Status Quo Nunc

What is the status quo now?

What do you see and what the news from here and o'er the sea?
What is said in Paris, what said in Brussels, and done in Benghazi?

as the poet said, me blowing my own horn (it is from my poem "Beau Ahmad" over in the other blog).

My father grows stronger. His iron levels are increasing, which makes him feel stronger, which makes him feel like it is all worth while, which makes him able to exercise and go walk about and firm up the muscles. The problem seems to have been that the blood count was dropping, then he got pneumonia and that made things difficult. My parents had somewhat earlier decided to stop taking iron pills due to side effects of a delicate (!?) nature, without substituting any source of iron in their place. Now they have blackstrap molasses, a brand whose tablespoon has 70% of the iron for the minimum daily requirement, etc. and a supply of liver sausage and sesame seed crackers for snacks. (All molasses are different in their chemical and mineral contents!)
The vision problem is iffy, but we have found a "Beaumont Doctor" (Wm. Beaumont Hospital in Troy), and she is "bright coin and Quito gold" and there is a feeling that all is in good hands. (The problem is wet macular degeneration... this is one of those little area of investment I thought would be better served when the rest of the nation was so gung ho on throwing money into the Iraq war in order to find those pesky - and invisible, so it turned out - weapons of mass destruction.)

He should be back gardening soon. Meanwhile, I have indentured myself as the main field hand at the summer place, and my wife is the housekeeper. In just 9 days, we arrived, got the space heaters cleaned and running because it was too cold, within 2 days ran into a 90 degree day, moderated, had two 90+ days, then froze again... the heating is not central and the a/c n'existe pas!
So we worked and sweated, changed clothes at least twice a day, showered, and worked from sun up to sun set... and, by the way, damn Daylight Savings to perdition! As if people who labor need another hour of sunshine!
Then trips to doctors' offices (my parents trust themselves usually, since the fact that they are stone deaf is not critical for most purposes, and a few doctors orders here or there can be let slip between the cracks... but not now.) and back and forth. We mark the years by our memories. The first year of pneumonia was 2005, which was the year of Katrina; we watched its approach in his isolation ward at the local hotel Dieu. Then there was the year of the Iliac aneurysm... and another "Beaumont doctor" miracle. (The local quacks essentially had given my father the diagnosis of iliac aneurysm and handed him a business card of their cousin's, who sold cemetery plots and garnishments... such as tombstones!)

I get to go up to Port Desespoir (as I call it) and take in the atmosphere. The newspaper is now about 6 pages large. There was a letter to the editor recently from an upright local yokel who was complaining about the desecration of tombs and disrespect generally: they said that some disrespectful lout had stolen the purple pants that they had dutifully laid upon their grandmother's tombstone! (I really am not sufficiently crazed to be able to make this stuff up.)
We can only assume that the purple pantaloons were her favorites, and that they had not been blown away in the wind. How does one anchor pants to a tombstone? I remember going to the cemetery in Forest, Michigan... which is on a cliff over Lake Huron and is very lovely... and looking at Minnie Quay's tomb. There were coins and toys and shells and jewelry and numerous other bric-a-brac that the peeps had left, and no one had taken any precautions against the elements removing them. (Minnie Quay is considered an real local haunt! She was Native American and had a tragic end which seems to escape me.)

My only other problem is the state of my Proclamation of Secession from the rest of the country. I figure that if I make enough clamor, someone will give me a homeland of my own somewhere...
I would not have to displace too many people to create an Intifada going forward for the next century, so it is possible.
"Sesesh fer ever!" My flag. Simple enough. Anyone understands. No pictures of snakes with logos "don't tread on me!" You won't tread on me 'cuz I be long gone! My political party ain't the Tea Party: it is the "Don't-Bother-To-RSVP-Because-I-Ain't-Going-Anyhow-No-Way!" Party... If Ron Paul were a real Libertarian, he would not try to force his neolithicisms on the rest of us!

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