Topo? Arigato.

Posted 4:00 PM by Gerald So

A recent corn on the pinky toe of my left foot led me to learn what causes corns, how to home-remedy them, and how to prevent them.

I already wear wide toe box shoes, but the corn painfully told me my everyday pair (ASICS Gel-Kayano 30) wouldn't do. Along with roomier toe boxes, I wanted decent cushioning and low drop. Topo Atmos delivered all three.

Photo by Gerald So

The Place of Prayer

Posted 3:30 AM by Gerald So

I've been watching a YouTuber who's had a kidney removed and other organs partially removed due to cancer. He claims to believe in God and Jesus and to have seen an angel during a childhood hospital stay. As his current condition worsens, though, he feels all his prayers and those on his behalf have been for naught. He wonders why God is letting him suffer when he's already suffered much in life.

I have no answers and I'm no prayer expert, but I don't think all prayer is immediately or eventually supposed to yield physical affirmative results. If it were so transactional, everyone would do it, as often and necessarily as they put money in the bank. Whatever power we pray to would simply be a fulfillment department. Does that sound correct or fair to you?

Photo by Rodolfo Clix via Pexels

I've seen loved ones suffer and have prayed for their healing and eventually have seen them die. I don't think their deaths were my prayers going unanswered. I pray to understand, accept, and respond correctly to what happens. Prayer is spiritual, not physical. No one wishes to suffer, yet we all suffer in some way. I think prayer is supposed to help us mentally endure, so ideally what harms the body doesn't scathe the intangible part of our existence.

Even in death, only the body is gone. We remember our loved ones and if you believe their spirits achieve their reward, who could ask for anything more? If you believe this life is all there is, when we reach the end, any suffering ends.

Why Don't I?

Posted 2:00 AM by Gerald So

My post yesterday mentioned a life avoiding alcohol, tobacco, and firearms. This extends to caffeine and drugs, including performance enhancers.

Why? As I wrote for Disability Pride Month, I want to see what I can do without it all. I don't want it to impair me on top of cerebral palsy. I want to think and move as well as I can, whenever I may need.

To show I'm not overthinking, a memory:

During Bouchercon 2013 in Albany, a police officer stopped me walking from my hotel to the con venue around 7:30 AM.

"What's your name?" he asked.

"Gerald," I said.

"Gerald?"

"Yes."

And he drove on.

I'll never know, but I guess he took my gait for drunken.

One by one

Posted 3:30 AM by Gerald So

On my recent posts, I've noticed many more hits than usual. I don't know where from; I've never tracked stats that closely. Video creation (a.k.a. content creation) has become a viable career for some, but I don't have the numbers. I don't want to monetize my FIVE-TWO poetry videos and have ads drop in mid-line, and I'm not willing to put more of my life on YouTube for money.

That said, I happily sell my writing and I was a listowner in the heyday of email discussions. My three lists—about later P.I. fiction, Robert B. Parker's legacy, and crime TV and cinema—had 100–500 members each, like my videos far from popular, but there for those interested.

My target audience are individuals who "get" my writing, fans of the specific things I like. I created lists because few existed I would join. Today that translates to my FANS OF ROBERT B. PARKER public Matrix room, four users strong so far. I find Matrix a good option for end-to-end encrypted communication. On the side, its unencrypted public rooms offer running, saved chat and the freedom to enter and leave as you please, no need to sub or unsub.

Likewise I don't crave massive social media followings. If you want to follow my Bluesky or Mastodon, you're welcome. I purposely guard against becoming as reflexive with them as I had on Twitter until Musk took over and I quit. Because I had a relatively small following (1,200 in fifteen years), I didn't feel I had to stay longer than I wanted.

A.I. Don't Think So

Posted 3:00 AM by Gerald So

You may have inferred from my Disability Pride Month post, and I've stated plainly on social media, but I also want to go on record here: I'm against the popular uses of artificial intelligence to write, make art, approximate voices...anything that originated as a human expressive endeavor.

I could rattle off the ethical reasons not to use A.I., but I have a personal one: I want to see what I can do unaided. Until I took the SAT, I declined extra time on tests. I wanted to see how much I could complete in the regular time. I always knew I wouldn't get extra time outside school, that I'd have to make time and others wouldn't.

The artificial in A.I. bothers me. It's not real intelligence; it hasn't been filtered through life experience and become wisdom; yet people and businesses lean on it with poor results. As for me, wherever I can, I will hone my critical thinking, creativity, and life skills. The unacceptable alternative is losing them.

Disability Pride Month

Posted 7:00 AM by Gerald So

July is Disability Pride Month and I decided I couldn't let it pass without a post. This is my particular view of my own disability, cerebral palsy, which I've had since I was hours old and stopped breathing.

Having no memory of the time before, my disability feels "normal" to me. As a person attentive to words, "disabled" is how I describe myself for expedience, not how I think of myself. Maybe this is denial, but if I thought I were disadvantaged, I'd be less motivated to see what I could do.

I've found I can do most of what I want, not as quickly or smoothly as someone else, but that hasn't kept me from doing it with time, the same as anyone needing to prioritize.

I read a stat today that fifteen percent of the world's population is disabled, but I'd say a hundred percent is unfinished. However we start, we decide where we go. If not physical issues, attitude issues threaten to stop us from pursuing and reaching our potential: to work together toward what we can't imagine or achieve alone.

It's Not Easy

Posted 3:30 PM by Gerald So

I titled this post after Five For Fighting's 2001 song about Superman because it has to do with my best college friendships, and in college I identified with Superman. I had romantic feelings for one of said friends, and their going unrequited threatened our friendship and my equilibrium. I could only handle it, I imagined, if I were Superman. My disappointment still spilled out at times, but less than it would have without my super thought experiment.

Fast forward thirty years, for about half of which the same college friends have dreamed of a destination reunion. It's finally happening next month, a long weekend in St. Paul, Minnesota, only I'm not going. My friends are all married, most with kids. I'm single, no kids. I'm also disabled. Can't drive well enough to pass a road test. We became friends in part because they drove me, enabling me to join in any group fun I could ask.

For the reunion, too, a friend offered to book flights together and arranged airport rides. I think this longstanding dynamic blinds them to realities of my disability always apparent to me. For one, getting ready each day. At home I do it in private. At a rental house with a handful of roommates? Not entirely possible. They are my friends because they accept everything about me, but I'm still self-conscious. It wouldn't be an issue if we had hotel rooms, but the house is the point of this trip.

I paid my share of the rent shortly after my mother's death. I thought a getaway would be good for me by the time it rolled around, but I find I'm still concerned I'd bring down the mood. So I passed, but that was far from the end of it.

While it's true we haven't all gotten together in persion in many years, we chat and email and video call regularly. I count all these because I never know if I can make events or trips. A lot of things to line up. That's true for everyone, but it might seem so in my case. I've freelanced from home with my mom's and brother's support since well before the pandemic and the past three years caring for Mom after her bouts of pneumonia. In calmer times, it looks as if I can rearrange my schedule to do anything.

My friends are used to including me, convincing me, in effect overlooking my self-consciousness. Others might empathize, knowing it doesn't mean I'm retreating from friendships; it means I'm cool with what friends want to keep to themselves.

Life after Death

Posted 12:30 PM by Gerald So

Last Sunday I heard a homily by one of our parish deacons. He began with how short this life is, how our souls are much more important than our bodies. From there, he pondered what we lose when a loved one dies. He had trouble summing that up. Many may feel a loss too great to fathom after all.

I've now lived through my parents' deaths, yet I don't feel I've lost them. Their bodies gave out on them, but in so yielding, freed their spirits. I believe their souls have attained their reward. I no longer worry for their health. I also believe they've become part of me. In that sense, we're closer than we could've been in life. Everything they tried to teach me, I still pursue.

The right lesson from life is to make the most of every moment, so when a loved one's time is up, you all don't feel you've missed the chance to do anything more.

I May

Posted 4:30 AM by Gerald So

For some time, May 4 was a difficult day for me, the day my father died from cancer in 2001. I decided to add a memory in 2017, attending an Ace Atkins Spenser book signing.

The other day, someone on Bluesky posted that Mother's Day had been difficult for him since his mother died. These anniversaries and occasions have come to be positive reminders my perents' suffering is over. They're together again after twenty-four years. Then again, I also believe people who love each other are always together in spirit.

Easter Monday

Posted 3:00 AM by Gerald So

March 31 our Internet connection went out while landscapers were felling dead trees. The cable had gone up a tree and across the street for years, since our neighborhood last repaved the street. Internet was restored that afternoon but became spotty until, two days ago, the cable was properly routed underground.

Nevertheless, THE FIVE-TWO relaunched April 7 and is open to submissions year-round.

The week before Easter is especially busy for my brother, cantor at our church, singing at Masses and services Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. The timing meant we couldn't join extended family in New Jersey for Easter lunch, but we had a quiet one ourselves, a Mediterranean platter of falafel, kibbeh, and dolmas, and a carrot cake for dessert.

If you follow me on Bluesky, you've seen my developing Inkscape skills. I've made a vector avator I'm happy with:

Image by Gerald So

Next I'm working on a vector of myself in a bunny costume. I have time. The Easter season is fifty days.

Stopping for Death

Posted 6:00 AM by Gerald So

Inspired by Emily Dickinson, I intend this entry title to be accepting, not blunt. My brother and I are going to a nurse cousin's wake this afternoon. Her husband, a dentist, had a heart transplant a year or two ago, and somewhere in that time looking after him and their daughters, she was diagnosed with cancer and, like my mother, needed a pleural catheter at the end.

As bad as I feel for my cousins' loss, I know death is also something of a relief. Cancer ravages the body. It doesn't get the spirit. I mean the soul for believers, but I also mean one's personality in life, what everyone remembers.

Economic Blackout

Posted 3:30 AM by Gerald So

I participated in the February 28 Economic Blackout, not only refraining from buying anything, but also not watching YouTube (Google) and Prime Video.

Apparently the blackout had mixed results, but I joined to practice even more restraint than the usual not making much, not spending much. I don't know if I'll be able to join further actions, so I gladly did this one.

A Good Day

Posted 10:30 PM by Gerald So

At 1:00 AM, I shoveled most of 3-4 inches of snow off our driveway so my brother would be able to get out for an 11:30 AM doctor's appointment. I blissfully ignored Trump's inauguration doing some touch-up shoveling and salt-spreading. I recommend the Snow Joe Shovelution, by the way.

My brother was back by noon, and we drove an hour to St. Louis de Montfort in Sound Beach to attend the visitation for Rev. Msgr. Don Hanson, who served as second pastor of our parish, Our Lady of Hope, 1999-2007.

I remember Fr. Hanson for his professorial demeanor, which I appreciated as a teacher myself, and for his tech savvy. In the days of eGroups/Yahoo! Groups, he had a mailing list of his homilies. He hired a similarly scholarly music director, Raymond Henderson, who stayed through the next pastor's term.

Fr. Hanson also visited my father and celebrated his funeral mass in 2001. In 2005, he helped my cousin's fiancee convert to Catholicism and marry.

It's not lost on me that several friends around my mother's age have died recently, that that part of my life has passed. I'm glad to have recognized how special it was as I lived it.

Test Run

Posted 6:00 AM by Gerald So

My left leg is somewhat shorter and thinner than my right, not so much I need a different shoe size for each foot. Maybe it's natural I love running, more for the self-test than to compete. Until recently, though, I let the selection at shoe stores and wholesale clubs determine wnat I bought. I didn't study whether they were road shoes or trail shoes, whether they had stability features that might help me.

I have tried various lifts and orthotics and feel most comfortable and agile barefoot. I thought barefoot shoes might be right for me, but they sound too unsupportive. I bought a pair of zero-drop Altra Provision 7s and decided they should be my home gym shoes. I was going to buy Altra Paradigm 7s as road-runners, but I heard they were too heavy to go fast. Instead I went with the recommended Saucony Tempus. And what about everyday sneakers for long walks or hours standing? ASICS Gel-Kayano 30.

Driveway-testing these shoes against their predecessor Fila Westmount trail shoes, they deliver as promised. Thanks to Run Moore, Doctors of Running, The Run Testers, and Ryan's Running Reviews for the insight via YouTube.

Ending, Beginning, and Going On

Posted 2:00 AM by Gerald So

I've never dwelled on occasions like New Year's Eve. They're special to me mainly because they don't linger. I thought I'd mark today on the blog, though, as I've just finished the most important notifications of my mother's passing.

I always consider she could've died from pneumonia three years ago when she refused going to the hospital or two years ago when she willingly went to the hospital. We had three years extra time and we made the most of it.

I don't mention my spiritual beliefs much because I can't prove them—And who am I to say anyone should believe what I do?—but I believe my mother's spirit has passed on to something we can't see, describe, detect, or prove from here. Indeed I believe it only because I have faith. My mother had faith that she would be seen through every uncertain moment in life. Looking on, I'd say she was.

In the days since her passing, I've prayed to her and to my father. I expect I will the rest of my life, however long it is. Wrapping up this post, may we all have time ahead and make the most of it.

Upside

Posted 1:00 AM by Gerald So

My mother passed Thursday afternoon, shortly after my brother and I got home from visiting her. We went back to the hospital to collect some personal belongings and then set the funeral pre-plan in motion. The funeral will be Tuesday morning.

Informing various friends of the family, I'm in the odd position of consoling them as they genuinely react to the news. I was thrust in charge of looking after my mother from her first emergency room visit for pneumonia two years ago. Taking that role was hard on me, but I know firsthand everything possible was done for her. Everyone who didn't see firsthand has a nagging sense of what-if, how-did-this-all-happen that I have to and am glad to assuage.

As with my father's death in 2001, I think I'll finally be relieved after the public grieving rituals. I'll be able to mourn my mother in my own way and time. That said, my father died from pancreatic cancer, my mother from heart and lung issues that left her unable to expel the harmful gasses that robbed her ability to communicate her wishes. Their deaths relieved longterm suffering and so are nothing to mourn.

Downturn

Posted 11:30 PM by Gerald So

My 91-year-old mother went back to the hospital yesterday, nine days after a stay during which she had a pleural catheter inserted. The initial drains seemed to go well, but didn't much visibly relieve her. Most of yesterday she was semi- to unresponsive. We thought it was an issue of very high blood sugar and gave her insulin to counteract, but while her sugar normalized, her responsiveness worsened.

At the hospital, it was discovered her CO₂ and acid levels were high because her lungs weren't expelling them. She doesn't want extraordinary measures, so she was put on a BPAP machine to try and bring the numbers down, but they worsened. She was moved to intensive care, and my brother and I were told to brace for the possibility she wouldn't survive the night.

We chose to respect her wishes, have nothing extraordinary done, and let her pass naturally when the time comes. Her primary doctor and cardiologist endorsed our decision.

I'm disappointed she's lost the ability to communicate near the end, but I look back on her surviving bilateral pneumonia with pleural effusions two years ago and my handling online contact with her doctors and ordering her medications and supplies over the same two years. It was an honor to care for her the way she looked after me growing up.

This final stretch is indefinite, but at least it lets us prepare mentally.

S.O.B.

Posted 3:00 AM by Gerald So

Appropriately, the medical abbreviation for shortness of breath is the social abbreviation for son of a bitch. Almost two years after my mother, then eighty-nine, developed pneumonia with complicated pleural effusion, spending a week in the hospital and two weeks at a sloppy rehab facility, shortness of breath at a checkup Tuesday led her to a four-night hospital stay.

Her life wasn't as in danger this time, but her right lung proved to be trapped, so though a January 2023 pleural tap relieved her, the doctors advised against a second. Instead, they inserted a catheter to self-drain the fluid in smaller amounts, first once daily, then two or three times a week.

Since the pneumonia, she's acquired an oxygen concentrator, tanks, a cane, a walker, a wheelchair, and recently hired a caregiver, all of which allowed her to be discharged today to home care. The catheter is a palliative measure. Leaky valves have left her heart too weak to prevent the fluid buildup.

It was a small miracle she recovered from pneumonia two years ago during Advent. Now to have her life prolonged just before Thanksgiving, I'm surely thankful.

What I Learned in College

Posted 3:30 AM by Gerald So

Some pundits say one reason the Democrats lost on Election Day was they were unable to frame their policies to reach workers who see the party as know-it-all elitists. As someone who loved college and went on to be an English teacher, I don't understand the animosity toward education. It's true college changes and matures you, for the better, in my experience.

I grew up around a large, tight-knit extended family. After Catholic elementary school, I was rejected from my first-choice Catholic high school, where my brother was a student, but I chose to attend St Mary's in Manhasset. After that, I felt I had enough of a religious foundation and wanted to meet a wider variety of people.

I attended Hofstra because one of my favorite English teachers was an alum. Hofstra had an Asian American Organization, but I didn't join. I didn't want friendships primarily based on common ethnicity. By contrast, my younger cousin eventually attended Hofstra, too, and became AAO president.

At the start of second semester junior year, I heard about a meeting to explore creating a student literary magazine. I attended and not only saw all kinds of people but befriended many of them, including someone four years younger, who had skipped second and eighth grades. He wore a Detroit Lions cap, so I turned to him and said, "Barry Sanders." It was that easy.

Others at the meeting stood out in their own ways, which is what attracted me. We built the magazine FONT from common interest in writing, welcoming any students to have a say in what was published. Six people who worked on the early magazine remain my best friends today. I was already open, but I learned to be much moreso. I saw how everyone's differences improved the magazine.

I'm massively disappointed America wasn't ready to elect Kamala Harris president. I'm all the more grateful that my college experience lived up to the ideal of diversity. I think college would benefit almost everyone who derides it. It's one of the best and safest ways to open your mind. If you resist opening your mind, ask yourself why. Is what you are now all you ever want to be?

An Election Simile

Posted 7:30 AM by Gerald So

It occurred to me the effort to remove Trump from the 2024 ballot was like a well-intentioned effort to remove a wrong answer from a multiple-choice test. If all the wrong answers were removed, it would no longer be a test. And as much as we'd like everyone to do well on tests, some don't.

Good luck, everyone.