Pittsburgh entered the core of my heart when I was a boy and cannot be torn out. Andrew Carnegie (pronounced an·droo kaar·nuh·gee)

So much has happened, including Thanksgiving, catching COVID, and having a heart ablation, since we went to the East Coast for Michele’s Cousin’s Reunion, that it seems much longer ago than it really was. I also want to say that, although the rationale for the trip was the Reunion, the Reunion itself was a minor part of the trip. The trip itself didn’t really have a center unless rambling around counts. I thought Washington, especially the various Smithsonian Museums, might be the center, but it wasn’t. The parts that stand out were the new places we saw through the eyes of old friends, especially Pittsburgh and Baltimore.

Starting with Pittsburgh, the downtown part is pretty much like most downtowns, with new and newer buildings jammed together. But its resemblance to other cities ends as soon as you drive a couple of blocks from the epicenter. First, there are bridges, bridges everywhere. In some cases, after crossing a river, they dive directly into a tunnel. Just outside of downtown, I expected to see lots of lofts in recycled factories, and they might be there, but I didn’t see them. Although, we did go to see a superb jazz performance by Eliane Elias in an old industrial building that had been converted into a theater. The areas further from downtown are hilly, not mountainous, just hilly with tight hollows; somewhat like a Gold Rush town in California or Eureka, Arkansas.

Outside of downtown, on alluvial flats along the rivers or in a wide spot along a creek, flat ground is at a premium, and there are narrow three-story detached houses jammed together, giving it a somewhat Dogpatch-y appearance. As a former builder, I found this fascinating. On the way out of town, I would follow a road through a narrow valley with a creek, turn a corner, and it would open up to a small flat space jammed with a half dozen very narrow (around twenty feet wide) three-story houses, squeezed between the right-of-way in front and a cliff in the back. They looked old and not very prosperous. By the way, I don’t have any pictures of this because I knew we would be coming back in about two weeks. Unfortunately, by then, I had contracted COVID and only saw the inside of the hotel room.

At some point during our stay with Arlene and Al, Arlene said something like, “I love it here. I love the green. I would never want to live in California where everything is dry and brown.” It was a comment that I kept bringing up in my mind as we drove around the East. The question just wouldn’t go away. It seemed so true, I didn’t know why anybody would prefer the burned-out California hills to these green hollows either.

While we were staying with Al and Arlene, Arlene said that the Appalachian Mountains were the oldest mountain chain in North America which sort of surprised me because of all the coal beds in the road cuts. But, it turns out, the Appalachian Mountains are 480,000,000 years old (plus or minus depending on where in time you put the beginning. Basically, they were formed when the North American Plate slammed into the European and African Plates forming Pangaea. That was a long time ago, even before life had left the seas and started to colonize dry land.

During the next 480M years, it was much warmer because this area was closer to the equator, and the atmosphere was richer in oxygen; life on land flourished. For a good part of the time, this area was periodically underwater, and the submerged plants and animals were covered with alluvium. Millions of years turned those layers into coal and oil. Later, much later, I drove through road cuts that had exposed those layers and eventually ended up on a plateau where the Amish had settled in the early 18th Century.

I spent about an hour or so wandering around a faux Amish village which was very interesting until it wasn’t. Ever since I’ve read or heard of the Amish, I thought they were Luddites, afraid of progress. That is not true, they seem to have no problem with modern conveniences, what they are tucked away from is the outside world. They have no problems with refrigerators or blenders, for example, just the connection to the outside world that electricity requires. They have solved that problem with natural gas-powered refrigerators and pneumatic blenders.

During the late 60s, I became very interested in Amish quilts. I thought they were knock-out, with their moody dark colors like purple and maroon and I’m glad to say that the Amish are still in the quilt biz even if what they are doing seems more conventional.

Leaving Lancaster County, heading towards the Cousins’ gathering in Cape May, I entered a tree-lined maze in which I had only a vague idea of what state I was in. Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, and Delaware all seem to be intertwined in a way, that, from the tree-lined tunnel I was in, seemed close to random. At the end of the day, I ended up at the Atlantic Ocean just in time for a drink with Michele and Claudia.

Cardioversion is a treatment to restore a normal heartbeat when your heart is beating too fast or with an irregular rhythm. It’s often used to treat atrial fibrillation, the most common kind of irregular beat. UCSF Health

Ablation is a procedure for restoring normal heart rhythm, particularly if the irregular rhythm has not responded to medication…The pumping action of your heart is triggered by electrical impulses. Heart & Stroke Foundation of Canada

I got my third ablation last Monday because my atrial fibrillation has come back. In the olden days, say the 1970s or 80s, it was fairly common to treat atrial fibrillation with a pacemaker. Then cardioversion, which involves shocking the patient’s heart back into normal rhythm with electrical jolts using paddles that look like ping pong paddles. Cardioversion is such a big name for what seems like brute force, and then came the simply named ablation.

The name is deceptive, however. An Ablation is staggeringly complicated. Close to unimaginably complicated. In my case, a catheter(s?) is inserted into the blood vessel by my groin and guided into my heart where the extra heartbeats are being generated. The thickened heart walls are then removed or scarred so that they no longer generate extra electrical signals. This is all done in my body in the dark – duh! – so finding the areas to ablate is the main problem. On my Consent to Surgery for the procedure, it is listed as Catheter ablation of atrial fibrillation with electrophysiology testing trans-septal approach with transesophageal echocardiogram possible use of intravenous contrast media.

The equipment to do this is almost laughably complex as these photographs – the first by Michele, and the rest by one of the doctors, using Michele’s new iPhone – show.

I am now back home, feeling better except for the expected sore throat caused by the breathing tube inserted into my lung and an ultrasound sensor inserted into my esophagus. I think it was in my esophagus; I was peacefully unconscious, so I’m not sure.

I’m now on my way to having a heart free of Afib. I hope and expect.

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. Not when I was young when the adults sat at a separate table and seemed to be having more fun, but now when I am one of the adults having fun. Thanksgiving is just a time to get together – with people you want to be with – and give thanks. But now there are cracks starting to appear in this idealized facade. Today, it is easier to see the echo of our past being played out in Israel/Palestine. The first Thanksgiving was a nice dinner with some Indians who – in the long run – had most of their land taken away – not to mention that the majority of them died (although murdered may be more accurate).

 I have mixed emotions about this and am reminded of my grandmother Bambow. After my grandfather died, my grandmother lived alone, and every couple of weeks, one or more of her descendants – usually my mother and, less often, me – would go up to Santa Rosa and take her shopping. She would fill her shopping cart to overflowing, and then she would waddle to the checkout counter pushing the cart while one of us would follow, picking up the boxes that slid off of the pile. Once, as my grandmother got close to the checkout, a woman with a bottle of milk tried to scurry ahead of her. (This was way before the time of 15 items or fewer checkout lines.) With a mighty shove, my grandmother pushed her cart in front of this poor soul, cutting her off.

The woman couldn’t believe it, and I couldn’t either. It was just such a nasty move. The woman looked at my grandmother and said “Well, I hope you are happy!” My grandmother looked back at her and said, “Of course, I am, I won, didn’t I?” I probably took the opportunity to admire the floor tiles.

But now I feel a bit like that about the Indians or First Nations, if you prefer. What we did is probably to the point of being genocide. Still, the world is becoming kinder, more compassionate. Every day, there are more acts of love and kindness. And I am happy that we are here, on this wonder-filled continent, celebrating Thanksgiving.

“The cries of the Palestinian and Israeli children sound no different to me. What I don’t understand is why the cries of Palestinians sound different to you all.” -@RepRashida

In one of its few bipartisan votes, the House of Representatives censured Rashida Talib, its only Palestinian member, a week or so ago, and I’m not sure why. I know that they said it was because she used the phrase “From the river to the sea.” which, defacto, proves she is an anti-semite, but… really? It upset me way more than I expected, and I want to talk about it.

I’m going to start by saying anti-Semitism exists, and a good case can be made that it is getting worse. Also, I would be willing to bet money that there are anti-Semites in Congress. Over my lifetime, however, anti-Semitism has changed. When I was younger, anti-semites were the so-called good people, the town elites, and now they are considered declasse. But, while being an anti-Semite may no longer considered fashionable, it is still threatening.

I also want to say that Jewish people, in the US, in Europe, and even in Israel, are not the same as the Israeli government, and criticism of the Israeli State’s treatment of Palestinians is not, necessarily anti-Semitism.

Every day, we swim in an almost infinite sea of opinions passed off as fact. All – maybe this should be prefaced with almost, but I don’t think so -news and information sources we get are biased, FOX and the New York Times are both biased. This sea of opinion influences who we are and what we think, it influences what we believe down to our bones.

One of these opinions that are often presented as fact is the definition of racism and, specifically, anti-sematism. When somebody does not like a specific Jewish person or a specific thing they did, that does not make them an anti-Semite. A lot of money and a lot of ink – pixels now, I guess – is spent every year to convince us that they are the same. A great majority of that money comes from AIPAC – which I believe stands for American Israeli Public Affairs Committee – and AIPAC is out to get Talib.

As an aside, AIPAC does not like any members of the Squad, according to The New Republic: Sources say AIPAC is gearing up to spend over *$100 MILLION* as part of a campaign to knock the Squad out of Congress in 2024. Cori Bush, Ilhan Omar, Jamaal Bowman, Summer Lee, and Rashida Tlaib are all marked for high-dollar challenges. End Aside.

Lastly, but most importantly, Rashida Tlaib is not an anti-Semite, she is one of the good guys. Yes, she strongly disagrees with Israeli policy, but that does not make her an anti-Semite. On her Congressional website, Talib says, I have repeatedly denounced the horrific targeting and killing of civilians by Hamas and the Israeli government, and have mourned the Israeli and Palestinian lives lost. (https://tlaib.house.gov/).

There, now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, I feel much better.

We got home about the 21st of last month, COVID-free, I think. My first COVID symptoms were on October 10th when we were at Harper’s Ferry. I read that symptoms can appear two to fourteen days after exposure which means I could have been exposed anytime, anywhere, on our trip. But, on this Veterans’ Day, 2023, I am COVID-free. Yeah!

But I’m not symptom-free. My smell and taste are back, I don’t have a headache or body aches, and I don’t have a fever. But – and it is a big but – I am still fatigued. I think I still have something, maybe long COVID, whatever that is. I am exhausted all the time.

I wrote the end of the above about three or four days ago, and I started it close to three weeks ago. Most of those days were filled with my just staring into space. It was concerning. But, for the last three days, I’ve felt better – substantially so – every day. Yeah! Indeed.

In what seems like weeks ago, I went to the doctor’s, a new General Practitioner recommended by Michele. The first White Male I’ve had for a doctor in, I think, twenty-one years. He ordered blood work and a chest X-ray which I got at Sequoia Hospital, the day before yesterday. The X-ray Department is right next to the Emergency Department at Sequoia, BTW. After the X-ray, just as I left the changing room, I got dizzy. Standing there, sweating, trying to stand up by holding on to the chair rail for dear life, trying to catch my breath, somebody asked if I was OK, and I said, “No”. A minute, two at the most, later I was in the Emergency Department, and three hours later, Michele gave me a ride home. I have no idea what happened. Neither does anybody else. Still, Life Is Good. Grand, even.