All posts by Steve Stern

Well Shit! I Didn’t Expect That

Around home, Medical

I thought about the possibility of death, but that wasn’t what bothered me the most. It was the feeling of helplessness. I just couldn’t see myself lying in bed, not being able to help myself. That, to me, was worse than the fear of death. John Wayne after beating “The big C”.

I found out at the end of last week that I have cancer of the bladder. More accurately, I most likely have cancer. The conversation went something like this: Dr. Sean Berquist, “You have a tumor in your bladder, and it might be cancerous. Well, it most likely is cancer. Actually, for a person of your age with a history of smoking, I’ve never seen it not be cancer.” Steve, “Is there a chance it could be benign?” Dr. Sean Berquist, “If you were eight years old, I would say ‘Yes’, but not at your age.”

The good news, the great! news is that the tumor is pretty small and can most likely be removed by fishing a cystoscope up my dick into my bladder and, according to Dr. Berquist, “scooping out the tumor and treating the inside of the bladder with a chemotherapy solution”. It is a simple procedure and almost always successful. The operation is late next Wednesday afternoon.

I know I have had a lot of medical problems, but counterintuitively, between medical emergencies, I feel fine. As far as the bladder cancer goes, I’m very optimistic and pretty upbeat about this whole thing. Still, I feel like this post is too short and too blunt. On the other hand, I don’t want to pad it, so I’ll just leave it at that.

A Quick Aside

Current Affairs, War

Last Sunday, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) – maybe SBU works better in Ukrainian, Служба безпеки України – conducted a series of attacks on Russian air bases that were home to much of Russia’s nuclear bombers. The attack, code-named Operation Spider’s Web, involved smuggling drone parts into Russia and reassembling them near the targets, which was widely reported in American and European newspapers.

What was not generally reported – at least I didn’t see it in the mainstream media – was that the Security Service of Ukraine hacked the website of the builder of the bombers, Tupolev (officially, United Aircraft Company Tupolev). Besides getting a bunch of confidential information, the Security Service of Ukraine changed the home page of Tupolev as shown above. The owl is a symbol closely associated with the Main Directorate of Intelligence of Ukraine (HUR), which is the mothership for the SBU.

Going Digital – scratch that – Electric

Cars

We got a new transportation appliance a couple of weeks ago and, as Michele says, “We totally love it!”. I hesitate to call it a car because it is so far from what I traditionally think of as a car. Car may be a small word, but it can carry all kinds of implications. Our new transportation appliance doesn’t seem to have any implications, or at least any of the usual implications. It’s a Hyundai Kona, which should be a bland small SUV, except that it is a super fun, nimble, everyday driver that is anything but bland. The 2025 Kona is surprisingly very much like Michele’s 2002 Volkswagen V-6 GTI, which we both agree used to be our favorite daily driver.

I’ve owned a lot of different cars, and at first, what seemed to make this one stand out was that it was digital. When I say digital, what I mean is that, like my Sony a6700 Camera, it seems to be almost infinitely adjustable. When I walk up to the driver’s door of the Kona, without taking the key fob out of my pants pocket, all four doors unlock. But when Michele walks up to the door, only the driver’s door unlocks. That is because the number of doors unlocking is adjustable by each key fob.

In addition to the breaks, when I take my foot off the gas pedal, the car slows down by regenerative braking, and the amount – zero to 100 percent – is adjustable by paddles on the steering wheel. When I turn on the left turn indicator, a television camera turns on, showing me the left lane behind the car in what would normally be the speedometer.

Still, after owning the Kona for a week, unlike the Sony a6700, I became used to most of the digital goodies, even thinking they were necessary. The electric-ness of the transportation appliance was a different thing. Because it takes longer to recharge the battery than to put gasoline in the tank, the remaining range of the battery is a constant presence. Electric motors do not have a torque curve; they have full torque from zero to whatever, so putting my foot on the gas – foot on the gas still seems to mean hitting the go button – at a stop sign or a freeway on ramp provides instant acceleration.

I’ve had a lot of great cars in my life, and the Kona is near the top. That is surprising to me. I expected bland and got fun.

A Couple of Blooming Mammalarias

Around home, Cactus & Succulents

There are flowers that bloom in gardens
      Under a gardener’s care,
      And their lavish beauties charm me,
      As they flourish in luxury there. 
      There are flowers that blow in the meadows, 
      Kissed by the rain and the dew,
      In a riot of happy blooming,
      And I love their loveliness too.
But the flower that fills me with comfort,
      And makes Life’s meaning sweet,
      Is the flower that blooms in the desert,
      In the midst of sand and heat; 
      Whose roots draw strength and beauty,
      From a land forbidding and wild, 
      Whose face turns bravely skyward,
      Nor pines for lot more mild…To a Desert Flower by Hattie Greene Lockett, American writer, rancher, and clubwoman (whatever the hell a clubwoman is). 

Our results showed that from 4.5 million years ago, the arid regions of Mexico were the locations for abundant cacti speciation. From these lands, cacti have colonized most of the Mexican territories, the southern regions of the United States, as well as the Caribbean. Delil A. Chincoya, Salvador Arias, Felipe Vaca-Paniagua, Patricia Dávila, and Sofía Solórzano, Phylogenomics and Biogeography of the Mammilloid Clade Revealed an Intricate Evolutionary History Arose in the Mexican Plateau

Our garden is in full bloom, or, at least, as full a spring bloom as we are going to get this year. It got warm early, and everybody started growing, stretching, seeking the sun’s warmth, then it got cold, and everybody hunkered down, confused, including me. I left out several plants I had taken from the greenhouse where they had spent the winter, and they were especially unhappy. One, a Pachypodium – a very succulent member of the Oleander family – even committed harakiri.

Even with everything else blooming, like Hattie, the clubwoman from Arizona, I am most fascinated by the small cactuses in pots on a table on our deck.

Cactuses like the Paraodia, below, which grow at about 1,000 feet to 2,500 feet on the eastern slopes of the Andes in northwestern Argentina and southwestern Bolivia.

And Mammalarias, which grow primarily in Mexico but have spread to Central and Southwestern United States, to Colombia, and the Caribbean.

The Met Gala or Anna Wintour Has Big Balls

Americana, Art, Current Affairs,

You can’t speak on Black dandyism, Black art, or Black aesthetics without honoring the Black women who shaped, nurtured, and redefined it all. This year, my intention was to uplift and be surrounded by some of the Black women whose brilliance moves me—artists, thinkers, visionaries who carry history and possibility in everything they do. I’ve invited Lauryn Hill, Regina King, Jordan Casteel, Ming Smith, Adrienne Warren, Danielle Deadwyler, Lorna Simpson, and Radhika Jones to my table this year. Thank you all for your presence, your power, and the gifts you so generously share with the world. I’m deeply grateful to have shared this evening with you. Lewis Hamilton on Instagram

Last Monday evening, Michele and I watched the blue carpet extravaganza of the Met Gala on YouTube. If you are not aware of the Met Gala, it started as a dinner party at which the invitees were expected to donate money to the Costume Department of New York’s Metropolitan Museum. The dinner party was a low-key affair for wealthy people who loved and bought haute couture clothing. But everything shifted when Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour took over in 1999. Now, it’s a televised fashion event that brings invite-only famous people together for the price of $75,000 a ticket.

Michele and I got interested in the Met Gala when Lewis Hamilton first got invited to the Gala sometime during the late 20-teens. He and Anna Wintour bonded over clothes and, strangely, for me, at least, over tennis, especially watching Serena Williams at Wimbledon. This year, the theme for the Gala was Superfine: Tailoring Black Style, and Lewis Hamilton was one of the co-chairs.

These are dangerous times to have a political conversation, especially around DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion). It is almost impossible to have a nuanced conversation. It is also a time when companies like Boeing and Google have reneged on their DEI commitments under pressure from the Trump Administration (although Apple didn’t). It is a time when a prudent person running a department in a museum that gets money from the Federal Government would not flaunt their DEI cred, but Anna Wintour is not prudent or timid.