Meanwhile, back in Eureka Springs Arkansas, we have decided to drive about an hour to Branson Missouri. Originally we were going to spend a couple of nights in Eureka Springs and then move on to Branson in Missouri but we liked Eureka Springs and didn’t think we would like Branson so we changed our plans to make Branson a day trip. Driving to Branson, the Ozarks seem subtly different than they had a couple of days earlier, they were are starting to come alive. The trees were starting to bud and, here and there, were blooming white-flowered trees. We were told were wild flowering pears and it seemed almost impossible to capture their vibrant burst of life in a photograph. Going roughly northeast, we dropped out of the mountains, drove across a valley rich with farms and large industrial chicken facilities, then back into the mountains just after we entered Missouri. Usually, on a driving trip, I drive and Michele takes all the photo while we are on the road, on this trip I’m doing all the photography,

Before we got to Branson, Michele, who had been doing her homework the night before, said that our best bet for lunch in Branson wasn’t actually in Branson, she suggested lunch at the College of the Ozarks just outside of town. The College of the Ozarks bills itself as a Christian College and it does not charge tuition, requiring that its students pay for their education through working on campus. One of the things they do is work in, raise and grow the organic food for, and run the restaurant where we had lunch. It was good, not great – they didn’t have tacos but, otherwise, it was pretty standard forward-thinking fare, including roasted Brussel sprouts with crispy kale chips, shredded parmesan, fresh lemon and sweet garlic aioli – but good and the college kids who were doing everything from cooking to waiting were charming. BTW, while this is a Christian School, its courses include BIO 323 – Evolution and Population Biology As an aside, I used to think that, as I have gotten older, all young adults sort of look the same age. I don’t think that anymore, these kids were not the same as a waiter in her/his late 20s. The way they carried themselves, even the way they stood, was different. End aside.

I probably should start by saying that we really didn’t give Branson a fair chance. We drove in past the new Convention Center, parked the car, walked along the river – or lake as they kept calling it, looking it up, I found that it is an abandoned meander, so I guess it is technically an oxbow lake – walked back through a shopping area between the old downtown and the lake, and drove home. We didn’t go to the strip along 76 Country Boulevard or the Titanic Museum or much of anything, really. I looked at one local marquee and didn’t know anybody except The Oak Ridge Boys and we weren’t particularly interested in the Branson Murder Mystery Dinner Show or the Absolutely Country, Definitely Gospel Dinner.

After our stroll around the shopping arcade, we drove back to Eureka Springs for the night. The next day, we spent a bright, sunny, and warm morning at the Diversity Celebration in ES and a dark, rainy, and cold afternoon driving through the Buffalo River Watershed – BTW, the Buffalo River is the first river to be designated a National Wild River and is managed by the National Park Service – to get to Mountain View Arkansas for the night.

Mountain View looked like a nice town but it was Sunday and everything was closed which we sort of expected when we made plans to layover there on our way to Memphis. Mountain View is also the home of The Ozark Folk Center State Park which has daily Ozark Folk Music shows and, while we knew we would be there a week before it officially opened, we hoped we might find some music in a local tavern. It turns out that Mountain View is in a dry county so there are no local taverns where local musicians play, which was fine as neither one of us was feeling great. As an aside, one of my favorite groups during the mid-70s was The Ozark Mountain Daredevils who I discovered through Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airman and is a welcome addition to anybody’s road music collection. End aside.

One thing we did miss, however, was The Urban Forge which, looking through the windows of the closed store, looked like the most sophisticated store we had seen on our entire trip and would have been a great place to see local folk art. We were still five hours from Memphis and our trip was winding down so maybe we were better off not having a place to spend an extra hour. So we moved on to Memphis…to be continued.

Yesterday morning I went into the hospital for a cardioversion which I now know is the name given to the procedure in which they stop somebody’s heart – in this case, mine – so that it can restart with a normal rhythm. For me, it is a relatively easy procedure. I show up at Sequoia Hospital with Michele who will drive me home – and took the above picture on her iPhone – check-in, get escorted to an empty Intensive Care Room, take my shirt off and lie down on a bed.

For the nurses and doctors, it’s more difficult. First, the nurse installs? gives me? hooks me up to an IV (even though IV has become a pretty common abbreviation for intravenous – which is medical Latin for into a vein – I’m not sure how to hook it up to a verb). The IV is used to start me on a saline drip because I haven’t had any water in about eight hours and they want me hydrated. Then a dozen, more or less, electrodes are placed around my chest, arms, and legs. About that time, my cardiologist comes in, and after some brief pleasantries, attaches a plate to my chest and one to my back. The anesthesiologist gives me a sort of mouthpiece to bite on – hard plastic with a hole in it – and then gives me an injection through my IV. He tells me that the anesthetic is fast acting both in sedating me and in only lasting a short time after which I will wake up. I feel a slight fluttering – which is way not accurate, maybe tingling is better, maybe just a slight altering of my conscience.

I only know what happens when I am out by hearsay or listening to YouTube videos so this may not be completely accurate. My cardiologist fishes a sonar-type device down my throat to get a better echocardiogram reading of my heart, especially the upper atrium. She is looking for blood clots that could cause a stroke, although I shouldn’t have any because of my blood thinner. Then she stops my heart, hoping that, when it starts, it will be in regular rhythm. It is, but a couple of minutes later, the Afib rhythm comes back.

Then I am awake and everybody is gone except for the nurse. I have no sense of time having past, I could’ve been out for ten seconds or ten hours. The nurse asks me how I feel and tells me that I am still in Afib (in a more caring and connected way than that sentence makes it sound). About then, Michele is let back into the ICU room, all the hospital umbilical cords are taken off, I put my shirt back on, the nurse walks us to the car, and we go home. It’s like nothing happened except I have a sore throat. While I was dubious about the cardioversion working, I now realize that I had a big emotional investment in the cardioversion and it not working has left me feeling down and disorientated enough to post a gratuitous picture.

My next step is an Atrial Fibrillation Ablation which worked for more than six years the last time I had it done so I am very hopeful…to be continued.

Michele and I wanted to go for a walk, after going to the Native American Museum, and the only place we really knew would be good is the natural area around Crystal Bridges. The Museum was closed but the garden paths are open for walkers, it was surprisingly crowded, with people and art. My favorite piece of art was a Deborah Butterfield, Redstick, which looks to be made of Madrone.

After our walk, we went to an early dinner at The Preacher’s Son, a restaurant in a converted church. It was terrific! (And I’m glad to say they had both Tacos and Brussel Spouts, the one constant across America in hip, new, restaurants in the rebuilt downtown or arts districts.) There were two openings, 5:30 and 8:00, and we choose the earlier so we could see the church in natural light. When we got there, the restaurant was almost empty and it was almost full when we left. The early dinner crowd – crowd being generous – would almost fit in to San Francisco or Silicon Valley. Almost being the operative word, the people are neater here and, somehow, brighter, not as edgy, still, Michele and I felt like we fit it. We had beets in smoked cashew butter – I think they were the best beets I’ve ever had – Chickpea Panisse, and a pork shank with Hanna grits all items that could be on any one of a half dozen restaurants in the Bay Area. Bentonville seems to be in the same Universe as Silicon Valley although in a different corner.

After dinner, we went to the Walton – or Walmart, they seem to be almost one and the same – Museum. For Michele and me, it was slightly interesting but I didn’t walk away with any revelations as to how Sam Walton became so rich (the family is worth about 145 billion). Well, maybe one, Walmart still seems hungry, they are not resting on their laurels. All over town are Walmart Neighborhood Marts and the most notable feature to me was the conspicuous Pickup area which suggests people shop online, just like Amazon, and then pick up what they ordered on the way home. Walking through the museum, the other visitors talked in hushed voices as if they were at a pilgrimage site – especially when looking at The Great One’s office or truck – and I think they thought they were. I walked away more aware of how Sam Walton from Kingfisher, Oklahoma completely changed the retail business. I liked it before the change but that doesn’t negate the fact that he changed our National Landscape and the organization still wants to change it.