Human faces fill empty spaces

By A. E. P. (Ed) Wall

I drove all of the navigable sidewalks on my electric scooter, but the neighborhood just looked empty. When you live alone there are times when you’d like to fill up those empty spaces with human faces. While I was bumping along, watching out for cracks and crevices in the pavement, I thought about a friend I haven’t seen in 70 years. We used to ride our bikes on sidewalks like that.

My wife’s diabetes took her into medical catastrophes as painfully pointless as waterboarding. At the same time I began stumbling and fumbling, courtesy of a neurological short circuit. We sold our house, said goodbye to a quarter century of friends, and moved a thousand miles or so to be close to family. Sally’s diabetes became even more aggressive, she moved to a nursing home, and didn’t live long after that.

Anybody who makes that kind of switch at a certain age, and with a disease that will soon stop him from driving, is lucky to have family and good neighbors nearby. But long-time friends and co-workers are not there. There are no jobs. If the move is into residential suburbia, and long winters, hobbies are savored. God bless computers!

So as I steered my scooter along bike paths and sidewalks my thoughts went from Billy Anderson, my 1930s bicycle pal, to others who put some real happiness and friendship into my life. I became so caught up in it that after I went home I started writing down the names, and picturing the people in my mind.

Some were childhood pals, some were girls I dated 65 or 70 years ago, some were co-workers and a couple of them were wives (but not simultaneously).

This was fun. I tried tracking some of them down via the Internet. I’m ruling out the grouches and remembering a lot of upbeat, smiling people.

This is dandy medicine. It isn’t covered by Medicare, but then, it doesn’t cost anything. It perks up the blood and lightens the feet. It will be a permanent part of my rebuttal when a self-centered mood starts to take shape, the mood that says even the silent monks see other monks, that a cat is good but not always good enough.

There’s no patent on this idea. Just think Rewind, and look for the cheerful voices and grinning faces out of the life you’re living. Call it daydreaming, call it mentalism, call it whatever describes it for you. I call it God’s gift—bigger even than the computer.

What we don't know about crime is a crime

By A. E. P. (Ed) Wall

The declaration that “all men [and women] are created equal” suggests more about the graceful character of early American patriots than about the intentions of a Creator.

Drawing upon English traditions and common law, the men who conceived the Declaration of Independence affirmed that everyone should have equal protection under the law. That was a revolutionary idea. It still is.

Angry revolutionaries seen on 21st century television sometimes risk their lives to challenge unjust rulers, but with more thought for the triumph of their cause than of equality for everyone, no matter what their religion or gender may be.

Men of property, planters and printers, teachers and preachers, were among the leaders of the American revolution and all they had to do was look around and see that all men were created equal to each other under English common law. Their eyes were upon each other, but they scarcely noticed their wives and daughters and sisters. Even those who were descended from indentured servants, shipped to the colonies, didn’t see slaves as equals under the law of the creator or the law of men.

Men voted for women’s rights

Many are the refinements of law, inspired by the revolution’s enthusiasm for persons more than property. Slavery was eventually abolished by white citizens who fought for emancipation. The right of women to vote was established by the only citizens who had the votes to do it--men. These were actions of a maturing society with an evolving grasp of what it means to be equal.

Whipping posts, dunking as punishment or interrogation, tormenting a prisoner in stocks, were rejected one by one. A prison cell for debt, self-defeating as it was, lost its place in the justice system.

Sending children to work in mines and factories came to an end, and children were given a status close to equality.

More recently the nation’s conscience began to unravel historic misconceptions about homosexuality. Maybe it wasn’t an ugly choice made by a disarranged mind, but instead a consequence of the way the genes lined up. Some babies were born with one sexual orientation, some with another, some were girls and some were boys, some had dark hair and some had light. Some, tragically, were born with alarming physical problems.

As people understood that being different is not the same as being unnatural, the punishment of consenting adults as criminals for engaging in homosexual activities came to a halt.

Laws to prevent two persons of different races from marrying? It seems incredible, but such laws were enforced not so long ago.

Knowing how little we know

Not even the sages of science were immune to the cramped beliefs of recent generations about criminality, sexuality and race. The smartest observers today know that most of what can be learned about these matters is still to be learned.

The United States is in the third world of justice and law, with the largest prison population on earth and disclosure that its highest officials sanctioned a return to torture as though 1776 had never been lived. Neither police nor courts, neither legislatures nor news media, know why people commit crimes. Burglary, rape, embezzlement, stabbing, cheating are predictable—but the people who do those things are not. Punishment hasn’t stopped those crimes in the last thousand years.

Shady impulses stir criminal behavior, and nobody knows much about it. Congress and state legislatures cannot even pass foolproof laws to wipe out their own institutional corruption once and for all.

People still look to secular government and to religious institutions to set rules of peace, justice and morality, and to be models of faithfulness to the rules. Instead, religion and state provide ongoing models of hope being dimmed by stress, indifference and corruption. Sexual abuse of children and adults is widely associated with churchmen, including cardinals and bishops in the Roman Catholic Church, Protestant evangelicals and leaders in other faiths.


How equal is dementia?

Religion’s adherents and converts may overcome failures, and encourage others to enrich the lives of themselves and others, but religious devotion is not expected to change qualities given to a person at birth. Religious teachings are generally presented in a “one size fits all” format, applicable to everybody in the same way. Nobody has figured out how someone who starts life with the burden of dementia, maybe an anti-social or psychosexual disorder, will absorb the golden rule as taught in Sunday school or celebrated in sermons.

Criminals cause crime, and it would be more efficient and cheaper to find out what’s nudging them and how to intervene, but it hasn’t happened. Apparently some people enjoy taking chances, pressing their luck without going to a casino, cheating on taxes and stealing from wimps. The glib claim that poverty causes crime has never been true, and its absurdity never more evident than in the arrest of billionaires for cheating themselves, their friends, the poor and the government. Prison terms are no more successful in wiping out crime than in preventing hurricanes.

Given the world’s experience with political organizations both secular and religious, campaigns, committees, letters to the editor, lawsuits and countersuits, climate change may put beaches on Pike’s Peak before justice issues are resolved. We ought to find out what really causes people to murder, steal and destroy, and how they might be drawn to healthier occupations.

Getting older? You bet your life

By A. E. P. (Ed) Wall

When I was a middle-aged fan of the feathered I used to think about retiring with binoculars in another decade or two, enjoying plenty of time for birdwatching.

When I finally got around to retiring the owls were hooting at me because I had the time, but I no longer had eyes that could even spot squirrels poking at my bird feeders. My ophthalmologist recommended that I buy bigger light bulbs. The owls hooted some more.

That was a long time ago. And now, 26 years after I joined, I’ve received a renewal notice from the AARP, as the American Association of Retired Persons is known. I’m offered a choice. I can renew for 1 year, or 3 years, or 5 years. As an optimist I’m opting for 5 years, which will cover me until a bit before my 90th birthday.

A friend told me that’s a ripe old age, and I thought I’d do a fact-check on that. What makes someone ripe? One reference book says something may be called ripe when its thread-like tendrils discolor and stop growing. Check!

Another way, especially if you’re wondering about a melon, is to rap on it to see whether it sounds hollow. If it sounds hollow, it probably is ripe. There’s nothing personal about this.

Growing old is an adventure, with risks, fears and satisfactions. Old age is sometimes treated as though it were a disease all by itself. Nobody has a cure for growth, or truly wants one. Old age is the consummation of human growth. Older folks have diseases. So do a tragic number of infants, children, young moms and dads. Jesus, who died young, offers the promise of eternal life, but no personal example of aging. No further example was unnecessary because, from the time of a person's birth, there's no change in Life's expectancy of a loving and generous spirit.

In the 21st century the words of Moses to Pharaoh resonate with power many generations after they were spoken. Exodus says that Moses was 80 years old when he insisted, “Let my people go.” In Psalm 71 there’s a prayer, “So even to old age and gray hairs, O God, do not forsake me, till I proclaim thy might to all the generations to come.”

Now that’s a positive fulfillment of advanced age—to proclaim the power of God, not necessarily from a pulpit or in a letter to the editor, but by being a living proclamation of faith. Faith is explained by catechisms, but it builds from the inside out.

New friends from old memories

From the Post-Journal, Jamestown, N.Y., Sunday, June 7, 2009

By Ed Wall

Eighty years ago I watched my grandpa in his rocking chair devour the Jamestown Post, starting with the headlines and not stopping until he checked out the classified ads. I learned to read at age 4 because I wanted to know what the Katzenjammer Kids were saying in the comic strips.

Many years later the morning Post and its evening competitor merged into The Post-Journal, still printing the news, including births and deaths. I had lost touch with the family of Harold Lind, my 1930s boyhood pal in Celoron, so I wrote to The Post-Journal. I also checked listings with Ancestry.com on the Internet. Results were swift.

The Post-Journal letter was read by my pal’s nieces and nephews in Oregon, Delaware and New York. All were born after Harold’s death during the Battle of the Bulge in World War II, but they knew about him.

They remember Harold’s parents, Walter and Ruth Lind, as their own dearly loved grandparents. Harold’s brother Warren died many years ago. Lady Lorna was Harold’ name for his little sister, Lorna, whose own children responded to my letter last month. Lorna died a couple of years ago. Her brother Laurel, called Larry, lives with his wife in Indiana. I remember him very well, even though I haven’t seen him in more than six and a half decades.

Larry wrote me that, thanks to the World War II GI Bill, he earned an electrical engineering degree, and worked for a major company. After retirement he spent several years as an electronic circuit design consultant.

"I remember you as my big brother’s best friend," he wrote.

I couldn’t think of a better way to be remembered.

My thanks to The Post-Journal and to all of the Linds, former Linds and near-Linds who have been in touch. Harold and I were inseparable when we were maybe 7 to 10 years old, and after my family moved away we were in frequent touch. We moved, as many did during the Great Depression. My dad, George H. Wall, was pipe organist at the Winter Garden theater and broadcast a daily program on Jamestown’s only radio station at the time, WOCL, but the national money crisis along with the advent of sound movies made it necessary to move on.
While I lived in Celoron with my grandparents, William Sheldon and Della Kinney Olmstead, I had all the children’s diseases that were standard in those days. When the doctor tacked a quarantine sign on the front door one day, allowing no visitors, I was discouraged because I heard nothing from Harold. The explanation turned out to be simple. We had picked up the same disease at the same time and were both quarantined at the same time.

We were both in uniform in 1942 when we spent Harold’s last Army leave, before he went to Texas for tank training, goofing around in New York City. I never saw him again. Harold was the kind of straight arrow, smart and upbeat, who should be remembered, and as Memorial Day approached this year I wanted to be certain he had not been forgotten.

I discovered from his relatives that there’s no chance of that.

Eyes on the dizzy button

By Ed Wall

The flu is getting the headlines. Maybe that’s why nobody seems to have noticed my new disease.

It attached itself to my long-time neurological ailment, which gives me a three-martini dizziness without the calories. As one who lives alone, except for a darting trip-triggering cat with feet fetish, I was recently persuaded to sign up with Rescue Alert. I was given a button to press in case of a bone-jarring fall or any other emergency. This button is attached to a cord, which I’m supposed to wear around my neck at all times.

Yes, it is waterproof.

Now I have developed two new psychiatric disorders, which are so new they are not even listed yet in the famous directory of mental diseases.

The first one is Bosom Anxiety. Will the next hug squeeze my button and set off a false alarm chain of commotion? It is almost impossible to talk to an Episcopalian without an embrace, and I worry about that even though I live among Catholics. If I were younger than 84 I might be anxious about other bosomy button pitfalls.

The second disease is Button Envy. When I’m out and around I try not to get scowled at, or maybe arrested, as I scan the chests of strangers. I’m looking for alarm buttons, of course, and when I find them there’s a compulsion to compare. Is the stranger’s button bigger than mine? And, although I have no bias, I note its color.

I’ve played enough Solitaire. My game now is Button, Button, Who’s Got the Button?

Killed in action, 1944

One of my favorite radio shows in the 1940s was a quiz show spoof called It Pays to be Ignorant. A zany panel of “experts” attempted to answer the questions, such as “Who is buried in Grant’s tomb?” That show comes to mind today because I was just too dumb to stop looking.

For a long time I’ve been trying to track down relatives of my best pal in elementary and junior high school. I’ve visited the house he once lived in on Celoron’s Gifford Avenue, talked to our teachers and rummaged around in Ancestry files. No luck.

Harold Elof Lind was born in Jamestown, N.Y., on July 12, 1923. We lived a few blocks apart in the village of Celoron, population about 700. On frigid January days we shivered together at the top of the bridge over the railroad tracks, wearing belts and badges that marked us as official agents of the school safety patrol.

Harold had gone off to college in Albany after making a perfect score on the New York State Regents exams, and even after Pearl Harbor he was given a draft deferment. Then the European theater needed more men. Harold was drafted and quickly taught whatever he needed to know about tanks. On what turned out to be his last leave, Harold’s parents drove the two of us to nearby Westfield, where we boarded a New York Central train for Albany so we could visit Harold’s fiance. After that we continued to New York City, where we spent a couple of days just poking around. We saw “You Can’t Take It With You” on Broadway and laughed a lot.

Harold was killed in action during the Battle of the Bulge on December 14, 1944.

Each year around Memorial Day I’m especially reminded of Harold, along with others who did not come home from World War II. I had turned to the Internet to try
to connect with anybody in his family, but I found nobody. Today I tried again, because the Internet keeps getting more useful and Ancestry.com widens its reach. Today I found a connection and hope to be in touch with a cousin or a friend of a cousin.

It is amazing what you can find when you’re too dumb to stop looking. The main thing is that Harold Lind did not die at the age of 21 and disappear from memory after that.

Defensive walking avoids bumps in the night

Defensive driving has kept a good many car radiators from losing their cool. It makes motorists something like Boy Scouts, whose famous motto is Be Prepared.

Defensive walking can save hips and lives when it is practiced by people who rely on canes, walkers, rollators and grab bars. Defensive drivers are alert to themselves and others. Defensive walkers are attentive mostly to themselves. Inattention can be the enabler that lets a slip, trip or tumble threaten hips, teeth and skulls.

Neurological ailments sometimes take over in a rush, and sometimes gradually. I was around 50 when I began bumping into things now and then, accumulating bruises and acquiring a walking stick. Like others who worked for a living, I tried not to make a big deal of it. My doctor had no idea what it meant. I was in my 70s before advanced medical knowledge, including new testing possibilities, brought a diagnosis of olivopontocerebellar atrophy, which my neurologist described as a form of Parkinsonism. It is known as OPCA.

By that time I was walking like Charlie Chaplin and learned to use a walker and a rollator, which is a sturdy version of a walker that’s designed for outdoor use, for walking around the block or to a neighbor’s house. I stopped driving when I was 81. It was my huge blessing that my daughter, son-in-law and five of my six grandchildren live a mile away.

Mine, like other neurological disorders, is progressive and does not yet have a cure. It manifests in some oddball ways, such as encouraging me to type hte instead of the. Dizziness and a gait with a mind of its own are constant companions.

Although it is not recognized as a sickness by psychiatrists, compulsive writing infected me long ago. This causes people to become journalists, and to continue telling stories even after they retire. This story is about defensive walking for folks who use canes. Some of the concerns are similar to defensive driving. Here are some lapses:

1. Inattention/distraction/fatigue while walking, whether at home where the terrain is familiar or someplace else. Don’t try to walk around while talking on the phone, or while chatting with somebody nearby but out of sight.

2. Poor lighting. Low-watt night lights make it cheap and easy to help guard against missteps at home. Moving around the house in the dark makes it too easy to trip over an animal or to slip on something the animal has done, or to trip over a misplaced object, maybe a broom or a chair or a shoe. I have night lights in bedrooms, bathrooms, even my living room in case I need to answer the front door or to get outside expeditiously.

3. Not bothering with gadgets. Some head for the bathroom in the middle of the night without reaching for a cane or walker. That’s not smart. After the fall it is too late to remember.

4. Hurrying. Take it easy. If it is an important phone call they’ll leave a message or call back. Don’t rush to the phone, day or night. There have to be speed limits for canes and walkers.

Accidents happen. But there’s no need to cooperate with them, to make it easy for them. They often can be avoided, and there’s only one person who can do it.