What can happen in a seventeen second snippet of time?

Not enough, if you’re a Giants fan.

For those readers who aren’t football fans, pardon me for a moment to commiserate.

Last night, Eli Manning played what might well have been the final game in his storied career. Congratulations to him. His play by play… exceptional. His comportment through it all… gentlemanly.

Football is a game of yardage, sometimes a game of inches. Then, of course, a game of seconds. Last night’s contest versus the Eagles thus exemplified. At one moment in the game the score was 17 to 17 with 17 seconds remaining to play.

Was that some sort of sign to play the lottery ? Maybe, if I played in the first place.

If you’re a Giants fan, it went downhill from there. In overtime the Eagles convincingly marched down the field to score the winning touchdown in short order. My bedtime bubble was abruptly burst.

Hey, I can take this. Remember, I’m a Rutgers fan too.

Well, they did it. Greg Schiano inks an eight year coaching contract with Rutgers. Four million a year puts him about in the middle of Big 10 football coaches. Perks galore include unlimited use of a private jet.

Now what, questions me, another jaded fan. I am long steeped in a perpetual tradition commonly known as the R.U. Screw. It somehow affects anyone with even ethereal associations with “the Banks”.

Indeed, Rutgers has made a bold move to bolster their program. Yes, I’ll watch with eager anticipation, but what a daunting task undertaken by Mr. Schiano .

He has certainly made it worth his while. Now he has to make it worth mine… not a small task.

They are my Neurologist’s words, not mine, but they well describe what’s going on in my body for the last 17 years. Indeed it is a slow smolder, not a description that is particularly pleasing to the guy on fire. At least it’s not raging .

I thought I’d scrawl a few words because there seems a deficiency in people’s understanding of what MS is. Do understand that my knowledge of it is rudimentary, but might be sufficient to get you through the quiz at the end of this post.

Think of a wire that transports electricity. That is essentially what nerves in the body do. Nervous impulses are electricity transported throughout the body via millions of nerves.

Surely you’ve observed electrical wires. They are coated with an “insulation” so that short-circuiting is prevented in case one touches the other. Nerves have an insulation, too. The insulation of nerves is called myelin.

MS, essentially, is the deterioration of myelin that coats the body’s nerves. It may be accurately said, then, that yours truly is a walking, talking short circuit !! What happens when one is short circuiting through life, you might ask.

There are many answers to that question. Some shorts are innocuous enough, some are outright dangerous. One that comes to mind quite clearly well-demonstrates a bodily short circuit: I’m holding a small block of wood in my left hand. My brain tells me to place that little block up in the cabinet over there on my right side.

That, of course, requires my left arm to reach across my front and up to the intended cabinet on my right side. Duh! You knew that. But my left arm won’t move ! My brain has just sent an electronic message to perform this simple task, but my left arm remains stock-still. It is lifeless for the moment. Couldn’t move it if I tried.

The consequences of this condition are obvious. Short circuiting while parking a car is NOT a good thing, much less driving a car. Relinquishing my license was a profound result; yet another downward notch in the quality of life spiral. Bouts with vertigo don’t help either.

I won’t bore you with the list of complications other than to say that it’s not pretty. Balance is a huge issue. There is an unending fear of cracking my noggin with a fall.

Urinary and bowel control issues add to the fray.

Fatigue is, for the most part, constant. My hearing is shot and much of what I used to be able to do physically is down the quality of life drain.

Other than that, things are pretty good. ( I love that line. A little humor diffuses the litany!)

So, that in a nutshell is life with MS, the slow smolder. You may wonder, is there any pain with all of this? That’s where I luck out ; just a little on the emotional side.

I had mentioned that a quiz awaited here at the end. I was just kidding.

I sit here on the writer’s perch,

Eyes fixed at the wooded edge.

There a vigorous brook flows by

To quench a thirsty sedge.

The scene is but a poem

Deftly drafted from above,

With masterful strokes of genius,

Wrought with a Godly glove.

That it be my good fortune

To behold this inspired scene,

Hewn in perfect detail

In all the shades of green.

That I might humbly muster

Proper thanks for what I see.

To nurse the view before me

And guard its majesty.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

— Pete Tucker

December 2019

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It may be a flower couched in a cluster of decaying leaves. You can’t quite name it. Let’s face it. High school biology is now but a far off, cloudy phantasmagoria suspended in the bleakness of your fragile, eggshell mind.

Perhaps, it is a newt at the stream’s edge, not recognized even by you, the frequent passer by. What was that thing called, anyway?

Then there is the familiar wildlife that dashes across the headlights at night so instantly as to defy recognition. Your best guess will have to do !

Indeed, there is a steady dose of challenge here in the woods. The “What Was That ?” game never ends , attributable only to the forest… and the weary, wayworn biology classes of ages past.

The sounds of the woods, however, are the most quizzical. Nighttime in warmer weather is when the forest is teeming with sounds. There are the fairly standard hoots, caws, cries, chirps , vibrations and screeches. Many are readily identifiable. Some just are NOT.

Yes, it’s true. There are some noises in the woods that I can’t identify to save myself. Then there are what we call THE KILLING FIELDS !!

Sorry, all of you bleeding hearts out there. Animals have predators. They all do. Just spend the night around my house. (No comments from the peanut gallery!) Eventually you will perceive shrieks of fantastic terror never heard before! If you wonder what it is that you’re hearing, you may repose comfortably knowing that it was simply an animal being snuffed out by a bigger animal. That’s all.

Such is life in the woods. Nature’s noises abound.

That ain’t happening !

There’s a reason why animals hibernate. Up ’til now (Dec.4) this animal just perched at my favorite place to write. Outside, on a deck that affords a kickin’ view. How can one write without first getting their head right? The “perch” takes care of that !

Do Phycologists perform clinical trials ? Count me in. I truly believe that a writer’s surrounds affect, one way or another, the quality of his/her writing.

I will note ,with no further ado, that it snowed all day yesterday. I didn’t blow the snow off the deck, so here it is this morning just above freezing with snow covering every square inch.

Imagine if I was trying to write music out there! Talk about sour notes. So if this particular post amounts to naught but venomous verbiage, you’ll know why. The writer is fouled by the weather.

Oh, well . The new snow season kinda reminds me of long ago. People would venture down our long lane for one reason or another. Stepping out of their car in near disbelief that someone lived this far from a public road, they would unfailingly ask what we ever did when it really snowed.

Still unadjusted to the notion, they would react a bit oddly after our polished deadpan reply : “Well, (pause) we just throw another log on the fire.”

At this point I’ve forgotten what I was going to write about today . Maybe I should hibernate!

Softly powder falls on this early December day. We are reminded yearly of nature’s breathtaking wand that sprightly whitens the landscape within all but hours. It is nothing less than a magical painting.

I peer out over the view afforded freely by windows, twice arising old notions. The first is quietly comforting. I have nothing to do and all day to do it ! The snow silently descends and nearly beckons me to further relax and put another log on the fire.

Yes, that is for real. We burn a real fire every day. No gas. No valves or knobs; all logs cured for three years, hard wood only. Yes, that is notion #2.

As a farm boy, snow wasn’t always this luxurious. It just made all the work a little harder.

OK . Notion #3. And, why am I counting?

It is a story with a quite unexpected twist. The story’s character ? He is nick-named Jeremiah -Liver Eating -Johnson.

Why ? How? Give me a second. I’m just getting through the book, CROW KILLER, now. I wouldn’t want to leak details that would compromise your reading of it.

Some words of general nature wouldn’t do that.

In the lore of American mountain men, Jeremiah is quite noted. As a young, strapping man he ventured west to the Rockies to seek his way as a trapper. This was in the mid-1800s. The West, indeed, still wild.

In short, the woman who Jeremiah had taken as his bride was murdered and scalped by a band of Crow Indians. As a one man militia, Jeremiah individually set upon the Crows and did some scalping of his own, wreaking untold havoc among them for an extended time. Sweet vengeance!

Are you sitting down? As part of his ritual, Johnson cut the liver out of his Crow victims and ate the delicacy while it was still warm.

Now comes the unexpected. I was seated on the porch of a stately old farm house right here in Alexandria Township, Hunterdon County, N.J. The owner/orchardist was celebrating his superb vintage of hard cider. Our conversation flitted back and forth between subjects when he mentioned that this house was the childhood home of a one Jeremiah Liver-Eating Johnson !

Whoa. If ever an incongruous juxtaposition of details ! How did a Jersey kid wind up in the annals of Rocky Mountain lore ?

I suppose stranger things have happened; I’m just not sure when. I’ll keep reading and get back to you later.

Be thankful we’re not getting all the government we’re paying for.

— Mark Twain