When I was young, I would roll my eyes when the adults in the room would lament how the world was going to hell. I listened to their stories about the Great Depression, and the rationing they endured during WWII, and wondered how in the world they could think those times were better than the one we lived in. But while their lives were better from an economic and materialistic perspective, they didn’t like what they saw as a society that was becoming too permissive, self-centered, selfish, and violent.
I remember hoping I didn’t get like that when I got old, but understand where they were coming from now because I’m feeling the same way about today’s world compared to when I was a kid. While social media isn’t solely to blame for this, it symbolizes what is wrong with the world and has greatly contributed to the dumbing down of this country.
I’m not anti-social media. Its original concept was good and positive. It provides quick access to information, provided one can discern facts from bullshit. It provides platforms to exchange ideas and collaborate. It helps increase digital literacy and connects people. Unfortunately, it also shortens attention spans, spreads misinformation, on-line engagements are often superficial, and in many cases bullying, hurtful and harassing.
What I see are generations of people not knowing how to have conversations or communicate with one another. All you need to do is go to a mall or any place where there are a lot of people, and you will often see a gaggle sitting next to one another and not say a word because their faces are buried in their phones. Perhaps they are even texting one another.
Likes and virtual friends have replaced real friends and are often the basis of an individual’s self-esteem. Students are relying more on AI to produce schoolwork, so all they are doing is regurgitating something that someone else produced rather than doing their own research and using their own brains. How does that allow anyone to learn and grow?
It provides a safe environment for cowards of all kinds to pass falsehoods as facts and to relentlessly insult and demean individuals with little or no recourse. Suicide rates among people between ages 10-24 have increased 62% over the last 15-20 years (according to Chat GPT – how ironic). It would be irresponsible to say that social media is the direct cause of this, but it would also be foolish to think it hasn’t has contributed. For those of you who like me are in their mid-sixties, can you imagine what it would have been like going to high school (or college) where a phone with a camera was always nearby to take a picture or video, and your reputation could be slandered with one click?
Social media has been instrumental in creating a toxic brand tribal politics, where anyone can spout blatant falsehoods as facts and have them accepted as gospel by too many people who are either too lazy to do their own research or too naïve to question anything from certain sources. Many of our younger congressional representatives are more interested in getting noticed and accumulating views and likes than accomplishing anything good or positive. All of this has spawned a sour and increasingly pessimistic collective mood in this country. It certainly has for me, and the scary thing is that we haven’t hit rock bottom yet.
With aging comes perspective and when I compare our collective mindset growing up to what I see today, we have created a culture where it is all about me. We have become lazy, ignorant and more self-centered. We take less personal accountability, have lost our sense of community or collective good, and are beginning to see a rise in the kind of political violence that permeated the late 60’s. I shudder to think how we would react to another depression, or to be forced to accept the rationing of the WWII years.
I am chagrined to discover that I have turned into my elders spouting gloom and doom. Greedy, ego-centric and ambitiously ruthless people who are primarily interested in feathering their nest without concern about how their actions might impact others have always existed and always will. But social media has allowed them to immediately influence the lives of others more directly than ever. It isn’t going away. Perhaps there will be some positive changes once we hit rock bottom, although I can’t imagine what that might be.
CONUNDRUM: A confusing or difficult problem or question.
Now that I have retired, my entire routine has changed. One of the many cards I received upon retirement was one that said welcome to the seven-day weekend. I got a chuckle out of that one, but it has been prophetic. When I was working, there was a strict routine. Monday through Friday were workdays and most of the errands and honey-do stuff was relegated to the weekends. I knew what day of the week it was because I was looking my Outlook Calendar every day. Now, I constantly ask/remind myself what day of the week it is because I can stay up as late as I’d like, don’t wake up to an alarm or look at a calendar anymore. So, my routine has changed a lot and I’m slowly getting used to it.
The one routine that hasn’t changed but is becoming tedious is my dependence on the monthly treatments I receive for my MS. The routine has evolved over the last eighteen years, but the one constant has been multiple needle sticks, and various degrees of feeling like shit for the better part of three days every month. I believe these treatments have allowed the progression to stay confined to one limb, although that limb today is virtually useless, but other comorbidities have cropped up that these treatments can’t touch – mainly leg tremorsand arthritis in both hips.
When I was first diagnosed with Primary Progressive MS, I understood and expected that my mobility was going to become compromised. My goal was to do whatever I could to avoid being stuck in a wheelchair and hoped that whatever pain I’d experience would be manageable. Maybe I’d get lucky, and my progression would end before any of that happened. Beyond that, I didn’t dwell on a future that I presumed was far beyond the horizon. There would be plenty of time to address these things when my MS bill became due.
While living and working with MS had its challenges, it didn’t prevent me from doing what I wanted. Getting dressed became harder, but it was still very manageable. It took longer to complete chores and yard work, but I could still do them. My mobility was compromised, but I could still do pretty much anything I was doing before the diagnosis, except for running or jogging. The only accommodation I had to make, which I learned the hard way, was to avoid being outside during periods of high heat and humidity because it would sap my strength so much, I would need to take a long nap.
Looking back on that time, my mindset was to put the blinders on, get whatever treatments I needed, and let the chips fall where they may.
The MS has evolved from a minor foot drop to a leg that is limp and weak. I get relief from these treatments for maybe 5 to 7 days, but I’m wondering if this is more from the steroid infusions instead of the apheresis treatments and semi-annual Ocrevus infusions. Regardless, when it starts to wear off, I slowly regress over the next three weeks before I get another treatment, but the between treatments experience is more difficult than before because of the arthritis and the progression within the bad leg.
I think I am more psychologically wedded to continuing this because of the fear of what might happen if I stop. What I can contribute to the maintenance of this house and yard has shrunk significantly over the years, but I still can take care of my personal needs and manage to do some chores, but the degree of difficulty of doing these things is much higher. I do very little outdoor work that requires me to be upright. I have hated watching K having to take on more of the chore burden, and neither of us are getting any younger. I loathe the idea of being completely disabled and unable to contribute the small amount that I currently can, but it feels like that will eventually happen regardless of what I do.
From a practical perspective, healthcare is going to take a bigger chunk of my overall income now that I’m not getting a regular paycheck, and at what point in time will it become cost prohibitive? My neurologist has suggested I add IVG (IV immunoglobulin) infusions to the monthly Apheresis/Steroids routine and is in the process of trying to get that approved, but will it help, and will it add to the misery of the two days that follow? And with all the turmoil going on in Washington that sadly will continue over the next three years (at least), how will that affect my coverage and out of pocket costs? Hospital revenue is going to shrink with Medicare and Medicaid cuts and the elimination of the ACA subsidies, so how is that going to affect the availability of services? I like the idea of having more income to do fun things, but the number of those fun things have shrunk dramatically over the years due to the mobility issues and if those got worse if I stopped getting treated, what good would that extra income be?
I’m frankly getting tired of doing this but don’t see any recourse. It’s like being on a merry-go-round you can’t get off. The conundrum is not knowing when to stop. I don’t see myself continuing this forever, but I’m not ancient and would like to believe I have a lot of potentially okay years left. I’m resigned to continuing the routine for now but can see the day where I say fuck it and throw in the towel. I’m not ready for the worst-case scenario if that were to happen and that is the biggest hurdle to overcome. It was better when I was younger and more naïve, but I can’t con myself into getting back into that headspace anymore. The MS bill I knew would be out there when this all started is here, and that reality sucks!
I’ve been working since I toiled in the tobacco fields of Connecticut when I was fourteen, sweating my ass off in the scorching summer sun under cheese cloth nets. My first “real” job occurred three years later when I obtained summer employment at the Hartford Hospital Business Office. Little did I know this would be the catapult for a career in healthcare revenue cycle management that started shortly after college and spanned forty-nine years, eight employers and three states. I’ve been with my current employer for over seventeen years.
I began to seriously think about retirement a few years ago, but the thought of living without a paycheck can be intimidating, not knowing how long the money you accumulated for retirement will last, or how much monthly expenses might need to be cut.
Then there is the issue of my MS. On the rare occasions where I thought about what retirement might be like before MS entered the picture, I envisioned a life where I could do anything I pleased and travel where I wanted to. While that isn’t off the table, the fact is my mobility is extremely compromised, and I lead a sedentary life. I have always enjoyed getting on a plane and flying off to visit new places and friends, but MS has made travelling and sightseeing a chore.
These types of issues made it harder to commit to a date. I worked on the numbers with a financial advisor last year to obtain a level of comfort, but you don’t really know what it will be like until you take the plunge and see what develops.
I pledged to take plunge and retire last December, but it decided to defer that decision for one year. I felt more committed to pulling the plug this time around but wondered if I would come up with another excuse to wimp out again once it came crunch time to file the paperwork. Deep down, I wanted the decision to be a no-brainer but did not know what it would take for that to occur.
I kept a monthly countdown and became more excited and apprehensive as each month elapsed. Then out of the blue, my employer announced a voluntary early retirement program for employees who met certain age and longevity criteria. That caught my attention.
I was hoping for an offer I couldn’t refuse but thought that might be too optimistic. But when the offer came, it was more generous than I expected, so much so that I read it several times and called the contact numbers on the offer to make sure I understood it correctly. I had, and this was the nudge I needed.
So, the plug has been officially pulled. My last day is September 19th. I’m both excited and a little nervous. I will enjoy not having to wake up to an alarm clock unless I want to. I will enjoy having a lot of free time on my hands and need to come up with fun and interesting things to fill most of that time. What I am most looking forward to is leaving the daily work grind, staying up as late as I choose and sleeping in a little more in the mornings.
Now that I’ve committed, the significance of what this step means has settled in.
I’ve always thought of life as a series of periods, with each period preparing us for the next. Childhood leads to adolescence then adulthood. As an adult we typically begin our careers in earnest, get married, have kids, secure housing, and slave away while trying to save enough to be able to afford to retire.
I don’t want to minimize the joy and freedom being retired brings. But if we are talking about life stages, what is the next big thing after retirement? Death. That sounds grim, but I don’t mean it that way.
Let’s face it. Retirement is the beginning of the last leg of our life’s journey. I prefer to think of it as revisiting the childhood years, minus the immaturity. It is a time to recapture as much of the fun we had as kids and squeeze every ounce of enjoyment out of whatever years that remain. The hope is we won’t be short-changed regarding how many years we get, that we remain mentally sharp, and we don’t spend significant time in a hospital or any time in a nursing home.
My parents were lucky. Their biggest fears were that they would become sick and a burden to their kids, but that never happened. They lived to 96 and 92 and were both physically fit and mentally sharp for their age. Their ends came quickly with no prolonged illness or drama. Dad died within three days of the event that felled him and Mom never recovered from her event and was gone hours later. I should be so lucky.
When I first learned I had MS and contemplated an unknown future, I didn’t dwell or obsess about a life that suddenly had storm clouds on the horizon. Whatever the future held would arrive in due time so why worry until it is necessary? It was important to learn what I could do in terms of treatments and meds that could slow my progression, but I didn’t let the disease consume my thoughts or dictate how I lived. I’m following that same mindset regarding the retirement years: embrace the present, squeeze as much enjoyment from it as possible, and worry about the other shit when I must.Damm the torpedoes, full steam ahead, and seize the day!
Well, the election did not go as I had hoped, and those of you who follow this post know why. If not, read the section about the President-Elect here.
A feeling of dread grew as Tuesday night progressed, so I stopped watching the election results and tried to get some sleep before the dread turned into despair. When I finally got out of bed after a fitful night of tossing, turning and catching bits of sleep here and there, my emotions were raw, and my anxiety was in the stratosphere. The despair I had wanted to avoid landed with a thud when the outcome was confirmed shortly after I awoke.
After stewing all morning and into the early afternoon while trying to concentrate on work, I had an epiphany. Life is too short, and I can’t keep pissing into the wind like this. I can’t continue to be consumed by national politics like I was in 2016, 2020 and allowed myself to be these last few months. It isn’t worth living and dying by who occupies the oval office in the MAGA era.
This is not sour grapes. While I believe the nation’s decision is extremely misguided, that the electorate completely missed the long-term implications of their decision, and that we are about to enter a particularly dangerous period in our nation’s history, that ship has sailed and there is nothing I can do about it. What I can do, however, is control how I adjust and adapt to what will follow over the next four, long years.
I’m heading into my late sixties, have fought the good fight, and it is time to move on. I am not going to torture myself anymore by following the news and being inundated with stories about the Armageddon that is coming and the chaos that is sure to follow. So, I’m done.
I’ll grieve for a while and get that out of my system, but to preserve my sanity I’ve decided to completely unplug from politics. No more CNN, no more MSNBC, no more 60 Minutes, no more discussing politics, no more of anything like that. No more deluge of political e-mails predicting the end of the world as we know it, as I literally spent close to fifteen minutes last night unsubscribing from all the stuff that was lingering in my mailbox.
I’m not going to bang my head against the wall with the MAGA crowd because experience has proven there is no reasoning or give and take with them, so let them own what follows. Reap the Whirlwind, as they say. It’ s time for the younger generations to take responsibility for their own future because mine is comparatively limited and they have the most to lose. I’ll make my voice heard at the ballot box.
I’ll stay informed at a superficial level about what is going on nationally by occasionally glancing at the titles of the news feeds that keep populating my phone and tablets, and follow what is going on locally and within my state more closely. I’ll dip my toes into the national waters the night of the mid-term elections, and of course in 2028. But other than that, it is time to move on. I’m putting the blinders on and will concentrate on what is truly important: family, friends, my health, and getting some Zen back into my life.
Sports have always been my fallback as a means of escape, but I will also watch more movies, read more fiction, and maybe write more than I have over the past couple of years. New England, which is where I live, is one of the prettiest regions of our country, so take I’ll take time to enjoy the beauty of her woods, beaches, lakes and hills/mountains more often. I’ll focus on appreciating the peace and wonder of what we take for granted, like the brilliance of the stars on a clear, dark night, the sight of fireflies flashing their lights on and off in a field of tall grass on a warm summer evening or standing outside in the tranquility of a winter’s night, watching the snowflakes fall on my illuminated yard. I need to begin appreciating life’s simple pleasures more instead of lamenting about what I can’t control. I also need to spend more time pondering the next stage of my life: retirement. I had a date in mind but need to get a sense of what might (or might not) happen to Social Security and Medicare, and if it makes sense to keep the original plan or keep working until that picture comes more into focus.
This new mindset has already provided a sense of freedom and relief. My deepest hope is that when I finally come up for air in 2028, the country will still resemble the one that I know and love.
When I learned that I had Primary Progressive MS back in 2007, I instinctually understood a day would come when a wheelchair became necessary. I dreaded the idea, but “that day” was too far out in the future to fret over it. So like everything else, I tucked that thought into the deepest recesses of my mind and focused on navigating my new reality.
Fast forward seventeen years, and while the wheelchair remains unnecessary, “that day” feels uncomfortably close because I can no longer walk any kind of distance easily. Like a lot of things with the disease, MS is not the direct cause, but a by-product of it is.
I wrote a post a few years back on how arthritis had settled in the knee of my bad leg and was causing mobility problems, not to mention occasional pain. It turns out that years of walking in a fucked-up manner has now created arthritic hips, and the hip of what used to be the good (left) leg is the one that is most affected because I’ve lost more than 50% of the cartilage in the joint, and the ball that fits into the hip socket is no longer round and smooth, but rough and gnarly.
That leg has always been the limb that supports most of my weight when I am walking or standing still, and now it often hurts to put weight on it. This is especially true if I’ve been on my feet a lot, and towards the end of the day in general. I’ve tried to compensate by putting more weight on the bad leg, but that unfortunately gets the arthritis in the knee going and creates a pain so sharp that my leg literally buckles to the point where I will fall if I don’t have anything to help keep me upright. I therefore try to make sure that whenever I am in the house, I always have one hand free or am close to an appliance, a wall or a counter to prop myself up to keep myself from collapsing when it does.
While I can work around this when I’m home, I have become reluctant to go to public events because I move like an inchworm and don’t want to risk falling in public.
K had been suggesting a mobility scooter for a while, which I had dismissed because I’m stubborn. If I could reasonably get from Point A to Point B, I was going to keep doing it my way on my own two feet. To do otherwise would be giving into the disease and waiving the white flag. But once the hip issue became pronounced, I couldn’t ignore that I needed to do something because to do otherwise would be a different form of giving up.
After doing my due diligence, I purchased the machine that you see at the beginning of this post, and it has improved my quality of life significantly in the short time I have had it. This bad boy, which I’m thinking of calling Moby, has a top speed of 6 MPH, which doesn’t sound fast until you are on it, has a tight turning radius, can handle uneven terrain and incline of up to 12 degrees. It can carry up to 265 pounds, is lightweight (around 37 pounds without the battery) and folds easily. Those last two items are key for any kind of travel.
I was self-conscious about being seen on it, but that lasted a nanosecond once I started using it. Moby makes going outside and doing outside things infinitely easier. Our town had its annual agricultural fair a few weeks ago and I never would have considered going without it. I’ve taken it to places like Lowes and Home Depot and it navigated the aisles and tight spaces easily. It allows K and I to spend more time together.
This is probably a temporary fix. I can’t use it any place that has stairs instead of ramps, and I’m not sure how it would work in a store that has narrow aisles. But I can still do stairs, so I don’t need it to visit friends at their houses. And I can negotiate distances and tight spaces provided there are places I can sit and rest once I get to where I need to be. The bottom line is my once-shrinking world has begun to expand again.
It has been a liberating experience. I’m hoping this will also help reduce the pace of the wear and tear in my lower half (along with Physical Therapy) and prolong the time between now and when I must seriously consider a wheelchair.
Of course, the possibility remains that I’ll never need one and the worst case scenario is I purchase another scooter to use inside the house. Wouldn’t that be nice?
1993 – 2000. William J. Clinton – Ages 34 to 41 – Liked.
The 1992 election was the first one I was really invested in. Clinton was young, personable, and eloquent, which was refreshing because I thought of everyone who previously served as an old guy. Clinton felt like more of a peer.
I thought he was brilliant and the emphasis on Whitewater and Paula Jones was a lazy excuse to distract voters from the reality of our economy. He oozed enthusiasm, optimism and hope. I vividly remember watching the election returns that night and became more excited as it became obvious what the results were going to be.
Economically speaking, these were good times. He converted what was then the largest deficit in American history to the largest (and last) surplus. His administration achieved a record 115 months of economic expansion and the lowest poverty rate in twenty years. The world was relatively peaceful. We experienced the highest rate of home ownership up until that time, the lowest level of government spending and the lowest unemployment in three decades. What was there not to like?
On a personal level I had become a father, had moved out of state only to return four years later, and was successful professionally. Everyone was prepping for Y2K, and 12/31/99 was the last time I intentionally stayed up to watch the clock strike midnight (that didn’t involve a party) to see if the lights stayed on or if computer systems crashed.
I liked Clinton a lot, and still do. He was one of the smartest Presidents of my lifetime, but his Slick Willie tendencies were silly and frequently hurt him (“I smoked marijuana but didn’t inhale”), and he tarnished his legacy because he couldn’t keep it in his pants. Remember how outraged everyone was that such a scandal could occur? And in the Oval Office, of all places. This is another example of how quaint and outdated this seems now given what has transpired and continues to transpire.
2001 – 2008 George W. Bush – Ages 42 to 49 – Disliked.
My focus during this period was raising a young son, and marveling at the changes I observed as he turned from 3 to 10. But I was never a Bush fan. I didn’t think he was a bad guy, but I thought the Clinton Administration had done well and Gore deserved a chance to serve. Bush didn’t have Clinton’s intellect or drive and was a clumsy public speaker who gave the impression he wasn’t comfortable in the spotlight. The 2000 election was the biggest election fiasco up to that time, (remember hanging chads?) and the Supreme Court ultimately decided who won the election. Gore to his credit ultimately bowed out to save the country from what would have been an ugly and prolonged fight. How times have changed.
Bush’s demeanor and response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks made me reassess, but that was short-lived. I never bought the proposition that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and was very skeptical of our involvement in Afghanistan because the Russians had been engaged in a 9-year war with them, accomplished nothing, and ultimately left. Why should we have expected different results?
Then came the most severe economic crisis since the Great Depression where he stayed mostly in the background. I had refinanced my variable rate mortgage to a fixed one a few years prior, so I didn’t get hammered. But people were hurting, I was cringing as my retirement portfolio took a nosedive, and his administration appeared helpless regarding what to do about it.
By the time 2008 rolled around, I couldn’t wait for him to leave, and thought he was the worst President of my lifetime. I was comforted by the idea that we would never have anyone as inept as him. Little did I know that the next Republican president would make him look like a Noble Laureate and make me long for a Republican like him.
2009 – 2016 Barack H. Obama II – Ages 50 to 57 – Liked
I was and still am a big Obama fan. He was young, vibrant, brilliant and the best orator we’d seen since Reagan. Even though I liked and respected John McCain, I thought Obama was what we country needed to get out of the economic quicksand we were in and felt as upbeat and hopeful as I had in a while. The fact that Sarah Palin was McCain’s running mate didn’t help his cause. The country needed hope and a reason to believe that better times were coming given the situation we were in, and he provided that in abundance.
Obama delivered. We did not plunge into the abyss of what pundits were calling the second great Depression of 2009. That by itself was a great accomplishment, one that he never received the credit it deserved. Let’s also not forget the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare), which opened access to care for multitudes that were previously uninsured, got rid of the pre-existing condition card insurers often played to escape responsibility of paying a claim, and allowed parents like me to cover their children’s health insurance needs until the age of 26. We also rid the world of Bin Laden on his watch.
The grace and dignity in which he handled himself was unparalleled. His entire Presidency was challenged by disrespect (remember Joe Wilson, as assistant Republican whip in the House of Representatives, interrupting his State of the union address by calling him a “liar”?), the issue of his citizenship (the birther conspiracy), and other inane allegations designed to make him appear small, weak and ineffective. Yet he didn’t sink to the level of his enemies. I admire that. Integrity is something I hold in high regard, and he and his wife had it in abundance.
He’s the only President I can think of that didn’t have to address a single scandal or major controversy during his administration (I don’t count the Benghazi uproar because that was directed against his Secretary of State). I It feels like that all occurred in a different lifetime, and I long for those days.
Donald J. Trump – 2017 – 2020 – Ages 58 to 61 – Despise (and fear).
Where do I start?
Before the campaign even began, the two names I didn’t want to see on the ballot were Bush and Clinton. Credentials aside, we had a collective twenty years where a Bush or Clinton was in the White House, and I was burned out on both. I believed the country was too.
I thought Trump’s candidacy was a joke, and he had less than a snowball’s chance in hell to get elected. To me he was nothing more than an arrogant, uncouth, ignorant con-artist, blowhard and egomaniac who screwed anyone over who got in his way without a tinge of remorse or regret. He was a legend in his own mind, and I believed the only reason he was running was to promote his brand and profit from it once the election was over. Unfortunately, he validated P.T. Barnum’s assertion that “there’s a sucker born every minute.”
This was not, and still is not, a Democrat/Republican thing. I’m fiscally conservative and socially liberal, which puts me square in the middle. But Integrity is very important, and while an argument can be made that Bill Clinton had character issues as a candidate, it was nothing compared to this guy. I could not and still can’t understand how people could be bamboozled by his schtick and not recognize him for who he was: a bully who was not only lazy but incapable of admitting he was ever wrong about anything. Including the 2020 insurrection which had his fingerprints all over it.
The 2016 election was the only time where an impending feeling of doom and shock hit me to the point where I was almost physically ill. It was also the one and only time in my life where I had difficulty sleeping on an election night. A few days later I started rationalizing that maybe it wasn’t going to be as bad as I thought. I mean, how bad could the guy be? Maybe he’d surprise me. Maybe he’d surround himself with people who knew how to get things done. Maybe I should give him the benefit of the doubt. That pretty much ended when Rex Tillerson, the former CEO of Exxon-Mobil who served as his Secretary of State from 2017-2018, resigned his position and reportedly called Trump a “fucking moron” once he left.
What are Trump’s gifts to the country? Propaganda and a bunch of lapdog sycophants whose intent is to make us doubt the integrity of institutions we rarely questioned. Fake news. A tribal band of politics. Cozying up to tyrants and dictators while dissing our NATO allies. Making racial comments acceptable. Unleashing the prejudice and extremism in this country. Juvenile name calling of political adversaries. Purposefully dividing the country. Never admitting any fault. Creating an toxic environment where anyone who didn’t think he was God’s gift to mankind was scum. I could go on and on.
The scary thing is that if it weren’t for the COVID pandemic and the way he handled it, he’d still be president today. And if anyone still doubted his true character, the election denial saga, the January 6th insurrection, and the Congressional hearings that followed should have laid that issue to rest. The fact that a large swath of this country seems willing to ignore January 6thand its aftermath is unfathomable, sickening and disturbing.
Trump has no regard for anyone or anybody but himself. You want to argue that we didn’t know him prior to 2016, and we needed someone who was not a politician who could “drain the swamp”? Well, the swamp didn’t get drained, and he approaches governing like a Mafia Mob-Boss. He’d rather be King because there isn’t any accountability, and I am more afraid of him getting elected now than I was in 2016.
Simply stated, he would sell you and this country down the river without thought or remorse if it put money in his pockets or keeps him in power. I honestly believe the democracy we enjoy and the freedoms that come with it are at risk, that he would stack the deck as best he could to make sure we can never get rid of him, and punish anyone who opposed him.
Joseph R. Biden, Jr – 2021 – 2024 – Ages 62 – 65
One of the happiest days of my life was the day he was inaugurated. Do I think he’s done a good job so far? Yes. Do I think he’s perfect? No, but none of his predecessors were. Biden was and is an experienced, stable and wise politician who inherited a mess and pulled us out of the pandemic. You want to give Trump credit for developing the vaccine? Fine. But given how he handled the pandemic in general (remember the idea of injecting bleach and the cluster fuck surrounding hospitals obtaining necessary ventilators and other supplies?) do you really think he would have handled the vaccine rollout, or dealt with the competing disasters in the Ukraine and the Middle East as well as Biden? You’re on drugs if you do.
2025 – ?
Prior to President Biden dropping out of the election, I had avoided watching anything related to politics, especially after the first debate. It was depressing because it was clear he lost the election that night. The apocalypse was approaching because we were going to be stuck with someone who has a hard time putting a coherent thought together, whose mental fitness was rapidly deteriorating before our eyes, and whose only motivation for getting elected was to keep his ass out of jail and make as much money as he could in the process.
I would have liked to see a Nicky Haley, Chris Christie or even Liz Cheney be the Republican candidate because I think the focus would have been on issues and not the circus. That would have been intriguing and refreshing.
If the lies about Haitians eating peoples’ pets in Ohio didn’t prove that he isn’t mentally fit to run for President, I don’t know what will. This lie has negatively impacted the lives of all Springfield residents, but he doesn’t care because he perceives it is politically advantageous to keep peddling it. Can you imagine if Hillary Clinton, Obama or any other democrat uttered those words? Or tried to overturn the 2020 election results. MAGA would be screaming for public executions.
Biden’s age concerned me a lot, and it seemed to concern a lot of Americans. But that now applies to Trump, who is only a few years younger than Biden and has a family history of Alzheimer, yet his age and deteriorating mental acuity get seem to get discounted.
The saddest thing of this entire affair has been the demise of the Republican Party as a moral, ethical and viable political alternative. Very few Republicans have had the cojones to stand up to Trump and his enablers, and those who have (Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger and a host of others) get blackballed and run out of office. The only way I see the party rebounding from the MAGA era is if Harris gets re-elected and the Republicans get annihilated in the Congressional and Senate races. Maybe common sense would prevail, the party would realize what an anchor he is, and they try to rebuild their honor.
The divide and conquer mentality of what used to be the GOP has too many people convinced that the elections are rigged, and their voices are not being heard. Games are being played at the local level to suppress and/or certify the vote. So, unless Trump wins or the Harris margin of victory is so significant it can’t be debated, the events surrounding the aftermath of this year’s election, and perhaps even the election itself, will be comparable if not worse to January 6th.
Regardless of who the candidates are, I had always felt we were safe and secure as a country because I believed they had our best interests at heart and could manage the ever-changing and increasingly complex global economy and politics. That no longer applies and hasn’t since 2020.
I recently saw a Mary Trump interview where she said that her uncle’s entire life has navigated a narrow band of emotions (grievance, rage and the fear of humiliation), and he has forced the rest of us to live in that world with him. Don’t know about you, but that sums up how I have felt since 2016. Trump’s America is an all-consuming rabbit hole that is deep and dark, where there is little light or hope. It becomes deeper, darker, and harder to escape from the longer he is around. His schtick is like a once-popular television show that has gotten old, stale, is tough to watch, and needs to be cancelled. I’d like to think that the majority of the electorate is smart enough to see that.
There have been thirteen occupants of the oval office since I was born and they fall into the following personal rating categories: liked, ambivalent, disliked, and despised. With the elections looming, I’ve been thinking about them as people, what they accomplished, and the tenor of the country during their administrations. While I firmly believe that we have hit rock bottom as a country during the eight years Trump has been a political figure, this trip down memory lane has taught me that there have been eras that are as bad if not worse (in a different way) than what we have today.
So here is a partial roster. The rest will be shared in Part 2.
1959 – 1960. Dwight D. Eisenhower – Ages 0 to 1 – Ambivalent – Remember nothing: All I know about Eisenhower is from what I’ve read in the history books, most of it as the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces during World War II than as a President. He’s on the list simply because I came into existence when he was President.
1961 – 1963. John F. Kennedy – Ages 2 to 4- Ambivalent – Remember very little: I was too young to know what was going on in the world, but this is one of the eras where I may have been wondering if we were on the verge of the apocalypse. The Cold War was raging, and the Cuban missile crisis would have been frightening to live through. Given Kennedy was the last President to be assassinated, you’d think that event is what I most remember about him, but you’d be wrong. At that age I LOVED parades. So, my most vivid memory concerns his funeral that was televised nationally. The event was a doozy.
1963 – 1968. Lyndon B. Johnson – Ages 4 to 9 – Ambivalent – He could have been great but wound up dividing the country: From a kid’s perspective, what I remember the most about LBJ was that he had big ears and talked funny. Back then the President was like a God, and I accordingly trusted and believed in them. My Dad used to routinely watch the CBS News with Walter Cronkite, and I started watching it with him in the late 60’s. I formed opinions based on what I heard, none of which were good. Racism in general, and the South in particular, were bad. The riots during the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago were bad. The Vietnam War was bad. The assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy were very, very bad. So based on that nine-year old’s perspective, LBJ would be on the disliked list. Looking back on that time now as an adult, I think LBJ could have gone down as one of the most noteworthy Presidents based his “Great Society” initiatives and our continued race to land on the Moon. But his willingness to allow us to become entrenched in the Vietnam quagmire fucked him and is the reason why he’ll never be considered one of the greats.
In looking back on all the violence and racial strife that occurred at the end of his presidency, I see a lot of similarities to our society today. Racism is rampant, we’ve seen political violence over the last few years, and it feels like more is on the horizon. We seemed to have lost common courtesy and decency, especially in our politics. I’ve asked myself if I were an adult in 1968, would I have been more fearful about our future compared to the night Trump got elected or today when I think about him getting re-elected. It’s a close call, but I think today is worse, primarily because both candidates in 1968 could be trusted to protect our country’s security. The same can’t be said today.
Not to be a complete downer, the LBJ years gave us The Beatles, I fell in love for the first time, and the Red Sox Impossible Dream season of 1967 spawned a life-long passion for baseball and the team. Whether that passion has served me well is debatable.
1969 – 1973. Richard M. Nixon (Tricky Dick) – Ages 10 to 14 – Disliked – A fall from grace and loss of trust: I was glad Nixon won the election in 1968 because he promised to get us out of the war. That is how a ten-year-old thought, because I didn’t know at the time that politicians words were cheap. But I was really into NASA and the space missions back then and was mesmerized by the Apollo 11 moon landing. Science fiction had come to life, and I could not pull myself away from the television. It galvanized the nation and the world unlike anything since, so I gave him credit for that.
I didn’t care about or understand politics. But “Peace with Honor” never materialized and the war in Vietnam had continued through his first term. It didn’t feel like the powder keg of 1968, but protests were still going on and Kent State happened. Agnew resigned in disgrace, becoming the first VP in over 130 years to do so. And to this ten-year-old, Nixon was becoming a guy you had a hard time liking or trusting. But he was the President, and I had not yet come to the point where I thought what a President does should be called into question. That all changed with Watergate. I raptly watched congressional hearings, concluded that Nixon was a bad guy, and was glad that he resigned. I didn’t fully understand the ramifications of it but sensed that something had fundamentally changed because our President was a crook and resigned from office for the first time in our history. His crime seems quaint now.
On a personal level, this period had more bad than good. The Beatles broke up, I discovered what real grief was when my best friend died of cancer, and the Junior High years were awkward at best. I had my first taste of working a job in the tobacco fields of Connecticut when I was 14 and absolutely hated it. I also smoked my first cigarette and experienced my first wet dream. One was a much better experience than the other.
1973 – 1976. Gerald R. Ford, Jr. – Ages 14 to 17 – Ambivalent – A Caretaker:
These were the years when I learned to drive a car and started to think about college. Girls were also becoming more interesting, but I was too shy to do anything about it.
To me, Ford was more of a caretaker than a President, given how he came into office. He’s the only President during my life that I would term forgettable. The few things I remember are his pardon of Nixon, which I didn’t agree with, our nation’s Bi-Centennial celebration, and the two assassination attempts on his life. Ford seemed so bland and clumsy and uncontroversial that I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to kill him.
1977 – 1980. James E. Carter – Ages 17 to 21 – Disliked – Economic Upheaval:
I had just entered college when Carter came into office and was more concerned about making the baseball team, losing my virginity, and experiencing life away from home than anything else. I didn’t care about what was going on in Washington DC. Having said that, I thought Jimmy Carter was a shitty president. The Israel/Egypt peace agreement was a huge accomplishment in retrospect, although at the time it didn’t mean much to me. But the Beirut hostage situation and the OPEC oil crisis, where we had to endure long lines at the gas pumps, assuming there was any gas, did and were black marks. He was the boss, so who else was there to blame? Maybe he suffered from bad timing and global circumstances he couldn’t control, but I thought a lot more bad than good occurred during his watch. Fast forward to today, and while my view of his presidency haven’t changed much, I think he was a good, decent man and has done as much if not more outside of his presidency than most.
1981 – 1988. Ronald W. Reagan – Ages 21 to 29 – Liked then disliked – The Teflon President.
I had just graduated college and was embarking on a career. At the time I thought Reagan was too old to be President (he was 69) but voted for him anyway because I thought Carter sucked.
I still wasn’t interested in or followed politics, but how could you not like how Reagan presented himself and his public speaking prowess (provided he had a script or teleprompter). He exuded strength and confidence, which was a nice departure from his predecessor, and he was a hawk as far as the Soviet Union was concerned, which I liked. John Hinckley tried to assassinate him, which made Reagan a sympathetic figure. Maybe Gorbachev and “Glastnost” had more to do with this, but our relationship with the Soviets and The Cold War in general got much better, which I gave Reagan credit for. It was certainly better than the “Evil Empire” days.
As the years of his presidency passed, I liked his policies less and less. “Trickle down” economics sounded dubious, and was. I knew a few people that were small business owners and farmers, and they were adamant that Reagan’s policies screwed them. Iran-Contra was shady, and I remember reading how our deficit was exploding. Still, nothing seemed to stick to him or his administration, thus the nickname “The Teflon President” The bottom line is I gave Reagan mixed grades and is a tough one to categorize because while I generally liked his first term, the same can’t be said for the second.
Reagan’s time was a fertile period of personal and professional growth. My career started taking off, I was independent and on my own, and I loved it. But I also suffered a broken and shattered heart as two momentous events occurred. A long-term relationship to someone I was convinced I would marry bit the dust, and the Red Sox snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in the 1986 World Series against the Mets. I swore, not for the first time, that I would never root for them again.
I got over the relationship angst within a little over a year as I met my soulmate, who ironically was a Mets fan, in late 1985, and we would marry twenty-one months later. I’d continue to suffer with the Sox for another 18 years.
1989 – 1992. George H.W. Bush – Ages 29 to 33 – Disliked, liked, then disliked again when the economy tanked.
Since I wasn’t keen on Reagan towards the end of his Presidency, I wasn’t enamored with the idea of his VP because I suspected he wouldn’t be very different. And after years of watching Reagan make his appearances look flawless, Bush looked like he was uncomfortable in the spotlight, which didn’t endear him to me. This was also the first time I remember (perhaps I was just paying more attention) a campaign being intentionally mean-spirited, with the ads of Dukakis being in a tank (which made him look ridiculous) and the continuous Willie Horton attack ads.
The Berlin Wall came crashing down early in his tenure, then Desert Storm, which he handled in an exemplary fashion. The Soviet Union had fallen apart, and Boris Yeltsin was leading the new Russia. Bush’s popularity meanwhile reached the stratosphere, and I didn’t think there was any way he would not be re-elected. I certainly thought he earned that right.
But…. The economy turned to shit. That and the “read my lips: no new taxes” pledge doomed him. By now I understood how policy decisions affected my pocketbook, and I concluded handling the economy was not his strong suit. Then during one of the Town Hall debates during the 1988 Presidential campaign, the camera caught him glancing at his watch, looking bored and as if he’d rather be anywhere else, and that turned me off. It’s amazing how quickly his fall from grace occurred.
I genuinely liked the man and though he was a decent president, but we bought our first house during a time when interest rates were sky high. The place turned out to be a money-pit to boot so of course I blamed him for our woes and voted for Clinton.
I later learned how lucky I was not to have become involved in the Desert Storm and subsequent Middle East conflicts. I was a member of the Air National Guard from 1983 to 1987 but decided not to re-enlist. Little did I know there was a two-year grace period after my tour ended, where I could be recalled in the event of a national emergency, that ended less than six months before Desert Storm started. Many National Guard personnel in our state were deployed, so perhaps I literally dodged a bullet there.
MS reared its ugly head in 2008 when I experienced my first flare and almost fell off the treadmill I was on. It took several months and more flares to be officially diagnosed, but I didn’t worry about it, even though it was eventually categorized as primary progressive, because all I was experiencing at the time was a minor foot drop and didn’t have any physical limitations other than making sure I didn’t shuffle my feet.
I presumed a day would come when walking would be impossible and I would be stuck in a wheelchair, but never dwelled on it because that is how I roll. I could have been catastrophizing the situation, so I put the blinders on and tried not to dwell on something that was so far away that it felt like the wheelchair and I existed on different planets.
Fast forward sixteen years, and the wheelchair feels close. Really close. While I do not fall very often, I am always at risk, even when I am standing still, because my balance sucks and leaning too far forward or too far to one side will take me down. Walking any distance is difficult because the leg is as limp as an overcooked strand of spaghetti. The only reason I have maintained any kind of mobility is because my good leg has always been my anchor, supporting most of my body weight.
The reason the wheelchair feels as close as it does is because I have sampled the bitter taste of struggling to walk at all these last few days, and the only good thing to come from this is I now know that if the wheelchair becomes a reality, I will welcome it because I will be tired of struggling.
I was disassembling patio furniture over the weekend. Instead of sitting on a chair while I was doing this, I chose not to because one was not close by, and I did not want to walk the distance to get it. Taking the lazy way out, I got down on my knees, “sitting” on the back of my legs, using my upper body and abdominal area to keep my balance. Without getting into the details, my reward was straining something in the hip of my good leg, although I did not realize it at the time.
After I had rested for a while and rose from my chair to get a beverage, the pain was as immediate as it was shocking. The cane helped a little, but this was the closest I have ever been to not being able to walk at all. Every step hurt, and because I could not put much weight on my good leg, keeping my balance was comparable to trying to solve an algebraic equation. The more I tried to walk, the more it hurt, not only in the hip area but the knee as well, which made the leg want to buckle, and take me down with it.
Historically, my bad leg constantly spasms and thrashes like a fish out of water, especially at night when I lay in bed, which is annoying as hell. But now, every time the hip in my good leg starts to throb, which also occurs mostly at night when I am laying down, something radiates down the leg, which causes it to thrash and spasm like my bad leg. The sensation is the same as what I feel most nights while I try to fall asleep. The odd thing is that while the good leg is acting up, the bad leg does not. I suppose I should be grateful that both legs are not twitching and thrashing simultaneously, but that is small consolation.
Almost a week has gone by and while the hip still hurts, it feels like it is slowly improving. Whether the thrashing of the good leg at night improves is still to be determined. What I do not know is whether any of this is MS-related. The thought that this could be part of a new progression that has expanded into a different limb is troubling. Fortunately, I am seeing my neurologist on Friday, assuming I can walk well enough to get there.
I never thought of walking as something to look forward to or enjoy. Like breathing, I took it for granted, not appreciating the fact that it expanded my horizons and allowed me to experience things and create memories from those experiences. How I long for those days.
I’m a cautious, methodical person by nature. I’ll rarely throw caution to the wind and make an impulsive, emotional decision. The only time in my life I instantly acted upon an idea without thought or consideration was when we bought a pool circa 2006. I never regretted it either, as my young son and family lived in that pool every summer until Nidan became older, and the MS made it harder to maintain.
Fast forward to 2023, and another crazy idea popped into my head: “Let’s get a dog.”
It’s important to note that I never owned a dog in my life. Cats were the pet of choice in my household growing up, nonetheless I’ve always loved all kinds of animals. But the three post pandemic years were brutal. The forced isolation, followed by increasing lack of mobility resulted in me becoming mostly housebound, introspective, and living in my head, which was not a great place to be. We all needed something to break from the malaise that had set in. I wasn’t up to getting another cat for a variety of reasons, but the idea of a puppy struck a nerve somewhere.
But it couldn’t be any kind of dog. I didn’t want a big dog, and we needed a hair dog due to K’s allergies, so that limited our options. I remembered a friend visiting us last year with her Havanese puppy (she had a Maltese too), and how I connected with Franklin, the Havanese. He was super friendly and affectionate, had a rich chocolate colored coat with alluring green eyes. So, I asked K how she felt about getting a dog, and she was receptive to the idea.
After K (who is the researcher in the household) did her due diligence, she discovered a breeder in Connecticut who had a litter of Havanese puppies. We scheduled a visit to see him and agreed we would make no commitments. We’d see what we’d see, drive home, and take a few days to make decision. Unbeknownst to K, I decided to bring my checkbook with us, just in case.
Long story short, we were instantly smitten holding those little fur balls, and I gave the breeder a refundable deposit before we left. Two or three weeks later, when she became eight weeks old, the little girl that opened this post, Lucy, was coming home with us.
So now I am two for two on impulsive decisions that have worked out. Lucy has opened our hearts, given us something to love and provide unconditional love in return, made us laugh, gotten ourselves out of our heads, and has been an absolute joy. Having said that, I have learned a lot about dogs that I never considered.
I never realized that puppies are a hell of a lot of work. I didn’t consider having to wake up numerous times during the night, or the relentless attention that was required when potty training and protecting everything in the house she could chew on that could hurt her or piss us off. I didn’t consider that when they aren’t sleeping, they want to play, play, and play some more. That can be a distraction when working from home. Dogs are also a hell of a lot more expensive than cats, can be prone to stomach issues (multiple bouts of diarrhea) and that puppy proofing the house is a continuous struggle.
I also didn’t consider the notion I would be dead tired and running on fumes during the day. It reminded me of Nidan when he was an infant and toddler (he was not a good sleeper) but there a big difference handling that when you are in you early 40’s compared to being in your mid 60’s. Nor did I consider that we would not be able to leave her home alone for a while, which was mucho inconvenient. Havanese are known as Velcro dogs, and hate being alone, even now as she is approaching seven months old. There have been numerous occasions where, in the throes of sleep deprivation and utter frustration, both K and I have muttered we must have been insane to get a puppy.
The days are full now, and there isn’t a lot of free me-time. Gripes aside, it has been a wonderful experience. We have no regrets, are looking forward to seeing her grow through her adolescence to adulthood. I’m happier than I have been in a long time, and I know our little Lucy, the joy she brings and the love she gives, has a lot to do with it. And she has finally given me something to write about, although finding the time to sit at the keyboard has been impossible until now. I’m sure this won’t be the last time I write about her.
MSich Chronicles 
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