Tag: Beatles

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Pain, Wisdom Teeth, and Westchmerz, by Louis

The two parts to my essay are (a) physical pain and (b)
Welstschmerz.
(a)           
Back in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s,
I was having trouble with my four wisdom teeth. The wisdom tooth pressing up
against its neighboring tooth caused extreme pain. The first wisdom tooth
extraction (Upper right) went rather well. A dentist got it out. The second
wisdom tooth (lower right) was more complicated so I had to go to Flushing
Hospital.
The
wisdom tooth resisted being extracted by the dental surgeon’s first attempt,
and he used a reasonably sized pliers. But as the wisdom tooth resisted, the
pain increased dramatically, and the dental surgeon kept choosing larger and
larger pliers. The last pair of pliers was quite enormous and resembled a
medieval torture instrument. For about a week after that, I just stayed drunk,
and I rinsed my mouth with whisky which is not only a good antiseptic, it
helped deaden the pain.
A
month or two after that, my two left wisdom teeth were pressing up against
their neighboring teeth. The pain was excruciating. So I chose an oral surgeon
or rather an oral surgery team.
I
lay down on a gurney, they gave me phenobarbital, and I went into a semi-dream
state, but I was still awake, and I was aware of the surgeon and the three or
four nurses assisting him who were hovering over me. They extracted both wisdom
teeth with surgery rather than yanking them out with pliers. Everything went
smoothly, I felt no pain, and the subsequent recuperation period had some pain
but it was minimal.
So,
if you need to have more than one tooth extracted at a time, choose oral
surgery. Phenobarbital was wonderful. You get anesthetized, but your body does
not feel threatened as with ether or other anesthesias. And you are still
actually awake.
(b)           
The other type of pain I have experienced
is Weltschmerz or “World pain,”
defined in Webster’s Dictionary as “sentimental pessimism or melancholy over
the state of the world”:
(1)           
JFK got assassinated. That trauma was
painful, but we discussed that already.
(2)           
The twin towers came down on 9/11/2001.
But of course we already discussed that trauma as well.
(3)           
President Nixon ordered the invasion of
Cambodia on May 8, 1970. I remember the protests in this country were swift and
enormous. I tried to go to a protest demonstration in Washington, D. C., but
there were just too many protesters. Our bus had to stop somewhere in the
outskirts of Washington, D. C., so we just sat there; some of the passengers
had guitars so we made the best of it by singing peace songs and Beatles’
songs. It was fun. But the invasion itself was traumatic and caused a lot of
people Weltschmerz.
(4)              
January 30, 1968 was the date of the Tet
Offensive. That was when we realized that, actually the Communists whooped us. On
April 30, 1975, the U. S. withdrew from Vietnam. Pictures of the “fall” of
Saigon were quite traumatic. I felt more Weltschmerz.
(5)           
The death of our two friends, Steve and
Randy.
On
a less serious note, the French language has two interesting tongue twisters,
that is le vire-langue (rarely used):
(a)           
Ton thé, t’ôte-t-il ta toux? Does
your tea get rid of your cough?
(b)        
La reine Didon dîna, dit-on, d’un dos dodu d’un dodu
dindon. The Queen of Carthage dined, they say, on the fat back
of a fat turkey.
Of
course, Dido (Didon) was not actually a queen, she was a princess, though she
did run ancient Carthage.
© 14 Sep 2017  
About the Author  

 I was born in 1944, I lived most of my life in New York City,
Queens County. I still commute there. I worked for many years as a Caseworker
for New York City Human Resources Administration, dealing with mentally
impaired clients, then as a social work Supervisor dealing with homeless PWA’s.
I have an apartment in Wheat Ridge, CO. I retired in 2002. I have a few
interesting stories to tell. My boyfriend Kevin lives in New York City. I
graduated Queens College, CUNY, in 1967.
                                       
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Help, by Louis Brown

Basically
the Beatles lyrics speak for themselves. I was thinking “Help” could
also mean “the Help”, the servants as in a turn of the century upper
class household. Think “Upstairs, Downstairs.” A study of social
class structure in England, back then. I wonder if the other authors of our
group have thought of the Beatles. Some have, I bet.

I Get by with a Little Help from My Friends
Help!
When I’m Sixty-Four



[Here is a link to see the lyrics to the above songs. Ed.] 
© 16 Sep 2016 
About
the Author 
 I was born in 1944, I lived most of my life in New York City,
Queens County. I still commute there. I worked for many years as a Caseworker
for New York City Human Resources Administration, dealing with mentally
impaired clients, then as a social work Supervisor dealing with homeless PWA’s.
I have an apartment in Wheat Ridge, CO. I retired in 2002. I have a few
interesting stories to tell. My boyfriend Kevin lives in New York City. I
graduated Queens College, CUNY, in 1967.
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Nowhere, by Ricky

Like many men of my age group, I had my mid-life crisis a few years ago. At this point in time, I perceive that nothing has changed since then. I still have feelings that my youthful goals and dreams are nowhere in sight for the future or accomplished in the past. With the loss of my best friend of 27 years and 9 months, most of the joy of life went with her. I now have no ambition, nowhere to go, no one to go there with, and no money to spend when I don’t arrive there.

I have been blessed with a modest amount of financial and medical security, but the Republican Party leadership is poised and planning to take even that mea-ger amount away by making major changes to existing law and pro-grams. Republican Paul Ryan has published his proposed budget for 2015. Bruce Lesley reported inThe Huffington Post [1 Dec 2014],”In the name of protecting children, the poor, and the states, the Ryan budget does the opposite.”

Like the Beatles’ Nowhere Man, the Republican Party’s proposed federal budget for 2015 is a “nowhere plan.” The republican leadership inhabit their “fortress of solitude,” listening to no one except budget extremists, and where they make all their plans for nowhere budgets for the benefit of nobody except the wealthy.

Nowhere does that nowhere plan contain the Affordable Care Act or the expansion of Medicare or uncapped Food Stamps or Public Radio or the endowment for the arts or Amtrak or even basic research grants or funding for educa-tion. Republican leaders are, “No way, No how, Nowhere Men”.

They know not where they will lead us to.
They are as blind as they can be.
They see what they want to see.
Nowhere Men can you see the poor at all?

Somewhere, somehow, sometime, the Nowhere Men will find the way to fund their favorite project – weapons for war to either use or sell. After all, a good old fashioned war is great for business because war makes the rich richer.

Nowhere Men never learned the lessons of history: wars cost money, the outcome is never certain, and innocent nobodies will end up, no-where. “Nowhere Men wars” will take us all nowhere, somehow, in no time.

In exchange for a unique American culture of democracy and the American Dream, by defunding education, Public Radio, and the endowment for the arts, the Nowhere Men would have us embrace a culture of rule by the few wealthy Nowhere Men – an oligarchy based upon military strength and a subservient poor.

Nowhere Men would be well advised to remember that Democrats, Libertarians, Independents, other groups, and individuals also own guns and were trained to use them during combat in Vietnam, the Gulf Wars, and on the streets of major American cities.

© 1 December 2014

About the Author

I was born in June of 1948 in Los Angeles, living first in Lawndale and then in Redondo Beach. Just prior to turning 8 years old in 1956, I began living with my grandparents on their farm in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years during which time my parents divorced.

When united with my mother and stepfather two years later in 1958, I lived first at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, California, graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966. After three tours of duty with the Air Force, I moved to Denver, Colorado where I lived with my wife and four children until her passing away from complications of breast cancer four days after the 9-11 terrorist attack.

I came out as a gay man in the summer of 2010. I find writing these memories to be therapeutic.

My story blog is TheTahoeBoy.Blogspot.com

Posted on

Nowhere by Ricky

Like many men of my age group, I had my mid-life crisis a few years ago. At this point in time, I perceive that nothing has changed since then. I still have feelings that my youthful goals and dreams are nowhere in sight for the future or accomplished in the past. With the loss of my best friend of 27 years and 9 months, most of the joy of life went with her. I now have no ambition, nowhere to go, no one to go there with, and no money to spend when I don’t arrive there.

I have been blessed with a modest amount of financial and medical security, but the Republican Party leadership is poised and planning to take even that meager amount away by making major changes to existing law and programs. Republican Paul Ryan has published his proposed budget for 2015. Bruce Lesley reported in The Huffington Post [1 Dec 2014],”In the name of protecting children, the poor, and the states, the Ryan budget does the opposite.”


Like the Beatles’ Nowhere Man, the Republican Party’s proposed federal budget for 2015 is a “nowhere plan”. The republican leadership inhabit their “fortress of solitude,” listening to no one except budget extremists, and where they make all their plans for nowhere budgets for the benefit of nobody except the wealthy.

Nowhere does that nowhere plan contain the Affordable Care Act or the expansion of Medicare or uncapped Food Stamps or Public Radio or the endowment for the arts or Amtrak or even basic research grants or funding for education. Republican leaders are, “No way, no how, nowhere”, men.
They know not where they will lead us to.
They are as blind as they can be.
They see what they want to see.
Nowhere Men can you see the poor at all?

Somewhere, somehow, sometime, the Nowhere Men will find the way to fund their favorite project – weapons for war to either use or sell. After all, a good old fashioned war is great for business because war makes the rich richer.

Nowhere Men never learned the lessons of history, one of which is wars cost money, the outcome is never certain, and innocent nobodies will end up, no-where. “Nowhere Men wars” will take us all nowhere, somehow, in no time.


In exchange for a unique American culture of democracy and the American Dream, by defunding education, Public Radio, and the endowment for the arts, the Nowhere Men would have us embrace a culture of rule by the few wealthy Nowhere Men – an oligarchy based upon military strength and a subservient poor.
Nowhere Men would be well advised to remember that Democrats, Libertarians, Independents, other groups, and individuals also own guns and were trained to use them during combat in Vietnam, the Gulf Wars, and on the streets of major American cities.
© 1 December 2014

About the Author

I was born in June of 1948 in Los Angeles, living first in Lawndale and then in Redondo Beach. Just prior to turning 8 years old in 1956, I began living with my grandparents on their farm in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years during which time my parents divorced.

When united with my mother and stepfather two years later in 1958, I lived first at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, California, graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966. After three tours of duty with the Air Force, I moved to Denver, Colorado where I lived with my wife and four children until her passing away from complications of breast cancer four days after the 9-11 terrorist attack.

I came out as a gay man in the summer of 2010. I find writing these memories to be therapeutic.

My story blog is TheTahoeBoy.Blogspot.com

Posted on

Where I Was in the 60’s by Louis

If you ask young people
today what they know about the 1960’s, some say the Beatles. Most are not aware
what a traumatic decade that was. As the war in Vietnam raged on and on and on,
pacifism and isolationism became more and more popular. The main problem with
the 60’s was the American people went left while the government went right.
There was a sort of  blow-up. The 1960’s
saw the blacks standing up and demanding their rights, and then there were the
riots. And then there were our riots that went on 3 days, the Stonewall riots,
that started on June 28, 1969. We must not forget either the assassination of
President Kennedy. (You were John Kennedy Jr.’s neighbor).
The only other
traumatic event that compares with the assassination of President Kennedy was
the blowing up of the Twin Towers. In both events, I think it is safe to say we
all felt personally threatened. I was an eye-witness to the blowing up of the
twin towers. I was on my way to work. I had to take a bus to get to the Long
Island Railroad stop that I took to get to work. On the bus route is a swampy
area with very low buildings that would enable the bus passenger to get a good
view of the twin towers. I saw smoke billowing out of the towers, and I
wondered what that was all about. When I got to the Long Island Railroad stop
in Flushing, I was told there was no service into Manhattan. Later I would know
why. So I tried the subway. I went a few stops to 61st Street. The
train stopped and the conductor said the train was not going any further since
the train was not permitted to enter Manhattan.
Where
were you when President John F. Kennedy was shot? I
remember I was on my way to swimming class in the Queens College gym. I never
got as far as the gym. A fellow student told me the President had been shot.
Next to the Queens College gym, that resembled an airplane hangar, was a
parking lot. The students with the cars turned on their car radios and let
passers-by listen. I listened and was horrified. Jack Kennedy was handsome,
well-educated, intelligent, well-spoken. Jacqueline Kennedy was beautiful,
soft-spoken, pretty much a perfect first lady. Remember how she remodeled the
White House? The whole world was dazzled. I was dazzled, and John Kennedy
convinced me that the USA would lead the world into a better place, that human
progress was going to continue. Our nasty right-wing neighbors in Dallas, Texas
had other ideas. Then Nixon got elected, and hope died, and it has been
downhill ever since, let’s face it.  
My
visit to the draft-board in lower Manhattan, on Whitehall Street:
I had to go for my physical. When the army doctor examined me, I told him I was
a homosexual, and I was pretty sure the U. S. military, for their reasons, did
not want homosexual men, I guess. So I asked to be excused on that basis though
I requested they do not write that down in my record. Whether they wrote that
down or not, I do not know. I did not show up in a gown, and I did not paint my
fingernails red, nothing like that. I got a 1-Y classification because I wore
glasses. My brother went through a long drawn-out rigmarole application process
as a conscientious objector. They ultimately denied his application for status
as a conscientious objector but they gave him a 1-Y classification. Much has
been made of student deferments in those days. Both I and my wannabe
conscientious objector brother were attending college, but we never received a
student deferment. Go figure. 1-Y meant we would not be drafted unless there
was a national emergency. I guess the Vietnam War was not considered a national
emergency for some unfathomable reason. Two of my other brothers got 1-Y
classifications. My oldest brother was in the Air Force, a major or something;
he got out when the Vietnam War was getting a little too hot.
© 19 May 2014
About the Author  
I was born in 1944, I lived most of my life in New York City, Queens County. I still commute there. I worked for many years as a Caseworker for New York City Human Resources Administration, dealing with mentally impaired clients, then as a social work Supervisor dealing with homeless PWA’s. I have an apartment in Wheat Ridge, CO. I retired in 2002. I have a few interesting stories to tell. My boyfriend Kevin lives in New York City. I graduated Queens College, CUNY, in 1967.