Dingleberry

I couldn't help it. I dropped the old LG phone (is everything made by LG?) one too many times until I had to use blue tape to hold the battery compartment on. Finally, one day when I was avoiding doing something else, I went over to the Verizon store and got myself a Blackberry.

Why should I be different?

Now that I have finally fired the new unit up, complete with teeny tiny Internet service and a couple of addictive games, I carry my desk in my pocket.

To make life even more silly, and to the embarrassment of my daughter, I bought a nerd holster to go with it so the Blackberry is attached to my ass cheek most of the time.

Every time I get an email it goes "Bing!" and if I get a "text," (doesn't anybody just call anymore?) it goes "Eh! Eh!"

It is a whole lotta fun, and late at night, when the darkness of the psych unit is dim and the techs are melting at computer screens and whoever the other nurse is naps in a corner and the patients are all asleep, I can play one of the very addictive word games I figured out how to download.

I can even look at this blog, teeny tiny and barely readable, although the computer wizards at the hospital cut off my access to this site so I can't write pithy updates from the floor for the readers who don't read this. Well me, anyway.

Diplomats

In the past year, I have been to my own graduation from nursing school, my daughter’s graduation from High School, Melissa’s graduation from Wesleyan (Master’s degree, thank you) and my son’s graduation from college.
Think of the sheep who have given their skin just for the matriculation of my family. Maybe Mary’s little lamb would be well-advised not to follow her to school so much.
Traditionally, millions of boring graduation orators have stressed the meaning of the word “commencement” at millions of graduation ceremonies, pointing out that the word does not connotate the end of something; rather it implies the beginning of something.
This is, traditionally true, of course, but nowadays, with the economy circling the drain and all, I heard more and more about how commencement really pointed the assembled mortarboards in a negative direction.
When I graduated from nursing school, hospitals, home care agencies, and any and all other manner of medical facilities, were climbing over each other to get us new nurses on their payrolls. This year, the graduating class of my alma mater is populated with frustrated job hunters. While the “nursing shortage” that is part of our culture still exists, the money shortage is currently overriding it.
Meanwhile, over at the Wesleyan podium, apologies were the word of the day. Speakers couldn’t help but bear some responsibility for the world into which their graduates were being thrust. No hyperbole would cushion the inevitable blow that would be struck upon the hung-over graduates, the soft, safe tablecloth of academia being yanked off the table in one resounding tug. The silverware of massive college loans crashing about their feet; the resounding din of reality wrapped in an awkward metaphor.
Back in the day, there was a job in Daddy’s firm awaiting, or headhunters had long since recruited you into a blue chip, Wall Street firm. Now Daddy’s firm is on bailout and the headhunters a looking for jobs for themselves.
At the Rhode Island School of Design, where my son was recently elevated to the ranks of alumni, artists prepared themselves for traditional lives in smelly garrets, painting, waiting tables and eating cold, canned spaghetti.
Advantage: artists. No longer a curse, for we no more can change our artistic destiny than we can our genetic code. Many are called but virtually none are chosen. Still, art is permanent, it cannot be killed. And the atmosphere at RISD was a deep contrast to the other graduations I had attended. A jazz band, perfectly piped into the speaker system set the tone, while conspicuous flat screen televisions, made the podium proceedings clearly visible to even the most inconvenienced parent. Sunny, jazzy, jolly; no apologies offered.
There was here, a sense of optimism. Much the same as there is inherent with all artists, since most of our future energies are directed toward a blank canvas or a lump of clay. While success is luscious, it is not as important as the drive to create. And the diploma, once a ticket to financial stability, is now a receipt for astronomical tuition bills. An artist, at least, can flip it over and use it to make a sketch.
Yes, the word “Commencement,” suggests beginning. Melissa, a working artist, got her Master’s degree creating art. Hannah, my daughter is studying art at Cooper Union. Alexander, my son, is hanging his diploma on the wall and hanging out his shingle as an artist. In an atmosphere where everything is upside-down, where Wall Street, once the central hub of enormous paydays, is now the center of insolvent sadness, and reliable juggernaut industries like American Chromium automobiles and hugely endowed banks are starving. A word traditionally reserved for artists.
Maybe it’s an finally even playing field. Maybe now artist’s can have the same opportunity as everyone else, especially since everyone else has no opportunity. And maybe we can get some of that bail-out money, allowing us to quit our menial day jobs to create the art we are destined to create. This would make jobs available to the brokers and bankers and automobile company executives who have found themselves in need of honest work.
I only regret that I didn’t stick it out myself. For I am an artist. There, I said it. And I have suppressed the drive to create, and yet, I just typed 744 words. And when I am done, I will draw a picture.
I just can’t help it.
You want fries with that?

Graduation Day

When the ivy walks are far behind
No matter where our paths may wind
We'll remember always
Graduation day
- Four Freshmen, written by unknown.

I used to say, back in the day, "If you want a year to go by quickly, wait out a pregnancy." Man, was I clever back in the day.

In a not dissimilar vein, It really seems like about 2 minutes ago that we brought two cars full of stuff to RISD and dropped off our green art student to live in a really well-situated dorm room over looking Providence. I guess I'll have to watch the "True-Hollywood Story" of his life in a couple of years, to see what REALLY happened, but in the meantime, he has survived college and now gets to survive life - and what a crappy time to be unleashed on reality.

At RISD, graduates are allowed to modify the traditional cap and gown scenario and we were not to be dissapointed. Many had gone to great lengths to decorate their garbs. Alexander, master of last-minute sublety, wore the green Snuggie I had given him for Christmas (fig one).

Super hi-tech ceremony with gigantic flat screens posted all over the inside of the huge tent. We came early and found a row of seats in front of one of the screens, enabling us to see the whole 3-hour ceremony as if we had front-row seats.

A splendid end to the fastest 4 years I had ever lived through.

Congradulations son, try to stay out of mischief

Are enn?

"It's late in the evening, people, but I ain't worried about that lonesome road because everything's cool. You understand?"
- Taj Mahal "Bacon Fat."

Lot's of work to be done on the unit now that all the work is done. don't I have to log on more often and contribute? I oughta let some people know I am out there. Or in here. Or in there.

In the interest of self-preservation I will not write about the miserable drudgery I am suffering at the hands - or more anatomically appropriate - flapping lips of a fellow worker who talks constantly, as if the thought process is connected to the larynx. I am not a mean person usually, but, land o' goshen, I had to ask my fellow worker to please stop talking so I could think.

I was trying to write a nursing note: a collection of adjectives describing the affect, mood, behavior and thought process of a particular patient. My colleague was rattling of adjectives, trying to put together a similar note. I couldn't listen and think at the same time. And due to the shrillness and pause-free tonal quality of the voice in my ear, I could not tune it out.

Mood: frustrated

Congratulations

I went to the pinning ceremony for the class of 2009 at my almamater yesterday. Here is how it went for us. Last year.

Pomp, Circumstance and Candle Wax
Eyes bloodshot, temples throbbing, we all passed the final exam. Some more than others, but the magic equation is C=RN, so 54 students, threadbare and dog-eared, gathered in a walnut bar, mid-May, to celebrate the end of nursing school.
Now that it’s over, I’m experiencing a bit of culture shock. Suddenly the alarm clock does not go off and there is nothing left to study. There is no clinical rotation for which to prepare. There is a huge void, empty of syllabi, medications to look up, and lectures to endure. Mostly though, it is the faces; the tired, familiar faces that have helped each other push that boulder up a hill for two solid years, that have retreated and vanished as if there has been a bus crash.
So, for about a week we rekindled the fires and relationships of our former lives. My kids had grown. One was off at college. Several neighbors had moved away and others had moved in. There were two years’ worth of New Yorker magazines to pretend to read, two years’ worth of dust bunnies in the corners and then there was the matter of the woman who lives in my house on Rusty Hinge road, what was her name again?
It was a scary feeling. What were we supposed to do? Well, here’s what we were supposed to do: get jobs as nurses and study for our nursing boards but first, we had to sit through one last requirement of nursing school: the pinning ceremony.
Job schmob, don’t you know there is nursing shortage? Exam Schmexam, almost everybody passes that on the first try, but the pinning ceremony, what was that exactly?
It is built on generations of Nursing tradition, probably, like everything else, devised by Florence Nightingale – the Florence Henderson of the sitcom that was the prehensile Brady Bunch of nursing practice – it was she who sort of brought my new profession, which appears to have some genesis in the world’s oldest profession, out of the dark ages and into the 19th century. Most instructors, while mentioning her with respectful solemnity, are quick to point out that not all that much has changed in Nursing practices since old Flo transformed it into a science, which it truly is. But we were talking about the pinning ceremony and here’s what it is: sometime in the darkest, most insecure, shakiest part of the last semester of Nursing school, when you are convinced you are crazy and wonder why you had ever decided to pursue such a lofty ambition, a little man showed up at class and collects checks for our “pins.” These gold (toned) circular lapel jobbies are custom-enameled with the emblem of our Alma Mater with the graduate’s initials engraved (crookedly) on the back.
Assuming one gets to the end, it is this pin with which one is pinned at the pinning ceremony. It is cheaper and far less painful than a tattoo.
Other traditions: everyone wears white, which is great if you are a bride or suffer from chronic dandruff, but these days nurses don’t wear all white most of the time, we wear scrubs that have “Hannah Montana’s” image impregnated in the polyester. So there’s the next item on the “to do” list: buy white nursing outfits. Another part of the ceremony involves a lamp and open flame, which goes back once again to Florence’s tenure (having to do with her sobriquet, “the Lady with the Lamp”). My class voted to be cheap and went with candles, rather than shell out another 12 bucks a head for official imitation Crimean war style porcelain lamps. In any event, word got around that the Fire Marshall wasn’t too pleased. Fortunately for him, we were all almost nurses, and even though we were not much use when it comes to putting out burning buildings, we were all about tending to burn victims.
So, a week after the final exam, we all arrived at the place of the pinning, scrubbed and shiny. The women had had their hair done so as to render them unrecognizable and the men looked like ice cream vendors.
But as we all came together one last time, and we were rested and the hangovers were gone we realized the good news along with the bad: the good news, it was over at last, the bad news: it was over for us.
That’s when the waterworks started. Tears of joy at first then the gulping, shattering realization that we were all going our separate ways and that even though we promised not to stray too far, we’d already begun to drift apart.
They queued us up in the back hall and checked us for alphabetization and made sure we were all properly free of crumbs and lint. We pulsed with energy as the friends and family members we had all not seen much of for 24 months, assembled in their seats with bouquets, flash cameras and possibly a thousand restless, noisy kids. We marched down the aisle to the thunder of their applause and on to the stage, filled with carefully arranged chairs under the hot lights of the stage.
More than a century of tradition poured over the audience for the next hour or so, as we waited in our whites gleaming from the glow within and the lights without and finally from the slim candles we all held aloft while we mumbled our way through the “Nursing Pledge,” and then, one by one, our instructors pinned us. A final happy finish. A coup de grace, delivered by the very folks who for the past two years had held our futures in their hands, and we marched back down and through the aisle to the rhythmic foot stomps and claps and into the night where nothing bad could possibly happen on this day that took so long to arrive.
It’s summer now, for real. Waves of heat warp the sight line over the highway and we hold fresh résumés in our carefully washed hands to find out just how desperate the need is for new nurses.
Jobs are out there, hiding in the bushes, but before we are secure in our new careers, the boards must be taken and passed. The books wait, but not for long, in the silence and the long overdue sleep at last.
This might pinch a bit.

Late night foray into the blogosphere

OK. I'll throw one of my many hats into the ring. Let's start by telling you what's what. I am going to assume if you are reading this you are somewhat acquainted with me and my machinations. I have to be careful, obviously, this is a family blog, I guess. My intention is to open up access mostly to readers of my monthly column "The Homemoaner" published by the Hersam-Acorn newspaper company.
I a writing this, very late at night at a top-secret, undisclosed location. I intend to contribute content ad lib, with no real theme. As stated in the blurb, I am a columnist, a justice of the peace, a registered nurse, oh yeah, I almost forgot, a husband, a real estate agent, a father, a son, a brother, an unapologetic liberal democrat and a knucklehead. If participation is possible - and I am not "blog savvy," participate. No one is excluded.
Love love love.