Meeting Joe in the Road

My brother's brushes with death come in regular intervals.

A sinus infection can mean a trip to the ICU - they interfere with his seizure medication, and thrust him through seizure after seizure.

The latest came courtesy of the staff at his new school.

You see, not all states are created equally when it comes to care for the mentally retarded. Ohio counties have robust programs, with workshops for older disabled people and levy-supported facilities. MRDD levies rarely fail, even in highly conservative counties. People accept caring for society's weakest members as a responsibility, not a burden.

In the span of two weeks, they sent Joe out to recess without a coat in low-40-degree weather and threw away his lunch when he didn't eat a bite (more likely, one of the aides figured "the retard can't tell anyone I ate it for him").

But Tuesday's escapades probably ended his run with the workshop.

The aide who picked him arrived at the school and helped Joe out of the car, then left him alone while she walked back around the car to get a jacket from the backseat.

By the time she looked up, my quiet and fast-moving brother stood at the apron of the road, with a semi rumbling down it.

Joe stopped and smiled, with no comprehension the danger just feet away.

[He has always been a fast mover. When he was 11, the school took their eye off him while they lowered a wheelchair-bound child into the pool. They neglected to give Joe his arm floats. When they went looking for him moments later, he was in the deep end of the pool, unconscious and sinking fast. A life-flight to the Cleveland Clinic and a week in intensive care later, a frail Joe came home.]

In Georgia, the lesson about watching the sly handicapped kid came within feet of becoming a tragedy. The panicked aide pulled him back from the road and then into the workshop.

Meanwhile, she went to the bathroom and vomited.

For once, my mom held that raging temper in check, said nothing, and took Joe home after school.

You can't judge the South with one brushstroke, nor can you condemn a handicapped workshop for just a few weeks of adjustment.

Yet everyone of these kids/adults is unique, with their own quirks and habits. Staff who don't bother to learn them risk peril for the handicapped person.

So I fully expect he won't return this time.

Vinyl Glory in Five Easy Steps

After six months of my record obsession, I’ve amassed about 50 albums. Record store visits are fun again, shuffling through the endless crates in hopes of finding a favorite gem.

Both new and old, I found them.

Alison Krauss and Robert Plant sound that much better on vinyl, coating those dark, tender songs with another layer of warmth. If I play the mandolin part from Sister Rosetta Goes Before Us, I could imagine them harmonizing at the end of my bed.

But I’ve raved about that album long enough. I figured I was due to write about my favorite finds.

Fairport Convention – What We Did On Our Holiday, Unhalfbricking, Liege & Lief

I almost reenacted a recent Saturday Night Live digital short when I saw this trio at Grimey’s. Unhalfbricking has been a favorite for nearly a decade, and a compilation rounded out what I knew of them. But the best English folk-rock band shines on heavy-grade vinyl

Fleet Foxes fans should devour these albums. Of course, this criminally underlooked band has a small devoted following in the states, despite a lineup featuring a young Richard Thompson on guitar and vocal powerhouse Sandy Denny. Holiday is especially revelatory as they skip from baroque balladry (Fotheringay) to country rock (Book Song) to zydeco. Even on Unhalfbricking, I heard Thompson guitar fills once buried in the background on CD.

When they break from traditional tunes and their material, the Fairport Convention gives the Byrds a run for the title of Best Bob Dylan Interpreter.

Almost flawless, these albums sounds at home today as many songs would have during the Elizabethan Age.

Nick Lowe – Jesus of Cool

The clerk at Great Escape expressed relief when I brought this to the counter on Christmas Eve. “I’m glad someone finally bought this,” he said in pure adoration of Nick Lowe’s magnum opus. The first side gave me a little cheer for the bothersome holiday trip to Atlanta.

Two months later, I have gone to sleep with this exercise in songwriting on the turntable more than any other record. Lowe leaps through styles effortlessly, never imitating or sacrificing his own artistic voice. I think I heard So It Goes about 15 years too late. Better yet, it comes with a second LP of rarities, including the original version of Lowe essential Cruel To Be Kind, a cover of Born a Woman and the snarky I Love My Label.

I just reviewed it for these gentlemen from NYC.

An Evening With Groucho

A staggering amount of material never migrated from vinyl to digital. This tribute to Groucho Marx, during which the 80-something comedian tells stories and performs songs dating back to the Marx Brothers films, is one of those cheap finds that validates a record store search.

I spotted the CD through an Amazon.com seller for nearly $60. For this two LP-set, I plunked down four bucks.

Cost affects quality in record-buying. The $1 copies of Fiddler on the Roof, Sports and Point of Know Return (You’re my boy, Blue!) are automatically sound better for having spent so little to acquire them.

Flying Burrito Brothers ~ Gilded Palace of Sin

Another record I’ve owned on CD forever, these tunes practically jump off the grooves. From Christine’s Tune to Dark End of the Street, Parsons and Company cut a perfect Side One. Side Two doesn’t miss by much.

Neil Young & Crazy Horse – Rust Never Sleeps

Neil hates the sound quality of MP3s. By the time you reach Hey Hey My My (Into the Black), you will too. The remnants of the scrapped album Chrome Dreams and other top-notch songs prove that Godfather of Grunge label with riff after riff. Splitting the sides between acoustic and electric pays due to Young's divergent styles. Record (mostly live) live, this is Young delivering one last blast of rock before he drifted off-course in the 80s.

As with all of these, Rust Never Sleeps just sounds better when the needle grips the groove.

I knew Tim Russert, I watched Tim Russert, and you, sir, are no Tim Russert.

Between Gregory and George Stephanopoulos, Sunday morning seems less friendly all the time.

The loss of Tim Russert caught political junkies - hell, it caught everyone by surprise.

Seven months later, his death is an open wound every Sunday morning.

The jovial Meet the Press host never missed a chance to pin some self-serving Senator against the wall with old newspaper comments.

But Meet the Press is in big trouble, thanks to its uninspired new host.

No one could replace the indomitable Russert, but NBC couldn't have picked a worse replacement.

Six solid months of Tom Brokaw as guest moderator soothed the pain; aside from his infamous Richard Jewel moment, Brokaw's stern newsman persona fit perfectly with the show's format. He's the respected elder statesman, and the political types know better than to feed him a line of bullshit.

There seemed a plethora of good choices out there, yet NBC went with the most vanilla candidate imaginable, White House correspondent David Gregory.

While Gregory seemed a decent reporter - White House reporters are pack animals, often feeding from the same trough of press availabilities - he seems overmatched as Meet the Press moderator. He lacks the flair and affability of Chuck Todd, NBC's political correspondent.

I caught his Sunday morning showdown with Obama official David Axelrod. Gregory seemed as if he'd shown up for a press conference, not spent the week burrowed in the library to sharpen the knives for Axelrod.

Gregory's better suited to the duty he performed this morning - covering as a co-host on the Today show. I can't watch him besmirch of one television's oldest shows anymore.

Thank God Bob Schieffer reconsidered his decision to pack it in after the election. The tough old Texas is the last man standing. That alone prevents Sunday morning from slipping into a wasteland. Still, I often forget about him; Russert has a massive presence. While NBC should not have sought a clone, they should have looked for the right temperament and personality.

As a result of their decision, I'm forced to act productively - at 9 a.m. every Sunday, no less - instead of watching politicians squirm.

Don't Ask Me Why My Parents Didn't Join This Case

If you placed a photo of my brother and parents next to this story, and swapped Joe's name for the little girl's in the section about symptoms, it would be identical - can't speak, wears diapers, needs constant monitoring due to epileptic seizures.

The worldwide medical community shivers at the thought of anyone proving essential childhood vaccines led to autism and severe mental retardation.

The whole childhood immunization system would collapse.

I think this is one of those bad secrets that will come back to haunt the field of medicine; they risk a catastrophe on par with Catholic Church sex abuse. The settlements will be even more extreme.

But what do I know? They've got high-price lawyers on their sides, and only a few cases ever get as far as the Cedillo's.

Only this - just that Joe was a happy baby until that damned shot.

Lincoln, Lincoln, I've Been Thinking ...

OK, now that I've gotten all those My American Cousin jokes out of my system, I can properly celebrate the Lincoln Bicentennial.

That is, if the TV news parrots would stop their grating usage of the English language. I heard one of the Today Show squawkers say that Feb. 12 "would have been Lincoln's 200th birthday."
True enough, but I think it could have been better said. When you phrase it that way, it implies he might well have lived to celebrate with us, as his willpower would have ferried him on. It's the 200th anniversary of Lincoln's birth, or the Lincoln bicentennial, a better representation for the long-dead.

It's not as if we still have a holiday just for Lincoln's birthday - President's Day washed that custom away. Under that anemic banner, we celebrate Lincoln, Franklin Pierce and Warren G. Harding together. President's Day is the national equivalent of that joint birthday party elementary classrooms have for the kids with summer birthdays - it's easier to lump everyone in one party.

The Lincoln Lovefest is a good thing overall, reacquainting the public with the back-country lawyer who president over the four worst years in the country's history.

It's been years since I turned Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals into a column- I couldn't think of a better object lesson for modern think-tank politicos and their rigid ideologies.

His team did not get along - Secretary of War Edwin Stanton would later befriend Lincoln, but considered his a country rube when they first met. Salmon Chase joined despite a longtime lust for the presidency. Lincoln managed all those egos, plus those of his generals, during the Civil War to great effect.

April 15 brings the 144th anniversary of Lincoln's death, when Stanton reportedly marked his moment of death by saying, "Now he belongs to the ages."

As for who belongs to our ages, that would be this crazy woman and her octuplets.

Big Wishes For Italy

You might say the best I’ve felt lately is “Abbastanza bene” – good enough, just like my attempt to pick up another language.

I’m five classes into Beginner’s Italian, the only guy in a class of women from their early twenties to middle age. Don't take that as a complaint - most are exceedingly friendly, even though I definitely reside at the class' socioeconomic low-end.

The language is great, even if the verb forms haven’t sunk in and the German translation for everything pops into my head before the Italian. Gott in Himmel ....

But the character of the class is undeniably Italian – we bring in bottles of wine and Italian books to share. At times, the classes feel closer to a gathering of Italian lovers than . I introduced them to primitivo from Puglia, and next week I’ll see how close Petrarch brushes to modern Italian.

My instructor hangs out in the two towns I must visit – Caserta and Foggia, the hometowns of my paternal grandparents’ families. While my grandmother surname became English in America, the Inglizis hailed from Foggia in Puglia, which runs along the western bootheel. My grandfather's family, the Pagliaros - now the Palmers - came from Caserta, just north of Naples in Campagna.

Our guest in class, Marco the soccer coach, told me Caserta’s palace is the equal of Versailles. The palace’s interiors are better known than people realize – George Lucas borrowed them to serve as the queen’s palace in the Star Wars prequels. But don’t hold that against Caserta.

So amidst the worst economic times of my life, I want badly to go to Italy. I have it mapped out already - flying into Rome, a quick train trip to Caserta for a few days, a one-day stop in Naples, then across to Puglia for a few more. I might tack on a day in Milan after hearing Marco describe its beauty.

Ideally, I would go sometime in late October, when southern Italy still hosts comfortable weather. Ever since my flight department Munich International on Feb. 26, 2007, I wanted to return. After flirting with a trip to Belgium (sorry about that, Holly) and looking at other European destinations for 2009, Italy cannot escape my crosshairs.

Ideally, I'll still have a job at that point. If I don't, maybe it's time to start researching jobs for auslanders in Italy .... damn German habits. If I'm going to hit Italy, I'll need to shed those, or at least closet them for seven days.

That much I can handle for a few moments on the Mediterranean.

Amazing ... I Have the Same Password On My Luggage!

How badly do I hope this isn't true?

This makes me wonder if such simple codes reside in the nuclear football handcuffed to a military man in the president's entourage.

I never thought life would imitate Spaceballs.

But it has. As usual, we're well on our way to the future Mike Judge envisioned.

Then again, I'm a frequent critic of short-attention spans and instances of idiocy (usually from the confines of my car). Perhaps one owner of this password is the embryo-happy physician in California who still has a mind-bogglingly moronic medical decision to explain.

But maybe this explains the rampant identity theft in our society. I can believe people are that stupid. Then again, I already do.

A Gym Rat ... For All Seasons?

This might have gone down as my busiest January ever. It certainly won’t be noted as my happiest.

The only thing keeping me close to normal are the four or five times I week I head to the unassuming cinderblock building in the Downtown neighborhood known as The Gulch.

On a lark, I went to an early morning boot camp class my co-worker Geppe talked me into. Crawling out of bed in 20-degree weather, I walked into the workout studio in enough time to start running warm-up laps.

Forty-five brutal minutes later, I became a convert. – even though I spend the rest of the day barely able to move my legs from the muscle pain. I’ve hit at least two boot camps a week since early December, starting off both Christmas Eve (terrible day) and New Year’s Eve (good on the balance).

Now that I discovered the evening boot camp burns away all the tension of the workday, I’ve been on a Monday-Wednesday-Friday kick. A few weeks ago I started Spinning to complement boot camp’s core exercises; now 45 minutes of jumps and steady inclines on a stationary bike never felt so compelling. Giddy up.

With at least one Spin class a week and a long run to keep up my half-marathon training in the dreary months, I have quickly fallen into a lifestyle that always eluded me. I am a gym rat.

I even spent a Friday night there – to improve the gym’s profile, the owners hosted a meet-up for a local hiking group that involved a blind wine tasting. Giddy up again.

All those wasted gym and YMCA memberships finally led me to a place where I’m comfortable working out. Friendly and without ego, the small gym atmosphere suits me well. The owner is a former co-worker, and its mission focuses more on total health.

I just love using exercises that use my body against me – it’s too easy to cheat on weight machines. Plus, there are few exercises more perfect than a push-up – although plank walk-ups, mountain climbers and battling ropes certainly make strong arguments.

The gym rat’s routine hasn’t instilled a new sense of fashion in me. All the weight I have gained since January 2007 has left my workout shirts a little snug – even the legally blind could follow the contours of my beer gut.

But that is intentional I catch sight of that paunch on the mirrored walls, and I want it gone. I lunge deeper, grunt harder when trying to sustain a plank or strain closer to the toes the gut prevents me from touching. On some exercises, I cheat and do extra reps because all the soreness and pain is temporary.

Most importantly, I suck that gut in as far as I can, hoping that one day I can glance at myself in those mirrors and find it gone.

For the first time, that doesn’t feel like a pipe dream.