Cumberland Island

My college buddy, Matt, invited us to join him... and his Boy Scout troop from Baxley, GA for a day at the Cumberland Island National Seashore this weekend. Historic ruins, wild ponies, unspoiled marshes and beaches and a gaggle of young men bursting with testosterone. Memories...

The weather was great and a good time was had by all. Here are a few pics.

Shadow Boxes

Life seldom unfolds according to “plan”. Certainly no one plans to lose their mind…

My wife’s mother is aged and infirmed. She has many issues; mobility, self care, instability. But she has, for the most part, retained her mental sharpness. The nursing home system is extremely complex and she has progressed from hospital care to skilled care to nursing home care. To the extent possible, the family engaged in the process, but did not foresee the turn of events which resulted in her placement in an Alzheimer unit.

She does not belong in this unit and the family is working frantically to facilitate her transfer to a more suitable facility. In the meantime, she is confined in a lock-down dementia unit. Her attitude is so positive and her faith is strong. She said, “Perhaps I have been placed here to pray for these poor people…” Prayers notwithstanding, it has been an eye opener for us.

To enter the Alzheimer wing, access codes are punched onto a security keypad unlocking the heavy wooden doors. Often there are patients standing inside the door peering out through the two small windows… trying to find a way out. Some, who appear otherwise healthy, will insist they are staff or visitors in an attempt to make their way through those doors, back into the world. All 50 patients behind those doors are severely impacted by mental disease… except my mother-in-law.

Men and women dressed in casual clothes, tee shirts, sneakers and sweat suits, roam up and down the long hallways along the highly polished floors. Some hold dolls or stuffed animals. Some talk to themselves. Others, like loveable little Lizzy, always seem to have a roll or a handful of bread and munch as she randomly ping pongs from wall to wall along the bright corridor. Lizzy is small and painfully thin with short gray hair, her age somewhere between perhaps 70 and 80. She was the first person I met coming through the locked door.

Lizzy shuffled up beside me. Her speech is unintelligible, stuttered. But she spoke passionately, with a tight smile on her face and an urgent expectation in her eyes. “Aba aba chh chh buh…” she said between clenched teeth. She took my hand and I followed as we wandered aimlessly and silently down the hall to the activity room, There, several dozen people sat at tables or randomly wandered about the room. They took no notice of me and I stood still to take in the scene.

Some people were sitting silently within themselves, rocking, seemingly not focusing on anything or anyone. Others were animated, jabbering away about snippets of thoughts that ran through their ravaged minds. “I need to go home.”… “Has my meal been paid for?”...“Get them away from me. Leave me alone!”... “My mother is coming for me today”…  Others were speaking nonsense, words without meaning, without ceasing. Lizzy released my hand and wandered away.

I walked among them and most seemed not to see me, but few responding to my smile or words of greeting. So foreign. So disturbing. A thought… how might they react to my gentle, little white dogs? Previously, we had brought them into hospitals and nursing homes with good results. I asked permission from the head nurse and with their vet records got the OK to bring them in from the van. I was apprehensive that some of the residents might be afraid of them or that others might hurt the dogs so decided to carry them in order to control their introduction. I was not prepared for the response.

We (Sampson and Lulu, 2 eight pound Maltese and me) rounded the corner from the long hallway into the activity room. Many people broke into broad smiles.  Eyes, which had been expressionless, were alive. Hands were outstretched.

I quickly learned to approach cautiously before bringing the dogs close enough to be petted. Ken, a baseball capped, 84 year old former logger, toothless and confined to his wheelchair, howled at me, “GET THOSE SONS OF WHORES AWAY FROM ME…”

Minutes later, he gently scratched their ears and reminisced about how his old hound dog would ride with him on his skidder as he worked deep in the Maine woods.

But most of patients, some of whom had appeared catatonic moments earlier, smiled, stroked their fur, spoke to them softly and with love. One woman repeated over and over, ‘Look at those beautiful babies… look at those beautiful babies”. Another woman jabbered away excitedly about pie and walked over to me presumably to pet the dogs, The nurses broke into gales of laughter when instead she put her hands inside my shirt and began to pet me.

I moved from table to table, offering each person an opportunity to pet the dogs or, in some cases, to hold them. They were gentle, loving. There were those who were unable to respond in any way. Others who responded with fear. For those who could respond, it was an extraordinary glimpse of the person they had once been, if only for a moment.

The next weekend when we again visited, there was Lizzy walking the halls. She gave no indication that she in any way remembered our walk down the hall together, an event burned into my memory. Her expression this day was anxious, upset. She seemed about to cry. But later in the day she approached me in the hall, jabbered excitedly, reached up and gently stroked my face. “ Moh moh shibbabababa…” she said and laughed. Her eyes and her attention wandered and she shuffled away. Did she remember me?

How insidious this disease. Late one night, after everyone was in bed, I walked the halls and read the “shadow boxes’ secured on the walls at the entryway to each room. Locked wooden boxes with plexi-glass covers. Names printed on tags, pictures of smiling people now silent, of grandchildren and children, husbands and wives, of lives now gone forever, the owners but shadows of their former selves. It touched me deeply.

The following week we arrived on Friday and accompanied my mother-in -law to dinner. I arrived ten minutes after my wife and her mother were seated at a table with 3 other women to find one of the women verbally terrorizing the table. My wife looked at me anxiously. The woman’s name was Martha.

“God damn you. Don’t look at me like that. You sons of bitches. Talk, talk, talk. That’s all you do. Just shut up! Shut up!” She glared at everyone and especially me, the only man at the table. I attempted to speak with her and she cut me off.”Talk, talk, talk” she taunted and began to knock food onto the floor and put silverware into her glass of milk. We ignored her misbehavior and soon she sat, sullen and withdrawn.

After dinner, while my wife was helping her mother prepare for bed, I wandered down to the community room and found Martha sitting with another resident. She was cruelly berating him as he sat happily, pulling on his suspenders. He, in response, was laughing foolishly, smiling broadly and making train noises. I decided to join the conversation.

Pulling another rocking chair close to them, I asked if I might sit there and getting no response, began to quietly rock away, not making eye contact. Soon she began to rant. ‘HE wants it HIS way… always HIS way. HE thinks because he works he can have it that way… and I suppose he can... Peculiar… I call it Peculiar.” I began repeating her words back to her. “Yes, he wants it that way.”… “I suppose he can.”… “Yes. Peculiar.”…

“Choo-Chooo” said Suspenders, complete with arm pull. I replied “Choo-Choo”. He grinned. She rocked and ranted. “I like these rocking chairs” I said to no one.

We rocked for 30 minutes. Several times Martha got up from the chair and each time that she did, I stood in the presence of a lady as my mother had always taught me to do. And when she sat, so did I. And we rocked some more.

Finally she rose and walked stiffly down the hall, farting loudly, muttering. I resumed the conversation with Suspenders. He railed about “working and working and I told them they can’t do that. That’s not right…. not right.” as his face clouded up at some distant grievance yet traversing the wrecked synapses of his brain.

When Martha reentered the room, I stood and she walked directly to me, but avoided my gaze.

“ It needs to stay here. Right here.” she instructed as she handed me her blue knit sweater. I hung it on the back of her rocking chair and smoothed it down gently. “It will be right here for you”, I said.

She continued to mumble about her room and how she wanted to “just get back”. “Can I walk with you to find your room?” I asked. Remarkably, she took my arm.

“Good night” I said to Suspenders. “Woo-Wooo”, he replied

Martha rambled as we walked until we met Lizzy who decided she was going to hold my other arm. Martha raised her voice and cussed her away. As we walked by the activity room, the big, friendly nurse smiled and said, “You found a friend Martha?” She gripped my arm tighter.

At the far end of the hall, I spied her shadowbox. Pictures from before, when she was whole. She was not smiling in any of the pictures. Hard, stern expressions. Life had not been easy for her.

She seemed relieved when she recognized her surroundings and announced, “My room… see, my rocking chair… and my bed.” She released my arm and sat on the side of the bed. And then she looked up and locked eyes with me, her eyes softened, looked wounded. The hair on the back of my neck stood up as she spoke directly to me. “This… has been wonderful. I can’t tell you how much I have enjoyed it. Just wonderful….” She lay back on the bed and closed her eyes.

Her moment of lucidity hammered my world view. How remarkable that she was able to surge through her disease, if but for an instant, to connect with compassion and warmth, to overcome the raging fear and anger within her crippled mind. An aberration I wondered?

I walked down the now dark and quiet hallways, past the shadow boxes and the shadow people, lost from the world, mindless, just waiting. I felt a mixture of emotions, an odd sense of awe and a profound sorrow. Lizzy wandered down the hall toward me, solitary, mouse-like, munching on a biscuit and leaving a trail of crumbs behind her as if to mark her trail back to sanity.

I felt badly that she had been driven away earlier by Martha’s bitterness and so I smiled and reached to hold her withered hands in mine. She smiled vacantly, food dribbling out the corners of her lips as she chewed with open mouth. I whispered in her ear, “Lizzy, you are my favorite,”

 She whispered back…“Thank you…” and drifted into the shadows.

Georgia Pics

Memories

Norma and Frank lived on Pillsbury Street in Willard Square in South Portland in 1950 after they were married ( left side of the gray apartment building in the background of the picture). Dad worked at Portland Pipeline as a Casual. Mom worked at a candy store in Portland until she became pregnant with me. I was born in the fall of 51. Gailie came along in the winter of 1953.

I don't remember much about this time except for some fleeting, dreamlike memories, perhaps real, perhaps invented from stories told over the years. I remember walking up stairs holding my fathers hand. I remember standing on a chair next to my sister strapped to a bassinet. I remember the neighbors dog. And I remember my first car accident.

Dad drove Fords. In the early years they were black... weren't they all. The story goes... and my memory confirms, that one day when I was 3, I stood on the seat of my tricycle and climbed in the open window of the old car. I seem to remember pushing the start button and I was told that the car started, lurched into reverse, sputtered down the driveway and struck a fire hydrant.

The fire hydrant still exists as does the apartment. Maybe my memories are correct. Maybe life is but a dream...

Odd, but Loveable

"The writer in me said, This is good material. Writers, like bears, will feed on just about anything." Philip Simmons

I smiled when I read these words in Simmons' book "Learning To Fall". True that, man!  I mean, I don't pretend to be in the same league as Phil, God rest his soul, but I have written enough to recognize the sage wisdom in his words. I have written enough that I think of myself as a writer.. of sorts. Sometimes I'm an intermittent writer, an occasional writer. There are long dry spells. Times when I don't feel like I have anything to say. According to the writing books I have read and the writing seminar lecturers to whom I have listened, those are the times to exercise discipline, grit your teeth, place yourself in solitary confinement and push through the block.

That's what Phil Simmons did. His was more than a "block". He was diagnosed with ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease, at age thirty-five and told he had less than five years to live. As a young husband and father and at the start of a promising literary career, he suddenly had to learn the art of dying. He did so by retreating to his writing shed on an old farm in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. He processed his thoughts, his suffering, his spirituality, his profound disappointment at his impending death and his fear of the unknown by writing about them. And he shared these truths with us.

Simmons writes about finding the courage to engage Life fully in spite of pain, loss and suffering. His writing is tight and raw and true. He is a master of the crafts, both the craft of writing and the craft of living a courageous life. I wish I had known to stop by and talk with him, to tell him how much I admired his work. He lived only hours from our home in Maine. But I didn't discover his book until last week at the Saint Simons Island, Georgia library. And he died in 2002. 2002...God knows I was desperately seeking spiritual wisdom in those days. I would have so valued his unique perspective.

In the Foreword of Learning To Fall, Simmons writes,"I write as a man who has been given an extraordinary chance to practice consciously the art of living and dying." And these words struck me. Isn't this the same extraordinary opportunity, regardless of the situations of our individual lives, that is available to each of us? Perhaps the difference between Phil and the majority of human beings is that he stood at the edge and knew he was not going to be allowed to back away from it. Contemplating ones mortality is most often avoided at all costs. Strange, because our mortality along with our birth, is perhaps the most common human experience we all share... or avoid sharing.

Strange is the operant word. We human beings are a very strange species, indeed. "Odd, but loveable" my wife says... usually speaking of me.

And so, I sit in my old writers shack, on a marsh, near a beach, on an island, off the coast of Georgia and, oddly, like a bear, look for things to feed upon, for inspiration, for some good material.

We are all standing on that edge. Most of us just don't dare to look, don't care to know. And we risk missing that "extraordinary chance to practice consciously the art of living and dying."

Thanks for the inspiration Phil.
 

word of honor

What is the power and value of a man's word? In this day of continuous examples of duplicitous politics (has there every been any other type of political day, notable individual exceptions not withstanding) it is evermore difficult to remain true to the noble concept of keeping one's word. But the concept is far from dead... especially among the "working class". In fact, it counts for more than can be measured.

The waterfront is cruel, much like nature is cruel. That is not to say nature or the waterfront is evil. Just the opposite. Let's just say they are both "efficient". The strongest, most adaptive species or individual wins. Weakness is not an attribute that is tolerated, perhaps reasonably accommodated, but never tolerated. On the waterfront, if a man's back or his brain are not up to a task, he will be accepted only at the level to which he can add value by some other means. If you can't handle the heavy lifting or accurately run the numbers on the tally sheet then you had better be able to run the winch or the fork truck or operate the salter. Or you're out...

Skully was on the bleeding edge of being deemed "useless". The younger guys harassed him mercilessly, cruelly, trying to finally tip the scales and be rid of him. Skully was 55, way past his prime, crippled with a bad back, a deformed hand, illiteracy and alcohol abuse... and a nasty disposition.  He operated the fork truck and was so dangerous that no ones eyes ever left him as he raced around the shop, spilling bait, tipping over totes, hitting walls. We all knew it was our responsibility to watch out for him, because he didn't give a rats ass about anyone else. Recently the forks truck brakes were repaired. Ralph's comment was "Well, Skully's got brakes now. All he needs is brains..."You decided to like Skully, in spite of himself... or you hated him.

Skully collected bottles and cans for beer money. Some of us would gather them from the trash we hoisted off the boats and throw them into barrels and totes until Skully would drag them away. Sometimes I would load my little truck with his treasures and drive him up India Street to the redemption center. After one such trip, Skully approached me with an orange tote. "This is Sam's tote. I told him would get it back to him. Will you do that? Give it back to Sam?" I knew from the way he was atypically looking into my eyes that returning the tote to Sam was important to him. I nodded. He wasn't satisfied. "You'll give this back to Sam? Won't forget?" He wanted to hear me say it. "I'll give it to Sam. I give you my word." He nodded. It wasn't as if someone hadn't broken their word to him before. His life was a continuum of broken words, broken dreams. But he knew my word was as good as he was going to get that day... whether or not the tote was returned.

I returned to the shop and carried the tote back to the dock. "Skully wants me to return this tote to Sam." I said to the crew and threw it into the corner. Later in the day, when Sam piloted his boat, the Irish Piper, up to the dock to bait up, I would toss it down to him. I didn't think any more about it and got busy filling boat orders and shoveling fish.

We were winching totes down to a waiting boat when I spied the orange tote, filled with herring and being rigged for winching by Jeff and Cecil, two of the hard nose younger men on the crew. They both hated Skully and took any opportunity to mess him up. And this was just another chance to push him closer to the edge of that proverbial cliff.

"Hey, that's the tote that Skully wants to give back to Sam," I objected.

"To hell with Skully, that useless bastahd." growled Jeff.

"Besides, Sam already owes us 2 totes." justified Cecil.

They both glared at me. Was I going to side with them or with Skully?

I took a deep breath and tried to hold my temper. I walked over and said slowly and quietly; "Look, I don't give a damn about this tote or what issues you boys have with Skully. But I gave my word that I would return it to Sam. So that's what I need to do. OK?"

They looked at each other, Cecil nodded. Jeff mumbled, "Fair enuf. Man's word is a man's word... but Skully is still a dipshit."

I nodded. "Fair enuf."

Sam got his tote back.

On the waterfront your word does count for something. It's really all you've got.

Now if only Washington would get the message...

German Joe

The Portland waterfront is entirely infused with "characters". They permeate the docks like the smell of fish and diesel fuel permeates the air on Custom House Wharf. Does the place draw these unique people to it? Or do the individuals create the environment? Probably both. No matter... Each person has their own story and with a little patience and the price of a cup of coffee, or a beer, they will often tell you their tale. It was not so with "German Joe", but, over decades of lobstering off the Maine coast, he had revealed himself in bits and pieces, here and there, to this person and that, and the story was collected.

"German Joe" as he is known on the docks, owns one of the finest deep water lobster boat on the Southern Maine coast. Approaching 80, short, stout and balding, demanding and direct, he captains the Mary Lou IV and fishes "outside" in the frigid deep waters of the Gulf of Maine. The vast majority of Maine's 4,000 lobster fishermen fish "inside" along the shoals and islands of the rocky coast. Only the most intrepid and fearless venture into the big waters where no land is visible setting their traps deep, seeking the biggest and best of the hard shelled northern lobster, Homarus americanus. It is tough and dangerous work performed by tough and dangerous men.

He grew up in Germany during WWII. His father served in the German Army on the Russian front. His mother beat him severely. Joe would go to school and get beat by the teacher then go home and get beat by his mother. Every time he opened his mouth he was beaten, so he stopped talking. At one point he didn't utter a word for a year. When he finally opened his mouth to speak, he stuttered. And he stutters today.

When Allied troops overran Germany, his cattle were straffed by fighter bombers. He hid in the attic of his house and peered out the louver vent at the approaching soldiers. Thinking he was a sniper, the troops machine gunned his house and he barely escaped with his life.

After the war, his parents somehow received permission to move to the US and the family entered the country through Ellis Island and resided in New York City. His mother enrolled him in school. Unfortunately for him it was a Jewish school. He woke up every day knowing he would have to fight someone. It was a brutal, violent upbringing.

Joe had happy memories of fishing in the river near his home in Germany and so he set his mind to fish. He dropped out of school and spent his time on the docks of NYC until he gained enough information and a fundamental grasp of English. And then he went to sea.

When German Joe walked into the bait shop, people snapped to. His reputation and terrible temper preceded him and the crew would scamper to stay out of his way. It was the bosses lot to cordially greet him and present the daily offering of poggies, redfish, haddock and skate for his review. He would handle each of the products, dig into the barrels of salted fish, smell them for freshness, determine their firmness and suitability for the long set he required. The boss saved the best to be offered for Joe hoping to avoid his wrath. And once the selection had been made, the most capable of the crew was assigned to load his boat. There were stories of an incident, years before, when his running lights had been damaged by a poorly winched barrel and of the shit storm that had resulted. No one wanted to mess with German Joe.

Joe was uber-paranoid in his craft. He trusted no one. He didn't want any other fisherman to know what bait he purchased, when he planned to ship out or when he returned, where he planned to fish, what his catch was, nothing. Actually, he was not unlike any of the lobster fishermen, but his obsession held a dangerous promise to it. Even his name was uttered only in low whispers by the men who worked the docks. German Joe was a force unto himself.

He had been married to Mary Lou and when she died, he drew further still, if that was possible, into himself. The story was that before each voyage he would visit her grave and sit on the headstone, receiving guidance from the beyond on where to set his traps this trip.

This past summer German Joe was involved in a boating accident. He entered the port between Custom House Wharf and Chandlers Wharf to offload his catch, swung the Mary Lou about to dock starboard and rammed a million dollar sailboat. Reckless inattention? From German Joe? Incomprehensible... But one of the early signs of the passing of a legend.

Just another story, just another character, just another blog.

Georgia Sunset

It was 1,000,000 times more spectacular... just like any photo, just like Life... you had to be there. Glad we are.

Simpson

Michael Rudd Simpson

Michael Rudd Simpson, 37
PORTLAND -- Michael Rudd Simpson, 37, son of Paul and Leigh Builter of Ridgefield, Conn., died on Tuesday, Oct. 26, 2010, in Portland.
Michael loved the sea and attended Massachusetts Maritime Academy before taking various jobs in the maritime industry. He lived in Portland for some 10 years and enjoyed walking the streets and talking to his friends. Michael was also a published author and submitted articles to maritime publications about his adventures at sea.
He grew up in New York and Connecticut. Having attended The Browning School in New York City as a young boy, he went on to graduate from Greenwich Country Day and Greenwich High School in Greenwich, Conn.
He was a loved son, brother and uncle and is survived by his parents; brother Jason, sister Amanda; and niece Ashley. He will be missed dearly.
A memorial visitation will be held on Monday, Nov. 1, 2010, from 6-7 p.m. at Jones, Rich & Hutchins Funeral Home, 199 Woodford St., Portland. A memorial service will follow at the funeral home at 7 p.m. Michael's family invites all his friends to stop by.


I met him on the docks in Portland. He was a big kid, 6'2", thin, yet muscular; muscles built from many years working the waterfront. In truth, he was no kid, in his mid 30s, but he acted younger. Perhaps the decade of heavy drug and alcohol use had stunted his maturity.

He was dressed in dirty orange "skins" and long blue neoprene gloves, the uniform of the bait shop, and he smelled like a bucket of 3 day old herring set in the hot sun. We worked together on the wharf rigging and winching 400 pound barrels of lobster bait down to the boats. He seemed competent, but a little off... squirrelly. It was clearly time for another fix.

One morning as we took our coffee break, we talked. He was from New York and had attended the Massachusetts Maritime College for a time. He didn't elaborate on why he had not finished the program. Heroin probably had something to do with it. Now he lived at the YMCA and worked for Craig when he could. His other job was riding the city garbage truck, tossing trash. He preferred working around boats.

He grew quiet and we sat watching the gray fog run in over the bay mercifully camouflaging all sins, all broken dreams, all regrets. He finished his drink and tossed the cup into the ebbing tide. "I don't like whales," he mumbled more to himself than to anyone else. But I was sitting next to him so I asked, "Why not?"

"They think they're better than everybody else..." he offered.

Some days Simpson showed up. Other days he didn't. No one asked "Where's Mike?" It was just too complicated. Then one morning a police cruiser showed up at the shop. The crew scattered, hid in the coolers, peered around corners and waited for the story to unfold. Someone had broken into the bait shop office upstairs, climbed through the suspended ceiling and stolen some blank checks from the file cabinet; a clumsy, desperate crime. No one wanted to believe it was one of us, but Simpson disappearance and the string of forged checks led to his door. The crew's condemnation was quick and brutal.  Judge, jury and execution, there was no mercy or attempt at understanding his disease. He was out.

Today, 2 years later, I wonder if this final ostracization was his last straw, the straw that broke his final hope, his loss of a final place of belonging.

It was the following summer that news came that Simpson was dead. The story was that he had tied a hangman's noose and walked into a hospital emergency room declaring that he was going to kill himself. They took the noose away and committed him to the locked ward on the 6th floor for observation. Several days later he was released and they gave him back his personal effects... including his rope.

Simpson walked up to the Eastern Promenade, to Fort Allen Park where all the high school kids used to snuggle in back seats on freezing cold January nights, windows fogged with passion and heavy breathing. Watching the submarine races, we used to call it.  And there, overlooking Casco Bay and the ocean he so loved, he hung himself from the limb of a maple tree.

It's been almost two years, Mike. Just didn't want you to think we thought we were better than you. Just luckier.

Remembering you...



November 8, 2010

 Portland Press Herald

Help for the suicidal falls short, chief says

By David Hench dhench@mainetoday.com
Staff Writer

Michael Simpson suffered from depression and anxiety and had attempted suicide at least twice.
Last month, shortly after being discharged from a psychiatric hospital, the 37-year-old merchant mariner took his own life. He was found hanging in Portland's Fort Allen Park on Oct. 26.
Simpson's belongings included a note in which he said the rope he used was the same one he had bought for the task and had brought with him to Mercy Hospital on Oct. 23 when he checked himself in because he was feeling suicidal.
Simpson wrote that he told hospital staff what he intended to do with the rope. Mercy transferred him to Spring Harbor Hospital, which discharged him within two days. When he checked the bag that held his clothes, he found the rope still inside, his note said.
"Would you give a suicidal man back his shotgun?" he wrote.
The note was described in the police report on the incident. The report was obtained from the Portland Police Department under the Freedom of Access law.
Portland Police Chief James Craig said the tragedy underscores the need to improve the way the mental health system responds to people who are suicidal.
"I know we can't always predict when someone is going to commit suicide or cause harm to someone else, but when we have good knowledge, evidence of a problem, it would seem we should do more," he said.
Hospital officials, meanwhile, say they try their best to assess patients' risk of hurting themselves or others. Confidentiality laws bar them from talking about the specific factors relevant to Simpson's case, they said.
Craig acknowledged that mental health is not his profession and said he did not intend to criticize the doctors who treated Simpson. But he said the mechanism for responding to such people needs improvement.
"When he writes a letter expressing dissatisfaction with the system, I think the young man was sending all of us a message (that) the system is broken," Craig said.
POLICE RESPOND TO ATTEMPTS
Police had dealt with Simpson following a previous suicide attempt this summer. Officers were called to the Eastern Prom, where they found Simpson bleeding from a self-inflicted wound. He told the officer he had tried to kill himself by cutting his carotid artery with a box cutter, even doing pushups beforehand to make it more pronounced.
Craig's criticism of how suicidal people are often released back into the community stemmed originally from an incident a year ago. A woman who had been threatening to jump off Casco Bay Bridge almost caused an officer to fall as he was trying to grab her. She was taken to the hospital for evaluation, was released and was back at the bridge the following night, police said.
The hospitals referenced in Simpson's letter declined comment on the case specifically.
"If a patient is in need of acute psychiatric care," said Mercy spokeswoman Diane Atwood, "we make an evaluation and transfer the patient safely as soon as possible to an appropriate provider or facility."

60,000 Hits

The Blog odometer just passed 60,000 hits. I'm stunned.

Five years ago we started this little blog as a way to stay in touch with family and friends as we began our "unplugged adventure"; Connie and Glen on the road. Somewhere along this long journey, we developed a readership. And the blog evolved. It became a vehicle through which I practice my growing enjoyment of writing. It became a pathway by which people, who read Broken Open or who watched the Oprah show that we were on, could Google us and contact us . It has been amazing.

I have the ability to track where the hits are coming from, not the identity of the people visiting the blog, but their locations and the number of visits. People from around the globe, but mostly North America. Some people leave comments and we appreciate that. Others do not and we wish they would. For instance the person in Moscow, Russia and the person near Pottstown, PA, and the person near Mountain View, CA and a hundred other people who hit the blog on a regular basis. I'd like to know who you are. I'd like to hear your stories.

Because that is what this blog is; a collection of stories. That is what our lives are. Stories are how we learn. They are how we teach. They are how we grow and what we leave behind.

It has been an amazing five years and we wouldn't trade it for anything. Hope to hear from you. Thanks for reading our stories.

Glen

Wounded Warriors

This is the much anticipated week of the third annual Davis Love III McGladrey Classic at Sea Island Golf Club here on Saint Simons Island. The entire community has spent months getting ready for the influx of PGA golfers and thousands of spectators. I have been fortunate to have been able to see it all up close as an employee with my buddy Pete's sign business. We dug all the post holes and installed signage around the course, the island and the county ( I can now claim the title of PHD... post hole digger). Long days, weary bones, it's been a blast.

The private jets scream directly overhead on their approach into the Saint Simons Island Airport. Limos convey the corporate sponsors to their $800/night rooms in the Lodge. Well dressed captains of industry dressed in bright pastel colored golf shirts drive their carts around the course chasing the little white ball. And I remember the days when I was among them... Strangely, I am grateful that today, instead, I am covered in dirt and sweat with blisters on my hands, enjoying the company of a crew of hard working good ole boys. Strange, but true.

 

Earlier this week we loaded the trucks with signs for installation at Davis Love's home up island. It's a magnificent, secluded, marsh-side estate complete with stables and all the fixin's. Golf has been "berry, berry good to him".

On Sunday before the tournament began Connie came to work with me to retrofit some pieces we had constructed for each of the tees. She dressed in one of my company work shirts in order to get through the tight security and looked official carrying around my drill. Afterwards we walked around the course and enjoyed the beauty. The Club is built on an old 1800's plantation complete with tabby building ruins and a slave graveyard.

The festivities officially opened today and the island is hopping with activity. With the surge of visitors, all the businesses are making hay while the sun shines... so to speak. There is, of course, golf to watch, but there are also concerts scheduled, celebrity wiffle-ball games and other special events... such as the arrival of the Wounded Warriors.

 

Corporate sponsors paid for 30 wounded military from the Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington DC to attend the festivities. We joined other island residents in welcoming them this evening. Heart warming... humbling.

And in the evening we were gifted (thanks Sue and George) two tickets to the Gary Allen country music concert under the Live Oaks on the seventh fairway with 3000 other folk.

 

Good times...

Surviving Swimmers Itch

It was the summer of 1979. Our identical twin baby boys were 6 months old. We lived in a little raised ranch in the farming community of Fairfield Center, Maine. I worked at a paper mill and Connie was a full-time mom. We quickly discovered, as do all new parents, that raising babies was more than a full-time job. It was a busy, busy time in our lives and it required both of us to keep up with things. So when my work informed me that I was to spend the last three weeks of June in Finland, we were both stunned... especially Connie.

The day of my departure arrived and Connie put on a brave face as I walked out the door. I remember her standing at the top of the foyer stairs, sleep deprived, holding two crying babies, covered in spit-up and formula, with tears streaming down her face.

We worked twelve hours a day, seven days a week during the three weeks at the paper mill of our parent company in Finland. The jet lag and the northern latitudes midnight sun  made sleep difficult.  I missed my family and I was worried. Every few days I would call home. Connie was exhausted. The boys had colic, weren't eating and the doctor was concerned about dehydration. It was the skin of a nightmare. I needed to be home.

On our last night in Finland, we were invited to visit the company sauna. The sauna was a 200 year old log structure and was hotter than anything I had ever experienced. We endured the heat as long as we could and then bolted to the lake to dive off the dock into the frigid lake. On the way back into the furnace, we would bolster our courage with bottles of ice cold Finnish vodka. On my third dive into the lake, my wedding ring slipped off my finger and sank to the bottom. For half an hour I tried unsuccessfully to recover it. Hans Bjornberg, the Finnish Vice President who had joined us at the sauna, put his arm around my shoulder. "You will have some explaining to do when you get home," he chuckled. "Yeah, she's not going to be happy," I agreed. One more thing...

I was exhausted when I walked through the front door into our sweltering little house on July 3rd. But I put on a happy face, rolled up my sleeves and pitched in to wash dishes and diapers, feed the kids, and allow my wife to collapse on the couch. She was numb with fatigue. But we had survived this ordeal and I was determined to help get things back to normal... whatever that was.

The next day was Independence Day and I convinced Connie that we should pack a picnic and head for the lake to escape the heat. We arrived at a public swimming spot on Great Pond around noon and found that a good deal of floating litter had accumulated in the weedy end of the beach. As Connie sat in the shallow water in the sandy part of the beach with the boys happily splashing in a plastic clothes basket, I waded into the weeds and collected the trash. A dozen ducks swam around me watching my progress. It was a pleasant couple hours, but soon the boys began to fuss. It was nap time and we headed home.

Sometime after supper, I began to notice an intense itching on my upper legs and in my groin. I headed to the bathroom and dropped my swim suit around my ankles to check things out. The skin from my knees to my belly button had broken out in an angry red rash. It looked like I had the bubonic plague and I was perplexed. What had I gotten into? Whatever it was, I was in agony.

At that point, Connie walked into the bathroom and stopped short. She walked over to me cautiously and slowly inspected my situation. "I don't know what this is, but it's itching like crazy," I blurted. She took two steps back, put her hands on her hips and demanded, "Where's your wedding ring?" Ahhhh... "Yeah, I forgot to tell you that I lost it in Finland. But this has nothing to do with that!" I scrambled. The look on her face let me know she was not convinced.

The rash was a common malady called swimmers itch caused by a parasite that lives in weedy fresh water lakes and ponds. It is transmitted from water fowl. Later that evening Connie also developed a few itchy, red spots on her ankle. So my diagnosis and explanation was finally, begrudgingly, accepted. But it was weeks before her mood improved. The swimmers itch on top of the three week ordeal was just too much. She had seriously lost her sense of humor.

The loss of the wedding ring was forgotten for the most part. Six weeks later the Finns came to Maine and the company threw a party for the management team. 75 employees and their spouses gathered at the company house. Hans Bjornberg stood to welcome the group. "It's nice to be among you. Thank you for all your hard work. We are very pleased with the progress being made here. But I have one question..." He pointed towards me, standing in the crowd with my arm around Connie's shoulder. "Glen, did she believe your story about the lost wedding ring?" I blushed 10 shades of red and the crowd roared with laughter. Connie laughed, too, her wonderful sense of humor regained.

Hans passed away ten years later at the age of 46. Too soon. Too young. But in the intervening years, whenever I saw him, he never failed to tell the story of the lost wedding ring. And ever since that day on Great Pond, I avoid swimming with ducks.

Sean

He was a salty old dog. Sean and his wife lived in the second floor Portland apartment next to Ryan and Kristen in the West End. During the summer I worked on the docks shoveling fish and selling bait to the lobster-men on Custom House Wharf, we lived in the kid's spare bedroom and I would occasionally see him walking slowly in the hall. At first he was stand-offish and then one day, he smelled me.

Sean stood around 5'8" with sparkling blue eyes. He wore a grey beret on his balding head and carried a medical device which delivered powerful intravenous drugs through a picc line into a large vein near his heart. And he wore different colored rubber crocs, one red and one green.

"You smell like the waterfront", he opened. I smiled and apologized, explained my summer job working on the docks. "No need to apologize. I'm a sailor. I find you odor familiar. It reminds me of my life at sea," he replied. Sean went on to talk about his boat. As with many sailors, he went on and on about the obviously critical attributes of his beloved vessel. All of it was lost on me, but I listened attentively, nodded my head and tried to ask savvy questions. "She a beamy boat?" I asked hoping I would get points for at least demonstrating that I knew boats were female. He continued with renewed passion talking about sheets and halyards, jibs and draft. As our conversation came to a close he said, "I have something you need. I'll drop it off at your door." And true to his word, the next morning as I exited the apartment for work at 3:30 AM, I found a rubberized, zippered laundry bag sitting on the hallway floor. Yep, Sean knew what I needed.

We spoke whenever our paths crossed. Some days were better than others. The chemotherapy was kicking his ass. He had moved to this place to be near Maine Medical center and to fight his battle. But he was in heavy seas and he was tiring terribly. I admired him and I ached for him.

The last time I saw him was in the fall as we prepared to head South for the winter. My work was winding down. The leaves on the trees were past their colors, turning brown and littering the street. A cold wind blew them into piles in the gutters. It was rainy, dismal and dreary.

We shook hands. I said good-bye and wished him success in his struggle. He dropped his eyes and shook his head. "But I have a last question for you, Sean. Why do you wear one red croc and one green croc? And why do you wear the red one sometimes on your right foot and sometimes on your left foot?"

He looked at me and a little of the old sparkle returned to his eyes. "Well, it's a nautical thing, you see," he said. "When you are leaving the harbor, headed out to sea, you keep the green buoy on your starboard side and the red buoy on your port. And when you return from sea, it's the opposite. "OK," I offered, "Red-Right-Return." It was a little idiom that I had heard sailors repeat over the years. "So why are you wearing the green croc on your right foot now?" "

He smiled a bittersweet smile. "Just my little thing. Every day I chart my course. I ask myself, "Am I coming or going?" I'm wearing the green on my right and the red on my left because I know I'm going..."

Sean died that winter. He fought and lost his valiant battle. No doubt, he was buried in his red and green crocs and his grey beret. One of the good ones...

Fair winds, friend.

Parable of Immortality ( A ship leaves . . . )
Henry Van Dyke - 1852 - 1933

"I am standing by the seashore.
A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze
and starts for the blue ocean.
She is an object of beauty and strength,
and I stand and watch
until at last she hangs like a peck of white cloud
just where the sun and sky come down to mingle with each other.

Then someone at my side says, 'There she goes!
Gone where? Gone from my sight - that is all.

She is just as large in mast and hull and spar
as she was when she left my side
and just as able to bear her load of living freight
to the places of destination.
Her diminished size is in me, not in her.

And just at the moment when someone at my side says,
'There she goes! ' ,
there are other eyes watching her coming,
and other voices ready to take up the glad shout :
'Here she comes!'

Kurt Vonnegut

You Can't Go Home Again

I have fond memories of the years our family lived in the so-called "Northeast Kingdom", Vermont's northern-most counties; Essex, Orleans and Caledonia. In 1955, when I was 4 and Gail was just a puppy, we moved to Barton. Dad worked at the Sutton Pump Station of the Portland Pipeline Corp. and we settled into our idealic life... at least in my childish mind's eye. We moved from house to house to house. Wendy was born on Lincoln Avenue during a January that was colder than a well digger's boot. Eventually we ended up living in a company house at the pump station, when dad was promoted to Station Chief, 10 miles from town and school and groceries, a mile from the nearest neighbor.

Barton became the exciting place where we traveled each week for supplies. There were strawberry ice cream sodas at the Ruggle's Drug Store soda fountain, thick nickle packs of black licorice, occasional hamburgers at the Blue Grill and a rack of comic books... my passion. Life was complete. I vaguely remember Mom complaining about making the long drive on snowy Rte 5 with temperatures hovering below zero for months on end. During the long winters we skated and skied. In the spring we joined friends collecting sap in the maple groves and boiled down the thick syrup over wood burning evaporators in the sugar shack. In the summer we swam in the ice cold glacial lakes and fished the mountain ponds for horn-pout. The autumns were glorious with amazing displays of forest colors. Life was good. I thought we lived in paradise. When Dad was transferred back to Portland when I was in the fifth grade, I grieved the relocation for years.

Connie and I spent 3 months back in Maine this summer. We enjoyed being among family and our time with friends. And when the time came to strike out again, Connie agreed to a trip to Northern Vermont to revisit the place of my childhood. I sold the idea with nostalgic memories and promises of relaxing in beautiful bed and breakfasts in God's country. I did some pre-planning on line and called the 3 listed bed and breakfasts in Barton. All three numbers had been disconnected. Hmmm...

On the day of our departure, we stopped in North Conway, NH. for lunch and discovered that Gail and Roland were also in town with Dan, Lauren and baby Brooke visiting their lot on the Saco River. We couldn't pass up seeing them again and enjoyed a couple hours visiting, walking the woods trails and wading the river. Finally, we headed up through the magnificent Crawford Notch and into Vermont. It was about 4:30 when we rolled off the highway into Barton. Along the way, Connie kept pointing at the luxury resorts and asking, "Are we staying there?" An uncomfortable unease began to grow in my chest. "No honey, not there. I have a special place in mind. I remember some lovely little cottages right on the lake in Barton that I think you will love." I was blowing smoke and I knew it.

The little town was nothing like I remembered it, but was probably entirely as it had ever been. The road crews were laying down new asphalt preparing for the Orleans Fair the next week so it was impossible to get to the lake and the pristine cabins of my memory. The homey little drug store, the former hub of the community, was now a franchise operation. The Blue Grill hadn't existed in decades. Even the Ben Franklin's Five and Dime was gone. The town was shabby. The economy, with the closure of the local mills, was desperate. Connie was beginning to frown. I began to scramble.

There was a little restaurant on the town square and we walked in to use the bathroom and ask some questions. The flies and open food containers at the counter grill disallowed a dining experience. While Connie was enduring a visit to the disreputable restroom, I struck up a conversation with two old-timers at the counter. "Howdy boys. We're looking for someplace to spend the night in town. Any ideas?" They mumbled among themselves and the suspendered, unshaven fellow who had been nominated spokesman pushed back his dirty ballcap before he began. "Well, there is a place. If you go down this gawd-damned road to the gawd-damned river and just as you go around the gawd-damned bend, there are some gawd-damned cabins." I turned to see Connie standing wide eyed behind me. I thanked the fellers and we headed down the gawd-damned road...

Connie's defenses were now on high alert and she began to remind me of my promise for a "nice bed and breakfast". Her tone was just short of shrill. When we pulled into the dirt driveway of the motor inn, we were greeted by 3 road construction workers sitting in rusty lawn chairs drinking from cans of beer, shirts hiked up over their pot bellies. "No... no... no... You've brought me to Deliverance country!" Connie began to rant. "Now honey, let's just check it out" I negotiated. We drove down the drive to another set of cabins facing the river. I rounded the corner and it looked all the world like a scene from the movie "The Grapes of Wrath".  Flat bed trucks, with dirty faced kids sitting on the tailgates, overheated, panting dogs laying in the road, overweight women in house dresses and curious men sitting on porches drinking beer watching us closely. I turned around near the concrete block, lime green swimming pool (It may have been the pool water that was lime green... whatever.) with Connie's persistent encouragement. Not one to give up easily, I said "There was an isolated cabin at the end of the row that might work. I'm going to stop at the office." Connie's back was no longer resting against the seat. She was rigid and at full alert, breathing short shallow breaths.

As I pulled up to the office (there was a piece of paper duct taped to the door that said "Ofice") an old rusted station wagon pulled off the road and parked broadside directly in front of us. Connie was close to panicking "Oh God, Oh God, Oh God...". The passenger side door opened and an old man in dirty cloths, pants hiked up under his armpits and a filthy cowboy hat stepped out. He looked directly at Connie, pulled his hat straight up from his balding head and screeched in a high pitched Festus voice..."Howdy!" Connie began to whimper "no, no, no, no..." At that point, the driver stepped out. She was about 5 ft 6", weighed a good 250 pounds and was wearing a white wife-beater tee shirt over her huge, unharnessed breasts. She had short cropped hair... and a dark, heavy beard. At this point Connie began to scream. "Get me out of here!" and I began to laugh uncontrollably. She verbally assaulted me all the way up the gawd-damned road back to Barton.

I stopped at the only gas station in town for an emergency bottle of wine. I desperately needed to lubricate her sense of humor. We parked next to another car and had to wait as the driver was getting into her car. She was an elderly woman sporting a full head of pink foam pin curlers, most of which were covered by a knotted colorful chiffon scarf. Her knee-high nylons were rolled halfway down her exposed calves below her floral print moo moo and she carried a Hello Kitty purse over her shoulder. She had tubes running up her nose and down to the oxygen bottle she wheeled behind her... and she was smoking a cigarette. I bought two bottles of wine and a big bag of Lays potato chips.

We drove to the Canadian border in stony silence. I did find a delightful bed and breakfast on Lake Memphremagog. I did rent their most expensive suite and we stayed for two nights. We did drink the wine.

The next day, Connie chose to remain at the lake and I drove back to Barton. I visited the old house on Water Street and walked around the school. I visited the Randall's on Breezy Hill and so enjoyed reminiscing with old friends. The House on Lincoln Avenue had been torn down and the house at the pump station in Sutton had been moved. I walked through the woods and the swamps where I had tromped as a boy. I remembered and relived and grieved the loss of my parents and my lost youth. And I realized that, although you can never really go home, our memories, our feelings, our loves, stay with us always. I'm glad I came home to those memories.

It was gawd-damned awesome.