Best job in Baltimore?

     Thursday was a gorgeous spring day in Charm City---perfect for a stroll through the Inner Harbor followed by lunch at the American Visionary Art Museum's amazing restaurant.  (Which included a hard-earned bottle of superb Victory Pilsner from Downingtown, Pa.) While wandering around the harbor Uncle Jack came upon two city employees hard at work removing trash from the waters adjacent to the walkways.  (Other larger and more mechanized trash removers operate in the open harbor).  Their combined efforts are needed year-round to keep the picturesque harbor from completely filling up with detritus inasmuch as it receives the outflow from several polluted rivers which empty into it 24 hours a day. Even with all the city's pollution control efforts the harbor gets extremely ripe during the summer months and has been known to give off exceedingly unpleasant odors.  Not so yesterday when working conditions on the water were idyllic as the picture suggests.
     If you haven't done it already, take a minute to get acquainted with the Humble Farmer's website.  He will put you on his mailing list if you like and let you know when he has posted a new set of rants.  Funny man and serious, too. Click on the link. http://www.thehumblefarmer.com/ThisWeek.html

Death and Taxes

     Uncle Jack is working on his taxes this week so he is not in a very good mood.  He has already done enough preliminary number crunching to know approximately how much he is going to have to fork over to the IRS and the Maryland treasury and it is just as depressing this time as it was last year.  He knows that paying taxes is a duty of all citizens in a democracy but he can't help thinking that his taxes, which seem so burdensome to him, will not be enough to keep the government behemoth fed for even a nanosecond. His check, with which he could have gone out to Best Buy and bought something nice to stimulate the economy, will vanish into the government money pit, never to be seen again.  Eventually it might help to cover a tiny part of the annual subsidy payment to a corporate farm in Iowa or some such but he will never know.
     At the local level he has discovered that his real estate tax on his diminutive condo in Baltimore is more than twice as high as the combined city and county tax on his house in Nags Head which is worth twice as much as the condo.  He is not sure exactly where all his Baltimore tax money goes but he suspects that endlessly repairing broken 200-year-old water mains eats up a lot of it along with filling potholes in the 200-year-old streets.  Removing 6.5 feet of snow from said streets this winter must have drained the treasury at least as much as the usual  graft and corruption which is as much a part of the local political scene as it is in most other big cities.
      Uncle Jack was delighted to receive a number of cheery comments this week from readers who had patiently waited for him to return from his self-imposed hiatus from blogging.  One comment on his "Aorta" blog was particularly heartwarming, to wit:  "You'll be dead within a year.  Your BP will spike at some point brought on by stress or surprise and then you'll take a dirt nap".  Uncle Jack had been ruefully contemplating the possibility that he might have to live out his final days in a nursing home or on life support in an intensive care facility somewhere but now, thanks to "Anonymous" he can look forward to a quick and dirty demise.
P.S.  If anybody knows "Anonymous" try to get him or her some help, ASAP.
  
 

Aorta be ashamed of myself.

      Uncle Jack's "hit counter" indicates that there are still a few steadfast readers out there looking in vain every day for some sign that he is still on the planet.  He apologizes for being so dilatory but as he grows older he feels less inclined to sit at his computer and pontificate when he could be reclining in his barcalounger sipping tea and reading a good book like the one he is enjoying at the moment.  It's called "Wits and Sages" and it was published in 1986 by the Johns Hopkins Press.  It's a fascinating study of a dozen or so of  America's most popular and influential newspaper columnists (e.g. Russell Baker, David Broder, Erma Bombeck, Ellen Goodman, George Will, Mike Royko) all of whom were interviewed at length by the author.  What makes the book even more special is that it was written by Uncle Jack's neighbor, Neil Grauer, who lives down at the end of the hall.  One of these days he is going to get up the courage to invite Mr. Grauer to dinner so he can drop a hint to keep Uncle Jack in mind if he ever decides to do another book about newspaper columnists.
      Uncle Jack mentioned back in January that he had an MRI on his heart to follow up on an echocardiogram that gave some indication that his aorta was somewhat dilated.  He finally got the scoop from his new cardiologist this week about what the MRI showed and he can tell you there is good news and bad news.  The bad news is that the MRI confirmed that Uncle Jack's aorta is indeed dilated but the good news is that it isn't a serious problem as long as his blood pressure stays normal.  The best news of all, though, is that if Uncle Jack's aorta does pop he will die almost instantly which is not a bad way to go if you ask him.  Now all he has to worry about is whether his prostate cancer metastasizes before his aorta gives out.
      The last few weeks have been somewhat trying on the medical front.  In rapid succession he had to cope with a sinus infection, an ear infection and an abscessed molar, all of which may have been products of the same bug.  Dr. Ausband neatly plucked the aching tooth from his lower right jaw, leaving a cavernous void which Uncle Jack has been compulsively exploring with his tongue ever since.  He looks forward to many hours of  this new and relatively inexpensive form of entertainment.
      He is scheduled to pick up his new hearing aid on Monday next.  Stay tuned.
    
    

Keeping an Eye on Dare County

While waiting for Uncle Jack to get off his butt and write another blog entry his readers (if he still has any) would do well to acquaint themselves with Ray Midgett's current blog, Eye on Dare.  It is entertaining as well as informative and should be must reading for anybody who has an interest in the present and future of  Dare County.  Check it out while Uncle Jack takes another nap.

http://eyeondare.blogspot.com/2010/02/time-to-get-to-work.html

Vintage Outer Banks pictures

    Uncle Jack discovered Outer Banks Vintage Scrapbook on Facebook the other day and he hasn't had time for anything else since.  Fascinating pictures.  Check it out at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?v=wall&gid=233505839903

Football highlights

          Uncle Jack spent most of the weekend watching NFL playoff games.  As a bona fide high school graduate he is not proud of wasting so much time this way but has to confess that the presence of a 52 inch Samsung  flat screen HDTV in his living room has had a powerful impact on his behavior.  Being able to see every aspect of the game up close in sharp detail and repeated a half-dozen times from different angles is a temptation he simply cannot resist. Twelve hours after the last game ended Sunday night he can barely recall who played whom  but he can tell you he enjoyed every minute of his descent into what Mencken would have called "boobosity" (or worse).
          Brain damage is not confined to the playing field on occasions like this.  Uncle Jack has never suffered a real concussion but after being beaten about the head by commercials for the better part of two days he thinks he knows how it must feel. He herewith nominates the inventor of the TV mute switch for the next Nobel Peace Prize.
       He is not sure if NFL games are broadcast anywhere else in the world but he couldn't help wondering what people in other countries might conclude about us after watching a game or two.  He made a short list of  reasonable conclusions they might come to, to wit:

l.  We love violence.  Not only is  professional football one of the most brutal spectacles in all of  "sport",  but the enthusiastic response of  "fans" (short for fanatics, remember) to particularly egregious examples of mayhem is scary.  Observing the intrinsic barbarity of the game itself coupled with endless commercials for violent movies and TV shows, a non-American viewer might reasonably conclude that we get our kicks from something more than just champagne.

2.  American advertisers are apparently allowed to lie through their teeth.  Every purveyor of automobile insurance cannot offer the lowest rates, but they all say they do. (Uncle Jack once took the Geico test and found that if he switched from U.S.A.A. to Geico his insurance would cost nearly $400 more).  Not every cellphone company can offer the best nationwide service but they all claim to.  All but one are lying. Did Howard Stern " change radio forever"? Come on.

3. We will apparently eat anything if it's cheap enough and somebody else will cook it for us.  Most of the products offered by the likes of  Taco Bell, Domino's, Pizza Hut, Burger King, Subway and McDonalds are positively revolting to a health foodie like Uncle Jack.  Judging from the popularity of American fast food in other countries, however, his opinion is not universally shared.

     Uncle Jack was happy to learn that thanks to "Pepsi Throwback" he can once again rot his teeth will real sugar instead of corn syrup should he choose to do so.  He was also delighted to find out that if he ever needs to pull a large paper mache boulder out of his yard all he needs is a GMC pickup.  Presumably the Ford-150 (best-selling pickup for 33 years) is not up to the job. Will Uncle Jack ever "taste greatness" in a can of  Miller Lite? Will anybody?.

     Three more games to go.  He wouldn't miss them for anything.

    

    

Fun at the hospital

     Uncle Jack had his annual heart check-up a couple of weeks ago, his first at Johns Hopkins Medical Center after seven trips to see a couple of different cardiologists at Duke.  It was the Duke doctors who first diagnosed his heart condition as something called "cardiomyopathy" which he understands to be a kind of umbrella term for situations in which the heart is not pumping a normal amount of blood into the arteries.
    Uncle Jack's problem was revealed by the first of numerous "echocardiograms" (one each year for the past eight)  and his condition has been monitored by use of that device ever since.  He has been taking a couple of medications during this time, getting regular exercise and eating sensibly and the "echos" have consistently shown improvement in his heart function, much to his delight.
    An echocardiogram is a fairly simple procedure involving a technician with cold fingers moving a small transponder around from one place to another on the subject's chest and back to obtain a computerized picture of what is going on in the heart area.  It's "quick and dirty" but it usually provides a sufficient amount of information for the cardiologist to tell what's going on in there.
    His new doctor, a distinguished heart surgeon named Stuart Russell, was not entirely satisfied with his last "echo", however, so he set Uncle Jack up for an MRI which would give him a much clearer picture of his heart and surrounding tissue.  He reported to the MRI facility in the old Johns Hopkins Hospital building at 5 p.m. last evening and at the ripe old age of 79 underwent his first bout of Magnetic Resonance Imaging.
     It was a trip.  By the time it was over he felt like he had just appeared in an episode of  "Star Wars", surrounded as he was by some of the most exotic machinery he has ever interacted with.  The MRI machine is essentially a big round magnet into which he was rolled on a flat platform after being strapped in and hooked up to a dozen wires.  Inside the magnet his face was perhaps two inches from the top surface which at first produced strong feelings of claustrophobia which he dealt with by shutting his eyes and keeping them shut for most of the half-hour it took to complete the procedure.
     "Take a breath and hold it--------now breathe."  This mantra, repeated dozens of times by the technician, became exceedingly boring after the first five minutes but the machine itself provided some entertainment by emitting a variety of honks, squeaks, buzzes, hums and clicks as it did its expensive thing.  As one would expect  from the best hospital in the U.S. the entire procedure from scheduling to completion was carried out with a high level of professionalism.  The scan was scheduled for 5:30 p.m. and that is precisely the time he was rolled into the monster machine.  Lucky for Uncle Jack this splendid hospital is only ten minutes by Mini from his condo which will come in handy when he gets the bill and suffers his first heart attack.