The International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs

[Above photo: Skiing at Riverside today.]

30 January 2022

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, Norm is 84yo and has been running the same 1 chair barbershop in the same tiny, two-story flatiron building on Congress Street for over 60 years. The last scalping he gave me in late October was sufficient for 3 months. Getting bushy over the ears and on the back of my neck, I returned this week, risking all. The basic haircut, I’ve discovered in Malawi, Myanmar, and Maine, is close-cropped sides and only slightly longer hair on top, giving me the look of a yokel or a Tatmadaw (Myanmar army) Private.

“How would you like it?” “Just trim it back over the ears and up my neck. Leave the top long.” “OK”. We chat. He tells me how accurate the Farmer’s Almanac is at predicting the severity of the coming winter weather, snipping away. “They look at the thickness of fur on the animals, how many nuts are the squirrels storing, something about the bees and about the birds.” Meanwhile, he is cutting the sides and top short. He puts the warm foam on my neck and scoops it off with a straight razor. We talk a little about covid and kayaks. Then he recaps the patter about the Farmer’s Almanac, word for word. And I realize he has re-lathered my neck and is shaving it a second time. I don’t have the heart to call his attention to it. I pay and tip him $2, he thanks me, and I look in the mirror at the identical haircut I got the last time. I suppose we all have our defaults and when our minds begin to slip, we rely on those. I’ll see him again in late April.

Upon awakening this week I thought about my first class of Child Psychiatrists in Myanmar and decided to write an email to one of them, Hnin Aye. She was a quick study and a very unassuming star in the class, first on both written and oral examinations and very thorough and intuitive with children and parents. She doesn’t have a child, which saddens her. She used to accompany me each day for a few blocks as I headed home from lecture in the late afternoon and we would talk. Her husband is in the merchant marine, at 35yo a First Mate about to take his Captain’s examinations. Hnin is always so happy to see him when he returns after 4-6 months travelling the world on a massive container ship. “We just love to chat with each other.” The two of them took me out to my favorite Wa (an ethnic group) restaurant in Yangon. Despite her talents, for Hnin is also a terrific teacher, I could not persuade her to enter an academic track.  She prefers to live in simple quarters in Maubin, a small delta town, and work in the district hospital and in her private clinic.

As I was having breakfast at 7:30AM, I scanned my emails to find one from her, sent at 4:20AM my time. My phone charges overnight in the kitchen, so I hadn’t seen it previously. We don’t communicate regularly and haven’t exchanged emails for perhaps 4 months. So how did that happen? I have had other, similar, experiences, anticipating something or deciding to contact someone and they turn up unexpectedly.  I think there must be channels of communication of which we are unaware. I know others have tried to explore this and it all sounds a bit woo-woo to me but how unlikely for it to be coincidence. I haven’t thought about her since our last exchange. Ah, sweet mystery of life! On the other hand, I get no response from sticking pins into a tiny replica of 45!

Prior to my lung cancer I gave blood regularly. The blood bank was a short walk from my house in Berkeley and it seemed like an easy way to be helpful. After my cancer and multiple chemotherapies I was not allowed to do so. I think there was an unsubstantiated fear that blood-borne tumor cells might contaminate my donation. I was told that 5 years after I was cured, I could resume giving. Now the delay has been reduced to 1 year. Listening to Morning Edition this week I learned of a blood shortage.  The Director of the blood bank at Vanderbilt Medical Center in Nashville said that instead of a 3-4 day reserve, they had only 1 day and that it reflected a national dearth. I made an appointment that day at our local blood bank and donated a unit. The nurse, Laura, noticed a mole with very irregular margins on my left bicep. “You’d better have that looked at.”

Now that attention was called to it, it suddenly seemed to me it had been growing and it was remarkably irregular at its edges.  However, it wasn’t the multicolored demon I associate with melanoma. But then there is amelanotic melanoma.  The following afternoon I had it biopsied. The 5 days until I received a phone call relaying that the biopsy was benign seemed a month. I recalled how difficult it had been to await the results of PET scans, MRIs, multiple biopsies, and even the surgical pathology report when I had lung cancer.  Knowing it was in me, growing and spreading, it seemed an eternity until I was able to schedule surgery and have the primary tumor removed. And my treatment went as rapidly and optimally as could be in a well-organized medical system. It alerts me to the fact that I am nowhere near to accepting my final breath on this tortured but miraculously lovely planet.

Prayers are sometimes, eventually answered. Portland received a good blanket of white yesterday.

As for today’s title, its members were the audience for a pamphlet written by Mr. Kurtz, as noted by Joseph Conrad in Heart of Darkness.  I certainly wasn’t prepared to absorb that tale in depth as an undergraduate. On a recent re-reading with a bit more life experience, I found it compelling, mixing as he does power, charisma, and intelligence with lust, corruption, and evil. “Droll thing life is—that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose.  The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself.” Of course, Mr. Kurtz wrote in the margin at the end of his pamphlet: “Exterminate all the brutes!”

Which brings me to the swelling stream of revelations by the January 6^th Committee of the extensive plans to interrupt the peaceful transfer of office and power from one president to the next at the conclusion of our last national election. The louder the cries of “Witch Hunt!”, the more assiduously should we shine a light on those howling and on their actions. False electors? Encouraging a riot? Looking for “just a few more votes”? A Power Point plan? Attempting to corrupt his vice-president? Refusing to interfere with mayhem in our Capital? Plans to seize the voting machines? Martial law? Continuing The Big Lie?

“He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision—he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath: ‘The horror! The horror!’”