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If you are unable to continue working due to disability, you will likely be filing for your Social Security Disability Benefits through your state. Keeping in mind that every state has its own rules and regulations for their own systems, there are still several things that can be done by any applicant to help ensure a fair case hearing.
In fact, over 50% of all initial claims for disability benefits are denied. The system is extremely complex and rigid, and can reject your claim based on anything from a typo on your application to missing a documentation deadline. For claimants who find themselves unable to work and bring in any income, the stress of having to cut through the red tape can be very stressful.
If you have never dealt with Social Security before and are unsure of how to proceed through your application process, you should consider talking to a lawyer. There are many firms available with experts that can help you deal with your disability benefits right from the start. Find out more about the benefits of having legal counsel on your side when facing the disability benefits system.
Application Assistance
The application for benefits can be lengthy and confusing for many people. With the help of a Disability lawyer you can make certain that your application is error-free and complete. Your lawyer will walk you through each part of the process while ensuring that everything is correct and submitted on time. In some cases, when a Disability application is handed in with errors, your claim can be rejected before it is even considered. Make sure that you give yourself the advantage of legal advice to increase the chances of your application being considered the first time.
They Know The System
When you hire a Disability lawyer you can help lower the stress levels involved in the application process. Your lawyer deals with the system on a daily basis and is an expert in the field. You will be able to confidently go through the process while staying in the loop about what is happening with your claim.
Increase Your Odds For Approval
With more than half of all Social Security Disability claims being rejected on their first submission, you want to have every bit of ammunition in your corner while going through the process. Trying to navigate all of the paperwork and submissions on your own leaves you at much greater risk of rejection. The system is just waiting for any type of error that can allow them to legally deny your claim. Protect your interests by gathering the best team with you to file your application.
Less Stress
When you are already dealing with an injury or sickness that is making it impossible to work, your life can be filled with stress. Just the financial strain alone can be enough to further affect your health in a negative way. When you hire a lawyer to help you file for your Social Security Disability Benefits, you can relax a bit knowing that all of your interests are covered.
Resources/Info
Disclaimer: We do our best to ensure the information on RetiredBrains.com is accurate and updated at all times; however, we are unable to guarantee the accuracy of all information. We make every attempt to keep the content up to date and factual. For the most current and complete product/service details please verify with the merchant, product, issuer, or service directly via their website or during the buying or application process. Please be aware that RetiredBrains may have a financial relationship with some of the sites included on our Website. RetiredBrains.com may receive compensation if users choose to click on the links located on certain pages of this website and sales and/or leads are generated. If legal advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of competent professional persons should be sought.
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Diego Rossi
Diego Martín Rossi Marachlian (born 5 March 1998) is a Uruguayan professional footballer who plays as a forward for MLS club Los Angeles FC.
Career
Youth
Rossi began playing football as a child at the El Queso school in Solymar. At the age of six, Rossi moved to the Solymar Uruguay Sports Center, with which he competed in the Interbalnearian League of Youth Football. He demonstrated his ability in the club and caught the attention of Peñarol, where he joined their academy at the age of 12. Néstor Gonçalves discovered him and was invited to play a friendly tournament in Alegrete with the a team, where he eventually was offered a contract.
At the age of 14, Rossi was the top scorer for the team's under-14 team in the Uruguayan seven tier, where he was a top scorer in 2012 with 42 goals in 27 matches. The following year, Rossi joined the Peñarol youth team in the Uruguayan sixth division, where he scored 25 times in 17 appearances. With Penarol's U-15 team, Rossi helped the team win the Apertura Tournament and the Uruguayan U-15 Championship as well as the Fabian Lomineto Cup.
In 2014, he was the top scorer of the Uruguayan Premier Division Under-16 Tournament, scoring 17 goals in the first half of the year, where Peñarol came out champions of the U-16 Clausura Tournament.
On 7 April 2015, he was invited to train with the first-team squad of Peñarol for the first time, along with his teammates from the under-17 team Santiago Bueno and Federico Valverde.
He was promoted by Pablo Bengoechea to the first team for the 2015–16 season in August. Diego alternated the practices with their U-18 team and Peñarol's senior team, but he played with the U-17 club and in the Third or Fourth Division for the entirety of the season.
He finished 2015 helping the Peñarol's U-17 team win the Apertura U-17 Tournament, and after beating Danubio in a final in which he scored a goal. For the fourth consecutive year he was the top scorer of the championship, with 22 goals plus 1 in the final, although he played 10 games in the Fourth and Third Division.
Peñarol
On 5 January 2016, Rossi began the preseason with the Peñarol first team. He debuted with the club on 16 January 2016, in the Bandes Cup final, where he came on in the 7th minute for Gabriel Leyes in a 1–0 victory against Cerro Porteño. Rossi made his debut with the club at the age of 17 years and 317 days old. At the end of the 2015–16, Rossi was demoted to the second team following a change in managerial leadership, where Bengoechea was sacked and Jorge Orosmán da Silva took over.
Following a series of poor results, da Silva called Rossi into the first team, where on 19 April 2016, he made his full debut with the club, playing against Sporting Cristal in the 2016 Copa Libertadores group stage match. In the 2015–16 Uruguayan Championship, Rossi scored the team's first goal in a 3–1 win against Plaza Colonia.
Los Angeles
On 14 December 2017, Rossi was signed as a young designated player for Los Angeles FC of Major League Soccer, an expansion franchise that began play in 2018. On 4 March 2018, Rossi made his MLS debut in Seattle against Seattle Sounders FC. In the 11th minute he scored in his first MLS game, and the first goal in Los Angeles FC history. The goal was also the fastest goal by an expansion team in MLS history. On 8 August 2018, Rossi scored his first hat-trick in MLS during a USOC semifinal match against the Houston Dynamo, a game in which LAFC lost in penalty kicks.
Personal life
Rossi earned his U.S. green card in February 2019. This status also qualifies him as a domestic player for MLS roster purposes. He is of Italian descent from his father's side and of Armenian descent from his mother's side. Since 2018, he has received invitation to play for Armenia national football team and it's still ongoing.
Career statistics
Club
As of 1 March 2020
Honours
Peñarol
Primera División: 2015–16, 2017
Los Angeles FC
Supporters' Shield: 2019
International
South American Youth Football Championship: 2017
Individual
MLS All-Star: 2019
References
External links
Category:Living people
Category:1998 births
Category:Uruguayan footballers
Category:Association football forwards
Category:Uruguay youth international footballers
Category:Uruguay under-20 international footballers
Category:Peñarol players
Category:Los Angeles FC players
Category:Uruguayan Primera División players
Category:Designated Players (MLS)
Category:Uruguayan people of Italian descent
Category:Uruguayan people of Armenian descent
Category:Major League Soccer players
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Respiration and heart rate variability during sleep in untreated Parkinson patients.
Twenty-six patients with untreated mild to moderate Parkinson's disease (PD) lasting 5 years or less, were investigated in the sleep laboratory. Sleep architecture and respiration during sleep did not significantly differ from age-matched controls. PD patients showed defective cardiac autonomic control during sleep, mainly parasympathetic but also sympathetic in nature, although they had normal results in conventional autonomic tests during wakefulness. Therefore, autonomic cardiac involvement seems to be an early sign of PD.
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The title of this post refers to F.A. Hayek’s essay ‘Why I am Not a Conservative’, which can be found as an appendix to his 1960 book The Constitution of Liberty. What this post is really about is the deficiencies of American conservatism and the general idea of liberal conservatism or a natural alliance between classical liberals and conservatives. However, first a few words about Hayek’s essay as Hayek is an important figure for liberty advocates. The essay in question is well known and particularly easy to find online.
Hayek’s criticism of conservatism overestimates the extent to which it is just a limiting position, slowing down change. The relation of conservatism to tradition is seem too much as conservatism being too slow to accept changes to tradition. Traditionalist conservatism, however, has been a much more active and dangerous force than that. ‘Traditionalism’ as far as I know is a 20th century term used particularly in France (René Guénon) and Italy (Julius Evola) to refer to a spiritual based for politics of an extreme conservative kind which found natural alliance with fascism. It seems clear enough that it has precedents in late 18th and 19th century conservative monarchist thinkers like Joseph de Maistre, Louis de Bonald, and Juan Donosó Cortes.
Carl Schmitt, who was maybe the greatest 20th century admirer of those thinkers, joined the Nazi Party in 1933, though found himself purged as not properly Nazi from his post as head of a jurists’ association in 1936. Not only did Schmitt admire the French and Spanish thinkers mentioned, he was a great admirer of Edmund Burke. Burke is a favourite of those claiming a conservative-liberty affinity. It would be unfair to suggest that Burke would have welcomed National Socialism (though the same applies to de Bonald, de Maiste, and Donosó Cortes).
It is a fact that a large part of conservative thinking of the time of the rise of Fascism, and allied forms of illiberal government such as corporatism, regarded it as a legitimate counter to Bolshevism and disorder. Even Ludwig von Mises defiled his own 1927 book Liberalism with generous words about Fascism as a counter to Bolshevism. The reality is that at the time such regimes came to power there was no immediate risk of Communist take over and this is a horrifying position, which cannot be justified by suggesting that Mises was writing in the heat of the moment as Bolsheviks stalked power in any particular country. Winston Churchill welcomed Fascism in Italy and even initially welcomed Hitler’s rise in Germany, before becoming acquainted with the reality of his regime. It is of course the case that Fascism and National Socialism had socialist roots as well as traditionalist conservative roots, but then a liaison between socialism and traditionalist conservatism as a counter to liberal individualism has a history going well back into the 19th century.
We can see right now in Europe the growing force of conservatism with a populist-nationalist emphasis targeting abnormals (as in everyone who does not fit their assumptions of a normal person in their country). This is not some new addition to the repertoire of the right. The strong man of the Northern League in Italy, Metteo Salvini, has aligned himself with Mussolini recently by tweeting a variation of Mussolini’s slogan ‘many enemies, much honour’ on Mussolini’s birthday. The Hungarian equivalent of Salvini, the Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, has rehabilitated the pre-war authoritarian leader Miklós Horthy. The Legue, Orbán’s Fidesz party, the Bannonite wing of the Republican Party and the like are stuffed with Vladimir Putin apologists, or at least as in Bannon’s case slippery arguments according to which he does not like Putin, but we should ally with him. In any case, Bannon is very active supporting the pro-Putin parties in Europe.
These parties draw on long traditions of conservative populism, monarchist anti-liberalism, and the like. The appeal to conservative love of monarchy, state church, and social conformity was a major weapon of monarchist conservative forces after the 1848 Springtime of the Peoples in Europe, helped by violent Russian intervention in the Austrian Empire to ‘restore order’. We see something like this now in the growing strength of a brand of conservatism which does not just limit change but fosters change in the direction of illiberalism, nationalism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, Christian identity, free trade, liberal protections of the individual from state power, the rights of civil society organisations to stand up to the state, and economic protection, seeking inspiration from the kleptomaniac nationalist authoritarian regime in Russia.
Enthusiasm for Recep Tayyıp Erdoğan is less obvious, but Orbán has put him on his list of ‘illiberal democracy’ heroes, and we can reasonably say that the rhetoric and methods of Erdoğan have been an inspiration for the populist right throughout Europe, even as, like Órban, it puts Islamophobia at the centre.
The role of Donald Trump and Steven Bannon as friends of, and models for, European populists should give reason to wonder whether Hayek misunderstood US conservatism. More on this in the next post.
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660 F.Supp.2d 882 (2009)
ABBOTT LABORATORIES and Central Glass Company Ltd., Plaintiffs,
v.
BAXTER HEALTHCARE CORP., Defendant.
No. 04 C 836.
United States District Court, N.D. Illinois, Eastern Division.
September 17, 2009.
*883 Edward L. Foote, James Franklin Herbison, Peggy M. Balesteri, R. Mark McCareins, Raymond C. Perkins, Winston & Strawn LLP, Timothy M. Schaum, Daspin & Aument LLP, Chicago, IL, Lara Marie Levitan, Abbott Laboratories, Abbott Park, IL, for Plaintiffs.
David T. Pritikin, Hugh Allen Abrams, Marc Andrew Cavan, Russell E. Cass, William Hans Baumgartner, Jr., Sidley Austin LLP, Chicago, IL, Thomas S. Borecki, Baxter Healthcare Corporation, Deerfield, IL, for Defendant.
*884 MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER
RONALD A. GUZMAN, District Judge.
Abbott Laboratories and Central Glass Company Ltd. (collectively hereinafter "Abbott") have sued Baxter Healthcare Corp. ("Baxter") for alleged infringement of U.S. Patent No. 6,677,492 ("the '492 Patent"). In turn, Baxter has moved for summary judgment on non-infringement. For the following reasons, the Court grants Baxter's motion.
Facts
This action stems from an Abbreviated New Drug Application ("ANDA") filed by Baxter in 2000 that sought approval to sell the drug sevoflurane in aluminum containers lined with an epoxyphenolic layer. Sevoflurane is a general anesthetic that is administered to patients by inhalation. For many years, Abbott enjoyed a considerable sevoflurane market share. However, after its initial presentation in the market, Abbott discovered that pure sevoflurane has the potential to degrade in the presence of Lewis acids. Among the byproducts of this degradation reaction is hydrofluoric acida solution that is extremely hazardous to the human body. After researching possible solutions to this problem, Abbott discovered that the reaction could be prevented by coating the interior of its glass sevoflurane container with a Lewis acid inhibitor such as water. Abbott applied for a patent for this method and ultimately obtained one on January 13, 2004 in the form of the '492 Patent entitled "Fluoroether Compositions and Methods for Inhibiting Their Degradation in the Presence of a Lewis Acid." (App. Def.'s Mot. Summ. J., Ex. D, '492 Patent at A293.) Claim 1 of the '492 Patent reads:
A method for storing a quantity of sevoflurane, the method comprising the steps of:
providing a container defining an interior space, said container having an interior wall adjacent said interior space[] defined by said container;
providing a quantity of sevoflurane;
coating said interior wall of said container with a Lewis acid inhibitor,
placing said quantity of sevoflurane in said interior space defined by said container.
(Id. at A304 (emphasis added).)
Discussion
"An infringement analysis involves two steps. First, the court determines the scope and meaning of the patent claims asserted, and then the properly construed claims are compared to the allegedly infringing device." Cybor Corp. v. FAS Techs., Inc., 138 F.3d 1448, 1454 (Fed.Cir. 1998) (citations omitted). Therefore, the Court must first construe Claim 1 of the '492 Patent at issue, the independent claim upon which each of the remaining '492 Patent claims depends. (See App. Def.'s Mot. Summ. J., Ex. D, '492 Patent at A304.)
The parties disagree about the proper construction of the Claim 1 limitation, "coating said interior wall of said container with a Lewis acid inhibitor." (See Pls.' Resp. Def.'s Mot. Summ. J. 9; Reply Mem. Supp. Def.'s Mot. Summ. J. 5-7.) Specifically, the parties are at odds over the correct interpretation of one term: the verb "coating." (See Pls.' Resp. Def.'s Mot. Summ. J. 9; Def.'s Reply Mem. Supp. Mot. Summ. J. 5-7.)
Claim construction is a question of law to be decided by a judge. See Markman v. Westview Instruments, Inc., 517 U.S. 370, 391, 116 S.Ct. 1384, 134 L.Ed.2d *885 577 (1996). When interpreting a patent claim term, "[courts] indulge a heavy presumption that a claim term carries its ordinary and customary meaning." CCS Fitness, Inc. v. Brunswick Corp., 288 F.3d 1359, 1366 (Fed.Cir.2002) (quotation omitted). However, courts must look to the specification, as "[t]he patentee may have acted as his own lexicographer and imbued the claim terms with a particular meaning or 'disavowed or disclaimed scope of coverage, by using words or expressions of manifest exclusion or restriction.'" E-Pass Techs., Inc. v. 3Com Corp., 343 F.3d 1364, 1369 (Fed.Cir.2003) (quoting Texas Digital Sys., Inc. v. Telegenix, Inc., 308 F.3d 1193, 1204 (Fed.Cir.2002)). "[I]n determining whether a statement by a patentee was intended to be lexicographic, it is important to determine whether the statement was designed to define the claim term or to describe a preferred embodiment." Id.
Thus, when construing the term "coating," the Court must first establish the ordinary and customary meaning of the term and then determine whether Abbott attempted to define "coating" in the specification, or if it simply intended to bring forth a preferred embodiment. When construing a claim, "dictionary definitions may establish a claim term's ordinary meaning." CCS Fitness, 288 F.3d at 1366. Merriam-Webster's Dictionary defines the verb "coat" as meaning "to cover or spread with a finishing, protecting, or enclosing layer." Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary 235 (11th ed. 2004). Baxter provides no evidence of an ordinary and customary meaning contrary to the dictionary definition, whereas Abbott contends that the Court should construe "coating" to mean "covering the surface of the object." (Pl.'s Resp. Def.'s Mot. Summ. J. 12.) The Court construes the term "coating" according to its ordinary and customary meaning: "covering or spreading with a finishing, protecting, or enclosing layer."
Baxter objects to such a construction and argues that a reading of the '492 Patent's specification requires the Court to construe "coating" to mean "rinsing or washing." (Def.'s Reply Mem. Supp. Mot. Summ. J. 5.) Baxter points to the '492 Patent's "Detailed Description of the Invention," which states, "a container, such as a glass bottle, is first washed or rinsed with the Lewis acid inhibitor and then filled with the fluoroether compound," and "small quantities of the composition containing appropriate amounts of the Lewis acid inhibitor can be used to wash or rinse containers to neutralize any Lewis acids that might be present in the container." (App. Def.'s Mot. Summ. J., Ex. D, '492 Patent, col. 5, lines 34-37, col. 5, line 66-col. 6, line 2; see Def.'s Reply Mem. Supp. Mot. Summ. J. 5.) However, to overcome the presumption that the ordinary meaning of "coating" applies, the '492 Patent's specification must establish that the patentee sought to define "coating" as "washing or rinsing" explicitly and did not merely set out to define a preferred embodiment. See E-Pass, 343 F.3d at 1369.
A reading of the specification establishes clearly that the patentee did not intend to act as its own lexicographer by using the "washing or rinsing" language. First, in the sentence directly preceding the first instance of such language in the "Detailed Description," the patentee specifically states that "[t]he composition of the present invention can be prepared in several ways," implying that "washing or rinsing" is only one of several possible embodiments of the patented method. (App. Def.'s Mot. Summ. J., Ex. D, '492 Patent, col. 5, lines 34-35.) Second, three paragraphs later in the "Detailed Description," the patentee teaches that "small quantities of the composition ... can be used to wash *886 or rinse containers...." (Id. at col. 5, line 66-col. 6, line 1) (emphasis added). Given this language, the Court finds that the patentee did not give a lexicographic effect to the "washing and rinsing" language but, rather, sought to describe several preferred embodiments of the patented method.
Baxter contends that this plain-meaning interpretation would render the '492 Patent invalid for failing to comply with the written description requirement of 35 U.S.C. § 112, paragraph 1, which states:
The specification shall contain a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and use the same.
35 U.S.C. § 112, ¶ 1 (2009).
Baxter merely argues that because nothing in the original 1997 parent application or the issued '492 Patent indicates that the inventors had possession of any kind of solid, non-soluble Lewis acid inhibitor, a plain-meaning construction of Claim 1 would render the '492 Patent invalid for failure to satisfy the written description requirement. (Def's Reply Mem. Supp. Mot. Summ. J. 13.)
The Court disagrees. It is undisputed that the patentee intended a lexicographic effect when it stated in the '492 Patent's specification, "[a]s used herein, `Lewis acid inhibitor' refers to any compound that interacts with the empty orbital of a Lewis acid thereby blocking the potential reaction sites of the acid." (Id. at col. 4, lines 51-54) Therefore, the Court construes Claim 1's "coating said interior wall of said container with a Lewis acid inhibitor" limitation to mean "to cover or spread the interior of the container with a finishing, protecting, or enclosing layer composed of any compound that interacts with the empty orbital of a Lewis acid."
Accordingly, a plain-meaning construction of coating does not necessarily require Claim 1 to encompass solid Lewis acid inhibitors. Rather, Claim 1's breadth, after this Court's construction, encompasses those Lewis acid inhibitors that interact with the empty electron orbital of a Lewis acid, regardless of the inhibitor's state of matter. Because Baxter has failed to establish by clear and convincing evidence that the '492 Patent does not satisfy the written description of section 112, the Court rejects Baxter's arguments that the '492 Patent is invalid.
Next, the Court must compare the allegedly infringing container in Baxter's ANDA to Claim 1 of the '492 Patent as construed above to determine whether summary judgment on the issue of noninfringement is warranted. See Cybor Corp., 138 F.3d at 1454; Hewlett-Packard Co. v. Bausch & Lomb Inc., 909 F.2d 1464, 1467 (Fed.Cir.1990) (stating that the presumption of validity of issued patents pursuant to 35 U.S.C. § 282 stands unless the movant presents clear and convincing evidence to the contrary). Summary judgment is appropriate if "the pleadings, the discovery and disclosure materials on file, and any affidavits show that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and that the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law." Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(c). "[A] party seeking summary judgment always bears the initial responsibility of informing the district court of the basis for its motion, and identifying those portions of [the record] which it believes demonstrate the absence of a genuine issue of material fact." Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 323, 106 S.Ct. 2548, 91 L.Ed.2d 265 (1986). If the moving party carries this burden, "[Rule 56] requires the nonmoving party to go beyond the pleadings *887 and by [its] own affidavits, or by the depositions, answers to interrogatories, and admissions on file, designate specific facts showing that there is a genuine issue for trial." Id. at 324, 106 S.Ct. 2548 (quotations omitted). The nonmovant "must do more than simply show that there is some metaphysical doubt as to the material facts." Matsushita Elec. Indus. Co., Ltd. v. Zenith Radio Corp., 475 U.S. 574, 586, 106 S.Ct. 1348, 89 L.Ed.2d 538 (1986).
Baxter has moved for summary judgment on the issue of noninfringement under both literal infringement and doctrine of equivalents theories. (See Def.'s Reply Mem. Supp. Mot. Summ. J. 9-10.) Unlike claim construction, "[a] determination of non-infringement, either literal or under the doctrine of equivalents, is a question of fact." Miken Composites, L.L.C. v. Wilson Sporting Goods Co., 515 F.3d 1331, 1336 (Fed.Cir.2008). "Those determinations are questions of fact, and on summary judgment, the issue is whether there is no genuine issue of material fact regarding infringement." In re Gabapentin Patent Litig., 503 F.3d 1254, 1259 (Fed.Cir.2007).
"Literal infringement requires that each and every claim limitation be present in the accused product." Abraxis Bioscience, Inc. v. Mayne Pharma (USA) Inc., 467 F.3d 1370, 1378 (Fed.Cir.2006). For the following reasons, having compared Baxter's allegedly infringing method of coating its container to that claimed in the '492 Patent, the Court finds that no genuine issue of material fact exists regarding literal infringement.
Baxter's aluminum container contains an internal epoxyphenolic liner. (See Pls.' LR 56.1(b)(3)(A) Stmt. ¶ 17.) As established in previous litigation between the parties, this internal liner is "dispensed through a spray nozzle" depositing the "internal lacquer on the base and the side walls of the open [container]." (Def.'s Resp. Pl.'s Mot. Summ. J., Ex. G, Chupak Dep., SA46, lines 5-14.) The entire cylindrical container is covered with the lacquer, as "the guns spray the bottoms and the side walls." (Id. at SA51.) After the liquid liner is applied in this fashion, the liner is "cured in a curing oven," transforming the applied lacquer into a permanent solid form. (Id. at SA50.) Therefore, because it constitutes an application of a solid liner that encloses the inside of Baxter's aluminum container, there exists no genuine issue of material fact concerning whether Baxter's method covers or spreads the interior of Baxter's container with a finishing, protecting, or enclosing layer as construed in Claim 1 of the '492 Patent.
However, to prevail in the present action, Abbott must also establish that Baxter's epoxyphenolic liner is a Lewis acid inhibitor, i.e., a compound that interacts with the empty orbital of a Lewis acid via covalent bonding or complexing, wherein electrons are shared between atoms or molecules to render the resulting bonded molecule inert and unavailable for subsequent Lewis acid interaction. See In re Gabapentin, 503 F.3d at 1262. Claim 1 of the '492 Patent mandates that the coating step of an infringing method must apply a Lewis acid inhibitor, i.e., any compound that interacts with the empty electron orbital of a Lewis acid. (See App. Def.'s Mot. Summ. J., Ex. D, '492 Patent at A293.)
Abbott argues that the deposition of Dr. Ralph A. Lessor from a 2001 action between the parties raises a genuine issue of material fact as to whether the epoxyphenolic liner acts as a Lewis acid inhibitor. (Pls.' Resp. Def.'s Mot. Summ. J. 3). In the deposition, Lessor stated that, because the molecular structure of the epoxyphenolic *888 liner utilized in Baxter's container contains a phenol group, the liner has the ability to complex with a Lewis acid. (See Pls.' Resp. Def.'s Mot. Summ. J., Ex. I, Lessor Dep. at SA 67:9-16.) However, after establishing the theoretical possibility that such complexing could occur, Lessor also downplayed the likelihood of such phenol/Lewis acid interaction in Baxter's container:
Q: Is it your understanding that phenols have the ability to complex with a Lewis acid?
[Lessor.] They do have that ability.
Q. Is there any reason why the epoxyphenolic resin of the Baxter aluminum container cannot complex with a Lewis acid?
[Lessor.] Well, it's not soluble in the sevoflurane.
(Id. at SA67:14-21). Further, Lessor's testimony fails to state that any testing was conducted to reinforce the soundness of his theory that Baxter's liner could complex with Lewis acids. Therefore, Lessor's assertion that Baxter's liner could act as a Lewis acid inhibitor is based solely on scientific theory.
Similarly, Abbott points to the 2001 trial testimony of Dr. Charles Rogers, Abbott's polymer science expert, in an attempt to establish a genuine issue of material fact concerning the Lewis acid-inhibiting nature of Baxter's liner. (See Pls.' Resp. Def.'s Mot. Summ. J. 4.) Rogers testified that, because the liner contained hydroxy groups and it was, in his opinion, well-established that hydroxy groups have the ability to complex with Lewis acids, the purported fact that the epoxyphenolic liner would act as a Lewis acid inhibitor should be given more weight than mere scientific theory typically affords. (See App. Def.'s Mot. Summ. J., Ex. A, Am. Bench Op. at A34.) However, Rogers, like Lessor, failed to offer any empirical data from testing to establish the validity of this theory. (See id.)
"[I]n determining whether a claim in a patent has been infringed, the scientific theories utilized must establish the presence of the limitations recited in the claim." Zenith Labs., Inc. v. Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., 19 F.3d 1418, 1423 (Fed.Cir.1994). For example, in the infringement action In re Gabapentin, the plaintiff, Warner Lambert, had discovered that under certain conditions the active ingredient in one if its drugs tended to form a lactum, which rendered the drug unstable. 503 F.3d at 1257. In an effort to cure this deficiency, Warner Lambert developed and patented a method of ensuring that the drug remained stable. Id. Claim 7 of the In re Gabapentin patent-at-issue included a limitation that the active ingredient in the drug contain "less than 20 ppm of an anion of a mineral acid." Id. at 1258 (emphasis in original). Therefore, in order to prove infringement, Warner Lambert was required to show that the samples of the allegedly infringing drug contained less than 20 parts per million of an anion of a mineral acid. See id. at 1262. Warner Lambert offered results from pH tests conducted on the samples, which established that the samples could contain between 7 and 17 parts per million anions. Id. at 1261. Because "pH testing can indicate whether a sample contains less than 20 ppm of acidic chloride by measuring the pH, or acidity, of the solution and comparing it against a sample with a known amount of acid," the In re Gabapentin court held that Warner Lambert had raised a genuine issue of material fact for trial, and denied the defendant's summary judgment motion on the issue of noninfringement. Id. at 1262.
However, unlike Warner Lambert, by failing to offer any test results that establish whether Baxter's epoxyphenolic liner *889 acts as a Lewis acid inhibitor, Abbott has not raised a genuine issue of material fact for trial on the issue of literal infringement. Buttressing this determination is Rogers' testimony from the 2001 action, wherein he stated that he tried three times to back his opinion with test data, but two of the tests were inconclusive and the third was stopped prematurely at the request of Abbott's attorneys. (See App. Def.'s Mot. Summ. J., Ex. A, Am. Bench Op. at A34-A35.) Additionally, no evidence on the present record indicates that Abbott has conducted any further tests to date. Clearly, this is insufficient to create a triable issue.
Therefore, Abbott has failed to present evidence to establish that Baxter's liner is in fact a Lewis acid inhibitor as defined by the '492 Patent's specification. Consequently, by failing to present any test results to legitimatize its experts' scientific theories, Abbott has not raised a genuine issue of material fact for trial regarding the Lewis acid inhibitor claim limitation, or literal infringement of the '492 Patent.
The infringement inquiry, however, does not stop at literal infringement, because "[t]he scope of a patent is not limited to its literal terms but instead embraces all equivalents to the claims described." Festo Corp. v. Shoketsu Kinzoku Kogyo Kabushiki Co., Ltd., 535 U.S. 722, 732, 122 S.Ct. 1831, 152 L.Ed.2d 944 (2002). The doctrine of equivalents holds that:
`[T]he substantial equivalent of a thing, in the sense of the patent law, is the same as the thing itself; so that if two devices do the same work in substantially the same way, and accomplish substantially the same result, they are the same, even though they differ in name, form, or shape.'
Warner-Jenkinson Co., Inc. v. Hilton Davis Chem. Co., 520 U.S. 17, 35, 117 S.Ct. 1040, 137 L.Ed.2d 146 (1997) (quoting Union Paper-Bag Mach. Co. v. Murphy, 97 U.S. 120, 125, 24 L.Ed. 935 (1878)).
Baxter argues, however, that Abbott is barred from relying on a doctrine of equivalents theory because prosecution history estoppel applies. The doctrine of prosecution history estoppel holds that when a "patentee originally claimed the subject matter alleged to infringe but then narrowed the claim in response to a rejection, he may not argue that the surrendered territory comprised unforeseen subject matter that should be deemed equivalent to the literal claims of the issued patent." Festo, 535 U.S. at 733-34, 122 S.Ct. 1831. "Prosecution history estoppel... is a question of law." Bayer AG v. Elan Pharm. Research Corp., 212 F.3d 1241, 1251 (Fed.Cir.2000).
The Court finds that prosecution history estoppel does not bar Abbott from asserting that Baxter's epoxyphenolic liner is an equivalent to the Lewis acid inhibitor limitation of Claim 1. Originally, the claims of patent application 10/190,271 (which eventually issued as the '492 Patent) were drawn to, for example, "[a]n anesthetic composition comprising a fluoroether compound having an alpha fluoroether moiety..." and "[a] method of stabilizing a fluoroether compound having an alpha fluoroether moiety ...." (See App. Def.'s Mot. Summ. J., Ex. E, '492 Patent File Wrapper at A337, A358.) The examiner rejected all of the original claims for indefiniteness, finding that the terms "alpha fluoroether moiety" and "fluoroether compound" did not "particularly point[] out and distinctly claim[] the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention" as required by 35 U.S.C. § 112. (Id. at A351.) Further, the examiner rejected all of the original claims due to obvious-type double patenting. (Id. at A352.) Abbott then canceled all of the original application's claims *890 and replaced them with the claims that eventually issued in the '492 Patent, which are drawn to completely different subject matter, namely, "[a] method of storing a quantity of sevoflurane." (Id. at A358.)
Because the '492 Patent's amended claims are drawn to completely different subject matter than the claims as originally filed, the Court finds that the amendment was not a "narrowing amendment," and that prosecution history estoppel does not apply to the "coating" step at issue. See Festo, 535 U.S. at 737, 122 S.Ct. 1831 ("Though prosecution history estoppel can bar a patentee from challenging a wide range of alleged equivalents made or distributed by competitors, its reach requires an examination of the subject matter surrendered by the narrowing amendment."). Comparing the relative scopes of the "anesthetic composition" claims of the original application to the "method of storing a quantity of sevoflurane" claims of the '492 Patent would be an impossible inquiry, akin to comparing apples and oranges. Therefore, although Abbott did indeed amend its application, Abbott did not surrender patent coverage drawn to equivalents of "coating said interior wall of said container with a Lewis acid inhibitor."
Because prosecution history does not apply, the Court must conduct a doctrine of equivalents inquiry to determine if there exists a genuine issue of material fact as to whether Baxter's container with the epoxyphenolic liner "[(1)] do[es] the same work [(2)] in substantially the same way, and [(3)] accomplishes] substantially the same result" as the method claimed in the '492 Patent. See Warner-Jenkinson, 520 U.S. at 35, 117 S.Ct. 1040. As discussed above, no genuine issue of material fact exists as to whether Baxter's container accomplishes substantially the same result as the '492 Patent, i.e., prevents sevoflurane degradation by coating the container with a compound that interacts with the empty electron orbital of a Lewis acid. Thus, the Court's inquiry will focus on whether Baxter's container does substantially the same work in substantially the same way as claimed in the '492 Patent. See id.
Again, because Abbott has not brought forth evidence that the epoxyphenolic liner chemically reacts in any way with available Lewis acids, no genuine issue of material fact exists concerning whether Baxter's container does substantially the same work in substantially the same way as claimed in the '492 Patent. Although Abbott contends that the testimony and depositions of Lessor and Rogers raise a genuine issue of material fact as to this issue, as the Court has explained above, this argument falls short due to the lack of test data on record. (See Pls.' Resp. Def.'s Mot. Summ. J. 3-4.) Though the Baxter liner does in fact inhibit Lewis acid degradation, it does so by forming a physical barrier between the aluminum surface and the sevoflurane, not by interacting chemically with the empty electron orbital of present Lewis acids as claimed in the '492 Patent. (See App. Def.'s Mot. Summ. J., Ex. A, Am. Bench Op. at A37.) Therefore, by simply serving as a buffer layer for mechanical separation, Baxter's liner does not do the same work in substantially the same way as claimed in the '492 Patent. Abbott, by relying simply on untested scientific theory, has done no more than establish a metaphysical doubt as to the simple mechanical blocking function of Baxter's liner. Therefore, there exists no genuine issue of material fact for trial concerning infringement by the doctrine of equivalents.
Conclusion
The Court grants defendants' motion for summary judgment [doc. no. 52]. This *891 case is hereby terminated and all other motions are stricken as moot.
SO ORDERED.
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{
"pile_set_name": "FreeLaw"
}
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Junction gate field effect transistors (JFET) provide various useful characteristics, such as low noise, fast switching speed, high power handling capability, etc. These characteristics make JFETs a design consideration in various power applications, such as power amplifiers.
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{
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XEphem
XEphem is a Motif based ephemeris and planetarium program for Unix-like operating systems developed by Elwood C. Downey.
History
XEphem started as a Unix and Motif conversion of the IBM PC-based . It was initially released in December 1993 with version 2.5. The most recent stable version is 3.7.6 (2013). XEphem's source code is available, but its free usage is restricted for personal and educational purposes only. The full set of catalogs is only distributed with a purchase of the commercial version.
Algorithms and models
XEphem uses
The VSOP87D planetary theory (full and reduced precision) for Solar System ephemeris,
Approximation to DE200 for the outer planets and Pluto, and
Formulae from J. Meeus (1982) for Jovian and Saturnian natural satellites
Model by the Bureau des Longitudes for Martian and Uranian natural satellites
and includes
About 452 million stars from both the Tycho-2 Catalogue and a magnitude limited subset of the Guide Star Catalog II,
About 1 million deep sky objects mainly from a subset of HYPERLEDA,
About 288,000 minor planets and comets orbital elements from the IAU Minor Planet Center and Lowell Observatory (that can be updated),
and other specialized catalogs. It also include the Digital Lunar Orbiter Photographic Atlas of the Moon. XEphem is a client for Internet data sources such as the Digitized Sky Survey, Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, AAVSO light curves, and global temperature and cloud coverage. Through the Instrument Neutral Distributed Interface, XEphem can control some models of amateur telescopes, such as by Meade, Celestron, and Vixen, and auxiliary telescope components.
Catalogs
While the free version of XEphem only includes a subset of the SKYMAP Master Catalog and the Messier Catalog, the internal format of the remaining catalogs can be inferred from the source code, and e.g. the internal binary Tycho-2 catalog can be generated from the original data. This is also possible for the non-stellar catalogs in the ASCII .edb format, such as for HYPERLEDA.
XEphem can also read several astrometric catalogs in their original formats:
GSC 1.2 and GSC-ACT
USNO A/SA 1.0/2.0
UCAC2
Numerical routines are used in PyEphem with permission of Elwood Downey.
See also
Cartes du Ciel
Celestia
Digital Universe Atlas
Google Mars
Google Moon
Google Sky
Hallo Northern Sky (HN Sky)
KStars
NASA World Wind
RedShift
Starry Night
Stellarium
TheSky
Universe Sandbox
WinStars
WorldWide Telescope
References
External links
Programs to generate XEphem 3.4 xe2 catalogs
Category:Planetarium software for Linux
Category:Science software for MacOS
Category:Astronomy software
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Depuis sa poussée dans les sondages, le candidat de la « France insoumise » fait l’objet de toutes les attentions et de toutes les critiques, et pas seulement de ses concurrents.
Son projet économique, mais également ses positions à l'international sont pointées du doigt par les médias. Un « bad buzz » qui ressemble fort à un « buzz » tout court, offert à 10 jours du premier tour. Et si la surprise de la présidentielle 2017, c'était lui? La question semble sévèrement travailler les rédactions françaises et mêmes internationales depuis moins d'une semaine. Dimanche 9 avril, un sondage Kantar Sofres — Onepoint pour LCI, RTL et Le Figaro est venu chambouler le podium établi jusque-là par les pronostiqueurs, en donnant pour la première fois Jean-Luc Mélenchon devant François Fillon, à respectivement 18 % et 17 %.
Une surprise qui a fait réagir François Hollande, lui qui s'était pourtant promis de ne pas sortir de son devoir de réserve jusqu'au premier tour. Mais peut-on lui reprocher, maintenant, d'être à une contradiction près? Dans une interview accordée à l'hebdomadaire Le Point et publiée jeudi 13 avril, François Hollande en appelle ainsi «à l'intelligence des Français » lorsqu'il dénonce « le péril » consistant à regarder « le spectacle du tribun plutôt que le contenu de son texte », une allusion claire à Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
Une surprise de taille, d'autant plus que jusqu'à présent, le candidat de la « France insoumise » n'était pas vraiment pris au sérieux par les médias. Preuve en est certainement le fait que depuis plusieurs jours, les journalistes semblent découvrir le programme de Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Pour le politologue Thomas Guénolé, auteur de « La Mondialisation malheureuse » (Ed. First, 2016), il est d'ailleurs rarissime qu'un journaliste lise en intégralité le programme d'un candidat, d'autant plus dans une campagne où onze prétendants s'affrontent:
« Il faut mettre un terme à une légende: la plupart des journalistes, la plupart des éditorialistes et la plupart des électeurs prétendent lire les programmes, mais ne les lisent pas ou les lisent en diagonale ou les lisent de manière bâclée. »
Le politologue souligne ainsi le risque pour les journalistes de « répéter des rumeurs, des clichés ou des raccourcis », faute de temps pour approfondir les choses. Sans oublier, bien sûr, le risque de se retrouver dans des situations pour le moins cocasses…
Être journaliste ne dispense pas de savoir lire (ni de savoir-vivre envers son invité…) https://t.co/vnNXjMBgDJ — Jacques Sapir (@russeurope) 23 марта 2017 г.
Dans la presse, ce sont principalement Les Échos et Le Figaro qui concentrent les tirs, le premier titrant sur le « risque » Mélenchon, le second sur le « projet dévastateur » du candidat d'extrême-gauche, qualifié au passage de « Chavez français ». Plus modérés, BFM et RMC se sont contentés de revenir sur les craintes de certains Français, prêts à quitter la France si Marine Le Pen ou Jean-Luc Mélenchon venait à être élu. Des critiques de la presse qui donnent échos aux piques adressées cette semaine à Jean-Luc Mélenchon par ces principaux opposants, tels qu'Emmanuel Macron et François Fillon.
Un phénomène rationnel, sur lequel revient Thomas Guénolé, ce phénomène s'explique de manière tout à fait rationnelle:
Cependant, si on pouvait s'attendre à des critiques sur le programme économique du candidat de la part de ses opposants ou de journaux de ligne éditoriale libérale ou conservatrice, la critique prend une toute autre dimension lorsque le programme international du candidat est évoqué. Dans C à vous, Patrick Cohen, brandit fièrement le programme du candidat de la France insoumise devant l'un de ses porte-parole, Alexis Corbière, invoquant le « chapitre » 62 (points 15 et 62 de son programme) et la fameuse alliance bolivarienne, qui depuis ne cesse de faire parler d'elle. Cela vire presque au Mélenchon-bashing, lorsque Clémentine Autin, autre porte-parole de la France insoumise, est prise au dépourvu sur cette même alliance bolivarienne, cette fois-ci sur le plateau de France Info.
Pour le politologue, le tableau n'est pourtant pas si noir pour le candidat de la France insoumise, rappelant qu'« un vieil adage de marketing dit qu'il n'y a pas de publicité négative ».insiste-t-il, faisant remarquer que Jean Luc Mélenchon a depuis occulté tous les autres sujets, notamment les campagnes des autres candidats. En somme, un « bad buzz » certes, mais un « buzz » quand même, offert au candidat, tout cela à un peu plus d'une semaine du premier tour.
Une volée de critiques qui ne fait que légitimer le candidat d'extrême-gauche dans son rôle de candidat antisystème. Phénomène ne pouvant que conforter son assise dans les sondages. Thomas Guénolé revient sur la part considérable des Français qui ont basculé ces dernières années dans une situation de relative précarité économique, d'instabilité professionnelle, nourrissant le vote contestataire, tant dans sa frange « raciste et xénophobe », selon ses termes, que dans son pendant « altermondialiste », évoquant le travail de l'économiste britannique Guy Standing, auteur « Le précariat, les dangers d'une nouvelle classe » (Editions de l'Opportun, 2017):
« Le précariat, c'est la France qui a des débuts de mois difficiles et qui ne sait pas où elle en sera économiquement et socialement le mois prochain. Cette France-là, c'est la majorité des français. »
Pour le politologue, face à cette « conséquence d'une politique économique pro-mondialisation », la question centrale pour Jean Luc Mélenchon dans cette campagne demeure la suivante: « à quel point peut-il réussir à fédérer un maximum de révoltés contre ce qu'on pourrait appeler la mondialisation malheureuse? »
Ainsi, si certains de ces opposants, comme Bernard-Henri Lévy — soutien d'Emmanuel Macron — se satisfont publiquement de cette polémique qui enflait sur l'alliance bolivarienne,
Rejouissant embarras des lieutenants de #Mélenchon face à cette affaire d'alliance #bolivarienne: "Europe non; Iran, Syrie, Cuba, oui!" — Bernard-Henri Lévy (@BHL) 13 апреля 2017 г.
Celle-ci n'est peut-être pas forcément tant à l'avantage des détracteurs du candidat. Tout comme le souligne d'ailleurs Eugénie Bastié, journaliste du Figaro.
Les gens s'en foutent, il monte encore. https://t.co/QsDwxhDzvl — Eugénie Bastié (@EugenieBastie) 14 апреля 2017 г.
Reste à savoir à quel candidat cela profite « Jean-Luc Mélenchon est devenu l'allié inespéré de François Fillon » relevait ce matin sur Europe 1, le chroniqueur Antonin André. Il relève un paradoxe: celui, pour le candidat Républicain et celui d' « En Marche! », de placer Jean-Luc Mélenchon au centre du jeu en agitant ainsi « la peur du bolchévique » afin de fédérer leur électorat. « L'arme Mélenchon est à double tranchant, elle peut très bien se retourner contre ceux qui l'agitent » conclut-il.
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Prospective evaluation of CT-guided HDR brachytherapy as a local ablative treatment for renal masses: a single-arm pilot trial.
In this pilot trial, we investigate the safety of CT-guided high-dose-rate brachytherapy (HDR-BT) as a local ablative treatment for renal masses not eligible for resection or nephrectomy. We investigated renal function after irradiation by HDR-BT in 16 patients (11 male, 5 female, mean age 76 years) with 20 renal lesions (renal cell carcinoma n = 18; renal metastases n = 2). Two patients had previous contralateral nephrectomy and two had ipsilateral partial nephrectomy. Six lesions had a hilar localization with proximity to the renal pelvis and would have not been favorable for thermal ablation. Renal function loss was determined within 1 year after HDR-BT by renal scintigraphy and laboratory parameters. Further investigations included CT and MRI every 3 months to observe procedural safety and local tumor control. Renal function tests were analyzed by Wilcoxon's signed rank test with Bonferroni-Holm correction of p-values. Survival and local tumor control underwent a Kaplan-Meier estimation. Median follow-up was 22.5 months. One patient required permanent hemodialysis 32 months after repeated HDR-BT and contralateral radiofrequency ablation of multifocal renal cell carcinoma. No other patient developed a significant worsening in global renal function and no gastrointestinal or urogenital side effects were observed. Only one patient died of renal tumor progression. Local control rate was 95% including repeated HDR-BT of two recurrences. HDR-BT is a feasible and safe technique for the local ablation of renal masses. A phase II study is recruiting to evaluate the efficacy of this novel local ablative treatment in a larger study population.
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{
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Appalachian States Low-Level Radioactive Waste Comm'n v. Pena
The court upholds the Secretary of Energy's interpretation of the term "provide for" within a provision of the Low-Level Radioactive Waste Policy Amendments Act that entitles states and regional radioactive-waste disposal compacts to a rebate of their waste disposal surcharges. Plaintiff regional compact commission argues that it provided for the disposal of the compact's low-level radioactive waste by amending its export ban to authorize and encourage its generators to dispose of their waste at a recently reopened disposal facility in South Carolina. The Secretary interprets "provide for" to imply some meaningful affirmative action to facilitate the disposal of the region's low-level radioactive waste. The court first holds that, although this issue was not raised before the district court, the public interest is sufficiently implicated to require resolution of the issue without remanding the case to the district court. The court holds that the plain meaning of the term "provide for" clearly suggests that, before a state or compact may receive a rebate under the act, it must take some affirmative step to supply, afford, or furnish means to dispose of its waste. The commission took no meaningful affirmative action. It did not construct a disposal facility, take title to its regions low-level radioactive waste, or enter into a disposal contract. Accordingly, the commission is not entitled to a proportional rebate. The court next holds that even if the term "provide for" was ambiguous, the court would defer to the Secretary's interpretation. When the Secretary sent out final notices of response to comments on the draft procedures and policies, a final policy statement on the subject was issued. The Secretary is asserting this same policy as its position in the instant litigation. Moreover, the consistency between the Secretary's position in this litigation and the prior policy statement suggests that the usual justifications for not deferring to agency counsel's litigation position are absent. In addition, the court cannot conclude that Congress intended to reward generators that are in the same position that they were in prior to the passage of the 1985 Act. Simply returning to this prior regime would be contrary to the purpose of the statute.
[The district court's opinion is published at 27 ELR 20061, and a prior Third Circuit opinion is published at 26 ELR 21632.]
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The Gunners are currently short on options between the sticks, with Lukasz Fabianski having been released and Emiliano Viviano’s uninspiring loan spell having now ended.
Wojciech Szczesny is still around, but Arsene Wenger wants to provide the Pole with a more able back-up man, and sees Pantilimon as a good option.
The Romanian recently rejected a new contract at City after warming the bench for the Premier League champions for the past few seasons, and is in search of a new challenge.
There is strong interest in the 27-year-old from Italy and Spain, but staying in English football may appeal to the lanky goalie.
The 6ft. 8” glovesman would not be an automatic choice at Arsenal, but may have a genuine chance of becoming Wenger’s number one, with Szczesny having failed to truly impress over the course of his spell at the Emirates Stadium.
Pantilimon starred for City in their Capital One Cup success last season, and enjoyed a brief spell as Manuel Pellegrini’s main goalkeeper while Joe Hart was out of the team.
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Infantile idiopathic scoliosis: can it be prevented?
The changing incidence of idiopathic scoliosis in 672 patients who attended the Edinburgh Scoliosis Clinic between 1968 and 1982 inclusive is reported. Of these patients, 144 had infantile, 51 juvenile and 477 adolescent idiopathic scoliosis. Thirty-seven of the infantile curves progressed and 107 resolved. The relative frequency of both progressive and resolving infantile idiopathic scoliosis (given as a percentage of the total number of patients with idiopathic scoliosis) declined from 41.75 per cent in the four years from 1968 to 1971, to four per cent in the three years from 1980 to 1982. It is suggested that infantile idiopathic scoliosis is a preventable deformity and that the position in which the infant is laid may be a causative factor.
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{
"pile_set_name": "PubMed Abstracts"
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These invitation sets are extremely special and perfect for the couple looking for something romantic, elegant, yet very creative! Each order comes with 60 sets of invitations.
HOW TO CUSTOMIZE TEXT?
After clicking Add to Cart, please leave your text in the 'Leave Notes for Seller' box. All of our cards can be printed in any language your prefer.
HOW TO CUSTOMIZE TEXT + DESIGN?
If you want design changes to your invitation, make sure you select 'Text + Design' when you check out. After clicking Add to Cart, please leave your text in the 'Leave Notes for Seller' box on the cart page, along with what type of design changes you'd like.
WHAT IS INCLUDED IN EACH INVITATION SET?Each set comes with a vellum envelope, a main invitation, a map, and a bow for photo taking purposes!
WHAT QUALITY ARE THE INVITES?All our invitations are made with high quality paper that's imported from Italy, ensuring that our customers get the most creative yet highest quality invitation set in the market. The paper we use is especially designed for wedding invitations so that the look and feel is of the highest quality when the guests receive each invitation set. Trust us, your guests will LOVE your invitations :)
HOW DOES THE PROCESS WORK?After purchasing your order, send us your text as mentioned above. Then, we will let you check the proof - and make edits until you are happy.
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Tuesday, January 11, 2011
The Pritcher Mass
Since I retired I have been reading and re-reading old prozines, enjoying its short fiction which seems much more sfnal than much of the short fiction being published currently (much of which tends toward the fantasy and slipstream variety). This month I picked up three issues of Analog from August, September and October, 1972. I only subscribed to Analog for a few years in the 1970s when Galaxy was degenerating under editors Ejler Jacobssen and John J. Pierce (with a few years’ spurt between them under Jim Baen), but I was also given a box of Analogs in the 1980s by a Biology teacher who was cleaning out his dad’s attic. Since Analog almost always had part of a serial in each issue, I kept the issues which had serials I did not already have in book form (which was 14 serials total), and gave my friend George, a Physics teacher and SF fan, the issues which either had incomplete serials or serials I already owned). I was left with 56 issues overall, which I have been reading occasionally (but much less frequently than I read 1950s issues of Galaxy and IF, which are more recent additions to my collection).
I selected the three issues I did this time because they contain a serial by Gordon R. Dickson, The Pritcher Mass, which I have never read. Dickson is one of the grandmasters of SF by whom I have read sadly-few books, only 2 in fact: Three To Dorsai! (which contains three novels in his most famous series: Necromancer, Dorsai! and The Tactics of Mistake) and the standalone novel Time Storm (which, for some reason, I have never read).
But I actually have 2 Dickson serials in Analog, the other being The Outposter and, based on my enjoyment reading The Pritcher Mass, I hope to read that serial as well in the near-future. The Pritcher Mass is about a near-future, overpopulated, polluted Earth, in which the majority of people live in domed cities, never daring to leave the domes because of “the rot” which is a mutated plant life which enters the lungs and grows until the person chokes to death. But life in the protected cities is dominated by The Citadel, a massive crime syndicate whose tentacles stretch even into the government itself.
But there is hope for humanity in the form of the Pritcher Mass, a giant “structure” being built purely by telekinetic-like abilities of the rare people who possess that talent, its purpose being to seek out planets where humanity can emigrate. The main character has been trying to qualify for the Pritcher Mass, since its workers live on a space station away from the crowding and pollution. But he has been failing his tests by the slimmest margins until he finds a “catalyst” in the form of a rock outside the dome. Subsequently, he encounters a female witch whom he believes is actually a telekinetic talent. He also learns that the Citadel is opposed to his being involved with the Pritcher Mass for reasons he does not know.
The novel combines fast-paced adventure with thought-provoking elements about the future of humanity and the polluted Earth. It was a good, if although great, novel which was both worthwhile reading and encouragement to read more by Gordon R. Dickson.
The three issues of Analog also had several enjoyable novelettes, some by well-known writers (James H. Schmitz, Christopher Anvil) but others by unknowns which, in some instances, is the real joy of reading prozines. The October issue had a novelettes by a writer I have never heard of previously. David Lewis’ “Common Denominator” was a novel about space soldiers. The narrator is a war ace flying solo fighter ships in a war on a distant planet. While the story is ostensibly about the invasion of a planet which is an enemy stronghold, it is really about the attitude of soldiers, both the narrator’s companions as well as the enemy, and how there are times when perhaps the enemy is actually more noble than members of one’s own race, in spite of the extreme differences which are the foundations of the war.
The August issue had a novelette by “old reliable” writer James H. Schmitz. “Symbiotes” is one of his Hub series featuring Trigger and Telzey, two women who are involved with the Psychology Service. Recently I read Schmitz’ huge collection Eternal Frontier, which was very enjoyable, but contained only non-Hub stories. Baen Books has published 4 collection of Schmitz’ stories which contain primarily Hub stories: Telzey Amberdon, T‘n’T: Telzey and Trigger, Trigger and Friends and The Hub: Dangerous Territory. If “Symbiotes” is any indication, those books should be as good as Eternal Frontier and definitely worth reading.
“Symbiotes” tells of Trigger at a shopping mall when she encounters an 8" high man on the run from somebody who has apparently kidnapped him and two friends who are inhabitants of a distant world which was designed hundreds of years ago as a possible outlet for overcrowded humanity by having its émigrés shrunk so that more of them could fit on the planet without crowding. But apparently somebody has found a profitable way to kidnap some of the tiny people and sell them for considerable profit. In the process, Trigger encounters three of the most intriguing aliens I have seen in a long time. Good stuff.
I read with envy. It is wonderful that you have that collection of old magazines. I got my first taste of the old Galaxy magazines last year when a friend gave me a couple of them to read. It felt like stepping back in time, in all the right ways. Of course it didn't hurt that the main stories in these issues were by Cordwainer Smith, a favorite, and Lester Del Rey, who I hadn't read but became an instant fan after reading "To Avenge Man". I hoping to pick up some more copies at shows/stores this year as I think it would be fun to read more of these older science fiction short stories in the format in which they initially appeared.
As a young SF fan of the giants such as Robert A. Heinlein, Issac Asimov, Carl Sagan, L Sprauge DeCamp, Arthur C. Clarke, Edgar Rice Burroughs… I had devoured them all and many others cover to cover until they were dog eared and yellowed…then one day from a bin at the used book store I picked up a paperback copy of the Pritcher Mass on a whim because of the cool cover art… the slinky sex-pot with glowing eyes in green and red striped cammo, and the feral imagery of the wolverine, with the psychic wizard in the back and the industrial polluted future scene… tech art with the red flares of the Pritcher Mass rising in the background. I was only seven in 1976 but had already devoured every SF novelist of Hugo and Nebula level work...so I took the dog eared copy for a few dollars and went into a park of tall pines in the Arkansas woods, leaned against a tree, and with one barefoot crossed over the other I opened the book in the early afternoon and there I was on that train, and in that wreck, and outside on the ground waking up with that cold stone held against my head desperately thinking of how to get back inside the city. Face it, we have passed beyond that golden age where the writers were the savants of imagery and emotion and their art form carried us all far beyond this space and time...because of the advance of technology we now live many of their dreams, but we now have that spark of mind from them in print still and like a time machine we can call back those early years where some of us sat in the deep of winter, having sneaked out an open window, to sit spell bound staring into the sky through a cheap metal telescope bought at the five and dime with change scraped together from recycled coke bottles found in the ditches and wondered, really wondered, did the stars really sing? If I had a spacesuit would I really travel? Are there giant hovering creatures on the gas planet Jupiter? Would we some day walk the red planet in suits escaping from an overbearing private school still wearing our custom painted helmet? Will we ever travel beyond this universe and see the wonders of it all? Thanks to the dreamers like Gordon who poured their thoughts and imaginations into a forge and out came, like molten gold, onto the page their adventures into space and time… thanks to them as long as we keep their print alive and pass it on the glitter of that golden age of SF genre they will never fade, and like gold their dreams will shine on for every young reader who is fortunate enough to find them still.
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Image copyright Getty Images
Grammar schools perform no better than non-selective state schools, once their pupils' higher ability and wealth is taken into account, a study suggests.
Academics at Durham University found the "apparent success" of these wholly selective schools was down to their brighter and more advantaged pupils.
They say increasing the number of schools that select pupils by ability would be dangerous for equality.
The government said it was working to widen access to grammar schools.
Grammar schools have a reputation for high academic achievement and dominate the top of the school league tables.
'Social segregation'
But this research, based on the detailed results of nearly 550,000 pupils, suggests once the ability and social background of pupils is taken into account, grammar schools are no more or less effective than other schools.
The research not only looked at the social backgrounds of grammar pupils, but also:
rates of chronic poverty
ethnicity
home language
special educational needs
age in the year group
The findings suggest England's grammars take only a tiny proportion of pupils who are, or have been, eligible for free school meals.
Image copyright Getty Images
This is important, say the researchers, because such pupils' results tend to decline with every year they are on free meals.
This means that other schools in selective areas are taking more than their fair share of the poorest and chronically poor pupils.
The Conservative government had to abandon plans to allow new grammar schools to open, following its weak position in Parliament after the general election.
But ministers are keen to continue to allow existing grammars to expand.
'No clear gain'
An analysis of pupil numbers by the BBC showed the equivalent of 11 new selective schools had been created since 2010 as existing schools had expanded.
Prof Stephen Gorard, from Durham's School of Education, said: "Dividing children into the most able and the rest from an early age does not appear to lead to better results for either group.
"This means that the kind of social segregation experienced by children in selective areas in England, and the damage to social cohesion that ensues, is for no clear gain.
"This is not to decry the schools that are currently grammars, or the work of their staff.
"However, the findings mean that grammar schools in England endanger social cohesion for no clear improvement in overall results. The policy is a bad one."
A Department for Education official said: "We want every child to receive a world-class education and to give parents greater choice when it comes to picking the school that's right for them - grammar schools are a part of this.
"Around 60% of these schools already prioritise admissions for disadvantaged children, and we are continuing to work closely with the school sector to widen access further.
"Research shows that pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds make better progress across core subjects in selective schools, and attain better results."
Paul Whiteman, general secretary of school leaders' union NAHT, said: "There is a wealth of evidence that selection at 11 works against the government's stated ambition of improving social mobility.
"Creating new grammars schools is not the best way to help children from disadvantaged backgrounds. Instead, greater investment in high quality early years education would have a bigger impact on life chances - 11 is too late to bridge the gap."
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
'Zen' can mean many things: Zen Buddhism, Zen meditation, Zen method, Zen philosophy or Zen approach to life, Zen experience or -realization, Zen enlightenment or - awakening and so on. However Zen meditation and realization are different from Zen Buddhism. Zen Buddhism characterizes a religious group; Zen meditation is independent from any specific religion. In fact Zen is the religion of non-religion, yet in its light religions can truly be themselves. Zen, in terms of practice and realization is apart from any philosophy, ideology or any "- ism" (Monism, pantheism, nihilism, secularism, humanism etc.). It transcends both, negation and affirmation. It finds and fulfills any reality in its suchness and singleness. It is the death of the "Old person" and the birth of the "New person", the new sky and the new earth. However, Zen is more practice and action (Jap. gyo, Sanscr. sadhana) than theory. It is the exercise of life together with the Master, the Sangha and daily living. It is the practice with body, mind and spirit that becomes realized within the space between oneself and the others - the action of the universe.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
}
|
Q:
SQL Reporting - Can you have a group inside a group?
I'm trying to produce a report that has multiple grouping but does not just show the group as the single field being grouped. I think it may be best shown with an example:
> Date <- Grouped, broken by page
> Meeting type <- grouped
> Meeting_Time Meeting_Place Meeting_Title Meeting_Priority
> Agenda_item_1
> Agenda_item_2
> Agenda_item_3
> Agenda_item_4
> Meeting_Time Meeting_Place Meeting_Title Meeting_Priority
> Agenda_item_1
> Agenda_item_2
> Meeting_Time Meeting_Place Meeting_Title Meeting_Priority
> Agenda_item_1
> Agenda_item_2
> Agenda_item_3
Can this be done, and if so, how are the report components grouped, and what should the DataSet look like?
A:
I am not sure I entirely follow you, so please clarify if I am misunderstanding anything.
Your dataset grouping should be very flexible. If you are uncertain how the data will be handled, I recommend not doing any grouping in producing the dataset.
I imagine your data set would have the following columns:
Date, MeetingType, MeetingTime, MeetingPlace, MeetingTitle, MeetingPriority, AgendaItem
To make it look like you have, here's what you can do:
1.) Add a table to the designer (6 Columns)
2.) Remove the header and footer
3.) Add a group on Date with no footer and page break at start checked
4.) Add the date to the first column, merge 1-6
5.) Add a group on MeetingType with no footer
6.) Add meeting type to column 2 in group 2 and merge 2 - 6
7.) Add a group on meeting time with no footer (you really should have an ID here instead or use name if it is unique)
8.) Add MeetingTime MeetingPlace MeetingTitle MeetingPriority to columns 3, 4, 5, 6 in group 3 (add a row above if you need a header here, don't use the table header)
9.) Add AgendaItem to column 4
10.) Merge 4 - 6
The rest is just formatting
|
{
"pile_set_name": "StackExchange"
}
|
Shahid Kapoor attacked in Kashmir
Shahid Kapoor and the entire crew of his upcoming film 'Haider' are having a tough time while shooting in Kashmir. Recently, Shahid Kapoor and Irrfan Khan were attacked while shooting. Watch the video for more details.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
}
|
Q:
Understanding the groovy syntax in a gradle task definition
I am new to Gradle and Groovy and trying to understand what is happening at the level of groovy when a gradle task is defined.
task hello {
println "configuring task hello"
doLast {
println "hello there"
}
}
From reading the "Gradle In Action" book I know that the task hello {} is a really a call to the task() method of the groovy Project interface. On page 77 it shows that there are 4 methods called task on the Project interface
task(args: Map<String,?>, name:String)
task(args: Map<String,?>, name:String, c:Closure)
task(name: String)
task(name: String, c:Closure)
I understand that the {} is the closure body.
What I don't understand is how does groovy interpret hello in task hello { } according to https://stackoverflow.com/a/25592665/438319 there is a groovy compiler plugin that converts task hello { } into task('hello', { })
My Questions:
Where can I find information about the Gradle Groovy Compiler plugin that does the conversion?
Is the claim that Gradle scripts are groovy programs technically incorrect since gradle somehow extends the Groovy programming language?
Is there a way to get the gradle command to print out the base groovy code that is generated after the compiler plugin has run?
A:
Gradle uses AST Transformations to extend the Groovy syntax. The task definition syntax you mention is just one of the transformations Gradle applies. You can find the implementation for that transform here. To answer your specific questions:
The individual transforms that Gradle applies are not specifically documented anywhere that I'm aware of. You could however look at the other classes in the same package of the link above.
Gradle scripts support a super-set of Groovy syntax. Any valid Groovy is also valid in a Gradle script, however, a Gradle script is not necessarily (and typically not) valid "default" Groovy.
There isn't a way to get an output of the equivalent Groovy code since it's the actual abstract syntax tree that is being manipulated in-memory.
A:
If you want to know more about it check transformVariableExpression function in the gradle source code in TaskDefinitionScriptTransformer class
private void transformVariableExpression(MethodCallExpression call, int index) {
ArgumentListExpression args = (ArgumentListExpression) call.getArguments();
VariableExpression arg = (VariableExpression) args.getExpression(index);
if (!isDynamicVar(arg)) {
return;
}
// Matches: task args?, <identifier>, args? or task(args?, <identifier>, args?)
// Map to: task(args?, '<identifier>', args?)
String taskName = arg.getText();
call.setMethod(new ConstantExpression("task"));
args.getExpressions().set(index, new ConstantExpression(taskName));
}
it converts task args?, <identifier>, args? or task(args?, <identifier>, args?) to task(args?, '<identifier>', args?)
it finds the task definition in the build.gradle and add quotes around the identifier(task name) so groovy can compile it without problem.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "StackExchange"
}
|
Not everyday you tell your parents how much you love them or care for them. Parents' day is the perfect occasion to acknowledge your parents' importance in your life. So send along Parents' Day Cards from Dgreetings and tell your parents that you're proud to have parents like them.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
}
|
A phase I study of the metal ionophore clioquinol in patients with advanced hematologic malignancies.
Clioquinol is a small-molecule metal ionophore that inhibits the proteasome through a metal-dependent mechanism. Here, we report a phase I study of clioquinol in patients with refractory hematologic malignancies. Neuropathy and abdominal pain were dose-limiting toxicities. Minimal pharmacodynamic effects were observed, and there were no clinical responses. Clioquinol is a small-molecule metal ionophore that inhibits the enzymatic activity of the proteasome and displays preclinical efficacy in hematologic malignancies in vitro and in vivo. Therefore, we conducted a phase I clinical trial of clioquinol in patients with refractory hematologic malignancies to assess its safety and determine its biological activity in this patient population. Patients with refractory hematologic malignancies were treated with increasing doses of oral clioquinol twice daily for 15 doses. Plasma and intracellular levels of clioquinol were measured. Enzymatic activity of the proteasome was measured before and after drug administration. Sixteen cycles of clioquinol were administered to 11 patients with 5 patients reenrolled at the next dose level as per the permitted intrapatient dose escalation. Dose-limiting neurotoxicity and abdominal pain were observed at a dose of 1600 mg twice daily. Intracellular drug levels were low. Minimal inhibition of the proteasome was observed. No clinical responses were observed. In patients with refractory hematologic malignancies, the maximal tolerated dose of clioquinol was determined. Minimal inhibition of the proteasome was observed at tolerable doses, likely due to low intracellular levels of the drug.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "PubMed Abstracts"
}
|
Q:
Is there an easy way to style the last couple characters of a string?
I have some floating point numbers where I would like to indicate that that the last few digits are not that important. What I have in mind is something like this.
For the number 273.978
<span style="font-weight:bold">273.9</span><span style="color:#3399ff">78</span>
It would be great if there were something like a "nth-last-chars" CSS selector. Then I could set this all up in my CSS file, instead of chopping the number in JavaScript. Is there a better way to achieve this?
EDIT: Here's what a native JavaScript solution looks like:
<span id="numstart" style="font-weight:bold">123.4</span><span id="numend" style="color:#3399ff">57</span>
<script>
var newnum = 273.978;
var numStr = String(newnum)
var numLen = numStr.length;
var newStart = numStr.substring(0,numLen-2);
var newEnd = numStr.substring(numLen-2,numLen);
document.getElementById("numstart").innerHTML = newStart;
document.getElementById("numend").innerHTML = newEnd;
</script>
A:
Had the same idea as stef:
<style type="text/css">
.number {
font-family: monospace;
}
.number:after {
background-color: rgba(255,255,255,0.5);
content: "";
display: inline-block;
height: 1em;
width: 1.2em;
position: relative;
top: 0.25em;
right: 1.2em;
}
</style>
<span class="number">273.978</span>
A:
Off the top of my head in jQuery:
<script type="text/javascript">
$('.numbers').each(function() {
$(this).html(
$(this).html().substr(0, $(this).html().length-2)
+ "<span style='color: #3399ff'>"
+ $(this).html().substr(-2)
+ "</span>");
});
</script>
Here's a fiddle to demonstrate it. I'm sorry it's not plain JavaScript, but I'm sure one of the folks here can offer a native solution if this doesn't cut your corn.
UPDATE: And here's a non-jQuery solution, and another fiddle demonstrating it. I also broke the style out into CSS.
<style type="text/css">
.unimportant {
color: #3399ff;
}
</style>
<script type="text/javascript">
var numberTargets = document.getElementsByClassName('number');
for(i=0; i<numberTargets.length; i++) {
var html = numberTargets[i].innerHTML;
numberTargets[i].innerHTML = html.substr(0, html.length-2)
+ "<span class='unimportant'>"
+ numberTargets[i].innerHTML.substr(-2)
+ "</span>";
}
</script>
|
{
"pile_set_name": "StackExchange"
}
|
Q:
What is Operations Research?
I saw this new site appear on HNQ, but you don't appear to have defined what it's about anywhere? The obvious locations, tour and on-topic have no details at all.
What is Operations Research? What is on-topic for this site?
A:
Welcome, and I'm glad you found your way here from HNQ.
Operations research (operational research, to some) is a set of mathematical and computational tools for making decisions about complex systems. Its major methodological subfields are things like mathematical optimization (linear programming; nonlinear/integer/stochastic programming; and so on), stochastic processes, and simulation. Its major application subfields are things like supply chain management, energy, health care, military, and humanitarian relief. It draws heavily on mathematics, computer science, statistics and probability, business, economics, and other fields. If you browse the questions or tags on the main site you'll get a sense of the kinds of topics we deal with.
We are a brand-new site; we entered public beta a week ago. So we haven't written our tour or on-topic pages yet, but expect to do that soon.
A:
What is Operations Research? The obvious locations, tour and on-topic have no details at all.
Our Tour page is equal in length to the one on Physics.SE (or Stats.SE), and customized for our site. The On-Topic link is editable by the Moderators - because our site is new and we haven't had an election there are no Moderators.
Wikipedia: "Employing techniques from other mathematical sciences, such as mathematical modeling, statistical analysis, and mathematical optimization, operations research arrives at optimal or near-optimal solutions to complex decision-making problems. Because of its emphasis on human-technology interaction and because of its focus on practical applications, operations research has overlap with other disciplines, notably industrial engineering and operations management, and draws on psychology and organization science. Operations research is often concerned with determining the extreme values of some real-world objective: the maximum (of profit, performance, or yield) or minimum (of loss, risk, or cost)."
What is on-topic for this site?
Look at our questions tagged [scope].
A 5 minute long explanation about OR is offered in the video: "INFORMS - O.R. and Analytics Impact", and INFORMS just uploaded a new video called: "Bright Future, Big Opportunities in O.R. and Analytics" (Oct 23 2019).
Here is a transcript of the 2nd 2 minute long video:
"Operations research and analytics play a role in nearly every part of our day to day lives, in ways both big and small, and in ways you may have never known.
And for students that are interested in math, science, and inspired to make a difference, operations research and analytics can offer a fulfilling career with limitless opportunities to make lasting contributions to the world around us.
Operations research, otherwise known as OR, uses advanced analytical methods to turn data into information, and information into insight, to help organizations make better and smarter decisions, or more simply stated, operations research and analytics saves lives, saves money, and solves problems.
From managing healthcare operations in hospitals, to improving emergency response services, enhancing surgical outcomes, expanding access to donated organs, and stopping the spread of diseases, OR and analytics are helping people live longer healthier lives.
Organizations across virtually every sector rely on powerful OR and analytics tools in nearly every aspect of how they function more efficiently and effectively. From resource allocation and management, to planning logistics, operations, and more.
OR and analytics are used to plan public transportation systems, determine economic and financial policies, drive new technologies, and innovate and improve the world around us. And that's just the beginning.
Virtually every organization uses OR and analytics to do things more efficiently and effectively. You can be a part of this incredible profession and make meaningful differences in the world around us.
If you are interested in learning more about operations research and analytics talk to your adviser or visit informs.org/students.".
|
{
"pile_set_name": "StackExchange"
}
|
Diamond Challenge Sculls
The Diamond Challenge Sculls is a rowing event for men's single sculls at the annual Henley Royal Regatta on the River Thames at Henley-on-Thames in England. First run in 1844, it is open to male scullers from all eligible rowing clubs.
The Diamond Challenge Sculls, the Wingfield Sculls and the London Cup in the Metropolitan Regatta make up the "Triple Crown" of the three premier single sculling events in the United Kingdom.
Winners
See also
Rowing on the River Thames
References
Category:Events at Henley Royal Regatta
Category:Recurring events established in 1844
|
{
"pile_set_name": "Wikipedia (en)"
}
|
Clinical aspects of mitochondrial diabetes.
Mitochondrial diabetes is a new nosological entity, the most common form of which is maternally inherited diabetes and deafness (MIDD) syndrome. In this syndrome, delayed insulin dependency is frequently observed, although any form of glucose intolerance is possible. The mechanism of diabetes is localised at the beta-cell level. The participation of an autoimmune process in beta-cell loss is still controversial. An association with macular pattern dystrophy and infraclinical myopathy is common and can facilitate diagnosis. Muscle 31-P MR spectroscopy is a non-invasive tool to detect oxidative and phosphorylative alterations and monitor the reversion of these anomalies through specific treatments. Numerous other mutations, deletions or duplications of mtDNA have been associated with diabetes. The description of mitochondrial diabetes is still in progress. In future, an understanding of the mechanism of glucose intolerance in these diseases should open the way to specific preventive treatments in subjects carrying diabetogeneic mutations of mtDNA.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "PubMed Abstracts"
}
|
Абсолют Банк предложил заемщикам валютной ипотеки варианты реструктуризации долга и установил льготный курс доллара. Об этом говорится в сообщении банка, которое было опубликовано на его сайте в четверг, 28 января.
Один вариант, предложенный банком валютным заемщикам, предполагает конвертацию долга по льготному курсу 65 руб. за долл. Для тех заемщиков, у кого есть трое и более несовершеннолетних детей, банк предлагает курс 57 руб. за долл. Кредит в рубли при этом будет конвертироваться по ставке 12% годовых.
Воспользоваться предложенными банком вариантами смогут только те заемщики, кто соответствует условиям госпрограммы помощи должникам в трудной ситуации Агентства по ипотечному жилищному кредитованию (АИЖК). При этом сделать это можно будет до 1 мая 2016 года.
Кроме того, Абсолют Банк предложил заемщикам полное погашение долга по льготному курсу 60 руб. за долл. Этим предложением можно будет воспользоваться до 1 марта 2016 года.
Предложение банка было сделано после того, как рабочая группа представителей Абсолют Банка встретилась в центральном офисе с членами инициативной группы валютных ипотечных заемщиков.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
const { assert } = require('chai');
const parseCommandLine = require('../../src/main-process/parse-command-line');
describe('parseCommandLine', () => {
describe('when --uri-handler is not passed', () => {
it('parses arguments as normal', () => {
const args = parseCommandLine([
'-d',
'--safe',
'--test',
'/some/path',
'atom://test/url',
'atom://other/url'
]);
assert.isTrue(args.devMode);
assert.isTrue(args.safeMode);
assert.isTrue(args.test);
assert.deepEqual(args.urlsToOpen, [
'atom://test/url',
'atom://other/url'
]);
assert.deepEqual(args.pathsToOpen, ['/some/path']);
});
});
describe('when --uri-handler is passed', () => {
it('ignores other arguments and limits to one URL', () => {
const args = parseCommandLine([
'-d',
'--uri-handler',
'--safe',
'--test',
'/some/path',
'atom://test/url',
'atom://other/url'
]);
assert.isUndefined(args.devMode);
assert.isUndefined(args.safeMode);
assert.isUndefined(args.test);
assert.deepEqual(args.urlsToOpen, ['atom://test/url']);
assert.deepEqual(args.pathsToOpen, []);
});
});
});
|
{
"pile_set_name": "Github"
}
|
# Copyright (c) Facebook, Inc. and its affiliates.
#
# This source code is licensed under the MIT license found in the
# LICENSE file in the root directory of this source tree.
#! /usr/bin/env python2
import os
import numpy as np
from matplotlib import pyplot
import re
from argparse import Namespace
# the directory used in run_on_cluster.bash
basedir = '/mnt/vol/gfsai-east/ai-group/users/matthijs/bench_all_ivf/'
logdir = basedir + 'logs/'
# which plot to output
db = 'bigann1B'
code_size = 8
def unitsize(indexkey):
""" size of one vector in the index """
mo = re.match('.*,PQ(\\d+)', indexkey)
if mo:
return int(mo.group(1))
if indexkey.endswith('SQ8'):
bits_per_d = 8
elif indexkey.endswith('SQ4'):
bits_per_d = 4
elif indexkey.endswith('SQfp16'):
bits_per_d = 16
else:
assert False
mo = re.match('PCAR(\\d+),.*', indexkey)
if mo:
return bits_per_d * int(mo.group(1)) / 8
mo = re.match('OPQ\\d+_(\\d+),.*', indexkey)
if mo:
return bits_per_d * int(mo.group(1)) / 8
mo = re.match('RR(\\d+),.*', indexkey)
if mo:
return bits_per_d * int(mo.group(1)) / 8
assert False
def dbsize_from_name(dbname):
sufs = {
'1B': 10**9,
'100M': 10**8,
'10M': 10**7,
'1M': 10**6,
}
for s in sufs:
if dbname.endswith(s):
return sufs[s]
else:
assert False
def keep_latest_stdout(fnames):
fnames = [fname for fname in fnames if fname.endswith('.stdout')]
fnames.sort()
n = len(fnames)
fnames2 = []
for i, fname in enumerate(fnames):
if i + 1 < n and fnames[i + 1][:-8] == fname[:-8]:
continue
fnames2.append(fname)
return fnames2
def parse_result_file(fname):
# print fname
st = 0
res = []
keys = []
stats = {}
stats['run_version'] = fname[-8]
for l in open(fname):
if st == 0:
if l.startswith('CHRONOS_JOB_INSTANCE_ID'):
stats['CHRONOS_JOB_INSTANCE_ID'] = l.split()[-1]
if l.startswith('index size on disk:'):
stats['index_size'] = int(l.split()[-1])
if l.startswith('current RSS:'):
stats['RSS'] = int(l.split()[-1])
if l.startswith('precomputed tables size:'):
stats['tables_size'] = int(l.split()[-1])
if l.startswith('Setting nb of threads to'):
stats['n_threads'] = int(l.split()[-1])
if l.startswith(' add in'):
stats['add_time'] = float(l.split()[-2])
if l.startswith('args:'):
args = eval(l[l.find(' '):])
indexkey = args.indexkey
elif 'R@1 R@10 R@100' in l:
st = 1
elif 'index size on disk:' in l:
index_size = int(l.split()[-1])
elif st == 1:
st = 2
elif st == 2:
fi = l.split()
keys.append(fi[0])
res.append([float(x) for x in fi[1:]])
return indexkey, np.array(res), keys, stats
# run parsing
allres = {}
allstats = {}
nts = []
missing = []
versions = {}
fnames = keep_latest_stdout(os.listdir(logdir))
# print fnames
# filenames are in the form <key>.x.stdout
# where x is a version number (from a to z)
# keep only latest version of each name
for fname in fnames:
if not ('db' + db in fname and fname.endswith('.stdout')):
continue
indexkey, res, _, stats = parse_result_file(logdir + fname)
if res.size == 0:
missing.append(fname)
errorline = open(
logdir + fname.replace('.stdout', '.stderr')).readlines()
if len(errorline) > 0:
errorline = errorline[-1]
else:
errorline = 'NO STDERR'
print fname, stats['CHRONOS_JOB_INSTANCE_ID'], errorline
else:
if indexkey in allres:
if allstats[indexkey]['run_version'] > stats['run_version']:
# don't use this run
continue
n_threads = stats.get('n_threads', 1)
nts.append(n_threads)
allres[indexkey] = res
allstats[indexkey] = stats
assert len(set(nts)) == 1
n_threads = nts[0]
def plot_tradeoffs(allres, code_size, recall_rank):
dbsize = dbsize_from_name(db)
recall_idx = int(np.log10(recall_rank))
bigtab = []
names = []
for k,v in sorted(allres.items()):
if v.ndim != 2: continue
us = unitsize(k)
if us != code_size: continue
perf = v[:, recall_idx]
times = v[:, 3]
bigtab.append(
np.vstack((
np.ones(times.size, dtype=int) * len(names),
perf, times
))
)
names.append(k)
bigtab = np.hstack(bigtab)
perm = np.argsort(bigtab[1, :])
bigtab = bigtab[:, perm]
times = np.minimum.accumulate(bigtab[2, ::-1])[::-1]
selection = np.where(bigtab[2, :] == times)
selected_methods = [names[i] for i in
np.unique(bigtab[0, selection].astype(int))]
not_selected = list(set(names) - set(selected_methods))
print "methods without an optimal OP: ", not_selected
nq = 10000
pyplot.title('database ' + db + ' code_size=%d' % code_size)
# grayed out lines
for k in not_selected:
v = allres[k]
if v.ndim != 2: continue
us = unitsize(k)
if us != code_size: continue
linestyle = (':' if 'PQ' in k else
'-.' if 'SQ4' in k else
'--' if 'SQ8' in k else '-')
pyplot.semilogy(v[:, recall_idx], v[:, 3], label=None,
linestyle=linestyle,
marker='o' if 'HNSW' in k else '+',
color='#cccccc', linewidth=0.2)
# important methods
for k in selected_methods:
v = allres[k]
if v.ndim != 2: continue
us = unitsize(k)
if us != code_size: continue
stats = allstats[k]
tot_size = stats['index_size'] + stats['tables_size']
id_size = 8 # 64 bit
addt = ''
if 'add_time' in stats:
add_time = stats['add_time']
if add_time > 7200:
add_min = add_time / 60
addt = ', %dh%02d' % (add_min / 60, add_min % 60)
else:
add_sec = int(add_time)
addt = ', %dm%02d' % (add_sec / 60, add_sec % 60)
label = k + ' (size+%.1f%%%s)' % (
tot_size / float((code_size + id_size) * dbsize) * 100 - 100,
addt)
linestyle = (':' if 'PQ' in k else
'-.' if 'SQ4' in k else
'--' if 'SQ8' in k else '-')
pyplot.semilogy(v[:, recall_idx], v[:, 3], label=label,
linestyle=linestyle,
marker='o' if 'HNSW' in k else '+')
if len(not_selected) == 0:
om = ''
else:
om = '\nomitted:'
nc = len(om)
for m in not_selected:
if nc > 80:
om += '\n'
nc = 0
om += ' ' + m
nc += len(m) + 1
pyplot.xlabel('1-recall at %d %s' % (recall_rank, om) )
pyplot.ylabel('search time per query (ms, %d threads)' % n_threads)
pyplot.legend()
pyplot.grid()
pyplot.savefig('figs/tradeoffs_%s_cs%d_r%d.png' % (
db, code_size, recall_rank))
return selected_methods, not_selected
pyplot.gcf().set_size_inches(15, 10)
plot_tradeoffs(allres, code_size=code_size, recall_rank=1)
|
{
"pile_set_name": "Github"
}
|
Intraosseous migration of unerupted tooth is a rare and unusual dental anomaly which occurs mostly in the permanent dentition of the lower jaw. When the tooth crosses the midline, this rare phenomenon is known as dental transmigration and it occurs almost exclusively with mandibular canines with an incidence of 0.34%.[@B1] The mandibular permanent lateral incisor is the most frequently displaced tooth which usually migrates distally in the bone, and it crosses the midline very rarely.[@B2] Camilleri[@B2] reported the first case of lower lateral incisor transmigration coupled with lower canine transmigration in 2007. Although maxillary canine impaction is a well-known dental anomaly, there were a few reports of cases which showed migration across the mid-palatal suture to the opposite side of the maxilla recently.[@B1],[@B3]-[@B8]
The etiology and exact mechanism of the transmigration is still unclear. Transmigrating teeth can cause pressure resorption of roots or tilting of the adjacent teeth and may migrate to adjacent structures like the coronoid process, causing pain and discomfort to the patient.[@B9] Since impacted or transmigrated teeth are important especially in terms of orthodontic treatment planning, these teeth must be diagnosed clinically and radiographically. Early diagnosis with a timely orthodontic or surgical intervention can help dentists preserve the canines, which play an important role, in both esthetics and function in the human dentition.
Due to unfavorable position of the transmigrated canine, orthodontic repositioning is difficult. Until now, successful corrections of transmigrated canines using orthodontic treatment have rarely been documented in the literatures.[@B10],[@B11] To the best of our knowledge, maxillary lateral incisor crossing the mid-palatal suture has never been reported in the literature. Multiple transmigrations are even rarer.
This report demonstrates a case of simultaneous transmigration of a lateral incisor and canine in the maxilla. It also reports four unusual cases of unilateral canine transmigration in the maxilla and mandible and successful eruption of one of the mandibular transmigrated canines following orthodontic traction. Etiology of transmigration and its clinical considerations are also discussed.
Case Report
===========
Case 1
------
A 14-year-old female reported to the department with a complaint of crowding of the upper teeth. Intraoral examination showed the absence of the maxillary right permanent lateral incisor and canine. A maxillary occlusal radiograph revealed double transmigration of both upper right lateral incisor and canine which were impacted ([Fig. 1](#F1){ref-type="fig"}). In order to evaluate the extent of the transmigration process, axial computed tomographic (CT) images were acquired from the maxillofacial region along with three dimensional reconstructions using CT equipment (Brilliance CT 64-channel scanner, Philips Healthcare, Andover, MA, USA). CT images revealed that the maxillary right lateral incisor was impacted horizontally and was positioned on the palatal side. Its crown had migrated across the mid palatine suture with its cusp tip against the middle third of the root of the upper left central incisor. The maxillary right canine was almost impacted horizontally and transmigrated across the mid palatine suture to the left side, with its crown near the root apex of the left central incisor. CT images showed pericoronal radiolucency in relation to the upper right canine suggestive of a dentigerous cyst, however no associated pathology was found in relation to the transmigrated upper right lateral incisor ([Fig. 2](#F2){ref-type="fig"}). Due to the unfavorable position of the transmigrated teeth and associated pathology, surgical removal was decided. Extractions were performed under general anesthesia ([Fig. 3](#F3){ref-type="fig"}). Healing was uneventful and a follow-up radiograph 8 months after the surgery showed no further abnormality ([Fig. 4](#F4){ref-type="fig"}).
Case 2
------
A 24-year-old female reported to the department with a chief complaint of spacing between the upper right lateral incisor and first premolar. Intraoral examination showed that the upper right permanent canine and all the third molars were absent. Panoramic radiograph revealed a transmigrated upper right canine which was impacted almost horizontally at the level of the apical third of the roots of the upper central incisors. The crown migrated across the mid-palatine suture with its cusp tip against the root of the upper left central incisor. Transmigration was also confirmed on the maxillary occlusal radiograph ([Fig. 5](#F5){ref-type="fig"}). There was no pathologic finding associated with the tooth. Due to the unfavorable position of the canine, surgical removal of the canine was decided. However, the patient declined the surgical intervention. The patient was informed of the consequences and radiographic monitoring was strongly recommended.
Case 3
------
A 22-year-old male patient was referred to our department for an orthodontic consultation. Intraoral examination showed the absence of the permanent canine and lateral incisor in the upper right quadrant. The lower left permanent canine was also absent and the deciduous canine was retained in the lower left quadrant ([Fig. 6A](#F6){ref-type="fig"}). As the patient did not report any history of extraction or traumatic avulsion of teeth, further investigation was done by panoramic, occlusal, and periapical radiographs. Radiographic examination revealed the presence of a migrated lower left canine with its crown located below the apices of the right central incisor. The upper right canine was impacted vertically and the lateral incisor was congenitally absent ([Fig. 6B](#F6){ref-type="fig"}). As both impacted canines were in favorable position, surgical exposure, followed by orthodontic traction was started to bring the canines into the arch. One year later, the upper right canine was well placed into the arch and transmigrated canine erupted in the oral cavity ([Fig. 7](#F7){ref-type="fig"}). A prosthetic implant would be placed for the missing lateral incisor after the completion of orthodontic treatment.
Case 4
------
A 20-year-old male reported to a dental clinic for a routine dental check up. Oral examination revealed a retained lower deciduous canine on the left side. On further examination, panoramic radiograph showed a horizontally impacted lower left permanent canine. It was transmigrated across the midline to the right side with its crown position near the inferior border of the mandible below the root apices of the right second premolar and permanent first molar ([Fig. 8](#F8){ref-type="fig"}). As there was no pathology associated with the tooth, periodic radiographic follow up was decided.
Case 5
------
A 22-year-od female patient was referred to our department for orthodontic consultation. Intraoral examination showed a missing permanent left lower canine. Panoramic radiograph examination revealed a migrated lower left canine with its crown located below the apices of the right premolars ([Fig. 9](#F9){ref-type="fig"}). Enlarged follicular space was found around the migrated canine. As there was no associated symptoms, periodic radiographic follow up was decided.
Discussion
==========
Tarsitano et al[@B12] defined transmigration as a phenomenon in which an unerupted mandibular canine migrates, crossing the mandibular midline. Javid[@B13] expanded the definition to include the cases in which more than half of the tooth had passed through the midline. Joshi[@B9] and Auluck et al[@B14] suggested that the tendency of a canine to cross the midline suture is a more important consideration than the actual distance of migration after crossing the midline. Moreover, it will also depend on the stage of transmigration when the orthodontist or oral surgeon first finds the patient. Therefore, we adapted their criteria to define the transmigration in our study.
Maxillary canine transmigration in Indian population has never been reported in the literature. Here we have presented two cases of maxillary transmigration from Indian people. Case 1 presented here showed many rare features. This unusual phenomenon has mostly been described and documented for the mandibular canine. The first published case of mandibular lateral incisor transmigration was reported in 2007,[@B2] however a case of maxillary incisor transmigration has been never reported in the literature. Transmigration is rarely found in the maxillary arch. Aydin and Yilmaz[@B3] reported the first case of maxillary canine transmigration in the literature in 2003. A chronological resume of the clinical features of the transmigratory maxillary canine, as observed by various earlier authors, is given in [Table 1](#T1){ref-type="table"}. In all of the previously published cases, isolated maxillary canine transmigration was reported. The case 1 was the first report where unilateral maxillary canine transmigration was seen along with the adjacent lateral incisor transmigration.
The larger cross-sectional area of the anterior mandible compared with the anterior maxilla may be a reason for the higher frequency of mandibular canine transmigration. In the maxilla, transmigration of canines might be prevented due to the shorter distance between the roots of maxillary incisors and the floor of the nasal fossa and restriction of the path of tooth movement by the roots of adjacent teeth, the maxillary sinus and the mid-palatal suture, which act as a barrier.[@B6]
In 2002, Mupparapu[@B15] proposed a classification for transmigrated mandibular canines according to their migratory pattern and position in the jaw and classified these teeth into five groups. This classification can be summarized as follows:
Type 1, canine is impacted mesioangularly across the midline, labial or lingual to the anterior teeth, with the crown portion of the tooth crossing the midline. Type 2, canine is horizontally impacted near the inferior border of the mandible below the apices of the incisors. Type 3, canine has erupted either mesial or distal to the opposite canine. Type 4, canine is horizontally impacted near the border of the mandible below the apices of either premolars or molars on the opposite side. Type 5, canine is positioned vertically in the midline with the long axis of the tooth crossing the midline. The most common transmigratory pattern reported in the literature was type I and type 5 being the least common. The radiographic appearance of the transmigrated canines in Case 4 and 5 was in accordance with type 4, whereas type 1 transmigratory pattern was seen in Case 3. Transmigrated maxillary canines could not be classified as there was no classification system proposed until now in the literature.
The etiology and exact mechanism of transmigration is still not clear. Although a number of factors have been suggested, abnormal displacement of the dental lamina in embryonic life is a commonly accepted explanation of the cause of the displacement and non-eruption of such canines.[@B9] Marks and Schroeder[@B16] suggested that a regional disturbance in the dental follicle might lead to local defective osteoclastic function with an abnormal eruption pathway being formed. Bruzst[@B17] believed that the canine germ was situated in front of the lower incisors and that facial growth pushed it towards the contralateral side while other authors[@B18] believed that an abnormally strong eruption force or a change which affected the crypt of the tooth germ might lead to erroneous eruption. According to Pippi and Kaitsas,[@B19] a strong and extended eruptive force caused by lasting root formation, and a pericoronal osteolytic area caused by widening of the follicular space played an important role in intraosseous migration of canines. The authors proposed that following impaction, these two factors could cause the anomalous movement of the canine. The osteolytic area is believed to represent a site of less resistance, toward which the tooth moves while root formation takes place. Hence, the simultaneous occurrence of these two events is believed to cause the intraosseous movement of the canine (in the opposite direction to the root) until a mechanical obstacle is reached (such as the cortical bone), or when the pericoronal osteolytic area dissipates.
Other local or pathologic factors suggested in the aetiology of transmigration, are premature loss of primary teeth and unavoidable occupation of the space by adjacent teeth, retention of the deciduous canine, discrepancies of tooth size, unfavorable alveolar length, genetics, trauma, tumors, odontomas, cysts and even a very small obstacle, such as a small root fragment, that would be sufficient to divert a tooth from its normal path of eruption.[@B9] According to Auluck and Mupparapu,[@B20] the angulation of the migrating maxillary canine relative to the mid-palatal suture might be an important factor in determining their transmigration. Impacted maxillary canines require a large amount of force to overcome the strong barrier, the mid-palatal suture, in their path. When the maxillary canines are positioned perpendicular to the mid-palatal suture, they might have enough horizontal component of eruptive force to migrate to the contralateral side. However, when they are positioned at an axiocoronal angulation ie, 45° to 90° the eruptive force will have both vertical and horizontal (angular) components. The horizontal component of the eruptive force of such an impacted maxillary canine might not be sufficient to overcome the resistance of the mid-palatal suture, and thus these teeth abruptly abandon their journey at the midline. In the cases presented here, all the maxillary transmigrated teeth were positioned almost perpendicular to the midline, facilitating their transmigration, except in case 2 where the canine was transmigrated to contralateral side with an axio-coronal angulation of less than 90 degree ([Fig. 5](#F5){ref-type="fig"}).
Canine just migrates without any pathological entity mostly, however in a few cases a cyst or odontoma accompanies such a tooth. In case 1 presented here, the transmigrated canine was associated with a dentigerous cyst.
Canine transmigration is of significant importance in dentistry, creating orthodontic, surgical, and interceptive problems. These cases have been increasing day by day. It is important to diagnose them in earlier stages of migration or abnormality to prevent more complicated situations. Vichi and Franchi[@B21] suggested that, proclination of the lower incisors, increased axial inclination of the unerupted canine, and an enlarged symphyseal cross-sectional area of the chin may be favorable conditions for the transmigration. All of these features found in 8- to 9-year-old patient demand periodic panoramic examination to rule out transmigration. Surgical removal, transplantation, radiographic follow-up, and surgical exposure with orthodontic treatment are suggested as treatment options for transmigrated canines.[@B7] Orthodontic correction of impacted transmigrated canines is difficult due to unfavorable position of the impacted tooth. Until now, successful corrections of transmigrated canines using orthodontic treatment have been rarely documented in the literature.[@B10],[@B11] In Case 3, the impacted transmigrated canine was erupted successfully after orthodontic traction and its alignment is still in progress ([Fig. 7](#F7){ref-type="fig"}).
If surgical removal is considered as the choice of treatment, it should be kept in mind that, although the teeth have transmigrated to the other side of the midline, they still maintain their nerve supply from the originating side.[@B9] This is an important factor in planning any surgical procedure under local anesthesia either to expose and bond or extract the transmigrated tooth.
In conclusion, the mechanism of transmigrated maxillary canines passing to the contralateral side of the mid-palatal suture needs to be further studied. Clinicians should be encouraged to report more cases of transmigrated maxillary canines to better understand their mechanism of eruption which will aid in the diagnosis, prevention and treatment of these occurrences.
{#F1}
{#F2}
{#F3}
{#F4}
{#F5}
{#F6}
{#F7}
{#F8}
{#F9}
######
Studies related to maxillary canine transmigration in chronological order
L: left, R: right, F: female, M: male, I: impacted, CR: retained primary canine, CE: exfoliated primary canine, Uni/Bi: unilateral/bilateral, NA: Not available.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "PubMed Central"
}
|
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|
{
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
}
|
Q:
.NET Core Console Application - SSL connect error
Context:
I have an n-tier dynamic-ish application that currently builds its elastic indexes at app startup.
While this was ok to get things going, I'd prefer to have a small CLI application/util that I can later re-use in some scripts and or run ad-hoc if I need to do things like, creating a new instance, seeding mock data etc.
Problem:
When I use the exact same code that worked in my dotnetcore web app's startup, in my console app, I get the following issue:
Invalid NEST response built from a unsuccessful low level call on PUT: /jobs-ng
# Audit trail of this API call:
- [1] BadRequest: Node: https://localhost:9200/ Took: 00:00:01.3948230
# OriginalException: System.Net.Http.HttpRequestException: An error occurred while sending the request. ---> System.Net.Http.CurlException: SSL connect error
at System.Net.Http.CurlHandler.ThrowIfCURLEError(CURLcode error)
at System.Net.Http.CurlHandler.MultiAgent.FinishRequest(StrongToWeakReference`1 easyWrapper, CURLcode messageResult)
--- End of inner exception stack trace ---
at System.Runtime.ExceptionServices.ExceptionDispatchInfo.Throw()
at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.TaskAwaiter.ThrowForNonSuccess(Task task)
at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.TaskAwaiter.HandleNonSuccessAndDebuggerNotification(Task task)
at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.TaskAwaiter.ValidateEnd(Task task)
at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.ConfiguredTaskAwaitable`1.ConfiguredTaskAwaiter.GetResult()
at System.Net.Http.HttpClient.<FinishSendAsyncBuffered>d__58.MoveNext()
--- End of stack trace from previous location where exception was thrown ---
at System.Runtime.ExceptionServices.ExceptionDispatchInfo.Throw()
at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.TaskAwaiter.ThrowForNonSuccess(Task task)
at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.TaskAwaiter.HandleNonSuccessAndDebuggerNotification(Task task)
at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.TaskAwaiter.ValidateEnd(Task task)
at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.TaskAwaiter`1.GetResult()
at Elasticsearch.Net.HttpConnection.Request[TReturn](RequestData requestData) in C:\Users\russ\source\elasticsearch-net-5.x\src\Elasticsearch.Net\Connection\HttpConnection-CoreFx.cs:line 78
# Request:
<Request stream not captured or already read to completion by serializer. Set DisableDirectStreaming() on ConnectionSettings to force it to be set on the response.>
# Response:
<Response stream not captured or already read to completion by serializer. Set DisableDirectStreaming() on ConnectionSettings to force it to be set on the response.>
Additional Info:
Currently my ElasticClient class only gets set like this:
var uri = new Uri("https://localhost:9200");
services.AddSingleton(new ElasticClient(new ConnectionSettings(uri)));
... thus I don't explicitly set a cert anywhere. (Hasn't been required thus far)
My best guess is that the native console app is missing something that the default web app projects provide, but as to what, I don't know?
I have set DisableDirectStreaming() as per the error log, but still no change.
I believe this might be a bug within .Net Core, but I'm hoping someone knows of a work around, or way around this issue for the time being (other that having this code be part of the we apps startup? (which is what my current working solution is))
A:
There is currently a documented issue, within the dotnet-core project's CURL implementation/usage thereof/within CURL on OSX... you get the idea. It seems to have been fixed for 1.1, but as I'm on 2.0 (and I've attempted all of the suggested fixes on the various github threads, to no success), I'm unable to verify if that fix works.
Thus the answer:
There is a bug thats preventing this from working on OSX currently.
Workaround:
Since my console app / cli-tool will run ad hoc internal to our applications network / same machine instance, I don't, in theory need HTTPS for this utility, HTTP should be sufficient. (Once I made that change, the code worked fine across the board)
|
{
"pile_set_name": "StackExchange"
}
|
Incidence and predictors for the development of significant supradiaphragmatic decompressing venous collateral channels following creation of Fontan physiology.
The occurrence of supradiaphragmatic decompressing venous collateral channels following construction of a bidirectional cavopulmonary connection or completion of the Fontan operation resulting in abnormal systemic hypoxemia has been infrequently described. In addition, the incidence and predictors of these channels have not been well delineated, especially in those patients without formation of such structures preoperatively. I evaluated, retrospectively, 40 patients who had undergone either construction of a bidirectional cavopulmonary shunt or completion of the Fontan operation, and who had complete pre and postoperative hemodynamic and angiographic data. Of the patients, 17 (43%) had developed a total of 21 decompressing venous collateral channels, of which 7 (18%) were considered to be hemodynamically significant requiring transcatheter coil occlusion. Of all variables examined, seven patients with significant decompressing collaterals had a greater transpulmonary gradient at follow-up catheterization (8 +/- 2 vs 5 +/- 2 mmHg, p=.01) and lower systemic saturations at routine clinical follow-up visits (82 +/- 5 vs 89 +/- 5 mmHg, p =.007) in comparison to the 33 others. When not evident preoperatively, decompressing venous collateral channels develop in a significant number of patients following conversion to Fontan physiology. If sufficiently large, they may produce lower than expected systemic saturations for the observed cardiac physiology. The larger decompressing channels are more likely to occur when a greater transpulmonary gradient exists postoperatively, which may require cardiac catheterization and transcatheter coil occlusion.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "PubMed Abstracts"
}
|
{ stdenv
, buildPythonPackage
, fetchPypi
, fetchpatch
, isPy27
, ipaddress
, openssl
, cryptography_vectors
, darwin
, packaging
, six
, pythonOlder
, isPyPy
, cffi
, pytest
, pretend
, iso8601
, pytz
, hypothesis
, enum34
}:
buildPythonPackage rec {
pname = "cryptography";
version = "2.9.2"; # Also update the hash in vectors.nix
src = fetchPypi {
inherit pname version;
sha256 = "0af25w5mkd6vwns3r6ai1w5ip9xp0ms9s261zzssbpadzdr05hx0";
};
outputs = [ "out" "dev" ];
buildInputs = [ openssl ]
++ stdenv.lib.optional stdenv.isDarwin darwin.apple_sdk.frameworks.Security;
propagatedBuildInputs = [
packaging
six
] ++ stdenv.lib.optional (!isPyPy) cffi
++ stdenv.lib.optionals isPy27 [ ipaddress enum34 ];
checkInputs = [
cryptography_vectors
hypothesis
iso8601
pretend
pytest
pytz
];
checkPhase = ''
py.test --disable-pytest-warnings tests
'';
# IOKit's dependencies are inconsistent between OSX versions, so this is the best we
# can do until nix 1.11's release
__impureHostDeps = [ "/usr/lib" ];
meta = with stdenv.lib; {
description = "A package which provides cryptographic recipes and primitives";
longDescription = ''
Cryptography includes both high level recipes and low level interfaces to
common cryptographic algorithms such as symmetric ciphers, message
digests, and key derivation functions.
Our goal is for it to be your "cryptographic standard library". It
supports Python 2.7, Python 3.5+, and PyPy 5.4+.
'';
homepage = "https://github.com/pyca/cryptography";
changelog = "https://cryptography.io/en/latest/changelog/#v"
+ replaceStrings [ "." ] [ "-" ] version;
license = with licenses; [ asl20 bsd3 psfl ];
maintainers = with maintainers; [ primeos ];
};
}
|
{
"pile_set_name": "Github"
}
|
After a blonde plays with balloons she fingers herself04:00
Busty And Beautiful: Cute looking blonde teen with bright, blue eyes seductively looks into the cam then starts stripping. She is already dripping wet, ready to get her fingers inside her slit as deep as she can.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
}
|
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<FrameLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
xmlns:app="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent">
<LinearLayout
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent"
android:orientation="vertical">
<com.tyorikan.voicerecordingvisualizer.VisualizerView
android:id="@+id/visualizer"
android:layout_width="100dp"
android:layout_height="100dp"
android:layout_gravity="center"
android:layout_marginTop="@dimen/spacing_large"
android:background="@android:color/black"
app:numColumns="4"
app:renderColor="@color/renderColor"
app:renderRange="top"
app:renderType="bar|fade" />
<com.tyorikan.voicerecordingvisualizer.VisualizerView
android:id="@+id/visualizer2"
android:layout_width="50dp"
android:layout_height="150dp"
android:layout_gravity="center_horizontal|top"
android:layout_marginTop="@dimen/spacing_large"
android:background="@android:color/background_light"
app:numColumns="10"
app:renderColor="@color/renderColor2"
app:renderRange="bottom"
app:renderType="pixel|fade" />
<com.tyorikan.voicerecordingvisualizer.VisualizerView
android:id="@+id/visualizer3"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="100dp"
android:layout_gravity="center_horizontal|bottom"
android:layout_marginTop="@dimen/spacing_large"
android:background="@android:color/darker_gray"
app:numColumns="100"
app:renderColor="@color/renderColor3"
app:renderRange="both"
app:renderType="pixel" />
</LinearLayout>
<android.support.design.widget.FloatingActionButton
android:id="@+id/fab"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_gravity="bottom|right"
android:layout_margin="@dimen/spacing_large"
android:src="@drawable/ic_mic"
app:backgroundTint="@android:color/white"
app:borderWidth="0dp"
app:fabSize="normal" />
</FrameLayout>
|
{
"pile_set_name": "Github"
}
|
Pages
Works only with LFS S2 0.6A1 and 0.6A2
How to use it:
1. Download and Unzip the file linked below anywhere in your computer.
2. Run the game and the .exe file from the archive.
3. Chose one of the steering options by clicking it.
4. Select a steering lock value from garage and then go on the track.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
}
|
All I ever wanted was to be a mum.
Turns out,it’s not quite what I imagined it to be. I’m not that perfectly dressed, refined mother who’s always portrayed on TV.
No. That’s not me.
I make mistakes. My children aren’t perfect. In fact, they can be downright devilish at times.
And I have three of them. Three!
What the hell was I thinking?
In this tongue-in-cheek novella, reluctant amateur sleuth, Doreen Sizemore, vows to never leave her home in South Shore, Kentucky ever again. She’s afraid of discovering another dead body since murders only seem to happen when she travels.
A cautionary tale for revolting pre-teens. It'll do you good to remember, that just because you think you can, doesn't necessarily mean you should. And just because you've always been that way, doesn't mean you shouldn't change. But most importantly...and listen carefully. Everybody gets what they deserve....In the end.
The hilarious second part of The Girl in the Shadows series follows the further adventures of Grace as she makes her way in life. Supported by Granny Maura and her mother, Grace accepts challenges head-on as only she can. Laugh with her, cry with her, but most of all, fall in love with her.
Wannabe actress Stevie Stone had to earn some fast money. Harriet Hollywood’s Repossession Company seemed like an easy gig, you grab the stuff and go. What could go wrong? Turns out, a lot. Now someone wants her dead. With the help of Hector her mothering partner with a donut obsession, her over protective
ex-boyfriend Bryan and her hot new mentor Manuel, she tries to outwit her assassins.
A local industry in the village of St. Ebans, named for its patron saint, is a scam to shake down tourists in his name. Then a man claiming to be St. Ebans returned from heaven arrives to protest his name being abused that way. News of that brings mobs of tourists while the local priest, the Mayor, the Bishop, and others try to sort things out while doing the least damage to the Church.
The true story behind two of the most popular Old Testament tales as retold by the red flannel storyteller his-own-self - namely, Uncle Bob.
If you like this freebie, grab a copy of Uncle Bob's Red Flannel Bible Camp - The Book of Genesis!
Nothing is normal in the small wine country community of Nordby on a good day. That’s why Jane Santorini’s café is equal parts therapy clinic and coffee house for a group of eccentric and deeply flawed aging lifelong friends. But when pitching sensation Seth Carpenter mistakes Viagra for a common headache remedy, it touches off a series of events sending everyone over the edge.
A frequent flyer has taken another hike and her step-dad wants Joe to bring her back. June has a task that only Joe can do and then another one. Frank has a new problem. Morse needs Joe to investigate a situation where due diligence was not done. A Bail Bond outfit asks Doc to locate a fugitive. Billy wants to take another shot at Mr. Florida; Natalie isn't so sure. Another fun romp in paradise!
The first story in THE HUNTERS: ORIGINS focuses on the team leader of the Hunters. After his unexpected discharge from the U.S. Army, Jack Cobb finds it difficult to adjust to civilian life. Thankfully two of Cobb’s closest friends (Jonathon Payne and David Jones) come to his rescue. NOTE: This is not a full-length book. It is a short novella that takes place prior to the action of THE HUNTERS.
The book comprises of nine stories, seven of which are set in Paris and two in India. Their genre ranges from mild to subtle humour and each of them presents an eminently interesting character. They provide a keen insight into the mind of an average Indian abroad. They also give a peep into the transformation taking place in the Indian society towards the end of the twentieth century.
The prized possession of my wife, Maddalena, was a 12-piece set of China place settings. We joked that we'd probably never use the set unless the Pope came for a visit. One day Maddie got a phone call announcing a visit from the Pope to our humble home. We were greatly excited and honored. We made preparations for the visit. This story tells about the visit. There was a surprise!
After being court-martialed by the Space Legion for ordering the strafing of a treaty-signing ceremony, multimillionaire Willard Phule receives his punishment: He must command the misfit Omega Company on Haskin’s Planet, a mining settlement on the edge of settled space.
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Severe liver impairment in a cystic fibrosis-affected child homozygous for the G542X mutation.
The clinical and laboratory findings of a cystic fibrosis (CF) patient homozygous for the G542X mutation are described. This is the first case, among the 7 G542X homozygous CF subjects described so far who shows severe liver involvement, associated pancreatic insufficiency, and moderate pulmonary expression of the disease, as demonstrated by laboratory and imaging data. This case adds to the conclusion that genotype/phenotype correlation in cystic fibrosis is more complex than formerly suspected.
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}
|
There is no better way to unwind than traveling. Planning for travel is made a hundred times better when you have someone else do the tough job for you. From booking hotels and flight tickets, to finding tourist spots, travel companies have it all sorted.
You may be wondering that travel agencies would cost you more than you can afford. Stop wondering and get clicking on CouponCodesMe, where you can find exclusive Rayna Tours Coupon Codes.
Use Rayna Tours promo codes for discounts on holiday destinations of your choice. Whether it’s the melting pot of culture you want to discover in Singapore, or the European architecture you want to see in Georgia, Tbilisi, CouponCodesMe has you covered with unlimited opportunities to save. For discounts, offers and amazing travel deals, log on to CouponCodesMe!
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If you’ve been living in the UAE for a couple of years, you’d already have some tourist spots at the back of your mind. Burj Khalifa, Gold Souk, and Spice Souk would definitely be on that list. It’s time to put on your explorer’s hat and rediscover UAE from a tourist’s perspective!
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Northwestern is determined to change the national narrative about its program this season.
How will the Wildcats do that?
‘‘We worry about what we can control, and we’ll just keep winning,’’ coach Pat Fitzgerald said Wednesday at the Walter Athletics Center in Evanston.
Even after NU won the Big Ten West last season, ESPN’s football power index has the Wildcats favored to win only four of their 12 games this season.
Why is NU so consistently underrated? Fitzgerald has several theories.
The Wildcats have struggled against lesser opponents early in their last few seasons. Since 2016, they have lost to Illinois State, Western Michigan and Akron and to Duke twice. But they have a combined 36-17 record the last four seasons, the third-best in the Big Ten West during that span.
‘‘Those who don’t cover us weekly or monthly or cover the Big Ten, they kind of define our team based on a handful of games, and they’re all losses,’’ Fitzgerald said. ‘‘I told the team, ‘If you guys want to change that narrative, you have to go out and earn it.’ ’’
NU also hasn’t had a high-scoring offense that runs up the score on opponents. In the last two seasons, the Wildcats are a combined 9-2 in games decided by eight points or fewer.
‘‘That may play into why, maybe, we don’t get a lot of national recognition from a respect standpoint,’’ Fitzgerald said. ‘‘I didn’t know the goal was to win by 80 points. I thought it was to win by one.’’
Most of the players don’t mind being underdogs. In fact, some prefer it.
‘‘Everyone is counting us out, and I like it,’’ linebacker Paddy Fisher said. ‘‘I’m big on laying low. When the time comes we’re exalted, and we show what we’ve been doing in the dark has come to light.’’
‘‘We’re embracing it, knowing we have a target on our backs this year,’’ receiver Riley Lees said. ‘‘If we have that mentality, it’ll help us go into games like, ‘We’re the team that everyone in the West wants to beat.’ And I think that’ll help us attack and do what we have to do to win.’’
Repeating as Big Ten West champions won’t be easy. Six of NU’s first seven opponents are projected to be Top 25 teams this season.
‘‘We haven’t gotten the starts we wanted over the last few seasons,’’ Fitzgerald said. ‘‘We’re not going to overanalyze it, other than the fact that we have to prepare better and we have to play better.
‘‘You want to earn [respect] by playing the best teams you possibly can. The way the season sets up for us in the first couple of weeks, it’s going to be a daunting challenge. But it’s going to be an absolutely phenomenal opportunity.’’
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{
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Patches and fences: probing for plasma membrane domains.
Cell plasma membranes appear to be composed of domains, patches whose composition and function differ from the average for an entire membrane surface. Proteins and lipids may be segregated into domains by different mechanisms. Some of these mechanisms are discussed, followed by a summary of the evidence for membrane domains obtained in my laboratory. This evidence is largely based on measurements of the lateral diffusion of membrane proteins and lipids. Recent new approaches to the interpretation of lateral diffusion measurements, consideration of so-called fractal or long time-tails promise to give new insights into the stability and lifetime of membrane domains.
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"pile_set_name": "PubMed Abstracts"
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|
Mobile devices commonly have graphics display systems that include a host, a camera, and a display device. They also include a graphics controller for driving the display device and interfacing the host, camera, and display device to one another. The host may be a CPU or a digital signal processor. The graphics controller commonly includes an embedded memory for storing image data. A mobile device may be, for example, a mobile telephone, personal digital assistant, digital camera, or a digital music player. Mobile devices typically rely primarily on a battery for power. To maximize battery life in these devices, it is important to minimize power consumption. It is also important to minimize the size of the memory which reduces cost and also reduces power consumption.
The graphics display systems in mobile devices employ a variety of techniques for minimizing power consumption and memory size. Many of these techniques are not employed in larger, stationary systems, such as personal computers which generally have more memory, faster processors, and less critical power constraints. Use of some of these power saving techniques in mobile devices may result in a modest reduction in image fidelity, which is acceptable because the reduction is not readily noticeable by the human eye. Sometimes, however, these techniques may create artifacts on the display screen that are quite noticeable and therefore undesirable.
One noticeably artifact is a gray fringe that sometimes appears around the periphery of dark text that has been overlaid on a background image, such as a photograph. Accordingly, methods and apparatus for making an edge artifact associated with an overlay image less conspicuous would be desirable.
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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Project ToolsVersion="4.0" DefaultTargets="Build" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">
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<Configuration Condition=" '$(Configuration)' == '' ">Debug</Configuration>
<Platform Condition=" '$(Platform)' == '' ">x86</Platform>
<ProductVersion>8.0.30703</ProductVersion>
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<ProjectGuid>{6BB5C546-306D-4810-8482-4A9600F0A4F5}</ProjectGuid>
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<AppDesignerFolder>Properties</AppDesignerFolder>
<RootNamespace>BuildSupport</RootNamespace>
<AssemblyName>BuildSupport</AssemblyName>
<TargetFrameworkVersion>v4.0</TargetFrameworkVersion>
<TargetFrameworkProfile>Client</TargetFrameworkProfile>
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<PropertyGroup Condition=" '$(Configuration)|$(Platform)' == 'Debug|x86' ">
<PlatformTarget>x86</PlatformTarget>
<DebugSymbols>true</DebugSymbols>
<DebugType>full</DebugType>
<Optimize>false</Optimize>
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<ErrorReport>prompt</ErrorReport>
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<PlatformTarget>x86</PlatformTarget>
<DebugType>pdbonly</DebugType>
<Optimize>true</Optimize>
<OutputPath>bin\Release\</OutputPath>
<DefineConstants>TRACE</DefineConstants>
<ErrorReport>prompt</ErrorReport>
<WarningLevel>4</WarningLevel>
</PropertyGroup>
<PropertyGroup Condition="'$(Configuration)|$(Platform)' == 'Deploy|x86'">
<OutputPath>..\lib\</OutputPath>
<DefineConstants>TRACE</DefineConstants>
<Optimize>true</Optimize>
<DebugType>pdbonly</DebugType>
<PlatformTarget>x86</PlatformTarget>
<CodeAnalysisLogFile>bin\Release\BuildSupport.exe.CodeAnalysisLog.xml</CodeAnalysisLogFile>
<CodeAnalysisUseTypeNameInSuppression>true</CodeAnalysisUseTypeNameInSuppression>
<CodeAnalysisModuleSuppressionsFile>GlobalSuppressions.cs</CodeAnalysisModuleSuppressionsFile>
<ErrorReport>prompt</ErrorReport>
<CodeAnalysisRuleSet>MinimumRecommendedRules.ruleset</CodeAnalysisRuleSet>
<CodeAnalysisRuleSetDirectories>;C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Team Tools\Static Analysis Tools\\Rule Sets</CodeAnalysisRuleSetDirectories>
<CodeAnalysisIgnoreBuiltInRuleSets>false</CodeAnalysisIgnoreBuiltInRuleSets>
<CodeAnalysisRuleDirectories>;C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Team Tools\Static Analysis Tools\FxCop\\Rules</CodeAnalysisRuleDirectories>
<CodeAnalysisIgnoreBuiltInRules>false</CodeAnalysisIgnoreBuiltInRules>
<CodeAnalysisFailOnMissingRules>false</CodeAnalysisFailOnMissingRules>
</PropertyGroup>
<ItemGroup>
<Reference Include="Ionic.Zip.Reduced, Version=1.9.1.5, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=edbe51ad942a3f5c, processorArchitecture=MSIL">
<SpecificVersion>False</SpecificVersion>
<HintPath>..\lib\Ionic.Zip.Reduced.dll</HintPath>
</Reference>
<Reference Include="System" />
<Reference Include="System.Core" />
<Reference Include="System.Xml.Linq" />
<Reference Include="System.Data.DataSetExtensions" />
<Reference Include="Microsoft.CSharp" />
<Reference Include="System.Data" />
<Reference Include="System.Xml" />
</ItemGroup>
<ItemGroup>
<Compile Include="Commands.ZipDirectory.cs" />
<Compile Include="Program.cs" />
<Compile Include="Properties\AssemblyInfo.cs" />
</ItemGroup>
<Import Project="$(MSBuildToolsPath)\Microsoft.CSharp.targets" />
<!-- To modify your build process, add your task inside one of the targets below and uncomment it.
Other similar extension points exist, see Microsoft.Common.targets.
<Target Name="BeforeBuild">
</Target>
<Target Name="AfterBuild">
</Target>
-->
</Project>
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{
"pile_set_name": "Github"
}
|
Introduction
============
*Streptococcus pneumonia* is commonly found in nasopharyngeal mucosa of healthy people and can cause various diseases, such as pneumonia and meningitis.[@b3-idr-11-1043] The bacterium is a relatively uncommon cause of septic arthritis, including pyogenic sacroiliitis, which is a rare manifestation of invasive pneumococcal diseases (IPD).[@b1-idr-11-1043] The prognosis of IPD is influenced by both bacterial factors, such as serotype, and host characteristics, such as age, chronic cardiovascular and pulmonary diseases, diabetes mellitus, alcoholism, smoking, and immunosuppressive states.[@b2-idr-11-1043],[@b3-idr-11-1043] Because serotype 3 *S. pneumonia* have a thick capsule, it is thought that it is highly pathogenic.[@b4-idr-11-1043] In this report, we describe a rare case of pyogenic sacroiliitis and osteomyelitis with a right iliac muscle abscess caused by serotype 3 *S. pneumonia* in a healthy adult.
Case report
===========
A previously healthy 54-year-old Japanese man was admitted to our hospital with a 3-week history of worsening right-side thigh pain and a 3-day history of fever. Four weeks prior to admission, the patient had a mild cough with sputum. His symptoms improved without any treatment. Three weeks prior to admission, the patient developed mild right thigh pain without trauma that did not interfere with his daily life. One week prior to admission, he came to a local clinic because of his right thigh pain, and loxoprofen was prescribed. His symptoms transiently improved with loxoprofen, but 3 days prior to admission, the patient had chills and his thigh pain worsened. He returned to the local clinic, and amoxicillin/clavulanate was prescribed. On the day of admission, he visited another community hospital and was transferred to our hospital on the diagnosis of right iliac muscle abscess. He denied sore throat, cough, dyspnea, and chest pain. His past history was not remarkable. The patient had no previous medical history, no use of tobacco or illicit drug, and rarely drink alcohol. He denied recent animal exposure, recent travel, or any history of allergies. On physical examination, his blood pressure was 140/60 mmHg, pulse rate was 66 beats per minute, temperature was 38.0°C, and respiratory rate was 20 breaths per minute with oxygen saturation of 97% on room air. The results of the physical examination were unremarkable, except for right buttock tenderness and positive right psoas sign. Laboratory data obtained on admission revealed a white blood cell count of 19,070 μL with 94% neutrophils. Examination of the serum chemistry revealed the following results: blood urea nitrogen 23.9 mg/dL, creatinine 1.6 mg/dL, albumin 2.2 g/dL, total protein 6.6 g/dL, and C-reactive protein 26.0 mg/dL. Based on these findings, the patient was suspected of having right psoas abscess. CT of the pelvic area showed bone destruction of the right sacroiliac joint with perifocal abscess formation in the right iliac muscle ([Figure 1A](#f1-idr-11-1043){ref-type="fig"}). A diagnostic CT-guided percutaneous drainage of the abscess was performed, and Gram staining of the pus revealed Gram-positive diplococcus bacteria and polymorphonuclear leukocytes ([Figure 2](#f2-idr-11-1043){ref-type="fig"}). After an initial work up in the emergency room, his primary diagnosis was bacterial sacroiliitis and osteomyelitis with right iliac muscle abscess. Transthoracic echocardiography was performed, and the results showed no evidence of an infection. The patient was started on intravenous cefmetazole at a dose of 2 g every 12 hours. No bacterium was detected from his blood culture, but the pus culture grew *S. pneumoniae*. Additional examination revealed the following results: 90 mm/h erythrocyte sedimentation rate, 56 mg/dL IgM (within normal range 33--183 mg/dL), 1450 mg/dL IgG (within normal range 861--1,747 mg/dL), 148 mg/dL C3 (within normal range 73--138 mg/dL), 40 mg/dL C4 (within normal range 11--31 mg/dL), and 70 mg/dL CH50 (within normal range 25--48 mg/dL). Human immunodeficiency virus antibody, M protein, and Bence Jones protein were negative. CT of the abdomen showed no evidence of any abdominal finding including spleen. Serum protein fraction came back with an acute inflammation pattern without M protein. Mucoid *S. pneumonia* was obtained by culturing of abscess sample. Serotyping of *S. pneumonia* was performed by the capsular swelling method using pneumococcal antisera (Statens Serum Institute, Copenhagen, Denmark) and the stain was determined to be serotype 3. Susceptibility of *S. pneumonia* to antibiotics was analyzed using the broth microdilution method according to a protocol of the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute. Minimal inhibitory concentration breakpoints were defined according to the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute (M100) criteria. The *S. pneumonia* strain exhibited susceptibility to penicillin, ampicillin, ceftriaxone, meropenem, tosufloxacin, vancomycin, and trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole, but was resistant to clindamycin ([Table 1](#t1-idr-11-1043){ref-type="table"}). On day 4, magnetic resonance imaging of the pelvic area revealed increased signal intensity of the right sacroiliac joint and surrounding bone, and diffuse thickening and effusion surrounding the muscle ([Figure 1B](#f1-idr-11-1043){ref-type="fig"}). On day 5, we attempted to perform de-escalation. The patient was switched to treatment with ampicillin at a dose of 2 g every 6 hours on the basis of the susceptibility test because his renal function had improved. He was given levofloxacin 500 mg orally because of the drug eruption due to ampicillin on day 25. The patient was successfully treated with an 8-week course of antibiotics. No evidence of a relapse of the infection was noted at the 6-month follow-up.
Ethics statement
================
Written informed consent has been obtained from the patient to obtain their results and to publish the case details with accompanying images.
Discussion
==========
Pyogenic sacroiliitis is a rare infectious diseases, representing 1%--2% of all cases of septic arthritis, most frequently in children and young adults.[@b5-idr-11-1043] The risk factors for pyogenic sacroiliitis include being intravenous drug user, having infections in other organs systems, such as urinary tract infection, and pregnancy.[@b6-idr-11-1043] According to previous reports, adult patients are more likely to have atypical presentation, concurrent infections, and local complication.[@b6-idr-11-1043],[@b7-idr-11-1043] Delay in the diagnosis can lead to additional complication such as osteomyelitis, abscess formation, and bacteremia. Based on previous studies, bacteremia is documented in 71% of adults with pneumococcal septic arthritis.[@b1-idr-11-1043] In this case, we believe that the cause of the sacroiliitis, osteomyelitis, and iliopsoas abscess was the secondary infection as a result of primary bacteremia. Although the results of the blood cultures were negative, this patient had chills, and amoxicillin/clavulanate were prescribed before admission to our hospital. Treatment options include antibiotic therapy alone, CT-guided drainage, or surgical drainage. The duration of antimicrobial treatment is at least 4--8 weeks.[@b6-idr-11-1043] *S. pneumonia* infrequently causes bacterial sacroiliitis. A review of pneumococcal septic arthritis showed 2.8% of adult patients with pneumococcal septic arthritis have sacroiliac involvement.[@b7-idr-11-1043] In addition, three cases of pneumococcal sacroiliitis in adult have been reported in the literature ([Table 2](#t2-idr-11-1043){ref-type="table"}).[@b8-idr-11-1043]--[@b10-idr-11-1043] These cases include a 31-year-old woman who presented with a fever, depressed level of consciousness, and right buttock and thigh pain, which was later proven to be caused due to *S. pneumonia* by blood cultures;[@b8-idr-11-1043] a 47-year-old woman who presented with a 4-week history of left-sided lower back pain which was proven to be caused due to *S. pneumonia* by CT-guided drainage;[@b9-idr-11-1043] and a 62-year-old who presented with a 3-day history of right buttock pain which was proven to be caused due to *S. pneumonia* by blood cultures, muscle biopsy, and surgical drainage.[@b10-idr-11-1043] In the present case, the patient did not have an immunodeficiency or chronic illness. Interestingly, all of the patients had no risk factor for IPD. *S. pneumonia* is covered by a capsule, which is a very important factor for its pathogenicity. In the case presented herein, serotype 3 *S. pneumonia* was isolated from the lesion and determined as the causative pathogen. Serotype 3 *S. pneumonia* strains always have a characteristically thicker capsule, show mucoid formation on blood agar plates, possess greater virulence, and have a higher mortality rate when compared to other serotype strains.[@b3-idr-11-1043],[@b4-idr-11-1043],[@b11-idr-11-1043] In the present case, the treatment duration was 8 weeks with no evidence of a relapse of the infection during the 6-month follow-up. We believe an adequate treatment duration leads to successful treatment, even in the case of serotype 3 infection.
Conclusion
==========
In conclusion, we reported a case of serotype 3 pneumococcal sacroiliitis and osteomyelitis with right iliac muscle abscess in a healthy adult. It is important to keep in mind that bacterial sacroiliitis and osteomyelitis due to *S. pneumonia* are rare, but can occur even in a previously healthy adult. Delay in the diagnosis can lead to additional complication such as osteomyelitis, abscess formation, and bacteremia.
**Disclosure**
The authors report no conflicts of interest in this work.
{#f1-idr-11-1043}
{#f2-idr-11-1043}
######
Susceptibility testing of the isolated *Streptococcus pneumonia*
Antimicrobial agent MIC (µg/mL)
------------------------------- -------------
Penicillin 0.03
Ampicillin 0.06
Ceftriaxone 0.25
Meropenem 0.015
Erythromycin 4
Tosufloxacin ≤0.12
Clindamycin ≥8
Vancomycin 0.5
Sulfamethoxazole/trimethoprim ≤0.25
**Abbreviation:** MIC, minimal inhibitory concentration.
######
Clinical profiles of the patients with pneumococcal sacroiliitis
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Case number Age (yrs) Gender Risk factors HIV antibody Chief complaints Clinical diagnosis Clinical samples Bacteremia Drainage Antibiotic treatment Treatment duration (weeks) Outcome Year Reference
------------- ----------- -------- -------------- -------------- ------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------ -------------------------------------------- ------------ -------------- ------------------------------ ---------------------------- --------- ------ --------------------
1 31 Female None Negative Fever Disturbance of consciousness Bacterial meningitis Sacroiliitis Blood culture Cerebrospina fluid l Positive None Penicillin for 42 days\ 8 Cure 1997 [@b8-idr-11-1043]
Oral penicillin for 14\
days
2 47 Female None Unknown Left-sided lower back pain Sacroiliitis Pneumonia Pus culture of percutaneous drainage Unknown Percutaneous Benzylpenicillin for 5 days\ 12 Cure 1998 [@b9-idr-11-1043]
Oral amoxycillin for 79 days
3 62 Male None Unknown Right buttock pain, fever Sacroiliitis Osteomyelitis Pyomyositis Blood culture Culture of the muscle biopsy Positive Surgical Ceftriaxone 7 days\ 6 Cure 2001 [@b10-idr-11-1043]
Cephalexin 35 days
4 54 Male None Negative Fever, chills, thigh pain Sacroiliitis Osteomyelitis Psoas abscess Pus culture of percutaneous drainage Negative Percutaneous Cefmetazole IV 4 days\ 8 Cure 2017 Presentcase
Ampicillin IV 21 days\
Oral levofloxacin 31 days
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
**Abbreviations:** HIV, human immunodeficiency virus; IV, intravenous; yrs, years.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "PubMed Central"
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|
The Single Best Strategy To Use For generac generators
Warning: CS0472: The result of the expression is usually 'true' considering that a price of kind 'bool' is rarely equal to 'null' of sort 'bool?'Warning: CS0472: The result of the expression is always 'accurate' given that a price of variety 'bool' is never equivalent to 'null' of kind 'bool?'In a minimum, urgent any button about the mouse will gen… Read More
Your alternative of home lighting fixtures is considerably more elaborate than choosing the proper complete to match your decor. You’ll want to verify the lights you buy are not only fashionable, but practical for your Room you intend to rely on them in.Noticeable light is the most common kind of electromagnetic radiation and tends to make up tha… Read More
Each individual jurisdiction sets its individual regulations and necessities regarding how to become a residential electrician – or if residential electricians are even a recognized Expert course individual from the basic electrician’s license.Planning to seek the services of a full-time electrician (all ability degrees), shell out is predicate… Read More
Take note to end users: Our website aids match individuals to nearby contractors, corporations, solutions, and installers. We have been a benefit services no diverse from using the Telephone book. It's your accountability to overview the credentials of everyone you use. We advise that you choose to speak with references and Verify the licenses of t… Read More
Be cautious when working these huge exhaust supporters. Open windows through the entire house to stop a powerful and concentrated suction in one location.Flip the enthusiast motor and rebolt it to your struts. Slip the fan belt into placement. Slide the motor as necessary to reach suitable tension. Be mindful to not overtighten.The vent also gets r… Read More
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Endoscopic treatment of patients with bile duct stricture after cholecystectomy: factors predicting recurrence in the long term.
Endoscopic treatment is effective in the treatment of patients with bile duct injury after cholecystectomy. We aimed to investigate the long-term results of endoscopic treatment, factors predicting the recurrence of the stricture, and to determine the optimal endoscopic treatment. The study was a retrospective cohort analysis and conducted at a tertiary referral center in patients with major bile duct injury (Strasberg E1-4 and E5 patients with main bile duct injury). Patients with minor injury (Luschka and cystic duct leakage), complete transection, and isolated aberrant bile duct injuries were excluded. The study group included 156 patients. The median follow-up period after stent removal was 6.5 years (range 1-16.5). Recurrence was seen in 18 patients (11 %) after a median duration of 9 months (range 2-96). Multivariate regression analysis revealed that the most important factors predicting the success of endoscopic treatment were: Rome type of treatment (inserting increasing number of stents every 3-4 months) (odds ratio 23.8, 95 % CI 1.46-390.7, p = 0.026) instead of Amsterdam-type treatment (replacing two 10F biliary stents every 3-4 months) and dilation of the stricture diameter to at least 76 % of the common bile duct diameter at the end of stent treatment (odds ratio 25.9, 95 % CI 2.46-272.7, p = 0.007). Endoscopic treatment is an effective method in the treatment of patients with bile duct stricture after cholecystectomy. Inserting multiple stents as much as possible without leaving a scar in the bile ducts should be aimed.
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{
"pile_set_name": "PubMed Abstracts"
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|
Q:
Laravel Eloquent how to get all products in a category with slug
My Productcategory.php has
public function products()
{
return $this->hasMany('App\Models\Product');
}
And Product.php has
public function productcategory()
{
return $this->belongsTo('App\Models\Productcategory', 'category_id');
}
Now my route is
Route::get('gallery/{slug}', 'GalleryController@index');
When URL is something like gallery/print-pattern-client-work, how can I get all products with the same category? I have the following but category_id is an integer and not a slug. So I am not so sure how to do it.
public function index()
{
$categoryslug = Request::segment(2);
$products = Productcategory::with('products')->where('category_id',$categoryslug)->get();
...
}
A:
This assumes you have a column named "slug" in your product_categories table. And that your described relations work well.
You could make an accessor in Product.php
public function scopeFindByCategorySlug($query, $categorySlug)
{
return $query->whereHas('productcategory', function ($query) use ($categorySlug) {
$query->where('slug', $categorySlug);
});
}
Then in your controller you call this:
public function index(Request $request, $slug)
{
$products = Product::findByCategorySlug($slug)->get();
}
Edit:
As mentioned in comments there is no actual need for an accessor. This is basically all you need (in controller):
public function index(Request $request, $slug)
{
$products = Product::whereHas('productcategory', function ($query) use ($categorySlug) {
$query->where('slug', $categorySlug);
})->get();
}
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Brno Nightlife walking Tour
You've heard of the renowned popular venues in Brno? Did you know that Brno has the best bar in the Czech Republic? Did you ever hear about the concepts like "The Stands", "Super Panda Circus" or "Bar which does not exist"? Let us show you what does it realy mean "Brno after dark.. " let's Have a fun and enjoy the Brno nightlife!
4 hrs tour | Price for 1 persons 25€ | Walking tour | Great local experience!
This is an exclusive PRIVATE walking tour, NOT GROUPS
DEPARTURE DAYS: EVERY DAY - ON DEMAND
„Brno is a city of galleries, museums, cafés, clubs and festivals.
See for yourself that Brno is a lively and creative place to discover.“
We provide full travel services for groups and for individual tourists co-ordinating precisely every detail of their sightseeing programme in Brno. Incoming travel agency Brno city, The South Moravian Region of the Czech Republic, Central Europe.
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Cadillac recently announced pricing for its upcoming 2014 ELR coupe, which will start at $75,995 when it arrives in showrooms this coming January. The 2014 ELR was originally unveiled at the Detroit Auto Show, and it borrows its electrified powertrain from the Chevy Volt.
Although the 2014 ELR’s pricing starts at $75,995, the final price you pay depends on how many tax incentives you are eligible for. If you are able to claim the full $7,500 tax incentive, then the final price drops to as low as $68,495. If you are a little shocked about the ELR’s starting price, at least you’ll be happy that it comes with a long list of standard features, and lets not forget about that sexy exterior that conceals its Chevy Volt powertrain.
The ELR comes standard with a range of systems including Cadillac’s CUE infotainment system and navigation, lane departure warning, forward collision alert, a safety alert seat, and a regen on demand feature that allows the driver to temporarily regenerate energy from the vehicle’s momentum via steering-wheel paddles.
The Cadillac ELR is powered by a range-extending 1.4L gasoline-powered electric generator and a T-shaped, 16.5 kWh lithium-ion battery pack that is located along the centerline of the vehicle, between the front and rear wheels. The ELR is capable of a total driving range in excess of 300 miles. Using only the energy stored in the battery, the ELR’s initial range is about 35 highway miles, or 82 MPGe.
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Help Bring Trader Joe's to Omaha, Nebraska
We've begun a petition that will be sent to the gentleman in charge of real estate acquisition for Trader Joe's to show him that we are serious about our request that they locate a TJ's in Omaha.
You do NOT need to give your email address or donate to the petition site. You can place mail@email.com in the email address slot. Thank you in advance.
Petition to Help Bring Trader Joe's to Omaha, NE
As we reported before, you can help bring Trader Joe's to Omaha by filling out a location request form on the Trader Joe's website. However, it appears things might be moving further along if this petition is a sign of anything.You can also join the Bring Trader Joe's to Omaha, Nebraska group on Facebook for further updates. While you're there, be sure to join the GFC fan page too if you haven't already.
Labels: NOTICE, SHOPPING
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**Contents**
_Title Page_
_Dedication_
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
_Permissions Acknowledgments_
_Joan Didion the Year of Magical Thinking_
_Also by Joan Didion_
[_Acclaim for Joan Didion's
The Year of Magical Thinking_](Didi_9780307279729_epub_qts_r1.htm)
_Copyright_
_This book is for John and for Quintana_
**1.**
_Life changes fast._
_Life changes in the instant._
_You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends._
_The question of self-pity._
**T** hose were the first words I wrote after it happened. The computer dating on the Microsoft Word file ("Notes on change.doc") reads "May 20, 2004, 11:11 p.m.," but that would have been a case of my opening the file and reflexively pressing save when I closed it. I had made no changes to that file in May. I had made no changes to that file since I wrote the words, in January 2004, a day or two or three after the fact.
For a long time I wrote nothing else.
_Life changes in the instant._
_The ordinary instant._
At some point, in the interest of remembering what seemed most striking about what had happened, I considered adding those words, "the ordinary instant." I saw immediately that there would be no need to add the word "ordinary," because there would be no forgetting it: the word never left my mind. It was in fact the ordinary nature of everything preceding the event that prevented me from truly believing it had happened, absorbing it, incorporating it, getting past it. I recognize now that there was nothing unusual in this: confronted with sudden disaster we all focus on how unremarkable the circumstances were in which the unthinkable occurred, the clear blue sky from which the plane fell, the routine errand that ended on the shoulder with the car in flames, the swings where the children were playing as usual when the rattlesnake struck from the ivy. "He was on his way home from work—happy, successful, healthy—and then, gone," I read in the account of a psychiatric nurse whose husband was killed in a highway accident. In 1966 I happened to interview many people who had been living in Honolulu on the morning of December 7, 1941; without exception, these people began their accounts of Pearl Harbor by telling me what an "ordinary Sunday morning" it had been. "It was just an ordinary beautiful September day," people still say when asked to describe the morning in New York when American Airlines 11 and United Airlines 175 got flown into the World Trade towers. Even the report of the 9/11 Commission opened on this insistently premonitory and yet still dumbstruck narrative note: "Tuesday, September 11, 2001, dawned temperate and nearly cloudless in the eastern United States."
"And then—gone." _In the midst of life we are in death,_ Episcopalians say at the graveside. Later I realized that I must have repeated the details of what happened to everyone who came to the house in those first weeks, all those friends and relatives who brought food and made drinks and laid out plates on the dining room table for however many people were around at lunch or dinner time, all those who picked up the plates and froze the leftovers and ran the dishwasher and filled our (I could not yet think _my_ ) otherwise empty house even after I had gone into the bedroom (our bedroom, the one in which there still lay on a sofa a faded terrycloth XL robe bought in the 1970s at Richard Carroll in Beverly Hills) and shut the door. Those moments when I was abruptly overtaken by exhaustion are what I remember most clearly about the first days and weeks. I have no memory of telling anyone the details, but I must have done so, because everyone seemed to know them. At one point I considered the possibility that they had picked up the details of the story from one another, but immediately rejected it: the story they had was in each instance too accurate to have been passed from hand to hand. It had come from me.
Another reason I knew that the story had come from me was that no version I heard included the details I could not yet face, for example the blood on the living room floor that stayed there until José came in the next morning and cleaned it up.
José. Who was part of our household. Who was supposed to be flying to Las Vegas later that day, December 31, but never went. José was crying that morning as he cleaned up the blood. When I first told him what had happened he had not understood. Clearly I was not the ideal teller of this story, something about my version had been at once too offhand and too elliptical, something in my tone had failed to convey the central fact in the situation (I would encounter the same failure later when I had to tell Quintana), but by the time José saw the blood he understood.
I had picked up the abandoned syringes and ECG electrodes before he came in that morning but I could not face the blood.
**I** n outline.
It is now, as I begin to write this, the afternoon of October 4, 2004.
Nine months and five days ago, at approximately nine o'clock on the evening of December 30, 2003, my husband, John Gregory Dunne, appeared to (or did) experience, at the table where he and I had just sat down to dinner in the living room of our apartment in New York, a sudden massive coronary event that caused his death. Our only child, Quintana, had been for the previous five nights unconscious in an intensive care unit at Beth Israel Medical Center's Singer Division, at that time a hospital on East End Avenue (it closed in August 2004) more commonly known as "Beth Israel North" or "the old Doctors' Hospital," where what had seemed a case of December flu sufficiently severe to take her to an emergency room on Christmas morning had exploded into pneumonia and septic shock. This is my attempt to make sense of the period that followed, weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I had ever had about death, about illness, about probability and luck, about good fortune and bad, about marriage and children and memory, about grief, about the ways in which people do and do not deal with the fact that life ends, about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself. I have been a writer my entire life. As a writer, even as a child, long before what I wrote began to be published, I developed a sense that meaning itself was resident in the rhythms of words and sentences and paragraphs, a technique for withholding whatever it was I thought or believed behind an increasingly impenetrable polish. The way I write is who I am, or have become, yet this is a case in which I wish I had instead of words and their rhythms a cutting room, equipped with an Avid, a digital editing system on which I could touch a key and collapse the sequence of time, show you simultaneously all the frames of memory that come to me now, let you pick the takes, the marginally different expressions, the variant readings of the same lines. This is a case in which I need more than words to find the meaning. This is a case in which I need whatever it is I think or believe to be penetrable, if only for myself.
**2.**
**D** ecember 30, 2003, a Tuesday.
We had seen Quintana in the sixth-floor ICU at Beth Israel North.
We had come home.
We had discussed whether to go out for dinner or eat in.
I said I would build a fire, we could eat in.
I built the fire, I started dinner, I asked John if he wanted a drink.
I got him a Scotch and gave it to him in the living room, where he was reading in the chair by the fire where he habitually sat.
The book he was reading was by David Fromkin, a bound galley of _Europe's Last Summer: Who Started the Great War in 1914?_
I finished getting dinner, I set the table in the living room where, when we were home alone, we could eat within sight of the fire. I find myself stressing the fire because fires were important to us. I grew up in California, John and I lived there together for twenty-four years, in California we heated our houses by building fires. We built fires even on summer evenings, because the fog came in. Fires said we were home, we had drawn the circle, we were safe through the night. I lit the candles. John asked for a second drink before sitting down. I gave it to him. We sat down. My attention was on mixing the salad.
John was talking, then he wasn't.
At one point in the seconds or minute before he stopped talking he had asked me if I had used single-malt Scotch for his second drink. I had said no, I used the same Scotch I had used for his first drink. "Good," he had said. "I don't know why but I don't think you should mix them." At another point in those seconds or that minute he had been talking about why World War One was the critical event from which the entire rest of the twentieth century flowed.
I have no idea which subject we were on, the Scotch or World War One, at the instant he stopped talking.
I only remember looking up. His left hand was raised and he was slumped motionless. At first I thought he was making a failed joke, an attempt to make the difficulty of the day seem manageable.
I remember saying _Don't do that._
When he did not respond my first thought was that he had started to eat and choked. I remember trying to lift him far enough from the back of the chair to give him the Heimlich. I remember the sense of his weight as he fell forward, first against the table, then to the floor. In the kitchen by the telephone I had taped a card with the New York–Presbyterian ambulance numbers. I had not taped the numbers by the telephone because I anticipated a moment like this. I had taped the numbers by the telephone in case someone in the building needed an ambulance.
Someone else.
I called one of the numbers. A dispatcher asked if he was breathing. I said _Just come._ When the paramedics came I tried to tell them what had happened but before I could finish they had transformed the part of the living room where John lay into an emergency department. One of them (there were three, maybe four, even an hour later I could not have said) was talking to the hospital about the electrocardiogram they seemed already to be transmitting. Another was opening the first or second of what would be many syringes for injection. (Epinephrine? Lidocaine? Procainamide? The names came to mind but I had no idea from where.) I remember saying that he might have choked. This was dismissed with a finger swipe: the airway was clear. They seemed now to be using defibrillating paddles, an attempt to restore a rhythm. They got something that could have been a normal heartbeat (or I thought they did, we had all been silent, there was a sharp jump), then lost it, and started again.
"He's still fibbing," I remember the one on the telephone saying.
" _V-_ fibbing," John's cardiologist said the next morning when he called from Nantucket. "They would have said ' _V-_ fibbing.' V for ventricular."
Maybe they said "V-fibbing" and maybe they did not. Atrial fibrillation did not immediately or necessarily cause cardiac arrest. Ventricular did. Maybe ventricular was the given.
I remember trying to straighten out in my mind what would happen next. Since there was an ambulance crew in the living room, the next logical step would be going to the hospital. It occurred to me that the crew could decide very suddenly to go to the hospital and I would not be ready. I would not have in hand what I needed to take. I would waste time, get left behind. I found my handbag and a set of keys and a summary John's doctor had made of his medical history. When I got back to the living room the paramedics were watching the computer monitor they had set up on the floor. I could not see the monitor so I watched their faces. I remember one glancing at the others. When the decision was made to move it happened very fast. I followed them to the elevator and asked if I could go with them. They said they were taking the gurney down first, I could go in the second ambulance. One of them waited with me for the elevator to come back up. By the time he and I got into the second ambulance the ambulance carrying the gurney was pulling away from the front of the building. The distance from our building to the part of New York–Presbyterian that used to be New York Hospital is six crosstown blocks. I have no memory of sirens. I have no memory of traffic. When we arrived at the emergency entrance to the hospital the gurney was already disappearing into the building. A man was waiting in the driveway. Everyone else in sight was wearing scrubs. He was not. "Is this the wife," he said to the driver, then turned to me. "I'm your social worker," he said, and I guess that is when I must have known.
**"I** opened the door and I seen the man in the dress greens and I knew. I immediately knew." This was what the mother of a nineteen-year-old killed by a bomb in Kirkuk said on an HBO documentary quoted by Bob Herbert in _The New York Times_ on the morning of November 12, 2004. "But I thought that if, as long as I didn't let him in, he couldn't tell me. And then it—none of that would've happened. So he kept saying, 'Ma'am, I need to come in.' And I kept telling him, 'I'm sorry, but you can't come in.'"
When I read this at breakfast almost eleven months after the night with the ambulance and the social worker I recognized the thinking as my own.
Inside the emergency room I could see the gurney being pushed into a cubicle, propelled by more people in scrubs. Someone told me to wait in the reception area. I did. There was a line for admittance paperwork. Waiting in the line seemed the constructive thing to do. Waiting in the line said that there was still time to deal with this, I had copies of the insurance cards in my handbag, this was not a hospital I had ever negotiated—New York Hospital was the Cornell part of New York–Presbyterian, the part I knew was the Columbia part, Columbia-Presbyterian, at 168th and Broadway, twenty minutes away at best, too far in this kind of emergency—but I could make this unfamiliar hospital work, I could be useful, I could arrange the transfer to Columbia-Presbyterian once he was stabilized. I was fixed on the details of this imminent transfer to Columbia (he would need a bed with telemetry, eventually I could also get Quintana transferred to Columbia, the night she was admitted to Beth Israel North I had written on a card the beeper numbers of several Columbia doctors, one or another of them could make all this happen) when the social worker reappeared and guided me from the paperwork line into an empty room off the reception area. "You can wait here," he said. I waited. The room was cold, or I was. I wondered how much time had passed between the time I called the ambulance and the arrival of the paramedics. It had seemed no time at all ( _a mote in the eye of God_ was the phrase that came to me in the room off the reception area) but it must have been at the minimum several minutes.
I used to have on a bulletin board in my office, for reasons having to do with a plot point in a movie, a pink index card on which I had typed a sentence from _The Merck Manual_ about how long the brain can be deprived of oxygen. The image of the pink index card was coming back to me in the room off the reception area: "Tissue anoxia for > 4 to 6 min. can result in irreversible brain damage or death." I was telling myself that I must be misremembering the sentence when the social worker reappeared. He had with him a man he introduced as "your husband's doctor." There was a silence. "He's dead, isn't he," I heard myself say to the doctor. The doctor looked at the social worker. "It's okay," the social worker said. "She's a pretty cool customer." They took me into the curtained cubicle where John lay, alone now. They asked if I wanted a priest. I said yes. A priest appeared and said the words. I thanked him. They gave me the silver clip in which John kept his driver's license and credit cards. They gave me the cash that had been in his pocket. They gave me his watch. They gave me his cell phone. They gave me a plastic bag in which they said I would find his clothes. I thanked them. The social worker asked if he could do anything more for me. I said he could put me in a taxi. He did. I thanked him. "Do you have money for the fare," he asked. I said I did, the cool customer. When I walked into the apartment and saw John's jacket and scarf still lying on the chair where he had dropped them when we came in from seeing Quintana at Beth Israel North (the red cashmere scarf, the Patagonia windbreaker that had been the crew jacket on _Up Close & Personal_) I wondered what an uncool customer would be allowed to do. Break down? Require sedation? Scream?
**I** remember thinking that I needed to discuss this with John.
There was nothing I did not discuss with John.
Because we were both writers and both worked at home our days were filled with the sound of each other's voices.
I did not always think he was right nor did he always think I was right but we were each the person the other trusted. There was no separation between our investments or interests in any given situation. Many people assumed that we must be, since sometimes one and sometimes the other would get the better review, the bigger advance, in some way "competitive," that our private life must be a minefield of professional envies and resentments. This was so far from the case that the general insistence on it came to suggest certain lacunae in the popular understanding of marriage.
That had been one more thing we discussed.
What I remember about the apartment the night I came home alone from New York Hospital was its silence.
In the plastic bag I had been given at the hospital there were a pair of corduroy pants, a wool shirt, a belt, and I think nothing else. The legs of the corduroy pants had been slit open, I supposed by the paramedics. There was blood on the shirt. The belt was braided. I remember putting his cell phone in the charger on his desk. I remember putting his silver clip in the box in the bedroom in which we kept passports and birth certificates and proof of jury service. I look now at the clip and see that these were the cards he was carrying: a New York State driver's license, due for renewal on May 25, 2004; a Chase ATM card; an American Express card; a Wells Fargo MasterCard; a Metropolitan Museum card; a Writers Guild of America West card (it was the season before Academy voting, when you could use a WGAW card to see movies free, he must have gone to a movie, I did not remember); a Medicare card; a Metro card; and a card issued by Medtronic with the legend "I have a Kappa 900 SR pacemaker implanted," the serial number of the device, a number to call for the doctor who implanted it, and the notation "Implant Date: 03 Jun 2003." I remember combining the cash that had been in his pocket with the cash in my own bag, smoothing the bills, taking special care to interleaf twenties with twenties, tens with tens, fives and ones with fives and ones. I remember thinking as I did this that he would see that I was handling things.
**W** hen I saw him in the curtained cubicle in the emergency room at New York Hospital there was a chip in one of his front teeth, I supposed from the fall, since there were also bruises on his face. When I identified his body the next day at Frank E. Campbell the bruises were not apparent. It occurred to me that masking the bruises must have been what the undertaker meant when I said no embalming and he said "in that case we'll just clean him up." The part with the undertaker remains remote. I had arrived at Frank E. Campbell so determined to avoid any inappropriate response (tears, anger, helpless laughter at the Oz-like hush) that I had shut down all response. After my mother died the undertaker who picked up her body left in its place on the bed an artificial rose. My brother had told me this, offended to the core. I would be armed against artificial roses. I remember making a brisk decision about a coffin. I remember that in the office where I signed the papers there was a grandfather's clock, not running. John's nephew Tony Dunne, who was with me, mentioned to the undertaker that the clock was not running. The undertaker, as if pleased to elucidate a decorative element, explained that the clock had not run in some years, but was retained as "a kind of memorial" to a previous incarnation of the firm. He seemed to be offering the clock as a lesson. I concentrated on Quintana. I could shut out what the undertaker was saying but I could not shut out the lines I was hearing as I concentrated on Quintana: _Full fathom five thy father lies / Those are pearls that were his eyes._
Eight months later I asked the manager of our apartment building if he still had the log kept by the doormen for the night of December 30. I knew there was a log, I had been for three years president of the board of the building, the door log was intrinsic to building procedure. The next day the manager sent me the page for December 30. According to the log the doormen that night were Michael Flynn and Vasile Ionescu. I had not remembered that. Vasile Ionescu and John had a routine with which they amused themselves in the elevator, a small game, between an exile from Ceau¸sescu's Romania and an Irish Catholic from West Hartford, Connecticut, based on a shared appreciation of political posturing. "So where is bin Laden," Vasile would say when John got onto the elevator, the point being to come up with ever more improbable suggestions: "Could bin Laden be in the penthouse?" "In the maisonette?" "In the fitness room?" When I saw Vasile's name on the log it occurred to me that I could not remember if he had initiated this game when we came in from Beth Israel North in the early evening of December 30. The log for that evening showed only two entries, fewer than usual, even for a time of the year when most people in the building left for more clement venues:
_NOTE: Paramedics arrived at 9:20 p.m. for Mr. Dunne. Mr. Dunne was taken to hospital at 10:05 p.m._
_NOTE: Lightbulb out on A-B passenger elevator._
The A-B elevator was our elevator, the elevator on which the paramedics came up at 9:20 p.m., the elevator on which they took John (and me) downstairs to the ambulance at 10:05 p.m., the elevator on which I returned alone to our apartment at a time not noted. I had not noticed a lightbulb being out on the elevator. Nor had I noticed that the paramedics were in the apartment for forty-five minutes. I had always described it as "fifteen or twenty minutes." _If they were here that long does it mean that he was alive?_ I put this question to a doctor I knew. "Sometimes they'll work that long," he said. It was a while before I realized that this in no way addressed the question.
**T** he death certificate, when I got it, gave the time of death as 10:18 p.m., December 30, 2003.
I had been asked before I left the hospital if I would authorize an autopsy. I had said yes. I later read that asking a survivor to authorize an autopsy is seen in hospitals as delicate, sensitive, often the most difficult of the routine steps that follow a death. Doctors themselves, according to many studies (for example Katz, J. L., and Gardner, R., "The Intern's Dilemma: The Request for Autopsy Consent," _Psychiatry in Medicine_ 3:197–203, 1972), experience considerable anxiety about making the request. They know that autopsy is essential to the learning and teaching of medicine, but they also know that the procedure touches a primitive dread. If whoever it was at New York Hospital who asked me to authorize an autopsy experienced such anxiety I could have spared him or her: I actively wanted an autopsy. I actively wanted an autopsy even though I had seen some, in the course of doing research. I knew exactly what occurs, the chest open like a chicken in a butcher's case, the face peeled down, the scale in which the organs are weighed. I had seen homicide detectives avert their eyes from an autopsy in progress. I still wanted one. I needed to know how and why and when it had happened. In fact I wanted to be in the room when they did it (I had watched those other autopsies with John, I owed him his own, it was fixed in my mind at that moment that he would be in the room if I were on the table) but I did not trust myself to rationally present the point so I did not ask.
If the ambulance left our building at 10:05 p.m., and death was declared at 10:18 p.m., the thirteen minutes in between were just bookkeeping, bureaucracy, making sure the hospital procedures were observed and the paperwork was done and the appropriate person was on hand to do the sign-off, inform the cool customer.
The sign-off, I later learned, was called the "pronouncement," as in "Pronounced: 10:18 p.m."
I had to believe he was dead all along.
If I did not believe he was dead all along I would have thought I should have been able to save him.
Until I saw the autopsy report I continued to think this anyway, an example of delusionary thinking, the omnipotent variety.
A week or two before he died, when we were having dinner in a restaurant, John asked me to write something in my notebook for him. He always carried cards on which to make notes, three-by-six-inch cards printed with his name that could be slipped into an inside pocket. At dinner he had thought of something he wanted to remember but when he looked in his pockets he found no cards. I need you to write something down, he said. It was, he said, for his new book, not for mine, a point he stressed because I was at the time researching a book that involved sports. This was the note he dictated: "Coaches used to go out after a game and say 'you played great.' Now they go out with state police, as if this were a war and they the military. The militarization of sports." When I gave him the note the next day he said "You can use it if you want to."
What did he mean?
Did he know he would not write the book?
Did he have some apprehension, a shadow? Why had he forgotten to bring note cards to dinner that night? Had he not warned me when I forgot my own notebook that the ability to make a note when something came to mind was the difference between being able to write and not being able to write? Was something telling him that night that the time for being able to write was running out?
One summer when we were living in Brentwood Park we fell into a pattern of stopping work at four in the afternoon and going out to the pool. He would stand in the water reading (he reread _Sophie's Choice_ several times that summer, trying to see how it worked) while I worked in the garden. It was a small, even miniature, garden with gravel paths and a rose arbor and beds edged with thyme and santolina and feverfew. I had convinced John a few years before that we should tear out a lawn to plant this garden. To my surprise, since he had shown no previous interest in gardens, he regarded the finished product as an almost mystical gift. Just before five on those summer afternoons we would swim and then go into the library wrapped in towels to watch _Tenko,_ a BBC series, then in syndication, about a number of satisfyingly predictable English women (one was immature and selfish, another seemed to have been written with _Mrs. Miniver_ in mind) imprisoned by the Japanese in Malaya during World War Two. After each afternoon's _Tenko_ segment we would go upstairs and work another hour or two, John in his office at the top of the stairs, me in the glassed-in porch across the hall that had become my office. At seven or seven-thirty we would go out to dinner, many nights at Morton's. Morton's felt right that summer. There was always shrimp quesadilla, chicken with black beans. There was always someone we knew. The room was cool and polished and dark inside but you could see the twilight outside.
John did not like driving at night by then. This was one reason, I later learned, that he wanted to spend more time in New York, a wish that at the time remained mysterious to me. One night that summer he asked me to drive home after dinner at Anthea Sylbert's house on Camino Palmero in Hollywood. I remember thinking how remarkable this was. Anthea lived less than a block from a house on Franklin Avenue in which we had lived from 1967 until 1971, so it was not a question of reconnoitering a new neighborhood. It had occurred to me as I started the ignition that I could count on my fingers the number of times I had driven when John was in the car; the single other time I could remember that night was once spelling him on a drive from Las Vegas to Los Angeles. He had been dozing in the passenger seat of the Corvette we then had. He had opened his eyes. After a moment he had said, very carefully, "I might take it a little slower." I had no sense of unusual speed and glanced at the speedometer: I was doing 120.
Yet.
A drive across the Mojave was one thing. There had been no previous time when he asked me to drive home from dinner in town: this evening on Camino Palmero was unprecedented. So was the fact that at the end of the forty-minute drive to Brentwood Park he pronounced it "well driven."
He mentioned those afternoons with the pool and the garden and _Tenko_ several times during the year before he died.
Philippe Ariès, in _The Hour of Our Death,_ points out that the essential characteristic of death as it appears in the _Chanson de Roland_ is that the death, even if sudden or accidental, "gives advance warning of its arrival." Gawain is asked: "Ah, good my lord, think you then so soon to die?" Gawain answers: "I tell you that I shall not live two days." Ariès notes: "Neither his doctor nor his friends nor the priests (the latter are absent and forgotten) know as much about it as he. Only the dying man can tell how much time he has left."
_You sit down to dinner._
"You can use it if you want to," John had said when I gave him the note he had dictated a week or two before.
_And then—gone._
Grief, when it comes, is nothing we expect it to be. It was not what I felt when my parents died: my father died a few days short of his eighty-fifth birthday and my mother a month short of her ninety-first, both after some years of increasing debility. What I felt in each instance was sadness, loneliness (the loneliness of the abandoned child of whatever age), regret for time gone by, for things unsaid, for my inability to share or even in any real way to acknowledge, at the end, the pain and helplessness and physical humiliation they each endured. I understood the inevitability of each of their deaths. I had been expecting (fearing, dreading, anticipating) those deaths all my life. They remained, when they did occur, distanced, at a remove from the ongoing dailiness of my life. After my mother died I received a letter from a friend in Chicago, a former Maryknoll priest, who precisely intuited what I felt. The death of a parent, he wrote, "despite our preparation, indeed, despite our age, dislodges things deep in us, sets off reactions that surprise us and that may cut free memories and feelings that we had thought gone to ground long ago. We might, in that indeterminate period they call mourning, be in a submarine, silent on the ocean's bed, aware of the depth charges, now near and now far, buffeting us with recollections."
My father was dead, my mother was dead, I would need for a while to watch for mines, but I would still get up in the morning and send out the laundry.
I would still plan a menu for Easter lunch.
I would still remember to renew my passport.
Grief is different. Grief has no distance. Grief comes in waves, paroxysms, sudden apprehensions that weaken the knees and blind the eyes and obliterate the dailiness of life. Virtually everyone who has ever experienced grief mentions this phenomenon of "waves." Eric Lindemann, who was chief of psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital in the 1940s and interviewed many family members of those killed in the 1942 Cocoanut Grove fire, defined the phenomenon with absolute specificity in a famous 1944 study: "sensations of somatic distress occurring in waves lasting from twenty minutes to an hour at a time, a feeling of tightness in the throat, choking with shortness of breath, need for sighing, and an empty feeling in the abdomen, lack of muscular power, and an intense subjective distress described as tension or mental pain."
Tightness in the throat.
Choking, need for sighing.
Such waves began for me on the morning of December 31, 2003, seven or eight hours after the fact, when I woke alone in the apartment. I do not remember crying the night before; I had entered at the moment it happened a kind of shock in which the only thought I allowed myself was that there must be certain things I needed to do. There had been certain things I had needed to do while the ambulance crew was in the living room. I had needed for example to get the copy of John's medical summary, so I could take it with me to the hospital. I had needed for example to bank the fire, because I would be leaving it. There had been certain things I had needed to do at the hospital. I had needed for example to stand in the line. I had needed for example to focus on the bed with telemetry he would need for the transfer to Columbia-Presbyterian.
Once I got back from the hospital there had again been certain things I needed to do. I could not identify all of these things but I did know one of them: I needed, before I did anything else, to tell John's brother Nick. It had seemed too late in the evening to call their older brother Dick on Cape Cod (he went to bed early, his health had not been good, I did not want to wake him with bad news) but I needed to tell Nick. I did not plan how to do this. I just sat on the bed and picked up the phone and dialed the number of his house in Connecticut. He answered. I told him. After I put down the phone, in what I can only describe as a new neural pattern of dialing numbers and saying the words, I picked it up again. I could not call Quintana (she was still where we had left her a few hours before, unconscious in the ICU at Beth Israel North) but I could call Gerry, her husband of five months, and I could call my brother, Jim, who would be at his house in Pebble Beach. Gerry said he would come over. I said there was no need to come over, I would be fine. Jim said he would get a flight. I said there was no need to think about a flight, we would talk in the morning. I was trying to think what to do next when the phone rang. It was John's and my agent, Lynn Nesbit, a friend since I suppose the late sixties. It was not clear to me at the time how she knew but she did (it had something to do with a mutual friend to whom both Nick and Lynn seemed in the last minute to have spoken) and she was calling from a taxi on her way to our apartment. At one level I was relieved (Lynn knew how to manage things, Lynn would know what it was that I was supposed to be doing) and at another I was bewildered: how could I deal at this moment with company? What would we do, would we sit in the living room with the syringes and the ECG electrodes and the blood still on the floor, should I rekindle what was left of the fire, would we have a drink, would she have eaten?
Had I eaten?
The instant in which I asked myself whether I had eaten was the first intimation of what was to come: if I thought of food, I learned that night, I would throw up.
Lynn arrived.
We sat in the part of the living room where the blood and electrodes and syringes were not.
I remember thinking as I was talking to Lynn (this was the part I could not say) that the blood must have come from the fall: he had fallen on his face, there was the chipped tooth I had noticed in the emergency room, the tooth could have cut the inside of his mouth.
Lynn picked up the phone and said that she was calling Christopher.
This was another bewilderment: the Christopher I knew best was Christopher Dickey, but he was in either Paris or Dubai and in any case Lynn would have said Chris, not Christopher. I found my mind veering to the autopsy. It could even be happening as I sat there. Then I realized that the Christopher to whom Lynn was talking was Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, who was the chief obituary writer for _The New York Times._ I remember a sense of shock. I wanted to say _not yet_ but my mouth had gone dry. I could deal with "autopsy" but the notion of "obituary" had not occurred to me. "Obituary," unlike "autopsy," which was between me and John and the hospital, meant it had happened. I found myself wondering, with no sense of illogic, if it had also happened in Los Angeles. I was trying to work out what time it had been when he died and whether it was that time yet in Los Angeles. (Was there time to go back? Could we have a different ending on Pacific time?) I recall being seized by a pressing need not to let anyone at the _Los Angeles Times_ learn what had happened by reading it in _The New York Times._ I called our closest friend at the _Los Angeles Times,_ Tim Rutten. I have no memory of what Lynn and I did then. I remember her saying that she would stay the night, but I said no, I would be fine alone.
And I was.
Until the morning. When, only half awake, I tried to think why I was alone in the bed. There was a leaden feeling. It was the same leaden feeling with which I woke on mornings after John and I had fought. Had we had a fight? What about, how had it started, how could we fix it if I could not remember how it started?
Then I remembered.
For several weeks that would be the way I woke to the day.
_I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day._
One of several lines from different poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins that John strung together during the months immediately after his younger brother committed suicide, a kind of improvised rosary.
_O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall_
_Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap_
_May who ne'er hung there._
_I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day._
_And I have asked to be_
_Where no storms come._
I see now that my insistence on spending that first night alone was more complicated than it seemed, a primitive instinct. Of course I knew John was dead. Of course I had already delivered the definitive news to his brother and to my brother and to Quintana's husband. _The New York Times_ knew. The _Los Angeles Times_ knew. Yet I was myself in no way prepared to accept this news as final: there was a level on which I believed that what had happened remained reversible. That was why I needed to be alone.
After that first night I would not be alone for weeks (Jim and his wife Gloria would fly in from California the next day, Nick would come back to town, Tony and his wife Rosemary would come down from Connecticut, José would not go to Las Vegas, our assistant Sharon would come back from skiing, there would never not be people in the house), but I needed that first night to be alone.
I needed to be alone so that he could come back.
This was the beginning of my year of magical thinking.
**3.**
**T** he power of grief to derange the mind has in fact been exhaustively noted. The act of grieving, Freud told us in his 1917 "Mourning and Melancholia," "involves grave departures from the normal attitude to life." Yet, he pointed out, grief remains peculiar among derangements: "It never occurs to us to regard it as a pathological condition and to refer it to medical treatment." We rely instead on "its being overcome after a certain lapse of time." We view "any interference with it as useless and even harmful." Melanie Klein, in her 1940 "Mourning and Its Relation to Manic-Depressive States," made a similar assessment: "The mourner is in fact ill, but because this state of mind is common and seems so natural to us, we do not call mourning an illness.... To put my conclusion more precisely: I should say that in mourning the subject goes through a modified and transitory manic-depressive state and overcomes it."
Notice the stress on "overcoming" it.
It was deep into the summer, some months after the night when I needed to be alone so that he could come back, before I recognized that through the winter and spring there had been occasions on which I was incapable of thinking rationally. I was thinking as small children think, as if my thoughts or wishes had the power to reverse the narrative, change the outcome. In my case this disordered thinking had been covert, noticed I think by no one else, hidden even from me, but it had also been, in retrospect, both urgent and constant. In retrospect there had been signs, warning flags I should have noticed. There had been for example the matter of the obituaries. I could not read them. This continued from December 31, when the first obituaries appeared, until February 29, the night of the 2004 Academy Awards, when I saw a photograph of John in the Academy's "In Memoriam" montage. When I saw the photograph I realized for the first time why the obituaries had so disturbed me.
I had allowed other people to think he was dead.
I had allowed him to be buried alive.
Another such flag: there had come a point (late February, early March, after Quintana had left the hospital but before the funeral that had waited on her recovery) when it had occurred to me that I was supposed to give John's clothes away. Many people had mentioned the necessity for giving the clothes away, usually in the well-intentioned but (as it turns out) misguided form of offering to help me do this. I had resisted. I had no idea why. I myself remembered, after my father died, helping my mother separate his clothes into stacks for Goodwill and "better" stacks for the charity thrift shop where my sister-in-law Gloria volunteered. After my mother died Gloria and I and Quintana and Gloria and Jim's daughters had done the same with her clothes. It was part of what people did after a death, part of the ritual, some kind of duty.
I began. I cleared a shelf on which John had stacked sweatshirts, T-shirts, the clothes he wore when we walked in Central Park in the early morning. We walked every morning. We did not always walk together because we liked different routes but we would keep the other's route in mind and intersect before we left the park. The clothes on this shelf were as familiar to me as my own. I closed my mind to this. I set aside certain things (a faded sweatshirt I particularly remembered him wearing, a Canyon Ranch T-shirt Quintana had brought him from Arizona), but I put most of what was on this shelf into bags and took the bags across the street to St. James' Episcopal Church. Emboldened, I opened a closet and filled more bags: New Balance sneakers, all-weather shoes, Brooks Brothers shorts, bag after bag of socks. I took the bags to St. James'. One day a few weeks later I gathered up more bags and took them to John's office, where he had kept his clothes. I was not yet prepared to address the suits and shirts and jackets but I thought I could handle what remained of the shoes, a start.
I stopped at the door to the room.
I could not give away the rest of his shoes.
I stood there for a moment, then realized why: he would need shoes if he was to return.
The recognition of this thought by no means eradicated the thought.
I have still not tried to determine (say, by giving away the shoes) if the thought has lost its power.
On reflection I see the autopsy itself as the first example of this kind of thinking. Whatever else had been in my mind when I so determinedly authorized an autopsy, there was also a level of derangement on which I reasoned that an autopsy could show that what had gone wrong was something simple. It could have been no more than a transitory blockage or arrhythmia. It could have required only a minor adjustment—a change in medication, say, or the resetting of a pacemaker. In this case, the reasoning went, they might still be able to fix it.
I recall being struck by an interview, during the 2004 campaign, in which Teresa Heinz Kerry talked about the sudden death of her first husband. After the plane crash that killed John Heinz, she said in the interview, she had felt very strongly that she "needed" to leave Washington and go back to Pittsburgh.
Of course she "needed" to go back to Pittsburgh.
Pittsburgh, not Washington, was the place to which he might come back.
The autopsy did not in fact take place the night John was declared dead.
The autopsy did not take place until eleven the next morning. I realize now that the autopsy could have taken place only after the man I did not know at New York Hospital made the phone call to me, on the morning of December 31. The man who made the call was not "my social worker," not "my husband's doctor," not, as John and I might have said to each other, our friend from the bridge. "Not our friend from the bridge" was family shorthand, having to do with how his Aunt Harriet Burns described subsequent sightings of recently encountered strangers, for example seeing outside the Friendly's in West Hartford the same Cadillac Seville that had earlier cut her off on the Bulkeley Bridge. "Our friend from the bridge," she would say. I was thinking about John saying "not our friend from the bridge" as I listened to the man on the telephone. I recall expressions of sympathy. I recall offers of assistance. He seemed to be avoiding some point.
He was calling, he said then, to ask if I would donate my husband's organs.
Many things went through my mind at this instant. The first word that went through my mind was "no." Simultaneously I remembered Quintana mentioning at dinner one night that she had identified herself as an organ donor when she renewed her driver's license. She had asked John if he had. He had said no. They had discussed it.
I had changed the subject.
I had been unable to think of either of them dead.
The man on the telephone was still talking. I was thinking: If she were to die today in the ICU at Beth Israel North, would this come up? What would I do? What would I do now?
I heard myself saying to the man on the telephone that my husband's and my daughter was unconscious. I heard myself saying that I did not feel capable of making such a decision before our daughter even knew he was dead. This seemed to me at the time a reasonable response.
Only after I hung up did it occur to me that nothing about it was reasonable. This thought was immediately (and usefully—notice the instant mobilization of cognitive white cells) supplanted by another: there had been in this call something that did not add up. There had been a contradiction in it. This man had been talking about donating organs, but there was no way at this point to do a productive organ harvest: John had not been on life support. He had not been on life support when I saw him in the curtained cubicle in the emergency room. He had not been on life support when the priest came. All organs would have shut down.
Then I remembered: the Miami-Dade Medical Examiner's office. John and I had been there together one morning in 1985 or 1986. There had been someone from the eye bank tagging bodies for cornea removal. Those bodies in the Miami-Dade Medical Examiner's office had not been on life support. This man from New York Hospital, then, was talking about taking only the corneas, the eyes. _Then why not say so? Why misrepresent this to me? Why make this call and not just say "his eyes"?_ I took the silver clip the social worker had given me the night before from the box in the bedroom and looked at the driver's license. _Eyes: BL,_ the license read. _Restrictions: Corrective Lenses._
Why make this call and not just say what you wanted?
His eyes. His blue eyes. His blue imperfect eyes.
_and what i want to know is_
_how do you like your blueeyed boy_
_Mister Death_
I could not that morning remember who wrote those lines. I thought it was E. E. Cummings but I could not be sure. I did not have a volume of Cummings but found an anthology on a poetry shelf in the bedroom, an old textbook of John's, published in 1949, when he would have been at Portsmouth Priory, the Benedictine boarding school near Newport to which he was sent after his father died.
_(His father's death: sudden, cardiac, in his early fifties, I should have taken that warning.)_
If we happened to be anywhere around Newport John would take me to Portsmouth to hear the Gregorian chant at vespers. It was something that moved him. On the flyleaf of the anthology there was written the name _Dunne,_ in small careful handwriting, and then, in the same handwriting, blue ink, fountain-pen blue ink, these guides to study: _1) What is the meaning of the poem and what is the experience? 2) What thought or reflection does the experience lead us to? 3) What mood, feeling, emotion is stirred or created by the poem as a whole?_ I put the book back on the shelf. It would be some months before I remembered to confirm that the lines were in fact E. E. Cummings. It would also be some months before it occurred to me that my anger at this unknown caller from New York Hospital reflected another version of the primitive dread that had not for me been awakened by the autopsy question.
What was the meaning and what the experience?
To what thought or reflection did the experience lead us?
How could he come back if they took his organs, how could he come back if he had no shoes?
**4.**
**O** n most surface levels I seemed rational. To the average observer I would have appeared to fully understand that death was irreversible. I had authorized the autopsy. I had arranged for cremation. I had arranged for his ashes to be picked up and taken to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, where, once Quintana was awake and well enough to be present, they would be placed in the chapel off the main altar where my brother and I had placed our mother's ashes. I had arranged for the marble plate on which her name was cut to be removed and recut to include John's name. Finally, on the 23rd of March, almost three months after his death, I had seen the ashes placed in the wall and the marble plate replaced and a service held.
We had Gregorian chant, for John.
Quintana asked that the chant be in Latin. John too would have asked that.
We had a single soaring trumpet.
We had a Catholic priest and an Episcopal priest.
Calvin Trillin spoke, David Halberstam spoke, Quintana's best friend Susan Traylor spoke. Susanna Moore read a fragment from "East Coker," the part about how "one has only learnt to get the better of words / For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which / One is no longer disposed to say it." Nick read Catullus, "On His Brother's Death." Quintana, still weak but her voice steady, standing in a black dress in the same cathedral where she had eight months before been married, read a poem she had written to her father.
I had done it. I had acknowledged that he was dead. I had done this in as public a way as I could conceive.
Yet my thinking on this point remained suspiciously fluid. At dinner in the late spring or early summer I happened to meet a prominent academic theologian. Someone at the table raised a question about faith. The theologian spoke of ritual itself being a form of faith. My reaction was unexpressed but negative, vehement, excessive even to me. Later I realized that my immediate thought had been: _But I did the ritual. I did it all._ I did St. John the Divine, I did the chant in Latin, I did the Catholic priest and the Episcopal priest, I did "For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past" and I did " _In paradisum deducant angeli._ "
_And it still didn't bring him back._
"Bringing him back" had been through those months my hidden focus, a magic trick. By late summer I was beginning to see this clearly. "Seeing it clearly" did not yet allow me to give away the clothes he would need.
In time of trouble, I had been trained since childhood, read, learn, work it up, go to the literature. Information was control. Given that grief remained the most general of afflictions its literature seemed remarkably spare. There was the journal C. S. Lewis kept after the death of his wife, _A Grief Observed._ There was the occasional passage in one or another novel, for example Thomas Mann's description in _The Magic Mountain_ of the effect on Hermann Castorp of his wife's death: "His spirit was troubled; he shrank within himself; his benumbed brain made him blunder in his business, so that the firm of Castorp and Son suffered sensible financial losses; and the next spring, while inspecting warehouses on the windy landing-stage, he got inflammation of the lungs. The fever was too much for his shaken heart, and in five days, notwithstanding all Dr. Heidekind's care, he died." There were, in classical ballets, the moments when one or another abandoned lover tries to find and resurrect one or another loved one, the blued light, the white tutus, the _pas de deux_ with the loved one that foreshadows the final return to the dead: _la danse des ombres,_ the dance of the shades. There were certain poems, in fact many poems. There was a day or two when I relied on Matthew Arnold, "The Forsaken Merman":
_Children's voices should be dear_
_(Call once more) to a mother's ear;_
_Children's voices, wild with pain—_
_Surely she will come again!_
There were days when I relied on W. H. Auden, the "Funeral Blues" lines from _The Ascent of F6:_
_Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,_
_Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,_
_Silence the pianos and with muffled drum_
_Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come._
The poems and the dances of the shades seemed the most exact to me.
Beyond or below such abstracted representations of the pains and furies of grieving, there was a body of subliterature, how-to guides for dealing with the condition, some "practical," some "inspirational," most of either useless. (Don't drink too much, don't spend the insurance money redecorating the living room, join a support group.) That left the professional literature, the studies done by the psychiatrists and psychologists and social workers who came after Freud and Melanie Klein, and quite soon it was to this literature that I found myself turning. I learned from it many things I already knew, which at a certain point seemed to promise comfort, validation, an outside opinion that I was not imagining what appeared to be happening. From _Bereavement: Reactions, Consequences, and Care,_ compiled in 1984 by the National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine, I learned for example that the most frequent immediate responses to death were shock, numbness, and a sense of disbelief: "Subjectively, survivors may feel like they are wrapped in a cocoon or blanket; to others, they may look as though they are holding up well. Because the reality of death has not yet penetrated awareness, survivors can appear to be quite accepting of the loss."
Here, then, we had the "pretty cool customer" effect.
I read on. Dolphins, I learned from J. William Worden of the Harvard Child Bereavement Study at Massachusetts General Hospital, had been observed refusing to eat after the death of a mate. Geese had been observed reacting to such a death by flying and calling, searching until they themselves became disoriented and lost. Human beings, I read but did not need to learn, showed similar patterns of response. They searched. They stopped eating. They forgot to breathe. They grew faint from lowered oxygen, they clogged their sinuses with unshed tears and ended up in otolaryngologists' offices with obscure ear infections. They lost concentration. "After a year I could read headlines," I was told by a friend whose husband had died three years before. They lost cognitive ability on all scales. Like Hermann Castorp they blundered in business and suffered sensible financial losses. They forgot their own telephone numbers and showed up at airports without picture ID. They fell sick, they failed, they even, again like Hermann Castorp, died.
This "dying" aspect had been documented, in study after study.
I began carrying identification when I walked in Central Park in the morning, in case it happened to me.
If the telephone rang when I was in the shower I no longer answered it, to avoid falling dead on the tile.
Certain studies, I learned, were famous. They were icons of the literature, benchmarks, referred to in everything I read. There was for example "Young, Benjamin, and Wallis, _The Lancet_ 2:454–456, 1963." This study of 4,486 recent widowers in the United Kingdom, followed for five years, showed "significantly higher death rates for widowers in first six months following bereavement than for married." There was "Rees and Lutkins, _British Medical Journal_ 4:13–16, 1967." This study of 903 bereaved relatives versus 878 non-bereaved matched controls, followed for six years, showed "significantly higher mortality for bereaved spouses in first year." The functional explanation for such raised mortality rates was laid out in the Institute of Medicine's 1984 compilation: "Research to date has shown that, like many other stressors, grief frequently leads to changes in the endocrine, immune, autonomic nervous, and cardiovascular systems; all of these are fundamentally influenced by brain function and neurotransmitters."
There were, I also learned from this literature, two kinds of grief. The preferred kind, the one associated with "growth" and "development," was "uncomplicated grief," or "normal bereavement." Such uncomplicated grief, according to _The Merck Manual,_ 16th Edition, could still typically present with "anxiety symptoms such as initial insomnia, restlessness, and autonomic nervous system hyperactivity," but did "not generally cause clinical depression, except in those persons inclined to mood disorder." The second kind of grief was "complicated grief," which was also known in the literature as "pathological bereavement" and was said to occur in a variety of situations. One situation in which pathological bereavement could occur, I read repeatedly, was that in which the survivor and the deceased had been unusually dependent on one another. "Was the bereaved actually very dependent upon the deceased person for pleasure, support, or esteem?" This was one of the diagnostic criteria suggested by David Peretz, M.D., of the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University. "Did the bereaved feel helpless without the lost person when enforced separations occurred?"
I considered these questions.
Once in 1968 when I needed unexpectedly to spend the night in San Francisco (I was doing a piece, it was raining, the rain pushed a late-afternoon interview into the next morning), John flew up from Los Angeles so that we could have dinner together. We had dinner at Ernie's. After dinner John took the PSA "Midnight Flyer," a thirteen-dollar amenity of an era in California when it was possible to fly from Los Angeles to San Francisco or Sacramento or San Jose for twenty-six dollars round-trip, back to LAX.
I thought about PSA.
All PSA planes had smiles painted on their noses. The flight attendants were dressed in the style of Rudy Gernreich in hot-pink-and-orange miniskirts. PSA represented a time in our life when most things we did seemed without consequence, no-hands, a mood in which no one thought twice about flying seven hundred miles for dinner. This mood ended in 1978, when a PSA Boeing 727 collided with a Cessna 172 over San Diego, killing one hundred and forty-four.
It occurred to me when this happened that I had overlooked the odds when it came to PSA.
I see now that this error was not confined to PSA.
When Quintana at age two or three flew PSA to Sacramento to see my mother and father she referred to it as "going on the smile." John used to write down the things she said on scraps of paper and put them in a black painted box his mother had given him. This box, which remains with its scraps of paper on a desk in my living room, was painted with an American eagle and the words "E Pluribus Unum." Later he used some of the things she said in a novel, _Dutch Shea, Jr._ He gave them to Dutch Shea's daughter, Cat, who had been killed by an IRA bomb while having dinner with her mother in a restaurant on Charlotte Street in London. This is part of what he wrote:
"Where you was?" she would say, and "Where did the morning went?" He wrote them all down and crammed them into the tiny secret drawer in the maple desk Barry Stukin had given him and Lee as a wedding present.... Cat in her school tartan. Cat who could call her bath a "bathment" and the butterflies for a kindergarten experiment "flybutters." Cat who had made up her first poem at the age of seven: "I'm going to marry / A boy named Harry / He rides horses / And handles divorces."
The Broken Man was in that drawer. The Broken Man was what Cat called fear and death and the unknown. I had a bad dream about the Broken Man, she would say. Don't let the Broken Man catch me. If the Broken Man comes, I'll hang onto the fence and won't let him take me.... He wondered if the Broken Man had time to frighten Cat before she died.
I see now what I had failed to see in 1982, the year _Dutch Shea, Jr._ was published: this was a novel about grief. The literature would have said that Dutch Shea was undergoing pathological bereavement. The diagnostic signs would have been these: He is obsessed with the moment Cat died. He plays and replays the scene, as if rerunning it could reveal a different ending: the restaurant on Charlotte Street, the endive salad, Cat's lavender espadrilles, the bomb, Cat's head in the dessert trolley. He tortures his ex-wife, Cat's mother, with a single repeated question: why was she in the ladies' room when the bomb went off? Finally she tells him:
You never gave me much credit for being Cat's mother, but I did raise her. I took care of her the day she got her period the first time and I remember when she was a little girl she called my bedroom her sweet second room and she called spaghetti buzzghetti and she called people who came to the house hellos. She said where you was and where did the morning went and you told Thayer, you son of a bitch, you wanted someone to remember her. So she told me she was pregnant, it was an accident, and she wanted to know what to do and I went into the ladies' room because I knew I was going to cry and I didn't want to cry in front of her and I wanted to get the tears out of the way so I could act sensibly and then I heard the bomb and when I finally got out part of her was in the sherbet and part of her was in the street and you, you son of a bitch, you want someone to remember her.
I believe John would have said that _Dutch Shea, Jr._ was about faith.
When he began the novel he already knew what the last words would be, not only the last words of the novel but the last words thought by Dutch Shea before he shoots himself: "I believe in Cat. I believe in God." _Credo in Deum._ The first words of the Catholic catechism.
Was it about faith or was it about grief?
Were faith and grief the same thing?
Were we unusually dependent on one another the summer we swam and watched _Tenko_ and went to dinner at Morton's?
Or were we unusually lucky?
If I were alone could he come back to me on the smile?
Would he say get a table at Ernie's?
PSA and the smile no longer exist, sold to US Airways and then painted off the planes.
Ernie's no longer exists, but was briefly re-created by Alfred Hitchcock, for _Vertigo._ James Stewart first sees Kim Novak at Ernie's. Later she falls from the bell tower (also re-created, an effect) at Mission San Juan Bautista.
We were married at San Juan Bautista.
On a January afternoon when the blossoms were showing in the orchards off 101.
When there were still orchards off 101.
No. The way you got sideswiped was by going back. The blossoms showing in the orchards off 101 was the incorrect track.
For several weeks after it happened I tried to keep myself on the correct track (the narrow track, the track on which there was no going back) by repeating to myself the last two lines of "Rose Aylmer," Walter Savage Landor's 1806 elegy to the memory of a daughter of Lord Aylmer's who had died at age twenty in Calcutta. I had not thought of "Rose Aylmer" since I was an undergraduate at Berkeley, but now I could remember not only the poem but much of what had been said about it in whichever class I had heard it analyzed. "Rose Aylmer" worked, whoever was teaching this class had said, because the overblown and therefore meaningless praise for the deceased in the first four lines ("Ah, what avails the sceptred race! / Ah, what the form divine! / What every virtue, every grace! / Rose Aylmer, all were thine") gets brought into sudden, even shocking relief by "the hard sweet wisdom" of the last two lines, which suggest that mourning has its place but also its limits: "A night of memories and sighs / I consecrate to thee."
"'A _night_ of memories and sighs,'" I remembered the lecturer repeating. " _A night._ One night. It might be all night but he doesn't even say _all night,_ he says _a night,_ not a matter of a lifetime, a matter of some hours."
Hard sweet wisdom. Clearly, since "Rose Aylmer" had remained embedded in my memory, I believed it as an undergraduate to offer a lesson for survival.
December 30, 2003.
We had seen Quintana in the sixth-floor ICU at Beth Israel North.
Where she would remain for another twenty-four days.
Unusual dependency (is that a way of saying "marriage"? "husband and wife"? "mother and child"? "nuclear family"?) is not the only situation in which complicated or pathological grief can occur. Another, I read in the literature, is one in which the grieving process is interrupted by "circumstantial factors," say by "a delay in the funeral," or by "an illness or second death in the family." I read an explanation, by Vamik D. Volkan, M.D., a professor of psychiatry at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, of what he called "re-grief therapy," a technique developed at the University of Virginia for the treatment of "established pathological mourners." In such therapy, according to Dr. Volkan, a point occurs at which:
we help the patient to review the circumstances of the death—how it occurred, the patient's reaction to the news and to viewing the body, the events of the funeral, etc. Anger usually appears at this point if the therapy is going well; it is at first diffused, then directed toward others, and finally directed toward the dead. Abreactions—what Bibring [E. Bibring, 1954, "Psychoanalysis and the Dynamic Psychotherapies," _Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association_ 2:745 ff.] calls "emotional reliving"—may then take place and demonstrate to the patient the actuality of his repressed impulses. Using our understanding of the psychodynamics involved in the patient's need to keep the lost one alive, we can then explain and interpret the relationship that had existed between the patient and the one who died.
But from where exactly did Dr. Volkan and his team in Charlottesville derive their unique understanding of "the psychodynamics involved in the patient's need to keep the lost one alive," their special ability to "explain and interpret the relationship that had existed between the patient and the one who died"? Were you watching _Tenko_ with me and "the lost one" in Brentwood Park, did you go to dinner with us at Morton's? Were you with me and "the one who died" at Punchbowl in Honolulu four months before it happened? Did you gather up plumeria blossoms with us and drop them on the graves of the unknown dead from Pearl Harbor? Did you catch cold with us in the rain at the Jardin du Ranelagh in Paris a month before it happened? Did you skip the Monets with us and go to lunch at Conti? Were you with us when we left Conti and bought the thermometer, were you sitting on our bed at the Bristol when neither of us could figure how to convert the thermometer's centigrade reading into Fahrenheit?
_Were you there?_
_No._
_You might have been useful with the thermometer but you were not there._
_I don't need to "review the circumstances of the death." I was there._
_I didn't get "the news," I didn't "view" the body. I was there._
I catch myself, I stop.
I realize that I am directing irrational anger toward the entirely unknown Dr. Volkan in Charlottesville.
Persons under the shock of genuine affliction are not only upset mentally but are all unbalanced physically. No matter how calm and controlled they seemingly may be, no one can under such circumstances be normal. Their disturbed circulation makes them cold, their distress makes them unstrung, sleepless. Persons they normally like, they often turn from. No one should ever be forced upon those in grief, and all over-emotional people, no matter how near or dear, should be barred absolutely. Although the knowledge that their friends love them and sorrow for them is a great solace, the nearest afflicted must be protected from any one or anything which is likely to overstrain nerves already at the threatening point, and none have the right to feel hurt if they are told they can neither be of use or be received. At such a time, to some people companionship is a comfort, others shrink from their dearest friends.
That passage is from Emily Post's 1922 book of etiquette, Chapter XXIV, "Funerals," which takes the reader from the moment of death ("As soon as death occurs, someone, the trained nurse usually, draws the blinds in the sick-room and tells a servant to draw all the blinds of the house") through seating instructions for those who attend the funeral: "Enter the church as quietly as possible, and as there are no ushers at a funeral, seat yourself where you approximately belong. Only a very intimate friend should take a position far up on the center aisle. If you are merely an acquaintance you should sit inconspicuously in the rear somewhere, unless the funeral is very small and the church big, in which case you may sit on the end seat of the center aisle toward the back."
This tone, one of unfailing specificity, never flags. The emphasis remains on the practical. The bereaved must be urged to "sit in a sunny room," preferably one with an open fire. Food, but "very little food," may be offered on a tray: tea, coffee, bouillon, a little thin toast, a poached egg. Milk, but only heated milk: "Cold milk is bad for someone who is already over-chilled." As for further nourishment, "The cook may suggest something that appeals usually to their taste—but very little should be offered at a time, for although the stomach may be empty, the palate rejects the thought of food, and digestion is never in best order." The mourner is prompted to practice economy as he or she accommodates the wearing of mourning: most existing garments, including leather shoes and straw hats, will "dye perfectly." Undertaking expenses should be checked in advance. A friend should be left in charge of the house during the funeral. The friend should see that the house is aired and displaced furniture put back where it belongs and a fire lit for the homecoming of the family. "It is also well to prepare a little hot tea or broth," Mrs. Post advised, "and it should be brought them upon their return without their being asked if they would care for it. Those who are in great distress want no food, but if it is handed to them, they will mechanically take it, and something warm to start digestion and stimulate impaired circulation is what they most need."
There was something arresting about the matter-of-fact wisdom here, the instinctive understanding of the physiological disruptions ("changes in the endocrine, immune, autonomic nervous, and cardiovascular systems") later catalogued by the Institute of Medicine. I am unsure what prompted me to look up Emily Post's 1922 book of etiquette (I would guess some memory of my mother, who had given me a copy to read when we were snowbound in a four-room rented house in Colorado Springs during World War Two), but when I found it on the Internet it spoke to me directly. As I read it I remembered how cold I had been at New York Hospital on the night John died. I had thought I was cold because it was December 30 and I had come to the hospital bare-legged, in slippers, wearing only the linen skirt and sweater into which I had changed to get dinner. This was part of it, but I was also cold because nothing in my body was working as it should.
Mrs. Post would have understood that. She wrote in a world in which mourning was still recognized, allowed, not hidden from view. Philippe Ariès, in a series of lectures he delivered at Johns Hopkins in 1973 and later published as _Western Attitudes toward Death: From the Middle Ages to the Present,_ noted that beginning about 1930 there had been in most Western countries and particularly in the United States a revolution in accepted attitudes toward death. "Death," he wrote, "so omnipresent in the past that it was familiar, would be effaced, would disappear. It would become shameful and forbidden." The English social anthropologist Geoffrey Gorer, in his 1965 _Death, Grief, and Mourning,_ had described this rejection of public mourning as a result of the increasing pressure of a new "ethical duty to enjoy oneself," a novel "imperative to do nothing which might diminish the enjoyment of others." In both England and the United States, he observed, the contemporary trend was "to treat mourning as morbid self-indulgence, and to give social admiration to the bereaved who hide their grief so fully that no one would guess anything had happened."
One way in which grief gets hidden is that death now occurs largely offstage. In the earlier tradition from which Mrs. Post wrote, the act of dying had not yet been professionalized. It did not typically involve hospitals. Women died in childbirth. Children died of fevers. Cancer was untreatable. At the time she undertook her book of etiquette, there would have been few American households untouched by the influenza pandemic of 1918. Death was up close, at home. The average adult was expected to deal competently, and also sensitively, with its aftermath. When someone dies, I was taught growing up in California, you bake a ham. You drop it by the house. You go to the funeral. If the family is Catholic you also go to the rosary but you do not wail or keen or in any other way demand the attention of the family. In the end Emily Post's 1922 etiquette book turned out to be as acute in its apprehension of this other way of death, and as prescriptive in its treatment of grief, as anything else I read. I will not forget the instinctive wisdom of the friend who, every day for those first few weeks, brought me a quart container of scallion-and-ginger congee from Chinatown. Congee I could eat. Congee was all I could eat.
**5.**
**T** here was something else I was taught growing up in California. When someone appears to have died you find out for sure by holding a hand mirror to the mouth and nose. If there is no exhaled moisture the person is dead. My mother taught me that. I forgot it the night John died. _Is he breathing,_ the dispatcher had asked me. _Just come,_ I had said.
December 30, 2003.
We had seen Quintana in the sixth-floor ICU at Beth Israel North.
_We had noted the numbers on the respirator._
_We had held her swollen hand._
_We still don't know which way this is going, one of the ICU doctors had said._
We had come home. The ICU did not reopen after evening rounds until seven so it must have been past eight.
We had discussed whether to go out for dinner or eat in.
I said I would build a fire, we could eat in.
I have no memory of what we meant to eat. I do remember throwing out whatever was on the plates and in the kitchen when I came home from New York Hospital.
_You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends._
In a heartbeat.
Or the absence of one.
During the past months I have spent a great deal of time trying first to keep track of, and, when that failed, to reconstruct, the exact sequence of events that preceded and followed what happened that night. "At a point between Thursday, December 18, 2003, and Monday, December 22, 2003," one such reconstruction began, "Q complained of 'feeling terrible,' flu symptoms, thought she had strep throat." This reconstruction, which was preceded by the names and telephone numbers of doctors to whom I spoke not only at Beth Israel but at other hospitals in New York and other cities, continued. The heart of it was this: On Monday, December 22, she went with a fever of 103 to the emergency room at Beth Israel North, which had at the time a reputation for being the least-crowded emergency room on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, and was diagnosed with the flu. She was told to stay in bed and drink liquids. No chest X-ray was taken. On December 23 and 24 her fever fluctuated between 102 and 103. She was too ill to come to dinner on Christmas Eve. She and Gerry canceled plans to spend Christmas night and a few days after with his family in Massachusetts.
On Christmas Day, a Thursday, she called in the morning and said she was having trouble breathing. Her breathing sounded shallow, labored. Gerry took her back to the emergency room at Beth Israel North, where X-rays showed a dense infiltrate of pus and bacteria in the lower lobe of her right lung. Her pulse was elevated, 150-plus. She was extremely dehydrated. Her white count was almost zero. She was given Ativan, then Demerol. Her pneumonia, Gerry was told in the emergency room, was "a 5 on a scale of 10, what we used to call 'walking pneumonia.'" There was "nothing serious" (this may have been what I wanted to hear), but it was nonetheless decided to admit her to a sixth-floor ICU for monitoring.
By the time she reached the ICU that evening she was agitated. She was further sedated, then intubated. Her temperature was now 104-plus. One hundred percent of her oxygen was being supplied by the breathing tube; she was not at that point capable of breathing on her own. Late the next morning, Friday, December 26, it was learned that there was now pneumonia on both lungs, and that this pneumonia was, despite the massive IV administration of azithromycin, gentamicin, clindamycin, and vancomycin, growing. It was also learned—or assumed, since her blood pressure was dropping—that she was entering or had entered septic shock. Gerry was asked to allow two further invasive procedures, first the insertion of an arterial line and then the insertion of a second line that would go close to the heart to deal with the blood pressure problem. She was given neosynephrine to support her blood pressure at 90-plus over 60-plus.
On Saturday, December 27, we were told that she was being given what was then still a new Eli Lilly drug, Xigris, which would continue for ninety-six hours, four days. "This costs twenty thousand dollars," the nurse said as she changed the IV bag. I watched the fluid drip into one of the many tubes that were then keeping Quintana alive. I looked up Xigris on the Internet. One site said that the survival rate for sepsis patients treated with Xigris was 69 percent, as opposed to 56 percent for patients not treated with Xigris. Another site, a business newsletter, said that Eli Lilly's "sleeping giant," Xigris, was "struggling to overcome its problems in the sepsis market." This seemed in some ways a positive prism through which to view the situation: Quintana was not the child who had been a deliriously happy bride five months before and whose chance of surviving the next day or two could now be calibrated at a point between 56 and 69 percent, she was "the sepsis market," suggesting that there was still a consumer choice to be made. By Sunday, December 28, it had been possible to imagine that the sepsis market's "sleeping giant" was kicking in: the pneumonia had not decreased in size, but the neosynephrine supporting her blood pressure was stopped and the blood pressure was holding, at 95 over 40. On Monday, December 29, I was told by a physician's assistant that after his weekend absence he had come in that morning to find Quintana's condition "encouraging." I asked what exactly had encouraged him about her condition when he came in that morning. "She was still alive," the physician's assistant said.
On Tuesday, December 30, at 1:02 p.m. (according to the computer), I made these notes in anticipation of a conversation with one more specialist to whom I had placed a call:
Any effect on brain—from oxygen deficit? From high fever? From possible meningitis?
Several doctors have mentioned "not knowing if there is some underlying structure or blockage." Are they talking about a possible malignancy?
The assumption here is that this infection is bacterial—yet no bacteria has shown up in the cultures—is there any way of knowing it's not viral?
How does "flu" morph into whole-body infection?
The last question _—How does_ " _flu_ " _morph into whole-body infection?—_ was added by John. By December 30 he had seemed fixed on this point. He had asked it many times in the preceding three or four days, of doctors and of physicians' assistants and of nurses and finally, most desperately, of me, and had never received an answer he found satisfactory. Something in this seemed to defy his understanding. Something in this defied my own understanding, but I was pretending that I could manage it. Here it was:
She had been admitted to the ICU on Christmas night.
She was in a hospital, we had kept telling each other on Christmas night. She was being taken care of. She would be safe where she was.
Everything else had seemed normal.
We had a fire. She would be safe.
Five days later everything outside the sixth-floor ICU at Beth Israel North still seemed normal: this was the part neither of us (although only John admitted it) could get past, one more case of maintaining a fixed focus on the clear blue sky from which the plane fell. There were still in the living room of the apartment the presents John and I had opened on Christmas night. There were still under and on a table in Quintana's old room the presents she had been unable to open on Christmas night because she was in the ICU. There were still on a table in the dining room the stacked plates and silver we had used on Christmas Eve. There were still on an American Express bill that came that day charges from the November trip we had made to Paris. When we left for Paris Quintana and Gerry had been planning their first Thanksgiving dinner. They had invited his mother and sister and brother-in-law. They were using their wedding china. Quintana had come by to get my mother's ruby crystal glasses. We had called them on Thanksgiving Day from Paris. They were roasting a turkey and pureeing turnips.
"And then—gone."
_How does "flu" morph into whole-body infection?_
I see the question now as the equivalent of a cry of helpless rage, another way of saying _How could this have happened when everything was normal._ In the cubicle where Quintana lay in the ICU, her fingers and face swollen with fluid, her lips cracked by fever around the breathing tube, her hair matted and soaked with sweat, the numbers on the respirator that night indicated that she was now receiving only 45 percent of her oxygen through the tube. John had kissed her swollen face. "More than one more day," he had whispered, another part of our family shorthand. The reference was to a line from a movie, Richard Lester's _Robin and Marian._ "I love you more than even one more day," Audrey Hepburn as Maid Marian says to Sean Connery as Robin Hood after she has given them both the fatal potion. John had whispered this every time he left the ICU. On our way out we managed to maneuver a doctor into talking to us. We asked if the decrease in delivered oxygen meant that she was getting better.
There was a pause.
This was when the ICU doctor said it: "We're still not sure which way this is going."
_The way this is going is up,_ I remember thinking.
The ICU doctor was still talking. "She's really very sick," he was saying.
I recognized this as a coded way of saying that she was expected to die but I persisted: _The way this is going is up. It's going up because it has to go up._
_I believe in Cat._
_I believe in God._
"I love you more than one more day," Quintana said three months later standing in the black dress at St. John the Divine. "As you used to say to me."
We were married on the afternoon of January 30, 1964, a Thursday, at the Catholic Mission of San Juan Bautista in San Benito County, California. John wore a navy blue suit from Chipp. I wore a short white silk dress I had bought at Ransohoff's in San Francisco on the day John Kennedy was killed. Twelve-thirty p.m. in Dallas was still morning in California. My mother and I learned what happened only when we were leaving Ransohoff's for lunch and ran into someone from Sacramento. Since there were only thirty or forty people at San Juan Bautista on the afternoon of the wedding (John's mother, his younger brother Stephen, his brother Nick and Nick's wife Lenny and their four-year-old daughter, my mother and father and brother and sister-in-law and grandfather and aunt and a few cousins and family friends from Sacramento, John's roommate from Princeton, maybe one or two others), my intention for the ceremony had been to have no entrance, no "procession," to just stand up there and do it. "Principals emerge," I remember Nick saying helpfully: Nick got the plan, but the organist who had materialized did not, and suddenly I found myself on my father's arm, walking up the aisle and weeping behind my dark glasses. When the ceremony was over we drove to the lodge at Pebble Beach. There were little things to eat, champagne, a terrace that opened onto the Pacific, very simple. By way of a honeymoon we spent a few nights in a bungalow at the San Ysidro Ranch in Montecito and then, bored, fled to the Beverly Hills Hotel.
I had thought about that wedding on the day of Quintana's wedding.
Her wedding was simple too. She wore a long white dress and a veil and expensive shoes but her hair was in a thick braid down her back, as it had been when she was a child.
We sat in the choir at St. John the Divine. Her father walked her to the altar. There at the altar was Susan, her best friend in California since age three. There at the altar was her best friend in New York. There at the altar was her cousin Hannah. There was her cousin Kelley from California, reading a part of the service. There were the children of Gerry's stepdaughter, reading another part. There were the youngest children, small girls with leis, barefoot. There were watercress sandwiches, champagne, lemonade, peach-colored napkins to match the sorbet that came with the cake, peacocks on the lawn. She kicked off the expensive shoes and unpinned the veil. "Wasn't that just about perfect," she said when she called that evening. Her father and I allowed that it was. She and Gerry flew to St. Barth's. John and I flew to Honolulu.
July 26, 2003.
Four months and 29 days before she was admitted to the ICU at Beth Israel North.
Five months and four days before her father died.
During the first week or two after he died, at night, when the protective exhaustion would hit me and I would leave the relatives and friends talking in the living room and dining room and kitchen of the apartment and walk down the corridor to the bedroom and shut the door, I would avoid looking at the reminders of our early marriage that hung on the corridor walls. In fact I did not need to look, nor could I avoid them by not looking: I knew them by heart. There was a photograph of John and me taken on a location for _The Panic in Needle Park._ It was our first picture. We went with it to the Cannes festival. It was the first time I had ever been to Europe and we were traveling first-class on Twentieth Century–Fox and I boarded the plane barefoot, it was that period, 1971. There was a photograph of John and me and Quintana at Bethesda Fountain in Central Park in 1970, John and Quintana, age four, eating ice cream bars. We were in New York all that fall working on a picture with Otto Preminger. "She's in the office of Mr. Preminger who has no hair," Quintana advised a pediatrician who had asked where her mother was. There was a photograph of John and me and Quintana on the deck of the house we had in Malibu in the 1970s. The photograph appeared in _People._ When I saw it I realized that Quintana had taken advantage of a break in the day's shooting to apply, for the first time, eyeliner. There was a photograph Barry Farrell had taken of his wife, Marcia, sitting in a rattan chair in the house in Malibu and holding their then-baby daughter, Joan Didion Farrell.
Barry Farrell was now dead.
There was a photograph of Katharine Ross, taken by Conrad Hall during the Malibu period when she taught Quintana to swim by throwing a Tahitian shell in a neighbor's pool and telling Quintana the shell would be hers if she brought it up. This was a time, the early 1970s, when Katharine and Conrad and Jean and Brian Moore and John and I traded plants and dogs and favors and recipes and would have dinner at one or another of our houses a couple of times a week.
I remember that we all made soufflés. Conrad's sister Nancy in Papeete had shown Katharine how to make them work without effort and Katharine showed me and Jean. The trick was a less strict approach than generally advised. Katharine also brought back Tahitian vanilla beans for us, thick sheaves tied with raffia.
We did crème caramel with the vanilla for a while but nobody liked to caramelize the sugar.
We talked about renting Lee Grant's house above Zuma Beach and opening a restaurant, to be called "Lee Grant's House." Katharine and Jean and I would take turns cooking and John and Brian and Conrad would take turns running the front. This Malibu survivalist plan got abandoned because Katharine and Conrad separated and Brian was finishing a novel and John and I went to Honolulu to do a rewrite on a picture. We worked a lot in Honolulu. No one in New York could ever get the time difference straight so we could work all day without the phone ringing. There was a point in the 1970s when I wanted to buy a house there, and took John to look at many, but he seemed to interpret actually living in Honolulu as a less encouraging picture than staying at the Kahala.
Conrad Hall was now dead.
Brian Moore was now dead.
From an earlier house, a great wreck of a house on Franklin Avenue in Hollywood that we rented with its many bedrooms and its sun porches and its avocado trees and its overgrown clay tennis court for $450 a month, there was a framed verse that Earl McGrath had written on the occasion of our fifth anniversary:
_This is the story of John Greg'ry Dunne_
_Who, with his wife Mrs. Didion Do,_
_Was legally married with family of one_
_And lived on Franklin Avenue._
_Lived with their beautiful child Quintana_
_Also known as Didion D_
_Didion Dunne_
_And Didion Do._
_And Quintana or Didion D._
_A beautiful family of one Dunne Dunne Dunne_
_(I mean a family of three)_
_Living in a style best called erstwhile_
_On Franklin Avenue._
People who have recently lost someone have a certain look, recognizable maybe only to those who have seen that look on their own faces. I have noticed it on my face and I notice it now on others. The look is one of extreme vulnerability, nakedness, openness. It is the look of someone who walks from the ophthalmologist's office into the bright daylight with dilated eyes, or of someone who wears glasses and is suddenly made to take them off. These people who have lost someone look naked because they think themselves invisible. I myself felt invisible for a period of time, incorporeal. I seemed to have crossed one of those legendary rivers that divide the living from the dead, entered a place in which I could be seen only by those who were themselves recently bereaved. I understood for the first time the power in the image of the rivers, the Styx, the Lethe, the cloaked ferryman with his pole. I understood for the first time the meaning in the practice of suttee. Widows did not throw themselves on the burning raft out of grief. The burning raft was instead an accurate representation of the place to which their grief (not their families, not the community, not custom, _their grief_ ) had taken them. On the night John died we were thirty-one days short of our fortieth anniversary. You will have by now divined that the "hard sweet wisdom" in the last two lines of "Rose Aylmer" was lost on me.
I wanted more than a night of memories and sighs.
I wanted to scream.
I wanted him back.
**6.**
**S** everal years ago, walking east on Fifty-seventh Street between Sixth and Fifth Avenues on a bright fall day, I had what I believed at the time to be an apprehension of death. It was an effect of light: quick sunlight dappling, yellow leaves falling (but from what? were there even trees on West Fifty-seventh Street?), a shower of gold, spangled, very fast, a falling of the bright. Later I watched for this effect on similar bright days but never again experienced it. I wondered then if it had been a seizure, or stroke of some kind. A few years before that, in California, I had dreamed an image that, when I woke, I knew had been death: the image was that of an ice island, the jagged ridge seen from the air off one of the Channel Islands, except in this case all ice, translucent, a blued white, glittering in the sunlight. Unlike dreams in which the dreamer is anticipating death, inexorably sentenced to die but not yet there, there was in this dream no dread. Both the ice island and the fall of the bright on West Fifty-seventh Street seemed on the contrary transcendent, more beautiful than I could say, yet there was no doubt in my mind that what I had seen was death.
Why, if those were my images of death, did I remain so unable to accept the fact that he had died? Was it because I was failing to understand it as something that had happened to him? Was it because I was still understanding it as something that had happened to me?
_Life changes fast._
_Life changes in the instant._
_You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends._
_The question of self-pity._
You see how early the question of self-pity entered the picture.
One morning during the spring after it happened I picked up _The New York Times_ and skipped directly from the front page to the crossword puzzle, a way of starting the day that had become during those months a pattern, the way I had come to read, or more to the point not to read, the paper. I had never before had the patience to work crossword puzzles, but now imagined that the practice would encourage a return to constructive cognitive engagement. The clue that first got my attention that morning was 6 Down, "Sometimes you feel like..." I instantly saw the obvious answer, a good long one that would fill many spaces and prove my competency for the day: "a motherless child."
_Motherless children have a real hard time—_
_Motherless children have such a real hard time—_
No.
6 Down had only four letters.
I abandoned the puzzle (impatience died hard), and the next day looked up the answer. The correct answer for 6 Down was "anut." "Anut?" A nut? Sometimes you feel like _a nut_? How far had I absented myself from the world of normal response?
Notice: the answer most instantly accessed ("a motherless child") was a wail of self-pity.
This was not going to be an easy failure of understanding to correct.
_Avid its rush, that reeling blaze!_
_Where is my father and Eleanor?_
_Not where are they now, dead seven years,_
_But what they were then?_
_No more? No more?_
—DELMORE SCHWARTZ,
_"Calmly We Walk Through This April's Day"_
He believed he was dying. He told me so, repeatedly. I dismissed this. He was depressed. He had finished a novel, _Nothing Lost,_ which was caught in the predictable limbo of a prolonged period between delivery and publication, and he was undergoing an equally predictable crisis of confidence about the book he was then beginning, a reflection on the meaning of patriotism that had not yet found its momentum. He had been dealing as well through most of the year with a series of enervating medical issues. His cardiac rhythm had been slipping with increasing frequency into atrial fibrillation. A normal sinus rhythm could be restored by cardioversion, an outpatient procedure in which he was given general anesthesia for a few minutes while his heart was electrically shocked, but a change in physical status as slight as catching a cold or taking a long plane flight could again disrupt the rhythm. His last such procedure, in April 2003, had required not one but two shocks. The steadily increasing frequency with which cardioversion had become necessary indicated that it was no longer a useful option. In June, after a series of consultations, he had undergone a more radical cardiac intervention, a radio-frequency ablation of the atrial-ventricular node and the subsequent implantation of the Medtronic Kappa 900 SR pacemaker.
During the course of the summer, buoyed by the pleasure of Quintana's wedding and by the apparent success of the pacemaker, his mood had seemed to lift. In the fall it dropped again. I recall a fight over the question of whether we should go to Paris in November. I did not want to go. I said we had too much to do and too little money. He said he had a sense that if he did not go to Paris in November he would never again go to Paris. I interpreted this as blackmail. That settles it then, I said, we're going. He left the table. We did not speak in any meaningful way for two days.
In the end we went to Paris in November.
_I tell you that I shall not live two days,_ Gawain said.
A few weeks ago at the Council on Foreign Relations at Sixty-eighth and Park I noticed someone across from me reading the _International Herald Tribune._ One more example of slipping onto the incorrect track: I am no longer at the Council on Foreign Relations at Sixty-eighth and Park but sitting across from John at breakfast in the dining room of the Bristol in Paris in November 2003. We are each reading the _International Herald Tribune,_ hotel copies, with little stapled cards showing the weather for the day. The cards for each of those November mornings in Paris showed an umbrella icon. We walked in the rain at the Jardin du Luxembourg. We escaped from the rain into St. Sulpice. There was a mass in progress. John took communion. We caught cold in the rain at the Jardin du Ranelagh. On the flight back to New York John's muffler and my jersey dress smelled of wet wool. On takeoff he held my hand until the plane began leveling.
He always did.
Where did that go?
In a magazine I see a Microsoft advertisement that shows the platform of the Porte des Lilas metro station in Paris.
I found yesterday in the pocket of an unworn jacket a used metro ticket from that November trip to Paris. "Only Episcopalians 'take' communion," he had corrected me one last time as we left St. Sulpice. He had been correcting me on this point for forty years. Episcopalians "took," Catholics "received." It was, he explained each time, a difference in attitude.
_Not where are they now, dead seven years,_
_But what they were then?_
That last cardioversion: April 2003. The one that had required two shocks. I remember a doctor explaining why it was done under anesthesia. "Because otherwise they jump off the table," he said. December 30, 2003: the sudden jump when the ambulance crew was using the defibrillating paddles on the living room floor. Was that ever a heartbeat or was it just electricity?
The night he died or the night before, in the taxi between Beth Israel North and our apartment, he said several things that for the first time made me unable to readily dismiss his mood as depression, a normal phase of any writer's life.
Everything he had done, he said, was worthless.
I still tried to dismiss it.
This might not be normal, I told myself, but neither was the condition in which we had just left Quintana.
He said that the novel was worthless.
This might not be normal, I told myself, but neither was it normal for a father to see a child beyond his help.
He said that his current piece in _The New York Review,_ a review of Gavin Lambert's biography of Natalie Wood, was worthless.
This might not be normal, but what in the past several days had been?
He said he did not know what he was doing in New York. "Why did I waste time on a piece about Natalie Wood," he said.
It was not a question.
"You were right about Hawaii," he said then.
He may have meant that I had been right a day or so before when I said that when Quintana got better (this was our code for "if she lives") we could rent a house on the Kailua beach and she could recuperate there. Or he may have meant that I had been right in the 1970s when I wanted to buy a house in Honolulu. I preferred at the time to think the former but the past tense suggested the latter. He said these things in the taxi between Beth Israel North and our apartment either three hours before he died or twenty-seven hours before he died, I try to remember which and cannot.
**7.**
**W** hy did I keep stressing what was and was not normal, when nothing about it was?
Let me try a chronology here.
Quintana was admitted to the ICU at Beth Israel North on December 25, 2003.
John died on December 30, 2003.
I told Quintana that he was dead late on the morning of January 15, 2004, in the ICU at Beth Israel North, after the doctors had managed to remove the breathing tube and reduce sedation to a point at which she could gradually wake up. Telling her that day had not been the plan. The doctors had said that she would wake only intermittently, at first partially, and for a matter of days be able to absorb only limited information. If she woke and saw me she would wonder where her father was. Gerry and Tony and I had discussed this problem at length. We had decided that only Gerry should be with her when she first began to wake. She could focus on him, on their life together. The question of her father might not come up. I could see her later, maybe days later. I could tell her then. She would be stronger.
As planned, Gerry was with her when she first woke. As not planned, a nurse told her that her mother was outside in the corridor.
Then when is she coming in, she wanted to know.
I went in.
"Where's Dad," she whispered when she saw me.
Because three weeks of intubation had inflamed her vocal cords, even her whisper was barely audible. I told her what had happened. I stressed the history of cardiac problems, the long run of luck that had finally caught up with us, the apparent suddenness but actual inevitability of the event. She cried. Gerry and I each held her. She dropped back into sleep.
"How's Dad," she whispered when I saw her that evening.
I began again. The heart attack. The history. The apparent suddenness of the event.
"But how is he _now,_ " she whispered, straining to be audible.
She had absorbed the sudden event part but not the outcome.
I told her again. In the end I would have to tell her a third time, in another ICU, this one at UCLA.
The chronology.
On January 19, 2004, she was moved from the sixth-floor ICU at Beth Israel North to a room on the twelfth floor. On January 22, 2004, still too weak to stand or sit unsupported and running a fever from a hospital infection acquired in the ICU, she was discharged from Beth Israel North. Gerry and I put her to bed in her old room in my apartment. Gerry went out to fill the prescriptions she had been given. She got out of bed to get another quilt from the closet and collapsed on the floor. I could not lift her and needed to get someone from the building to put her back to bed.
On the morning of January 25, 2004, she woke, still in my apartment, with severe chest pain and increasing fever. She was admitted that day to the Milstein Hospital at Columbia-Presbyterian after a diagnosis of pulmonary emboli was reached in the Presbyterian emergency room. Given her prolonged immobility at Beth Israel, I know now but did not know then, this was an entirely predictable development that could have been diagnosed before discharge from Beth Israel by the same imaging that was done three days later in the Presbyterian emergency room. After she was admitted to Milstein her legs were imaged to see if further clots had formed. She was placed on anticoagulants to prevent such further formation while the existing clots were allowed to dissolve.
On February 3, 2004, she was discharged from Presbyterian, still on anticoagulants. She began physical therapy to regain strength and mobility. Together, with Tony and Nick, she and I planned the service for John. The service took place at four o'clock on a Tuesday afternoon, March 23, 2004, at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, where, at three o'clock in the presence of the family, John's ashes had been placed as planned in the chapel off the main altar. After the service Nick had arranged a reception at the Union Club. Eventually thirty or forty members of the family made their way back to John's and my apartment. I lit a fire. We had drinks. We had dinner. Quintana, although still fragile, had stood up in her black dress at the Cathedral and laughed with her cousins at dinner. On the morning of March 25, a day and a half later, she and Gerry were going to restart their life by flying to California and walking on the beach at Malibu for a few days. I had encouraged this. I wanted to see Malibu color on her face and hair again.
The next day, March 24, alone in the apartment, the obligation to bury my husband and see our daughter through her crisis formally fulfilled, I put away the plates and allowed myself to think for the first time about what would be required to restart my own life. I called Quintana to wish her a good trip. She was flying early the next morning. She sounded anxious. She was always anxious before a trip. Decisions about what to pack had seemed since childhood to trigger some fear of lost organization. Do you think I'll be okay in California, she said. I said yes. Definitely she would be okay in California. Going to California would in fact be the first day of the rest of her life. It occurred to me as I hung up that cleaning my office could be a step toward the first day of the rest of my own life. I began doing this. During most of the following day, Thursday, March 25, I continued doing this. At points during the quiet day I found myself thinking that possibly I had come through into a new season. In January I had watched ice floes form on the East River from a window at Beth Israel North. In February I had watched ice floes break up on the Hudson from a window at Columbia-Presbyterian. Now in March the ice was gone and I had done what I had to do for John and Quintana would come back from California restored. As the afternoon progressed (her plane would have landed, she would have picked up a car and driven up the Pacific Coast Highway) I imagined her already walking on the beach with Gerry in the thin March Malibu sunlight. I typed the Malibu zip code, 90265, into AccuWeather. There was sun, a high and low I do not remember but do remember thinking satisfactory, a good day in Malibu.
There would be wild mustard on the hills.
She could take him to see the orchids at Zuma Canyon.
She could take him to eat fried fish at the Ventura County line.
She had arranged to take him to lunch one day at Jean Moore's, she would be in the places in which she had spent her childhood. She could show him where we had gathered mussels for Easter lunch. She could show him where the butterflies were, where she had learned to play tennis, where she had learned from the Zuma Beach lifeguards how to swim out of a riptide. On the desk in my office there was a photograph taken when she was seven or eight, her hair long and blonde from the Malibu sun. Stuck in the back of the frame there was a crayoned note, left one day on the kitchen counter in Malibu: _Dear Mom, when you opened the door it was me who ran away XXXXXX—Q._
At ten minutes past seven that evening I was changing to go downstairs, for dinner with friends who live in the building. I say "at ten minutes past seven" because that was when the phone rang. It was Tony. He said he was coming right over. I noted the time because I was due downstairs at seven-thirty but Tony's urgency was such that I did not say so. His wife, Rosemary Breslin, had spent the past fifteen years dealing with an undiagnosable blood disorder. Since shortly after John died she had been on an experimental protocol that had left her increasingly weak and required intermittent hospitalization at Memorial Sloan-Kettering. I knew that the long day at the Cathedral and later with the family had been strenuous for her. I stopped Tony as he was about to hang up. I asked if Rosemary was back in the hospital. He said it was not Rosemary. It was Quintana, who, even as we spoke, at ten minutes past seven in New York and ten minutes past four in California, was undergoing emergency neurosurgery at UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles.
**8.**
**T** hey had gotten off the plane.
They had picked up their shared bag.
Gerry was carrying the bag to the car rental shuttle, crossing the arrivals driveway ahead of Quintana. He looked back. Even today I have no idea what made him look back. I never thought to ask. I pictured it as one more case in which you heard someone talking and then you didn't, so you looked. _Life changes in the instant. The ordinary instant._ She was lying on her back on the asphalt. An ambulance was called. She was taken to UCLA. According to Gerry she was awake and lucid in the ambulance. It was only in the emergency room that she began convulsing and lost coherence. A surgical team was alerted. A CT scan was done. By the time they took her into surgery one of her pupils was fixed. The other became fixed as they wheeled her in. I would be told this more than once, in each case as evidence of the gravity of the condition and the critical nature of the intervention: "One pupil was fixed and the other went as we wheeled her in."
The first time I heard this I did not know the significance of what I was being told. By the second time I did. Sherwin B. Nuland, in _How We Die,_ described having seen, as a third-year medical student, a cardiac patient whose "pupils were fixed in the position of wide black dilatation that signifies brain death, and obviously would never respond to light again." Again in _How We Die,_ Dr. Nuland described the failing attempts of a CPR team to revive a patient who had suffered cardiac arrest in the hospital: "The tenacious young men and women see their patient's pupils become unresponsive to light and then widen until they are large fixed circles of impenetrable blackness. Reluctantly the team stops its efforts.... The room is strewn with the debris of the lost campaign." Was this what the New York–Presbyterian ambulance crew saw in John's eyes on our living room floor on December 30, 2003? Was this what the UCLA neurosurgeons saw in Quintana's eyes on March 25, 2004? "Impenetrable blackness?" "Brain death?" Was that what they thought? I look at a printout of that day's CT report from UCLA and still go faint:
The scan shows right hemispheric subdural hematoma, with evidence of acute bleeding. Active bleeding cannot be excluded. The hematoma causes marked mass effect upon the right cerebrum, subfalcial and early uncal herniation, with 19 mm of midline shift from right to left at the level of the third ventricle. The right lateral ventricle is subtotally effaced and the left lateral ventricle shows early entrapment. There is moderate to marked midbrain compression and the perimesencephalic cistern is effaced. A thin posterior falcine and left tentorial subdural hematomas are noted. A small parenchymal bleed, likely contusional, is noted in the right inferolateral frontal lobe. The cerebellar tonsils are at the level of the foramen magnum. There is no skull fracture. There is a large right parietal scalp hematoma.
March 25, 2004. Ten minutes past seven in the evening in New York.
She had come back from the place where doctors said "We still don't know which way this is going" and now she was there again.
For all I knew it had already gone the wrong way.
They could have told Gerry and Gerry could be trying to absorb it before calling me.
She could already be on her way to the hospital morgue.
Alone. On a gurney. With a transporter.
I had already imagined this scene, with John.
Tony arrived.
He repeated what he had told me on the telephone. He had gotten the call from Gerry at UCLA. Quintana was in surgery. Gerry could be reached by cell phone in the hospital lobby, which happened to double (UCLA was building a new hospital, this one was overcrowded and outdated) as the surgical waiting area.
We called Gerry.
One of the surgeons had just come out to give him an update. The surgical team was now "fairly confident" that Quintana would "leave the table," although they could not predict in what condition.
I remember realizing that this was meant as an improved assessment: the previous report from the operating room had been that the team was "not at all sure she would leave the table."
I remember trying and failing to understand the phrase "leave the table." Did they mean alive? Had they said "alive" and Gerry could not say it? _Whatever happens,_ I remember thinking, _she will without question_ " _leave the table._ "
It was then maybe four-thirty in Los Angeles, seven-thirty in New York. I was not sure how long at that point the surgery had been in progress. I see now, since according to the CT report the scan had taken place at "15:06," six minutes past three in Los Angeles, that she had probably been in surgery only about half an hour. I got out an OAG guide to see who would still be flying that night to Los Angeles. Delta had a 9:40 p.m. out of Kennedy. I was about to call Delta when Tony said that he did not think that being in flight during the surgery was a good idea.
I remember a silence.
I remember setting aside the OAG.
I called Tim Rutten in Los Angeles, and asked him to go to the hospital to wait with Gerry. I called our accountant in Los Angeles, Gil Frank, whose own daughter had undergone emergency neurosurgery at UCLA a few months before, and he too said that he would go to the hospital.
That was as close as I could get to being there.
I set the table in the kitchen and Tony and I picked at coq au vin left from the dinner for the family after St. John the Divine. Rosemary arrived. We sat at the kitchen table and tried to develop what we referred to as a "plan." We used phrases like "the contingencies," delicately, as if one of the three of us might not know what "the contingencies" were. I remember calling Earl McGrath to see if I could use his house in Los Angeles. I remember using the words "if I need to," another delicate construction. I remember him cutting directly through this: he was flying to Los Angeles the next day on a friend's plane, I would go with them. Around midnight Gerry called and said that the surgery was finished. They would now do another CT scan to see if there was additional bleeding they had missed. If there was bleeding they would operate again. If there was not they would do a further procedure, the placement of a screen in the vena cava to prevent clots from entering the heart. About four a.m. New York time he called again, to say that the CT scan had shown no bleeding and they had placed the screen. He told me what the surgeons had told him about the operation itself. I made notes:
_"Arterial bleed, artery gushing blood, like a geyser, blood all over the room, no clotting factor."_
_"Brain pushed to the left side."_
When I got back to New York from Los Angeles late on the evening of April 30 I found these notes on a grocery list by the kitchen phone. I now know that the technical term for "brain pushed to the left side" is "midline shift," a significant predictive factor for poor outcome, but even then I knew that it was not good. What I had thought I needed on that March day five weeks before were Evian splits, molasses, chicken broth, and flaxseed meal.
_R_ _ead, learn, work it up, go to the literature._
_Information is control._
On the morning after the surgery, before I went to Teterboro to get on the plane, I looked on the Internet for "fixed and dilated pupils." I found that they were called "FDPs." I read the abstract of a study done by researchers in the Department of Neurosurgery at the University Clinic in Bonn. The study followed ninety-nine patients who had either presented with or developed one or two FDPs. The overall mortality rate was 75 percent. Of the 25 percent who were still alive twenty-four months later, 15 percent had what the Glasgow Outcome Scale defined as an "unfavorable outcome" and 10 percent a "favorable outcome." I translated the percentages: of the ninety-nine patients, seventy-four died. Of the surviving twenty-five, at the end of two years, five were vegetative, ten were severely disabled, eight were independent, and two had made a full recovery. I also learned that fixed and dilated pupils indicated injury or compression of the third cranial nerve and the upper brainstem. "Third nerve" and "brainstem" were words that I would hear more often than I wanted to during the weeks to come.
**9.**
**Y** _ou're safe,_ I remember whispering to Quintana when I first saw her in the ICU at UCLA. _I'm here. You're going to be all right._ Half of her skull had been shaved for the surgery. I could see the long cut and the metal staples that held it closed. She was again breathing only through an endotracheal tube. _I'm here. Everything's fine._
"When do you have to leave," she asked me on the day when she could finally speak. She said the words with difficulty, her face tensed.
I said I would not leave until we could leave together.
Her face relaxed. She went back to sleep.
It occurred to me during those weeks that this had been, since the day we brought her home from St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica, my basic promise to her. I would not leave. I would take care of her. She would be all right. It also occurred to me that this was a promise I could not keep. I could not always take care of her. I could not never leave her. She was no longer a child. She was an adult. Things happened in life that mothers could not prevent or fix. Unless one of those things killed her prematurely, as one had almost done at Beth Israel and another could still do at UCLA, I would die before she did. I remembered discussions in lawyers' offices during which I had become distressed by the word "predecease." The word could not possibly apply. After each of these discussions I would see the words "mutual disaster" in a new and favorable light. Yet once on a rough flight between Honolulu and Los Angeles I had imagined such a mutual disaster and rejected it. The plane would go down. Miraculously, she and I would survive the crash, adrift in the Pacific, clinging to the debris. The dilemma was this: I would need, because I was menstruating and the blood would attract sharks, to abandon her, swim away, leave her alone.
Could I do this?
Did all parents feel this?
When my mother was near death at age ninety she told me that she was ready to die but could not. "You and Jim need me," she said. My brother and I were by then in our sixties.
_You're safe._
_I'm here._
One thing I noticed during the course of those weeks at UCLA was that many people I knew, whether in New York or in California or in other places, shared a habit of mind usually credited to the very successful. They believed absolutely in their own management skills. They believed absolutely in the power of the telephone numbers they had at their fingertips, the right doctor, the major donor, the person who could facilitate a favor at State or Justice. The management skills of these people were in fact prodigious. The power of their telephone numbers was in fact unmatched. I had myself for most of my life shared the same core belief in my ability to control events. If my mother was suddenly hospitalized in Tunis I could arrange for the American consul to bring her English-language newspapers and get her onto an Air France flight to meet my brother in Paris. If Quintana was suddenly stranded in the Nice airport I could arrange with someone at British Airways to get her onto a BA flight to meet her cousin in London. Yet I had always at some level apprehended, because I was born fearful, that some events in life would remain beyond my ability to control or manage them. Some events would just happen. This was one of those events. _You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends._
Many people to whom I spoke in those first days while Quintana lay unconscious at UCLA seemed free of this apprehension. Their initial instinct was that this event could be managed. In order to manage it they needed only information. They needed only to know how this had happened. They needed answers. They needed "the prognosis."
I had no answers.
I had no prognosis.
I did not know how this had happened.
There were two possibilities, both of them, I came to see, irrelevant. One possibility was that she had fallen and the trauma had caused a bleed into her brain, a danger of the anticoagulants she had been given to prevent emboli. The second possibility was that the bleed into her brain had occurred before the fall and in fact caused it. People on anticoagulants bleed. They bruise at a touch. The level of anticoagulant in the blood, which is measured by a number called the INR (International Normalized Ratio), is hard to control. The blood must be tested every few weeks and in some cases every few days. Minute and complicated changes must be made in dosage. The ideal INR for Quintana was, give or take a tenth of a point, 2.2. On the day she flew to Los Angeles it so happened that her INR was over 4, a level at which spontaneous bleeding can occur. When I got to Los Angeles and spoke to the chief surgeon, he said that he was "one hundred percent sure" the trauma had caused the bleed. Other doctors to whom I spoke were less certain. It was suggested by one that the flight alone could have caused sufficient changes in pressurization to precipitate a bleed.
I recall pressing the surgeon on this point, myself trying (one more time) to manage the situation, get answers. I was talking to him on a cell phone from the courtyard outside the UCLA Medical Center cafeteria. The cafeteria was named "Café Med." This was my first visit to Café Med and my introduction to its most noticeable regular, a small balding man (I assumed a Neuropsychiatric Institute patient with walkaround privileges) whose compulsion it was to trail one or another woman through the cafeteria, alternately spitting and mouthing enraged imprecations about how disgusting she was, how vile, what a piece of worthless trash. On this particular morning the small balding man had trailed me out to the courtyard and it was hard to make out what the surgeon was saying. "It was the trauma, there was a ruptured blood vessel, we saw it," I thought he said. This had not seemed to entirely address the question—a ruptured blood vessel did not categorically rule out the possibility that the ruptured blood vessel had preceded and caused the fall—but there in the Café Med courtyard with the small balding man spitting on my shoe I realized that the answer to the question made no difference. It had happened. It was the new fact on the ground.
During the course of this call from the surgeon, which took place on the first full day I spent in Los Angeles, I recall being told several other things.
I recall being told that her coma could continue for days or weeks.
I recall being told that it would be a minimum of three days before anyone could begin to know what shape her brain was in. The surgeon was "optimistic," but no prediction was possible. Many more urgent issues could come up in the next three or four or more days.
She could develop an infection.
She could develop pneumonia, she could develop an embolism.
She could develop further swelling, which would necessitate reoperating.
After I hung up I walked back into the cafeteria, where Gerry was having coffee with Susan Traylor and my brother's daughters, Kelley and Lori. I remember wondering whether to mention the more urgent issues the surgeon had mentioned. I saw when I looked at their faces that there was no reason not to: all four of them had been at the hospital before I got to Los Angeles. All four of them had already heard about the more urgent issues.
During the twenty-four December and January nights when Quintana was in the sixth-floor ICU at Beth Israel North I had kept on the table by my bed a paperback copy of _Intensive Care: A Doctor's Journal,_ by John F. Murray, M.D., who had been from 1966 to 1989 chief of the Pulmonary and Critical Care Division at the University of California medical school in San Francisco. _Intensive Care_ describes, day by day, a four-week period in a San Francisco General Hospital medical ICU for which Dr. Murray was at the time the attending physician responsible for all patients, residents, interns, and medical students. I had read this account over and over. I had learned much that proved useful in the calibration of my daily dealings with the ICU doctors at Beth Israel North. I had learned for example that it was often difficult to gauge when the time was right for extubation, the removal of an endotracheal tube. I had learned that a common barrier to extubation was the edema so predictably seen in intensive care. I had learned that this edema was less often the result of an underlying pathology than of an excess in the administration of intravenous fluid, a failure to observe the distinction between hydration and overhydration, an error of caution. I had learned that many young residents made a similar error of caution when it came to extubation itself: their tendency, because the outcome was uncertain, was to delay the procedure longer than necessary.
I had registered these lessons. I had made use of them: the tentative question here, the expressed wish there. I had "wondered" if she might not be "waterlogged." ("Of course I don't know, I just know how she looks.") I had deliberately used the word "waterlogged." I had noticed a stiffening when I used the word "edema." I had further "wondered" if she might not be better able to breathe if she was less waterlogged. ("Of course I'm not a doctor, but it just seems logical.") I had again "wondered" if the monitored administration of a diuretic might not allow extubation. ("Of course this is a home remedy, but if I felt the way she looks I'd take a Lasix.") With _Intensive Care_ as my guide it had seemed straightforward, intuitive. There was a way to know if you had made headway. You knew you had made headway when a doctor to whom you had made one or another suggestion presented, a day later, the plan as his own.
This was different. A certain derisive phrase had occurred to me during the edema contest of wills at Beth Israel North: _It's not brain surgery._ This was. When these doctors at UCLA said "parietal" and "temporal" to me I had no idea where in the brain they were talking about, let alone what they meant. "Right frontal" I thought I could understand. "Occipital" I thought suggested "eye," but only on the misconceived reasoning that the word began with "oc," like "ocular." I went to the UCLA Medical Center bookstore. I bought a book described on its cover as a "concise overview of neuroanatomy and of its functional and clinical implications" as well as an "excellent review for the USMLE." This book was by Stephen G. Waxman, M.D., chief of neurology at Yale–New Haven, and was called _Clinical Neuroanatomy._ I skimmed successfully through some of the appendices, for example "Appendix A: The Neurologic Examination," but when I began to read the text itself I could think only of a trip to Indonesia during which I had become disoriented by my inability to locate the grammar in Bahasa Indonesia, the official language used on street signs and storefronts and billboards. I had asked someone at the American Embassy how to tell the verbs from the nouns. Bahasa was a language, he had said, in which the same word could be either a verb or a noun. _Clinical Neuroanatomy_ seemed to be one more case in which I would be unable to locate the grammar. I put it on the table by my bed at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, where it would remain for the next five weeks.
On further study of _Clinical Neuroanatomy,_ say if I woke in the morning before _The New York Times_ had arrived with its sedative crossword puzzle, even "Appendix A: The Neurologic Examination" seemed opaque. I had originally noticed the obvious familiar directives (ask the patient the name of the president, ask the patient to count backwards from one hundred by sevens), but as days passed I seemed focused on a mysterious narrative, identified in Appendix A as the "gilded-boy story," that could be used to test memory and comprehension. The patient could be told the story, Dr. Waxman suggested, then asked to retell it in his own words and explain its meaning. "At the coronation of one of the popes, about 300 years ago, a little boy was chosen to play the part of an angel."
So began the "gilded-boy story."
So far clear enough, although potentially troubling details (three hundred years ago? play the part of an angel?) for someone emerging from coma.
It continued: "So that his appearance might be as magnificent as possible, he was covered from head to foot with a coating of gold foil. The little boy fell ill, and although everything possible was done for his recovery except the removal of the fatal golden covering, he died within a few hours."
What was the "meaning" of the "gilded-boy story"? Did it have to do with the fallibility of "the popes"? With the fallibility of authority in general? With the specific fallibility (note that "everything possible was done for his recovery") of medicine? What possible point could there be in telling this story to a patient immobilized in a neuro ICU at a major teaching hospital? What lesson could be drawn? Did they think that because it was a "story" it could be told without consequence? There was a morning on which the "gilded-boy story" seemed to represent, in its utter impenetrability and apparent disregard for the sensitivity of the patient, the entire situation with which I was faced. I went back to the UCLA Medical Center bookstore with the thought of checking other sources for an elucidation, but there was no mention of the gilded-boy story in the first several textbooks I picked up. In lieu of checking further, I bought, since the afternoon highs in Los Angeles were by then in the eighties and I had flown west with only the late-winter clothes I had been wearing in New York, several sets of blue cotton scrubs. So profound was the isolation in which I was then operating that it did not immediately occur to me that for the mother of a patient to show up at the hospital wearing blue cotton scrubs could only be viewed as a suspicious violation of boundaries.
**10.**
**I** had first noticed what I came to know as "the vortex effect" in January, when I was watching the ice floes form on the East River from a window at Beth Israel North. At the join between the walls and the ceiling of the room from which I was watching the ice floes there happened to be a rose-patterned wallpaper border, a Dorothy Draper touch, left I supposed from the period when what was then Beth Israel North had been Doctors' Hospital. I myself had never been in Doctors' Hospital, but when I was in my twenties and working for _Vogue_ it had figured in many conversations. It had been the hospital favored by _Vogue_ editors for uncomplicated deliveries and for "resting," a kind of medical Maine Chance.
This had seemed a good line of thinking.
This had seemed better than thinking about why I was at Beth Israel North.
I had ventured further:
_Doctors' Hospital was where X had the abortion that was bought and paid for by the district attorney's office._ "X" was a woman with whom I had worked at _Vogue._ Seductive clouds of cigarette smoke and Chanel No. 5 and imminent disaster had trailed her through the Condé Nast offices, which were then in the Graybar Building. On a single morning, while I was attempting to put together a particularly trying _Vogue_ feature called "People Are Talking About," she had found both that she needed an abortion and that her name had turned up in the files of a party girl operation under investigation by the district attorney's office. She had been cheerful about these two pieces of (what had seemed to me) devastating news. A deal had been struck. She had agreed to testify that she had been approached by the operation, and the district attorney's office had in turn arranged a D&C at Doctors' Hospital, no inconsiderable favor at a time when getting an abortion meant making a clandestine and potentially lethal appointment with someone whose first instinct in a crisis would be to vacate the premises.
The party girl operation and the arranged abortion and the years in which I had spent mornings putting together "People Are Talking About" still seemed a good line of thinking.
I remembered having used such an incident in my second novel, _Play It As It Lays._ The protagonist, a former model named Maria, had recently had an abortion, which was troubling her.
Once a long time before Maria had worked a week in Ocho Rios with a girl who had just had an abortion. She could remember the girl telling her about it while they sat huddled next to a waterfall waiting for the photographer to decide the sun was high enough to shoot. It seemed that it was a hard time for abortions in New York, there had been arrests, no one wanted to do it. Finally the girl, her name was Ceci Delano, had asked a friend in the district attorney's office if he knew of anyone. "Quid pro quo," he had said, and, late the same day that Ceci Delano testified to a blue-ribbon jury that she had been approached by a party girl operation, she was admitted to Doctors' Hospital for a legal D&C, arranged and paid for by the district attorney's office.
It had seemed a funny story as she told it, both that morning at the waterfall and later at dinner, when she repeated it to the photographer and the agency man and the fashion coordinator for the client. Maria tried now to put what had happened in Encino into the same spirited perspective, but Ceci Delano's situation seemed not to apply. In the end it was just a New York story.
This seemed to be working.
I had avoided thinking for at least two minutes about why I was at Beth Israel North.
I had moved on, into the period during which I was writing _Play It As It Lays._ The rented wreck of a house on Franklin Avenue in Hollywood. The votive candles on the sills of the big windows in the living room. The _té de limón_ grass and aloe that grew by the kitchen door. The rats that ate the avocados. The sun porch on which I worked. Watching from the windows of the sun porch as Quintana ran through a sprinkler on the lawn.
I recall recognizing that I had hit more dangerous water but there had seemed no turning back.
I had been writing that book when Quintana was three.
_When Quintana was three._
There it was, the vortex.
Quintana at three. The night she had put a seed pod from the garden up her nose and I had driven her to Children's Hospital. The pediatrician who specialized in seed pods had arrived in his dinner jacket. The next night she had put another seed pod up her nose, wanting to repeat the interesting adventure. John and I walking with her around the lake in MacArthur Park. The old man lurching from a bench. "That child is the picture of Ginger Rogers," the old man cried. I finished the novel, I was under contract to begin a column for _Life,_ we took Quintana to Honolulu. _Life_ 's idea for the first column was that I should introduce myself, "let the readers know who you are." I planned to write it from Honolulu, the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, we used to get a lanai suite on the press rate for twenty-seven dollars a night. While we were there the news of My Lai broke. I thought about the first column. It seemed to me that given this news I should write it from Saigon. By then it was a Sunday. _Life_ had given me a printed card with the home numbers of its editors and also of lawyers in cities around the world. I took out the card and called my editor, Loudon Wainwright, to say I was going to Saigon. His wife answered the phone. She said he would have to call me back.
"He's watching the NFL game," John said when I hung up. "He'll call you at halftime."
He did. He said that I should stay where I was and introduce myself, that as far as Saigon went "some of the guys are going out." The topic did not seem open to further discussion. "There's a world in revolution out there and we can put you in it," George Hunt had said when he was still the managing editor of _Life_ and offering me the job. By the time I finished _Play It As It Lays_ George Hunt had retired and some of the guys were going out.
"I warned you," John said. "I told you what working for _Life_ would be like. Didn't I tell you? It would be like being nibbled to death by ducks?"
I was brushing Quintana's hair. The picture of Ginger Rogers.
I felt betrayed, humiliated. I should have listened to John.
I wrote the column letting the readers know who I was. It appeared. At the time it seemed an unexceptional enough eight hundred words in the assigned genre, but there was, at the end of the second paragraph, a line so out of synch with the entire _Life_ mode of self-presentation that it might as well have suggested abduction by space aliens: "We are here on this island in the middle of the Pacific in lieu of filing for divorce." A week later we happened to be in New York. "Did you know she was writing it," many people asked John, sotto voce.
Did he know I was writing it?
He edited it.
He took Quintana to the Honolulu Zoo so I could rewrite it.
He drove me to the Western Union office in downtown Honolulu so I could file it.
At the Western Union office he wrote _REGARDS, DIDION_ at the end of it. That was what you always put at the end of a cable, he said. Why, I said. Because you do, he said.
See where that particular vortex sucked me.
From the Dorothy Draper wallpaper border at Beth Israel North to Quintana at three and I should have listened to John.
_I tell you that I shall not live two days,_ Gawain said.
The way you got sideswiped was by going back.
**I** saw immediately in Los Angeles that its potential for triggering this vortex effect could be controlled only by avoiding any venue I might associate with either Quintana or John. This would require ingenuity. John and I had lived in Los Angeles County from 1964 until 1988. Between 1988 and the time he died we had spent significant amounts of time there, usually at the very hotel in which I was now staying, the Beverly Wilshire. Quintana was born in Los Angeles County, at St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica. She went to school there, first in Malibu and later at what was then still the Westlake School for Girls (the year after she left it became coeducational, and was called Harvard-Westlake) in Holmby Hills.
For reasons that remain unclear to me the Beverly Wilshire itself only rarely triggered the vortex effect. In theory its every corridor was permeated with the associations I was trying to avoid. When we were living in Malibu and had meetings in town we would bring Quintana and stay at the Beverly Wilshire. After we moved to New York and needed to be in Los Angeles for a picture we would stay there, sometimes for a few days, sometimes for weeks at a time. We set up computers and printers there. We had meetings there. _What if,_ someone was always saying in these meetings. We could work until eight or nine in the evening there and transmit the pages to whichever director or producer we were working with and then go to dinner at a Chinese restaurant on Melrose where we did not need a reservation. We always specified the old building. I knew the housekeepers. I knew the manicurists. I knew the doorman who would give John the bottled water when he came back from walking in the morning. I knew by reflex how to work the key and open the safe and adjust the shower head: I had stayed over the years in some dozens of rooms identical to the one in which I was now staying. I had last stayed in such a room in October 2003, alone, doing promotion, two months before John died. Yet the Beverly Wilshire seemed when Quintana was at UCLA the only safe place for me to be, the place where everything would be the same, the place where no one would know about or refer to the events of my recent life; the place where I would still be the person I had been before any of this happened.
_What if._
Outside the exempt zone that was the Beverly Wilshire, I plotted my routes, I remained on guard.
Never once in five weeks did I drive into the part of Brentwood in which we had lived from 1978 until 1988. When I saw a dermatologist in Santa Monica and street work forced me to pass within three blocks of our house in Brentwood, I did not look left or right. Never once in five weeks did I drive up the Pacific Coast Highway to Malibu. When Jean Moore offered me the use of her house on the Pacific Coast Highway, three-eighths of a mile past the house in which we had lived from 1971 until 1978, I invented reasons why it was essential for me to stay instead at the Beverly Wilshire. I could avoid driving to UCLA on Sunset. I could avoid passing the intersection at Sunset and Beverly Glen where for six years I had turned off to the Westlake School for Girls. I could avoid passing any intersection I could not anticipate, control. I could avoid keeping the car radio tuned to the stations I used to drive by, avoid locating KRLA, an AM station that had called itself "the heart and soul of rock and roll" and was still in the early 1990s programming the top hits of 1962. I could avoid punching in the Christian call-in station to which I had switched whenever the top hits of 1962 lost their resonance.
Instead I listened to NPR, a sedate morning show called _Morning Becomes Eclectic._ Every morning at the Beverly Wilshire I ordered the same breakfast, huevos rancheros with one scrambled egg. Every morning when I left the Beverly Wilshire I drove the same way to UCLA: out Wilshire, right on Glendon, slip left to Westwood, right on Le Conte and left at Tiverton. Every morning I noted the same banners fluttering from the light standards along Wilshire: _UCLA Medical Center—#1 in the West,_ _#3 in the Nation._ Every morning I wondered whose ranking this was. I never asked. Each morning I inserted my ticket into the gate mechanism and each morning, if I inserted it right, the same woman's voice said " _Wel-_ come to _U-C-L-A._ " Each morning, if I timed it right, I got a parking place outside, on the Plaza 4 level, against the hedge. Late each afternoon I would drive back to the Beverly Wilshire, pick up my messages, and return a few of them. After the first week Gerry was flying back and forth between Los Angeles and New York, trying to work at least a few days a week, and if he was in New York I would call to give him the day's information or lack of it. I would lie down. I would watch the local news. I would stand in the shower for twenty minutes and go out to dinner.
I went out to dinner every night I was in Los Angeles. I had dinner with my brother and his wife whenever they were in town. I went to Connie Wald's house in Beverly Hills. There were roses and nasturtiums and open fires in the big fireplaces, as there had been through all the years when John and I and Quintana would go there. Now Susan Traylor was there. I went to Susan's own house in the Hollywood hills. I had known Susan since she was three and I had known her husband Jesse since he and Susan and Quintana were in the fourth grade at the Point Dume School, and now they were looking after me. I ate in many restaurants with many friends. I had dinner quite often with Earl McGrath, whose intuitive kindness in this situation was to ask me every morning what I was doing that night and, if the answer was in any way vague, to arrange an untaxing dinner for two or three or four at Orso or at Morton's or at his house on Robertson Boulevard.
After dinner I would take a taxi back to the hotel and place my morning order for huevos rancheros. "One scrambled egg," the voice on the phone would prompt. "Exactly," I would say.
I plotted these evenings as carefully as I plotted the routes.
I left no time to dwell on promises I had no way of keeping.
_You're safe. I'm here._
In the deep hush of _Morning Becomes Eclectic_ the next day I would congratulate myself.
I could have been in Cleveland.
Yet.
I cannot count the days on which I found myself driving abruptly blinded by tears.
The Santa Ana was back.
The jacaranda was back.
One afternoon I needed to see Gil Frank, at his office on Wilshire, several blocks east of the Beverly Wilshire. In this previously untested territory ( _terra cognita_ for these purposes was west on Wilshire, not east) I caught sight, unprepared, of a movie theater in which John and I had in 1967 seen _The Graduate._ There had been no particular sense of moment about seeing _The Graduate_ in 1967. I had been in Sacramento. John had picked me up at LAX. It had seemed too late to shop for dinner and too early to eat in a restaurant so we had gone to see _The Graduate_ and then to dinner at Frascati's. Frascati's was gone but the theater was still there, if only to trap the unwary.
There were many such traps. One day I would notice a familiar stretch of coastal highway in a television commercial and realize it was outside the gate house, on the Palos Verdes Peninsula at Portuguese Bend, to which John and I had brought Quintana home from St. John's Hospital.
She was three days old.
We had placed her bassinet next to the wisteria in the box garden.
_You're safe. I'm here._
Neither the house nor its gate could be seen in the commercial but I experienced a sudden rush of memories: getting out of the car on that highway to open the gate so that John could drive through; watching the tide come in and float a car that was sitting on our beach to be shot for a commercial; sterilizing bottles for Quintana's formula while the gamecock that lived on the property followed me companionably from window to window. This gamecock, named "Buck" by the owner of the house, had been abandoned on the highway, in the colorful opinion of the owner by "Mexicans on the run." Buck had a distinctive and surprisingly endearing personality, not unlike a Labrador. In addition to Buck this house also came equipped with peacocks, which were decorative but devoid of personality. Unlike Buck, the peacocks were fat and moved only as a last resort. At dusk they would scream and try to fly to their nests in the olive trees, a fraught moment because they would so often fall. Just before dawn they would scream again. One dawn I woke to the screaming and looked for John. I found him outside in the dark, tearing unripe peaches from a tree and hurling them at the peacocks, a characteristically straightforward if counterproductive approach to resolving an annoyance. When Quintana was a month old we were evicted. There was a clause in the lease that specified no children but the owner and his wife allowed that the baby was not the reason. The reason was that we had hired a pretty teenager named Jennifer to take care of her. The owner and his wife did not want strangers on the property, or as they said "behind the gate," particularly pretty teenagers named Jennifer, who would presumably have dates. We took a few months' lease on a house in town that belonged to Herman Mankiewicz's widow, Sara, who was going to be traveling. She left everything in the house as it was except one object, the Oscar awarded to Herman Mankiewicz for the screenplay of _Citizen Kane._ "You'll have parties, people will just get drunk and play with it," she said when she put it away. On the day we moved John was traveling with the San Francisco Giants, doing a piece on Willie Mays for _The Saturday Evening Post._ I borrowed my sister-in-law's station wagon, loaded it, put Quintana and Jennifer in the back seat, said goodbye to Buck, drove out, and let the totemic gate lock behind me for the last time.
All that and I had not even driven down there.
All I had done was catch sight of a commercial on television while I was dressing to go to the hospital.
Another day I would need to buy bottled water at the Rite Aid on Canon and remember that Canon was where The Bistro had been. In 1964 and 1965, when we were living in the gate house with the beach and the peacocks but could not afford even to tip the parking boys at restaurants, let alone eat in them, John and I used to park on the street on Canon and charge dinner at The Bistro. We took Quintana there on the day of her adoption, when she was not quite seven months old. They had given us Sidney Korshak's corner banquette and placed her carrier on the table, a centerpiece. At the courthouse that morning she had been the only baby, even the only child; all the other adoptions that day had seemed to involve adults adopting one another for tax reasons. " _Qué bonita, qué hermosa,_ " the busboys at The Bistro crooned when we brought her in at lunch. When she was six or seven we took her there for a birthday dinner. She was wearing a lime-green ruana I had bought for her in Bogotá. As we were about to leave the waiter had brought the ruana and she had flung it theatrically over her small shoulders.
_Qué bonita, qué hermosa,_ the picture of Ginger Rogers.
John and I had been in Bogotá together. We had escaped from a film festival in Cartagena and gotten on an Avianca flight to Bogotá. An actor who had been at the film festival, George Montgomery, had also been on the flight to Bogotá. He had gone up to the cockpit. From where I was sitting I could see him chatting with the crew, then sliding into the pilot's seat.
I had nudged John, who was sleeping. "They're letting George Montgomery fly this plane over the Andes," I had whispered.
"It beats Cartagena," John said, and went back to sleep.
I did not that day on Canon get as far as the Rite Aid.
**11.**
**S** ometime in June, after she had left UCLA and was in the sixth of what would be fifteen weeks as an inpatient at the Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine at New York University Medical Center in New York, Quintana told me that her memory not only of UCLA but of her arrival at Rusk was "all mudgy." She could remember some things about UCLA, yes, as she could not yet remember anything else since before Christmas (she did not for example remember speaking about her father at St. John the Divine, nor, when she first woke at UCLA, did she remember that he had died), but it was still "mudgy." Later she corrected this to "smudgy," but she did not need to: I knew exactly what she meant. On the neuro floors at UCLA they had called it "spotty," as in "her orientation is improving but still spotty." When I try to reconstruct those weeks at UCLA I recognize the mudginess in my own memory. There are parts of days that seem very clear and parts of days that do not. I clearly remember arguing with a doctor the day they decided to do the tracheostomy. She had by then been intubated for almost a week, the doctor said. UCLA did not leave tubes in for more than a week. I said that she had been intubated for three weeks at Beth Israel in New York. The doctor had looked away. "The rule at Duke was also a week," he said, as if under the impression that mention of Duke would settle the question. Instead it enraged me: _What is Duke to me,_ I wanted to say but did not. _What is Duke to UCLA. Duke is North Carolina. UCLA is California. If I wanted the opinion of somebody in North Carolina I would call somebody in North Carolina._
Her husband is right now on a flight to New York, I said instead. Surely this can wait until he lands.
Not really, the doctor said. Since it's already on the schedule.
The day they decided to do the tracheostomy was also the day they turned off the EEG.
"Everything's looking good," they kept saying. "She's going to get better sooner once we do the trach. She's already off the EEG, maybe you didn't notice that."
Maybe I didn't notice that?
My only child?
My unconscious child?
Maybe I didn't notice when I walked into the ICU that morning that her brain waves were gone? That the monitor above her bed was dark, dead?
This was now being presented as progress but it had not seemed so when I first saw it. I remembered reading in _Intensive Care_ that the ICU nurses at San Francisco General turned off the monitors when a patient was near death, because their experience was that family members would focus on the screens rather than on the dying patient. I wondered if such a determination had been made in this case. Even after I was assured that this was not the case, I found myself averting my eyes from the blank EEG screen. I had grown used to watching her brain waves. It was a way of hearing her talk.
I did not see why, since the equipment was sitting there unused, they could not keep the EEG on.
Just in case.
I had asked.
I do not remember getting an answer. It was a period when I asked many questions that did not get answered. What answers I did get tended to the unsatisfactory, as in, "It's already on the schedule."
Everyone in the neuro units got a trach, they had kept saying to me that day. Everyone in the neuro units had muscular weaknesses that rendered the removal of the breathing tube problematic. A trach involved less risk of windpipe damage. A trach involved less risk of pneumonia. Look to your right, look to your left, both sides have trachs. A trach could be done with fentanyl and a muscle relaxant, she would be under anesthesia no more than an hour. A trach would leave no cosmetic effect to speak of, "only a little dimple scar," "as time goes by maybe no scar at all."
They kept mentioning this last point, as if the basis for my resistance to the trach was the scar. They were doctors, however freshly minted. I was not. Ergo, any concerns I had must be cosmetic, frivolous.
In fact I had no idea why I so resisted the trach.
I think now that my resistance came from the same fund of superstition from which I had been drawing since John died. If she did not have a trach she could be fine in the morning, ready to eat, talk, go home. If she did not have a trach we could be on a plane by the weekend. Even if they did not want her to fly, I could take her with me to the Beverly Wilshire, we could have our nails done, sit by the pool. If they still did not want her to fly we could drive out to Malibu, spend a few restorative days with Jean Moore.
If she did not have a trach.
This was demented, but so was I.
Through the printed blue cotton curtains that separated the beds I could hear people talking to their functionally absent husbands, fathers, uncles, co-workers. In the bed to Quintana's right was a man injured in a construction accident. The men who had been on the site at the time of the accident had come to see him. They stood around his bed and tried to explain what had happened. The rig, the cab, the crane, I heard a noise, I called out to Vinny. Each man gave his version. Each version differed slightly from the others. This was understandable, since each witness proceeded from a different point of view, but I recall wanting to intercede, help them coordinate their stories; it had seemed too much conflicting data to lay on someone with a traumatic brain injury.
"Everything's going along as usual and then all shit breaks loose," one said.
The injured man made no response, nor could he, since he had a trach.
To Quintana's left lay a man from Massachusetts who had been in the hospital for several months. He and his wife had been in Los Angeles visiting their children, there had been a fall from a ladder, he had seemed all right. One more perfectly ordinary day. Then he had trouble speaking. _Everything's going along as usual and then all shit breaks loose._ Now he had pneumonia. The children came and went. The wife was always there, pleading with him in a low mournful voice. The husband made no response: he too had a trach.
They did the trach for Quintana on the first of April, a Thursday afternoon.
By Friday morning enough of the sedation for the breathing tube had been metabolized out that she could open her eyes and squeeze my hand.
On Saturday I was told that the next day or Monday she would be moved from the ICU into a step-down neuro-observational unit on the seventh floor. The sixth and seventh floors at UCLA were all neuro.
I have no memory of when she was moved but I think it was some days after that.
One afternoon after she had been moved to the step-down unit I ran into the woman from Massachusetts in the Café Med courtyard.
Her husband too had left the ICU, and was moving now to what she called a "subacute rehab facility." We each knew that "subacute rehab facilities" were what medical insurance carriers and hospital discharge coordinators called nursing homes but this went unmentioned. She had wanted him moved to the eleven-bed acute rehab unit at UCLA Neuropsychiatric but he had not been accepted. That was the phrase she used, "not been accepted." She was concerned about how she would get to the subacute facility—one of the two with an available bed was near LAX, the other in Chinatown—because she did not drive. The children had jobs, important jobs, they could not always be driving her.
We sat in the sun.
I listened. She asked about my daughter.
I did not want to tell her that my daughter would be moving to the eleven-bed acute rehab unit at Neuropsychiatric.
At some point I noticed that I was trying like a sheepdog to herd the doctors, pointing out edema to one intern, reminding another to obtain a urine culture to check out the blood in the Foley catheter line, insisting on a Doppler ultrasound to see if the reason for the leg pain could be emboli, doggedly repeating—when the ultrasound indicated that she was in fact again throwing clots—that I wanted a specialist on coagulation called in to consult. I wrote down the name of the specialist I wanted. I offered to call him myself. These efforts did not endear me to the young men and women who made up the house staff ("If you want to manage this case I'm signing off," one finally said) but they made me feel less helpless.
**I** remember learning at UCLA the names of many tests and scales. The Kimura Box Test. The Two-Point Discrimination Test. The Glasgow Coma Scale, the Glasgow Outcome Scale. My comprehension of the meaning of these tests and scales remained obscure. I also remember learning, both at UCLA and before, at Beth Israel and Columbia-Presbyterian, the names of many resistant hospital bacteria. At Beth Israel there had been _Acinetobacter baumannii,_ which was resistant to vancomycin. "That's how you know it's a hospital infection," I recall being told by a doctor I asked at Columbia-Presbyterian. "If it's resistant to vanc it's hospital. Because vanc only gets used in hospital settings." At UCLA there had been MRSA, methicillin-resistant _Staphylococcus aureus,_ as opposed to MRSE, methicillin-resistant _Staphylococcus epidermidis,_ which was what they first thought they had cultured and which had seemed to more visibly alarm the staff. "I can't say why but since you're pregnant you may want to transfer off," one therapist advised another during the MRSE scare, glancing at me as if I might not understand. There were many other names of hospital bacteria, but those were the big hitters. Whatever bacteria was shown to be the source of the new fever or urinary tract infection, it would mandate gowns, gloves, masks. It would provoke heavy sighing among the aides who were required to suit up before entering the room to empty a wastebasket. The methicillin-resistant _Staphylococcus aureus_ at UCLA was an infection in the bloodstream, a bacteremia. When I heard this I expressed concern to the doctor who was examining Quintana that an infection in her bloodstream might again lead to sepsis.
"Well, you know, sepsis, it's a clinical term," the doctor said, then continued examining her.
I had pressed him.
"She's already in some degree of sepsis." He had seemed cheerful. "But we're continuing vanc. And so far her blood pressure is holding."
So. We were back to waiting to see if she lost blood pressure.
We were back to watching for septic shock.
Next we would be watching for ice floes on the East River.
In point of fact what I watched from the windows at UCLA was a swimming pool. I never once saw anyone swim in this swimming pool, although it was filled, filtered (I could see the little swirl where the water entered the filter and the bubbling where it reemerged), sparkling in the sun, and surrounded by patio tables, with parasols. One day when I was watching it I had a sharp memory of having gotten the idea to float candles and gardenias in the pool behind the house in Brentwood Park. We were having a party. It was an hour before the party but I was already dressed when the gardenia idea presented itself. I knelt on the coping and lit the candles and used the pool skimmer to guide the gardenias and candles into a random pattern. I stood up, pleased with the result. I put the pool skimmer away. When I glanced back at the pool, the gardenias had vanished and the candles were out, tiny drenched hulks bobbing furiously around the filter intake. They could not be sucked in because the filter was already clogged with gardenias. I spent the remaining forty-five minutes before the party cleaning the sodden gardenias from the filter and scooping out the candles and drying my dress with a hair dryer.
So far so good.
A memory of the house in Brentwood Park that involved neither John nor Quintana.
Unfortunately I thought of another. I had been alone in the kitchen of that house, late twilight, early evening, feeding the Bouvier we then had. Quintana was at Barnard. John was spending a few days at the apartment we had in New York. This would have been late 1987, the period during which he had begun talking about wanting us to spend more time in New York. I had discouraged this idea. Suddenly a red flashing light had filled the kitchen. I had gone to the window. There was an ambulance in front of a house across Marlboro Street, visible beyond the coral tree and two cords of stacked wood in our side yard. This was a neighborhood in which many houses, including the one across Marlboro Street, had side yards in which there were two cords of stacked wood. I had watched the house until the last light was gone and the ambulance left. The next morning when I was walking the Bouvier a neighbor told me what had happened. Two cords of stacked wood had not kept the woman in the house across Marlboro Street from becoming a widow at dinner.
I had called John in New York.
The red flashing light had by then seemed an urgent warning.
I said maybe he was right, we should spend more time in New York.
Watching the empty swimming pool from the window at UCLA I could see the vortex coming but could not deflect it. The vortex in this instance would be the memory's insistent appointment-in-Samarra aspect. Had I not made that call would Quintana have moved back to Los Angeles when she graduated from Barnard? Had she been living in Los Angeles would Beth Israel North have happened, would Presbyterian have happened, would she be in UCLA today? Had I not misread the meaning of the red flashing light in late 1987 would I be able to get in my car today and drive west on San Vicente and find John at the house in Brentwood Park? Standing in the pool? Rereading _Sophie's Choice_?
Would I need to relive every mistake? If by accident I remembered the morning we drove down to St.-Tropez from Tony Richardson's house in the hills and had coffee on the street and bought the fish for dinner would I also need to remember the night I refused to swim in the moonlight because the Mediterranean was polluted and I had a cut on my leg? If I remembered the gamecock at Portuguese Bend would I also need to remember the long drive home from dinner to that house, and how many nights as we passed the refineries on the San Diego Freeway one or the other of us had said the wrong thing? Or stopped speaking? Or imagined that the other had stopped speaking? "Each single one of the memories and expectations in which the libido is bound to the object is brought up and hypercathected, and detachment of the libido is accomplished in respect of it.... It is remarkable that this painful unpleasure is taken as a matter of course by us." So Freud explained what he saw as the "work" of grief, which as described sounded suspiciously like the vortex.
In point of fact the house in Brentwood Park from which I had seen the red flashing light and thought to evade it by moving to New York no longer existed. It was torn down to the ground and replaced (by a house marginally larger) a year after we sold it. The day we happened to be in Los Angeles and drove past the corner of Chadbourne and Marlboro and saw nothing left standing except the one chimney that allowed a tax advantage, I remembered the real estate agent telling me how meaningful it would be to the buyers were we to give them suitably inscribed copies of the books we had written in the house. We had done this. _Quintana and Friends, Dutch Shea, Jr.,_ and _The Red White and Blue_ for John, _Salvador, Democracy,_ and _Miami_ for me. When we saw the flattened lot from the car, Quintana, in the back seat, burst into tears. My first reaction was fury. I wanted the books back.
Did this corrective line of thinking stop the vortex?
Not hardly.
One morning when Quintana was still in the step-down unit because the persistence of her fever necessitated an echocardiogram to rule out endocarditis she lifted her right hand for the first time. This was significant because it was on the right side of her body that the effects of the trauma could be seen. Movement meant that the traumatized nerves remained alive. Later that day she kept wanting to get out of bed, and fell into a sulk like a child when I said I would not help her. My memory of that day is not at all mudgy.
It was decided in late April that sufficient time had passed since the surgery to allow her to fly to New York. The issue until then had been pressurization and the potential it presented for swelling. She would need trained personnel to accompany her. A commercial flight was ruled out. Arrangements were made to medevac her: an ambulance from UCLA to an airport, an air ambulance to Teterboro, and an ambulance from Teterboro to New York University Hospital, where she would do neuro-rehab at the Rusk Institute. Many conversations were held between UCLA and Rusk. Many records were faxed. A CDROM of CT scans was prepared. A date was set for what even I was now calling "the transfer": Thursday, April 29. Early that Thursday morning as I was about to check out of the Beverly Wilshire I got a call from somewhere in Colorado. The flight had been delayed. The plane was in Tucson, where it had landed with "mechanical difficulties." The mechanics in Tucson would look at it when they came in, at ten mountain time. By early afternoon Pacific time it was clear that the plane would not be flying. Another plane would be available the next morning, but the next morning was a Friday, and UCLA did not like to transfer on Fridays. At the hospital I pressed the discharge coordinator to agree to the Friday transfer.
To delay the transfer into the following week could only dispirit and confuse Quintana, I said, sure of my ground.
Rusk had no problem with a Friday night admission, I said, less sure.
There was nowhere I could stay over the weekend, I lied.
By the time the discharge coordinator had agreed to the Friday transfer Quintana was asleep. I sat for a while in the sun on the plaza outside the hospital and watched a helicopter circling to land on the roof. Helicopters were always landing on the roof at UCLA, suggesting trauma all over Southern California, remote scenes of highway carnage, distant falling cranes, bad days ahead for the husband or wife or mother or father who had not yet (even as the helicopter landed and the trauma team rushed the stretcher into triage) gotten the call. I remembered a summer day in 1970 when John and I stopped for a red light on St. Charles Avenue in New Orleans and noticed the driver of the next car suddenly slump over his steering wheel. His horn sounded. Several pedestrians ran up. A police officer materialized. The light changed, we drove on. John had been unable to get this image out of his mind. There he was, he had kept saying later. He was alive and then he was dead and we were watching. We saw him at the instant it happened. We knew he was dead before his family did.
_Just an ordinary day._
"And then—gone."
The day of the flight, when it came, had seemed to unfold with the nonsequential inexorability of a dream. When I turned on the news in the early morning there was a guerrilla action on the freeways, truckers protesting the price of gasoline. Huge semi trucks had been deliberately jackknifed and abandoned on Interstate 5. Witnesses reported that the first semis to stop had carried the TV crews. SUVs had been waiting to take the truckers themselves from the blocked freeway. The video as I watched it had seemed dislocatingly French, 1968. "Avoid the 5 if you can," the newscaster advised, then warned that according to "sources" (presumably the same TV crews who were traveling with the truckers) the truckers would also block other freeways, specifically the 710, the 60, and the 10. In the normal course of this kind of disruption it would have seemed unlikely that we could get from UCLA to the plane, but by the time the ambulance arrived at the hospital the entire French event seemed to have dematerialized, that phase of the dream forgotten.
There were other phases to come. I had been told the plane would be at Santa Monica Airport. The ambulance crew had been told Burbank. Someone made a call and was told Van Nuys. When we reached Van Nuys there were no planes in sight, only helicopters. That must be because you're going by helicopter, one of the ambulance attendants said, clearly ready to hand us off and get on with his day. I don't think so, I said, it's three thousand miles. The ambulance attendant shrugged and disappeared. The plane was located, a jet Cessna with room for the two pilots, the two paramedics, the stretcher to which Quintana was strapped, and, if I sat on a bench over the oxygen canisters, me. We took off. We flew for a while. One of the paramedics had a digital camera and was taking pictures of what he kept referring to as the Grand Canyon. I said I believed it was Lake Mead, Hoover Dam. I pointed out Las Vegas.
The paramedic continued taking pictures.
He also continued referring to it as the Grand Canyon.
_Why do you always have to be right,_ I remembered John saying.
It was a complaint, a charge, part of a fight.
He never understood that in my own mind I was never right. Once in 1971, when we were moving from Franklin Avenue to Malibu, I found a message stuck behind a picture I was taking down. The message was from someone to whom I had been close before I married John. He had spent a few weeks with us in the house on Franklin Avenue. This was the message: "You were wrong." I did not know what I had been wrong about but the possibilities seemed infinite. I burned the message. I never mentioned it to John.
_All right it's the Grand Canyon,_ I thought, shifting position on the bench over the oxygen canisters so that I could no longer see out the window.
Later we landed in a cornfield in Kansas to refuel. The pilots struck a deal with the two teenagers who managed the airstrip: during the refueling they would take their pickup to a McDonald's and bring back hamburgers. While we waited the paramedics suggested that we take turns getting some exercise. When my turn came I stood frozen on the tarmac for a moment, ashamed to be free and outside when Quintana could not be, then walked to where the runway ended and the corn started. There was a little rain and unstable air and I imagined a tornado coming. Quintana and I were Dorothy. We were both free. In fact we were out of here. John had written a tornado into _Nothing Lost._ I remembered reading the last-pass galleys in Quintana's room at Presbyterian and crying when I hit the passage with the tornado. The protagonists, J.J. McClure and Teresa Kean, see the tornado "in the far distance, black and then milky when the sun caught it, moving like a huge reticulated vertical snake." J.J. tells Teresa not to worry, this stretch had been hit before, twisters never hit the same place twice.
The tornado finally set down without incident just across the Wyoming line. That night in the Step Right Inn, at the junction between Higginson and Higgins, Teresa asked if it was true that tornadoes never hit the same place twice. "I don't know," J.J. said. "It seemed logical. Like lightning. You were worried. I didn't want you worried." It was as close a declaration of love as J.J. was capable of making.
Back in the plane, alone with Quintana, I took one of the hamburgers the teenagers had brought and tore it into pieces so that she and I could share. After a few bites she shook her head. She had been allowed solid food for only a week or so and could not eat more. There was still a feeding tube in place in case she could not eat at all.
"Am I going to make it," she asked then.
I chose to believe that she was asking if she would make it to New York.
"Definitely," I told her.
_I'm here. You're safe._
Definitely she would be okay in California, I remembered telling her five weeks before.
That night when we arrived at the Rusk Institute Gerry and Tony were waiting outside to meet the ambulance. Gerry asked how the flight had been. I said that we had shared a Big Mac in a cornfield in Kansas. "It wasn't a Big Mac," Quintana said. "It was a Quarter Pounder."
It had seemed to me on the day in Quintana's room at Presbyterian when I read the final proof for _Nothing Lost_ that there might be a grammatical error in the last sentence of the passage about J.J. McClure and Teresa Kean and the tornado. I never actually learned the rules of grammar, relying instead only on what sounded right, but there was something here that I was not sure sounded right. The sentence in the last-pass galleys read: "It was as close a declaration of love as J.J. was capable of making." I would have added a preposition: "It was as close _to_ a declaration of love as J.J. was capable of making."
I sat by the window and watched the ice floes on the Hudson and thought about the sentence. _It was as close a declaration of love as J.J. was capable of making._ It was not the kind of sentence, if you had written it, you would want wrong, but neither was it the kind of sentence, if that was the way you had written it, you would want changed. How had he written it? What did he have in mind? How would he want it? The decision was left to me. Any choice I made could carry the potential for abandonment, even betrayal. That was one reason I was crying in Quintana's hospital room. When I got home that night I checked the previous galleys and manuscripts. The error, if it was an error, had been there from the beginning. I left it as it was.
_Why do you always have to be right._
_Why do you always have to have the last word._
_For once in your life just let it go._
**12.**
**T** he day on which Quintana and I flew east on the Cessna that refueled in the cornfield in Kansas was April 30, 2004. During May and June and the half of July that she spent at the Rusk Institute there was very little I could do for her. I could go down to East Thirty-fourth Street to see her in the late afternoons, and most afternoons I did, but she was in therapy from eight in the morning until four in the afternoon and exhausted by six-thirty or seven. She was medically stable. She could eat, the feeding tube was still in place but no longer necessary. She was beginning to regain movement in her right leg and arm. She was regaining the mobility in her right eye that she needed to read. On weekend days when she did not have therapy Gerry would take her to lunch and a movie in the neighborhood. He would eat dinner with her. Friends would join them for picnic lunches. For as long as she was at Rusk I could water the plants on her windowsill, I could find the marginally different sneakers her therapist had decreed, I could sit with her in the greenhouse off the Rusk lobby watching the koi in the pond, but once she left Rusk I would no longer be able to do even that. She was reaching a point at which she would need once again to be, if she was to recover, on her own.
I determined to spend the summer reaching the same point.
I did not yet have the concentration to work but I could straighten my house, I could get on top of things, I could deal with my unopened mail.
That I was only now beginning the process of mourning did not occur to me.
Until now I had been able only to grieve, not mourn. Grief was passive. Grief happened. Mourning, the act of dealing with grief, required attention. Until now there had been every urgent reason to obliterate any attention that might otherwise have been paid, banish the thought, bring fresh adrenaline to bear on the crisis of the day. I had passed an entire season during which the only words I allowed myself to truly hear were recorded: _Wel-_ come to _U-C-L-A._
I began.
Among the letters and books and magazines that had arrived while I was in Los Angeles was a thick volume called _Lives of '54,_ prepared for what was by then the imminent fiftieth reunion of John's class at Princeton. I looked up John's entry. It read: "William Faulkner once said that a writer's obituary should read, 'He wrote books, then he died.' This is not an obit (at least as of 19 September 2002) and I am still writing books. So I'll stick with Faulkner."
I told myself: this was not an obit.
At least as of 19 September 2002.
I closed _Lives of '54._ A few weeks later I opened it again, and leafed through the other entries. One was from Donald H. ("Rummy") Rumsfeld, who noted: "After Princeton, the years seem like a blur, but the days seem more like rapid fire." I thought about this. Another, a three-page reflection by Lancelot L. ("Lon") Farrar, Jr., began: "Arguably our best-shared Princeton memory was Adlai Stevenson's address to the senior banquet."
I also thought about this.
I had been married to a member of the Class of '54 for forty years and he had never mentioned Adlai Stevenson's address to the senior banquet. I tried to think of anything at all he had mentioned about Princeton. He had many times mentioned the misguided entitlement he heard in the words "Princeton in the Nation's Service," the slogan Princeton had adopted from a speech by Woodrow Wilson. Other than that I could think of nothing except his saying a few days after our wedding (why did he say it? how had it come up?) that he had thought the Nassoons absurd. In fact, because he knew it amused me, he would sometimes impersonate the Nassoons in performance: the studied plunge of one hand into a pocket, the swirling of the ice cubes in the imaginary glass, the chin thrust into profile, the slight satisfied smile.
_As I remember you—_
_We stood there together on a high windy slope—Our faces to the weather and our hearts full of hope—_
For forty years this song had figured in a private joke between us and I could not remember its name, let alone the rest of its lyrics. Finding the lyrics became a matter of some urgency. I could find only a single reference on the Internet, in an obituary from the _Princeton Alumni Weekly:_
John MacFadyen '46 *49: John MacFadyen died February 18, 2000, in Damariscotta, Maine, near the village of Head Tide, where he and his wife, Mary-Esther, made their home. The cause of death was pneumonia, but his health failed for some years, particularly after his wife's death in 1977. John came to Princeton from Duluth in the 'accelerated' summer of 1942. Gifted in music and arts, he contributed songs to Triangle, including, "As I Remember You," long a Nassoons favorite. John was the life of any party with a piano. Remembered was his rendition of "Shine, Little Glow Worm," played upside down from under the piano. After U.S. Army service in Japan, he returned to Princeton for a master's of fine arts in architecture. In the New York firm Harrison & Abramowitz, he designed a main United Nations building. John received the Rome Prize in architecture, and, newly wed to Mary-Esther Edge, spent 1952–53 at Rome's American Academy. His private architectural practice, noted especially for the design of the Wolf Trap Center for the Arts outside Washington, was interrupted by his service, during the 1960s, under Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, as executive director of the first state arts council. The class joins his children, Camilla, Luke, William, and John and three grandchildren in mourning the loss of one of our most unforgettable members.
"As I Remember You," long a Nassoons favorite.
But how about the death of Mary-Esther?
And how long ago was it when the life of any party last played "Shine, Little Glow Worm" upside down from under the piano?
What would I give to be able to discuss this with John?
What would I give to be able to discuss anything at all with John? What would I give to be able to say one small thing that made him happy? What would that one small thing be? If I had said it in time would it have worked?
**A** night or two before he died John asked me if I was aware how many characters died in the novel he had just sent to press, _Nothing Lost._ He had been sitting in his office making a list of them. I added one he had overlooked. Some months after he died I picked up a legal pad on his desk to make a note. On the legal pad, in very faint pencil, his handwriting, was the list. It read:
_Teresa Kean_
_Parlance_
_Emmett McClure_
_Jack Broderick_
_Maurice Dodd_
_Four people in car_
_Charlie Buckles_
_Percy—electric chair (Percy Darrow)_
_Walden McClure_
Why was the pencil so faint, I wondered.
Why would he use a pencil that barely left a mark.
_When did he begin seeing himself as dead?_
"It's not black and white," a young doctor at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles had told me, in 1982, about the divide between life and death. We had been standing in an ICU at Cedars watching Nick and Lenny's daughter Dominique, who had the night before been strangled to the point of death. Dominique was lying there in the ICU as if she were asleep but she would not recover. She was breathing only on life support.
Dominique had been the four-year-old at John's and my wedding.
Dominique had been the cousin who supervised Quintana's parties and took her shopping for prom dresses and stayed with her if we were out of town. _Roses are red, violets are blue,_ read the card on a glass of flowers Quintana and Dominique left on the kitchen table for our return from one such trip. _I wish you weren't home and Dominique does too. Love, Happy Mother's Day, D & Q._
I remember thinking that the doctor was wrong. For as long as Dominique lay in this ICU she was alive. She could not keep herself alive unaided but she was alive. That was white. When they turned off the life support there would be a matter of some minutes before her systems shut down and then she would be dead. That was black.
There were no faint traces about dead, no pencil marks.
Any faint traces, any pencil marks, were left "a night or two before he died," or "a week or two before," in any case decisively _before he died._
There was a divide.
The abrupt finality of this divide was something about which I thought a great deal during the late spring and summer after I came home from UCLA. A close friend, Carolyn Lelyveld, died in May, at Memorial Sloan-Kettering. Tony Dunne's wife, Rosemary Breslin, died in June, at Columbia-Presbyterian. In each of those cases the phrase "after long illness" would have seemed to apply, trailing its misleading suggestion of release, relief, resolution. In each of those long illnesses the possibility of death had been in the picture, in Carolyn's case for some months, in Rosemary's since 1989, when she was thirty-two. Yet having seen the picture in no way deflected, when it came, the swift empty loss of the actual event. It was still black and white. Each of them had been in the last instant alive, and then dead. I realized that I had never believed in the words I had learned as a child in order to be confirmed as an Episcopalian: _I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Holy Catholic Church, the Communion of Saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting, amen._
I did not believe in the resurrection of the body.
Nor had Teresa Kean, Parlance, Emmett McClure, Jack Broderick, Maurice Dodd, the four people in the car, Charlie Buckles, Percy Darrow, or Walden McClure.
Nor had my Catholic husband.
I imagined this way of thinking to be clarifying, but in point of fact it was so muddled as to contradict even itself.
I did not believe in the resurrection of the body but I still believed that given the right circumstances he would come back.
He who left the faint traces before he died, the Number Three pencil.
One day it seemed important that I reread _Alcestis._ I had last read it at sixteen or seventeen, for a paper on Euripides, but recalled it as somehow relevant to this question of the "divide." I remembered the Greeks in general but _Alcestis_ in particular as good on the passage between life and death. They visualized it, they dramatized it, they made the dark water and the ferry into the mise-en-scène itself. I did reread _Alcestis._ What happens in the play is this: Admetus, the young king of Thessaly, has been condemned by Death to die. Apollo has interceded, gaining a promise from the Fates that Admetus, if he can find another mortal to die in his place, need not die immediately. Admetus approaches his friends and his parents, in vain. "I tell myself that we are a long time underground and that life is short, but sweet," his father tells him after declining to take his place.
Only the wife of Admetus, the young queen, Alcestis, volunteers. There is much wailing about her approaching death, but no one steps in to save her. She dies, at length: "I see the two-oared boat, / I see the boat on the lake! / And Charon, / Ferryman of the Dead, / Calls to me, his hand on the oar..." Admetus is overcome by guilt and shame and self-pity: "Alas! How bitter to me is that ferrying of which you speak! O my unhappy one, how we suffer!" He behaves in every way badly. He blames his parents. He insists that Alcestis is suffering less than he. After some pages (and quite enough) of this, Alcestis, by means of a remarkably (even for 430 B.C.) clumsy deus ex machina, is allowed to come back. She does not speak, but this is explained, again clumsily, as temporary, self-correcting: "You may not hear her voice until she is purified from her consecration to the Lower Gods, and until the third dawn is risen." If we rely on the text alone, the play ends happily.
This was not my memory of _Alcestis,_ which suggests that I was already given, at sixteen or seventeen, to editing the text as I read it. The principal divergences between the text and my memory appear toward the end, when Alcestis returns from the dead. In my memory, the reason Alcestis does not speak is that she declines to speak. Admetus, as I remembered it, presses her, at which point, to his distress, since what she turns out to have on her mind are his revealed failings, she does speak. Admetus, alarmed, shuts off the prospect of hearing more by calling for celebration. Alcestis acquiesces, but remains remote, other. Alcestis is on the face of it back with her husband and children, again the young queen of Thessaly, but the ending ("my" ending) could not be construed as happy.
In some ways this is a better (more "worked out") story, one that at least acknowledges that death "changes" the one who has died, but it opens up further questions about the divide. If the dead were truly to come back, what would they come back knowing? Could we face them? We who allowed them to die? The clear light of day tells me that I did not allow John to die, that I did not have that power, but do I believe that? Does he?
Survivors look back and see omens, messages they missed.
They remember the tree that died, the gull that splattered onto the hood of the car.
They live by symbols. They read meaning into the barrage of spam on the unused computer, the delete key that stops working, the imagined abandonment in the decision to replace it. The voice on my answering machine is still John's. The fact that it was his in the first place was arbitrary, having to do with who was around on the day the answering machine last needed programming, but if I needed to retape it now I would do so with a sense of betrayal. One day when I was talking on the telephone in his office I mindlessly turned the pages of the dictionary that he had always left open on the table by the desk. When I realized what I had done I was stricken: what word had he last looked up, what had he been thinking? By turning the pages had I lost the message? Or had the message been lost before I touched the dictionary? Had I refused to hear the message?
_I tell you that I shall not live two days,_ Gawain said.
Later in the summer I received another book from Princeton. It was a first edition copy of _True Confessions,_ in, as the booksellers say, "good condition, original dust jacket slightly frayed." In fact it was John's own copy: he had apparently sent it to a classmate who was organizing, for the fiftieth reunion of the Class of 1954, an exhibition of books written by class members. "It occupied the position of honor," the classmate wrote to me, "since John was unquestionably the most distinguished writer in our class."
I studied the original dust jacket, slightly frayed, on the copy of _True Confessions._
I remembered the first time I saw this jacket, or a mock-up of this jacket. It had sat around our house for days, as proposed designs and type samples and jackets for new books always did, the idea being to gauge whether or not it would wear well, continue to please the eye.
I opened the book. I looked at the dedication. "For Dorothy Burns Dunne, Joan Didion, Quintana Roo Dunne," the dedication read. "Generations."
I had forgotten this dedication. I had _not sufficiently appreciated it,_ a persistent theme by that stage of whatever I was going through.
**I** reread _True Confessions._ I found it darker than I had remembered it. I reread _Harp._ I found a different, less sunny, version of the summer we watched _Tenko_ and went to dinner at Morton's.
Something else had happened toward the end of that summer.
In August there had been a memorial service for an acquaintance (this was not in itself the "something else" that happened), a French tennis player in his sixties who had been killed in an accident. The memorial service had been on someone's court in Beverly Hills. "I met my wife at the service," John had written in _Harp,_ "coming directly from a doctor's appointment in Santa Monica, and as I sat there under the hot August sun, death was very much on my mind. I thought Anton had actually died under the best possible circumstances for him, a moment of terror as he realized the inevitable outcome of the accident, then an instant later the eternal dark."
The service ended and the parking attendant brought my car. As we drove away, my wife said, "What did the doctor say?"
There had not been an appropriate moment to mention my visit to the doctor in Santa Monica. "He scared the shit out of me, babe."
"What did he say?"
"He said I was a candidate for a catastrophic cardiac event."
A few pages further in _Harp,_ the writer, John, examines the veracity of this (his own) account. He notes a name changed, a certain dramatic restructuring, a minor time collapse. He asks himself: "Anything else?" This was the answer he gave: "When I told my wife he scared the shit out of me, I started to cry."
Either I had not remembered this or I had determinedly chosen not to remember this.
I had _not sufficiently appreciated it._
Was that what he experienced as he himself died? "A moment of terror as he realized the inevitable outcome of the accident, then an instant later the eternal dark"? In the sense that it happens one night and not another, the mechanism of a typical cardiac arrest could be construed as essentially accidental: a sudden spasm ruptures a deposit of plaque in a coronary artery, ischemia follows, and the heart, deprived of oxygen, enters ventricular fibrillation.
But how did he experience it?
The "moment of terror," the "eternal dark"? Did he accurately intuit this when he was writing _Harp_? Did he, as we would say to each other to the point of whether something was accurately reported or perceived, "get it right"? What about the "eternal dark" part? Didn't the survivors of near-death experiences always mention "the white light"? It occurs to me as I write that this "white light," usually presented dippily (evidence of afterlife, higher power), is in fact precisely consistent with the oxygen deficit that occurs as blood flow to the brain decreases. "Everything went white," those whose blood pressure has dropped say of the instant before they faint. "All the color drained out," those bleeding internally report of the moment when blood loss goes critical.
The "something else" that happened toward the end of that summer, which must have been 1987, was the series of events that followed the appointment with the doctor in Santa Monica and the memorial service on the tennis court in Beverly Hills. A week or so later an angiogram was done. The angiogram showed a 90 percent occlusion of the left anterior descending artery, or LAD. It also showed a long 90 percent narrowing in the circumflex marginal artery, which was considered significant mainly because the circumflex marginal artery fed the same area of the heart as the occluded LAD. "We call it the widowmaker, pal," John's cardiologist in New York later said of the LAD. A week or two after the angiogram (it was by then September of that year, still summer in Los Angeles) an angioplasty was done. The results after two weeks, as demonstrated by an exercise echocardiogram, were said to be "spectacular." Another exercise echo after six months confirmed this success. Thallium scans over the next few years and a subsequent angiogram in 1991 gave the same confirmation. I recall that John and I took different views of what had happened in 1987. As he saw it, he now had a death sentence, temporarily suspended. He often said, after the 1987 angioplasty, that he now knew how he was going to die. As I saw it, the timing had been providential, the intervention successful, the problem solved, the mechanism fixed. You no more know how you're going to die than I do or anyone else does, I remember saying. I realize now that his was the more realistic view.
**13.**
**I** used to tell John my dreams, not to understand them but to get rid of them, clear my mind for the day. "Don't tell me your dream," he would say when I woke in the morning, but in the end he would listen.
When he died I stopped having dreams.
In the early summer I began to dream again, for the first time since it happened. Since I can no longer pass them off to John I find myself thinking about them. I remember a passage from a novel I wrote in the mid-1990s, _The Last Thing He Wanted:_
Of course we would not need those last six notes to know what Elena's dreams were about.
Elena's dreams were about dying.
Elena's dreams were about getting old.
Nobody here has not had (will not have) Elena's dreams.
We all know that.
The point is that Elena didn't.
The point is that Elena remained remote most of all to herself, a clandestine agent who had so successfully compartmentalized her operation as to have lost access to her own cutouts.
I realize that Elena's situation is my own.
In one dream I am hanging a braided belt in a closet when it breaks. About a third of the belt just drops off in my hands. I show the two pieces to John. I say (or he says, who knows in dreams) that this was his favorite belt. I determine (again, I think I determine, I should have determined, my half-waking mind tells me to do the right thing) to find him an identical braided belt.
In other words to fix what I broke, _bring him back._
The similarity of this broken braided belt to the one I found in the plastic bag I was given at New York Hospital does not escape my attention. Nor does the fact that I am still thinking _I broke it, I did it, I am responsible._
In another dream John and I are flying to Honolulu. Many other people are going, we have assembled at Santa Monica Airport. Paramount has arranged planes. Production assistants are distributing boarding passes. I board. There is confusion. Others are boarding but there is no sign of John. I worry that there is a problem with his boarding pass. I decide that I should leave the plane, wait for him in the car. While I am waiting in the car I realize that the planes are taking off, one by one. Finally there is no one but me on the tarmac. My first thought in the dream is anger: John has boarded a plane without me. My second thought transfers the anger: Paramount has not cared enough about us to put us on the same plane.
What "Paramount" was doing in this dream would require another discussion, not relevant.
As I think about the dream I remember _Tenko. Tenko,_ as the series progresses, takes its imprisoned Englishwomen through their liberation from the Japanese camp and their reunions in Singapore with their husbands, which do not go uniformly well. There seemed for some a level at which the husband was held responsible for the ordeal of imprisonment. There seemed a sense, however irrational, of having been abandoned. Did I feel abandoned, left behind on the tarmac, did I feel anger at John for leaving me? Was it possible to feel anger and simultaneously to feel responsible?
I know the answer a psychiatrist would give to that question.
The answer would have to do with the well-known way in which anger creates guilt and vice versa.
I do not disbelieve this answer but it remains less suggestive to me than the unexamined image, the mystery of being left alone on the tarmac at Santa Monica Airport watching the planes take off one by one.
_We all know that._
_The point is that Elena didn't._
I wake at what seems to be three-thirty in the morning and find a television set on, MSNBC. Either Joe Scarborough or Keith Olbermann is talking to a husband and wife, passengers on a flight from Detroit to Los Angeles, "Northwest 327" (I actually write this down, to tell to John), on which "a terrorist tryout" is said to have occurred. The incident seems to have involved fourteen men said to be "Arabs" who, at some point after takeoff from Detroit, began gathering outside the coach lavatory, entering one by one.
The couple now being interviewed on-screen reports having exchanged signals with the crew.
The plane landed in Los Angeles. The "Arabs," all fourteen of whom had "expired visas" (this seemed to strike MSNBC as more unusual than it struck me), were detained, then released. Everyone, including the couple on-screen, had gone about their day. It was not, then, "a terrorist attack," which seemed to be what made it "a terrorist tryout."
I need in the dream to discuss this with John.
Or was it even a dream?
Who is the director of dreams, would he care?
Was it only by dreaming or writing that I could find out what I thought?
When the twilights got long in June I forced myself to eat dinner in the living room, where the light was. After John died I had begun eating by myself in the kitchen (the dining room was too big and the table in the living room was where he had died), but when the long twilights came I had a strong sense that he would want me to see the light. As the twilights began to shorten I retreated again to the kitchen. I began spending more evenings alone at home. I was working, I would say. By the time August came I was in fact working, or trying to work, but I also wanted not to be out, exposed. One night I found myself taking from the cupboard not one of the plates I normally used but a crackled and worn Spode plate, from a set mostly broken or chipped, in a pattern no longer made, "Wickerdale." This had been a set of dishes, cream with a garland of small rose and blue flowers and ecru leaves, that John's mother had given him for the apartment he rented on East Seventy-third Street before we were married. John's mother was dead. John was dead. And I still had, of the "Wickerdale" Spode, four dinner plates, five salad plates, three butter plates, a single coffee cup, and nine saucers. I came to prefer these dishes to all others. By the end of the summer I was running the dishwasher a quarter full just to make sure that at least one of the four "Wickerdale" dinner plates would be clean when I needed it.
At a point during the summer it occurred to me that I had no letters from John, not one. We had only rarely been far or long apart. There had been the week or two or three here and there when one of us was doing a piece. There had been a month in 1975 when I taught at Berkeley during the week and flew home to Los Angeles on PSA every weekend. There had been a few weeks in 1988 when John was in Ireland doing research for _Harp_ and I was in California covering the presidential primary. On all such occasions we had spoken on the telephone several times a day. We counted high telephone bills as part of our deal with each other, the same way we counted high bills for the hotels that enabled us to take Quintana out of school and fly somewhere and both work at the same time in the same suite. What I had instead of letters was a souvenir of one such hotel suite: a small black wafer-thin alarm clock he gave me one Christmas in Honolulu when we were doing a crash rewrite on a picture that never got made. It was one of those many Christmases on which we exchanged not "presents" but small practical things to make a tree. This alarm clock had stopped working during the year before he died, could not be repaired, and, after he died, could not be thrown out. It could not even be removed from the table by my bed. I also had a set of colored Buffalo pens, given to me the same Christmas, in the same spirit. I did many sketches of palm trees that Christmas, palm trees moving in the wind, palm trees dropping fronds, palm trees bent by the December _kona_ storms. The colored Buffalo pens had long since gone dry, but, again, could not be thrown out.
I remember having had on that particular New Year's Eve in Honolulu a sense of well-being so profound that I did not want to go to sleep. We had ordered mahimahi and Manoa lettuce vinaigrette for the three of us from room service. We had tried for a festive effect by arranging leis over the printers and computers we were using for the rewrite. We had found candles and lit them and played the tapes Quintana had wrapped up to put under the tree. John had been reading on the bed and had fallen asleep about eleven-thirty. Quintana had gone downstairs to see what was happening. I could see John sleeping. I knew Quintana was safe, she had been going downstairs to see what was happening in this hotel (sometimes alone, sometimes with Susan Traylor, who often came along with Quintana when we were working in Honolulu) since she was six or seven years old. I sat on a balcony overlooking the Waialae Country Club golf course and finished the bottle of wine we had drunk with dinner and watched the neighborhood fireworks all over Honolulu.
I remember one last present from John. It was my birthday, December 5, 2003. Snow had begun falling in New York around ten that morning and by evening seven inches had accumulated, with another six due. I remember snow avalanching off the slate roof at St. James' Church across the street. A plan to meet Quintana and Gerry at a restaurant was canceled. Before dinner John sat by the fire in the living room and read to me out loud. The book from which he read was a novel of my own, _A Book of Common Prayer,_ which he happened to have in the living room because he was rereading it to see how something worked technically. The sequence he read out loud was one in which Charlotte Douglas's husband Leonard pays a visit to the narrator, Grace Strasser-Mendana, and lets her know that what is happening in the country her family runs will not end well. The sequence is complicated (this was in fact the sequence John had meant to reread to see how it worked technically), broken by other action and requiring the reader to pick up the undertext in what Leonard Douglas and Grace Strasser-Mendana say to each other. "Goddamn," John said to me when he closed the book. "Don't ever tell me again you can't write. That's my birthday present to you."
I remember tears coming to my eyes.
I feel them now.
In retrospect this had been my omen, my message, the early snowfall, the birthday present no one else could give me.
He had twenty-five nights left to live.
**14.**
**T** here came a time in the summer when I began feeling fragile, unstable. A sandal would catch on a sidewalk and I would need to run a few steps to avoid the fall. What if I didn't? What if I fell? What would break, who would see the blood streaming down my leg, who would get the taxi, who would be with me in the emergency room? Who would be with me once I came home?
I stopped wearing sandals. I bought two pairs of Puma sneakers and wore them exclusively.
I started leaving lights on through the night. If the house was dark I could not get up to make a note or look for a book or check to make sure I had turned off the stove. If the house was dark I would lie there immobilized, entertaining visions of household peril, the books that could slide from the shelf and knock me down, the rug that could slip in the hallway, the washing machine hose that could have flooded the kitchen unseen in the dark, the better to electrocute whoever turned on a light to check the stove. That this was something more than prudent caution first came to my attention one afternoon when an acquaintance, a young writer, came by to ask if he could write a profile about me. I heard myself say, too urgent, that I could not possibly be written about. I was in no shape to be written about. I heard myself overstressing this, fighting to regain balance, avert the fall.
I thought about this later.
I realized that for the time being I could not trust myself to present a coherent face to the world.
Some days later I was stacking some copies of _Daedalus_ that were lying around the house. Stacking magazines seemed at that point the limit of what I could do by way of organizing my life. Careful not to push this limit too far, I opened one of the copies of _Daedalus._ There was a story by Roxana Robinson, called "Blind Man." In this story, a man is driving in the rain at night to deliver a lecture. The reader picks up danger signals: the man cannot immediately recall the subject of his lecture, he takes his small rented car into the fast lane oblivious to an approaching SUV; there are references to someone, "Juliet," to whom something troubling has happened. Gradually we learn that Juliet was the man's daughter, who, on her first night alone after a college suspension and rehab and a restorative few weeks in the country with her mother and father and sister, had done enough cocaine to burst an artery in her brain and die.
One of the several levels on which the story disturbed me (the most obvious being the burst artery in the child's brain) was this: the father has been rendered fragile, unstable. The father is me.
In fact I know Roxana Robinson slightly. I think of calling her. She knows something I am just beginning to learn. But it would be unusual, intrusive, to call her: I have met her only once, at a cocktail party on a roof. Instead I think about people I know who have lost a husband or wife or child. I think particularly about how these people looked when I saw them unexpectedly—on the street, say, or entering a room—during the year or so after the death. What struck me in each instance was how exposed they seemed, how raw.
How fragile, I understand now.
How unstable.
I open another issue of _Daedalus,_ this one devoted to the concept of "happiness." One piece on happiness, the joint work of Robert Biswas-Diener of the University of Oregon and Ed Diener and Maya Tamir of the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, noted that although "research has shown that people can adapt to a wide range of good and bad life events in less than two months," there remained "some events to which people are slow or unable to adapt completely." Unemployment was one such event. "We also find," the authors added, "that it takes the average widow many years after her spouse's death to regain her former level of life satisfaction."
Was I "the average widow"? What in fact would have been my "former level of life satisfaction"?
I see a doctor, a routine follow-up. He asks how I am. This should not be, in a doctor's office, an unforeseeable question. Yet I find myself in sudden tears. This doctor is a friend. John and I went to his wedding. He married the daughter of friends who lived across the street from us in Brentwood Park. The ceremony took place under their jacaranda tree. In the first days after John died this doctor had come by the house. When Quintana was at Beth Israel North he had gone up with me on a Sunday afternoon and talked to the doctors on the unit. When Quintana was at Columbia-Presbyterian, his own hospital although she was not his patient, he had stopped in to see her every evening. When Quintana was at UCLA and he happened to be in California he had taken an afternoon to come by the neuroscience unit and talk to the doctors there. He had talked to them and then he had talked to the neuro people at Columbia and then he had explained it all to me. He had been kind, helpful, encouraging, a true friend. In return I was crying in his office because he asked how I was.
"I just can't see the upside in this," I heard myself say by way of explanation.
Later he said that if John had been sitting in the office he would have found this funny, as he himself had found it. "Of course I knew what you meant to say, and John would have known too, you meant to say you couldn't see the light at the end of the tunnel."
I agreed, but this was not in fact the case.
I had meant pretty much exactly what I said: I couldn't see the upside in this.
As I thought about the difference between the two sentences I realized that my impression of myself had been of someone who could look for, and find, the upside in any situation. I had believed in the logic of popular songs. I had looked for the silver lining. I had walked on through the storm. It occurs to me now that these were not even the songs of my generation. They were the songs, and the logic, of the generation or two that preceded my own. The score for my generation was Les Paul and Mary Ford, "How High the Moon," a different logic altogether. It also occurs to me, not an original thought but novel to me, that the logic of those earlier songs was based on self-pity. The singer of the song about looking for the silver lining believes that clouds have come her way. The singer of the song about walking on through the storm assumes that the storm could otherwise take her down.
**I** kept saying to myself that I had been lucky all my life. The point, as I saw it, was that this gave me no right to think of myself as unlucky now.
This was what passed for staying on top of the self-pity question.
I even believed it.
Only at a later point did I begin to wonder: what exactly did "luck" have to do with it? I could not on examination locate any actual instances of "luck" in my history. ("That was lucky," I once said to a doctor after a test revealed a soluble problem that would have been, untreated, less soluble. "I wouldn't call it lucky," she said, "I'd call it the game plan.") Nor did I believe that "bad luck" had killed John and struck Quintana. Once when she was still at the Westlake School for Girls, Quintana mentioned what she seemed to consider the inequable distribution of bad news. In the ninth grade she had come home from a retreat at Yosemite to learn that her uncle Stephen had committed suicide. In the eleventh grade she had been woken at Susan's at six-thirty in the morning to learn that Dominique had been murdered. "Most people I know at Westlake don't even know anyone who died," she said, "and just since I've been there I've had a murder and a suicide in my family."
"It all evens out in the end," John said, an answer that bewildered me (what did it mean, couldn't he do better than that?) but one that seemed to satisfy her.
Several years later, after Susan's mother and father died within a year or two of each other, Susan asked if I remembered John telling Quintana that it all evened out in the end. I said I remembered.
"He was right," Susan said. "It did."
I recall being shocked. It had never occurred to me that John meant that bad news will come to each of us. Either Susan or Quintana had surely misunderstood. I explained to Susan that John had meant something entirely different: he had meant that people who get bad news will eventually get their share of good news.
"That's not what I meant at all," John said.
"I knew what he meant," Susan said.
Had I understood nothing?
Consider this matter of "luck."
Not only did I not believe that "bad luck" had killed John and struck Quintana but in fact I believed precisely the opposite: I believed that I should have been able to prevent whatever happened. Only after the dream about being left on the tarmac at the Santa Monica Airport did it occur to me that there was a level on which I was not actually holding myself responsible. I was holding John and Quintana responsible, a significant difference but not one that took me anywhere I needed to be. _For once in your life just let it go._
**15.**
**A** few months after John died, in the late winter of 2004, after Beth Israel and Presbyterian but before UCLA, I was asked by Robert Silvers at _The New York Review of Books_ if I wanted him to submit my name for credentials to cover the Democratic and Republican summer conventions. I had looked at the dates: late July in Boston for the Democratic convention, the week before Labor Day in New York for the Republican convention. I had said yes. At the time it had seemed a way of committing to a normal life without needing actually to live it for another season or two, until spring had come and summer had come and fall was near.
Spring had come and gone, largely at UCLA.
In the middle of July Quintana was discharged from the Rusk Institute.
Ten days later I went to Boston for the Democratic convention. I had not anticipated that my new fragility would travel to Boston, a city devoid, I thought, of potentially tricky associations. I had been with Quintana in Boston only once, on a book tour. We had stayed at the Ritz. Her favorite stop on this tour had been Dallas. She had found Boston "all white." "You mean you didn't see many black people in Boston," Susan Traylor's mother had said when Quintana got back to Malibu and reported on her trip. "No," Quintana had said. "I mean it's not in color." The last several times I had needed to be in Boston I had gone alone, and in each case arranged the day so as to get the last shuttle back; the single time I could remember being there with John was for a preview of _True Confessions,_ and all I remembered of that was having lunch at the Ritz and walking with John to Brooks Brothers to pick up a shirt and hearing, after the picture was shown and the response evaluated, this disheartening assessment of its commercial prospects: _True Confessions_ could do very well, the market researcher said, among adults with sixteen-plus years of education.
I would not be staying at the Ritz.
There would be no need to go to Brooks Brothers.
There would be market researchers, but what bad news they delivered would not be mine.
I did not realize that there was still room for error until I was walking to the Fleet Center for the opening of the convention and found myself in tears. The first day of the Democratic convention was July 26, 2004. The day of Quintana's wedding had been July 26, 2003. Even as I waited in the security line, even as I picked up releases in the press center, even as I located my seat and stood for the national anthem, even as I bought a hamburger at the McDonald's in the Fleet Center and sat on the lowest step of a barricaded stairway to eat it, the details sprang back. "In another world" was the phrase that would not leave my mind. Quintana sitting in the sunlight in the living room having her hair braided. John asking me which of two ties I preferred. Opening the boxes of flowers on the grass outside the cathedral and shaking the water off the leis. John giving a toast before Quintana cut the cake. The pleasure he took in the day and the party and her transparent happiness. "More than one more day," he had whispered to her before he walked her to the altar.
"More than one more day," he had whispered to her on the five days and nights he saw her in the Beth Israel North ICU.
"More than one more day," I had whispered to her in his absence on the days and nights that followed.
_As you used to say to me,_ she had said when she stood in her black dress at St. John the Divine on the day we committed his ashes.
I recall being seized by the overwhelming conviction that I needed to get out of the Fleet Center, now. I have only rarely experienced panic but what set in next was recognizably panic. I remember trying to calm myself by seeing it as a Hitchcock movie, every shot planned to terrify but ultimately artifice, a game. There was the proximity of my assigned section to the netting that held the balloons for the balloon drop. There were the shadowy silhouettes moving on the high catwalks. There was the steam or smoke leaking from a vent over the sky boxes. There were, once I fled my seat, the corridors that seemed to go nowhere, mysteriously emptied, the walls slanted and distorted (the Hitchcock movie I was seeing would have to be _Spellbound_ ) ahead of me. There were the immobilized escalators. There were the elevators that did not respond to the push of the button. There were, once I managed to get downstairs, the empty commuter trains frozen in place beyond the locked glass wall (again, slanted and distorted as I approached it) that opened to the North Station tracks.
I got out of the Fleet Center.
I watched the end of that night's session on television in my room at the Parker House. There had seemed about this room at the Parker House when I first walked into it the day before something déjà vu, which I had put from my mind. Only now, as I was watching C-SPAN and listening to the air conditioner cycle on and off on its own schedule, did I remember: I had stayed in just such a room at the Parker House for a few nights between my junior and senior years at Berkeley. I had been in New York for a college promotion _Mademoiselle_ then ran (the "Guest Editor" program, memorialized by Sylvia Plath in _The Bell Jar_ ) and was returning to California via Boston and Quebec, an "educational" itinerary arranged, in retrospect dreamily, by my mother. The air conditioner had been cycling on and off on its own schedule even in 1955. I could remember sleeping until afternoon, miserable, then taking a subway to Cambridge, where I must have walked around aimlessly and taken the subway back.
These shards from 1955 were coming to me in such shredded (or "spotty," or even "mudgy") form (what did I do in Cambridge, what possibly could I have done in Cambridge?) that I had trouble holding them, but I tried, because for so long as I was thinking about the summer of 1955 I would not be thinking about John or Quintana.
In the summer of 1955 I had taken a train from New York to Boston.
In the summer of 1955 I had taken another train from Boston to Quebec. I stayed in a room at the Château Frontenac that did not have its own bathtub.
_Did mothers always try to press on their daughters the itineraries of which they themselves had dreamed?_
_Did I?_
This was not working.
I tried going further back, earlier than 1955, to Sacramento, high school dances at Christmastime. This felt safe. I thought about the way we danced, close. I thought about the places on the river we went after the dances. I thought about the fog on the levee driving home.
I fell asleep maintaining focus on the fog on the levee.
I woke at four a.m. The point about the fog on the levee was that you couldn't see the white line, someone had to walk ahead to guide the driver. Unfortunately there had been another place in my life where the fog got so thick that I had to walk ahead of the car.
The house on the Palos Verdes Peninsula.
The one to which we brought Quintana when she was three days old.
When you came off the Harbor Freeway and through San Pedro and onto the drive above the sea you hit the fog.
You (I) got out of the car to walk the white line.
The driver of the car was John.
I did not risk waiting for the panic to follow. I got a taxi to Logan. I avoided looking, as I bought a coffee at the Starbucks franchise outside the Delta shuttle, at its decorative garland of red-white-and-blue foil strips, presumably conceived as a festive "convention" touch but instead glittering forlornly, Christmas in the tropics. _Mele Kalikimaka._ Merry Christmas in Hawaiian. The little black alarm clock I could not throw away. The dried-out Buffalo pens I could not throw away. On the flight to LaGuardia I remember thinking that the most beautiful things I had ever seen had all been seen from airplanes. The way the American west opens up. The way in which, on a polar flight across the Arctic, the islands in the sea give way imperceptibly to lakes on the land. The sea between Greece and Cyprus in the morning. The Alps on the way to Milan. I saw all those things with John.
How could I go back to Paris without him, how could I go back to Milan, Honolulu, Bogotá?
I couldn't even go to Boston.
A week or so before the Democratic convention, Dennis Overbye of _The New York Times_ had reported a story involving Stephen W. Hawking. At a conference in Dublin, according to the _Times,_ Dr. Hawking said that he had been wrong thirty years before when he asserted that information swallowed by a black hole could never be retrieved from it. This change of mind was "of great consequence to science," according to the _Times,_ "because if Dr. Hawking had been right, it would have violated a basic tenet of modern physics: that it is always possible to reverse time, run the proverbial film backward and reconstruct what happened in, say, the collision of two cars or the collapse of a dead star into a black hole."
I had clipped this story, and carried it with me to Boston.
Something in the story seemed urgent to me, but I did not know what it was until a month later, the first afternoon of the Republican convention in Madison Square Garden. I was on the Tower C escalator. The last time I had been on such an escalator in the Garden was with John, in November, the night before we flew to Paris. We had gone with David and Jean Halberstam to see the Lakers play the Knicks. David had gotten seats through the commissioner of the NBA, David Stern. The Lakers won. Rain had been sluicing down the glass beyond the escalator. "It's good luck, an omen, a great way to start this trip," I remembered John saying. He did not mean the good seats and he did not mean the Laker win and he did not mean the rain, he meant we were doing something we did not ordinarily do, which had become an issue with him. We were not having any fun, he had recently begun pointing out. I would take exception (didn't we do this, didn't we do that) but I had also known what he meant. He meant doing things not because we were expected to do them or had always done them or should do them but because we wanted to do them. He meant wanting. He meant living.
This trip to Paris was the one over which we had fought.
This trip to Paris was the one he said he needed to take because otherwise he would never see Paris again.
I was still on the Tower C escalator.
Another vortex revealed itself.
The last time I covered a convention at Madison Square Garden had been 1992, the Democratic convention.
John would wait until I came uptown at eleven or so to have dinner with me. We would walk to Coco Pazzo on those hot July nights and split an order of pasta and a salad at one of the little unreserved tables in the bar. I do not think we ever discussed the convention during these late dinners. On the Sunday afternoon before it began I had talked him into going uptown with me to a Louis Farrakhan event that never materialized, and between the improvisational nature of the scheduling and the walk back downtown from 125th Street his tolerance for the 1992 Democratic convention was pretty much exhausted.
Still.
He waited every night to eat with me.
I thought about all this on the Tower C escalator and suddenly it occurred to me: I had spent a minute or two on this escalator thinking about the November night in 2003 before we flew to Paris and about those July nights in 1992 when we would eat late at Coco Pazzo and about the afternoon we had stood around 125th Street waiting for the Louis Farrakhan event that never happened. I had stood on this escalator thinking about those days and nights without once thinking I could change their outcome. I realized that since the last morning of 2003, the morning after he died, I had been trying to reverse time, run the film backward.
It was now eight months later, August 30, 2004, and I still was.
The difference was that all through those eight months I had been trying to substitute an alternate reel. Now I was trying only to reconstruct the collision, the collapse of the dead star.
**16.**
**I** said I knew what John meant when he said we were not having any fun.
What he meant was something that had to do with Joe and Gertrude Black, a couple we had met in Indonesia in December 1980. We were there on a USIA trip, giving lectures and meeting Indonesian writers and academics. The Blacks had shown up in a classroom one morning at Gadjah Mada University in Jogjakarta, an American couple apparently at home in the remote and in many ways alien tropic of central Java, their faces open and strikingly luminous. "The critical theories of Mr. I. A. Richards," I remember a student asking me that morning. "What think?" Joe Black was then in his fifties, Gertrude a year or two younger but again, I suppose in her fifties. He had retired from the Rockefeller Foundation and come to Jogjakarta to teach political science at Gadjah Mada. He had grown up in Utah. As a young man he had been an extra in John Ford's _Fort Apache._ He and Gertrude had four children, one of whom had been, he said, hit hard by the 1960s. We talked to the Blacks only twice, once at Gadjah Mada and a day later at the airport, when they came to see us off, but each of these conversations was curiously open, as if we had found ourselves stranded together on an island. Over the years John mentioned Joe and Gertrude Black frequently, in each case as exemplary, what he thought of as the best kind of American. They represented something personal to him. They were models for the life he wanted us eventually to live. Because he had mentioned them again a few days before he died I searched his computer for their names. I found the names in a file called "AAA Random Thoughts," one of the files in which he kept notes for the book he was trying to get off the ground. The note after their names was cryptic: "Joe and Gertrude Black: The concept of service."
I knew what he meant by that too.
He had wanted to be Joe and Gertrude Black. So had I. We hadn't made it. "Fritter away" was a definition in the crossword that morning. The word it defined was five letters, "waste." Was that what we had done? Was that what he thought we had done?
Why didn't I listen when he said we weren't having any fun?
Why didn't I move to change our life?
According to the computer dating the file called "AAA Random Thoughts" was last amended at 1:08 p.m. on December 30, 2003, the day of his death, six minutes after I saved the file that ended _how does_ " _flu_ " _morph into whole-body infection._ He would have been in his office and I would have been in mine. I cannot stop where this leads me. We should have been together. Not necessarily in a classroom in central Java (I do not have a sufficiently deluded view of either of us to see that scenario intact, nor was a classroom in central Java what he meant) but together. The file called "AAA Random Thoughts" was eighty pages long. What it was he added or amended and saved at 1:08 p.m. that afternoon I have no way of knowing.
**17.**
**G** rief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it. We anticipate (we know) that someone close to us could die, but we do not look beyond the few days or weeks that immediately follow such an imagined death. We misconstrue the nature of even those few days or weeks. We might expect if the death is sudden to feel shock. We do not expect this shock to be obliterative, dislocating to both body and mind. We might expect that we will be prostrate, inconsolable, crazy with loss. We do not expect to be literally crazy, cool customers who believe that their husband is about to return and need his shoes. In the version of grief we imagine, the model will be "healing." A certain forward movement will prevail. The worst days will be the earliest days. We imagine that the moment to most severely test us will be the funeral, after which this hypothetical healing will take place. When we anticipate the funeral we wonder about failing to "get through it," rise to the occasion, exhibit the "strength" that invariably gets mentioned as the correct response to death. We anticipate needing to steel ourselves for the moment: will I be able to greet people, will I be able to leave the scene, will I be able even to get dressed that day? We have no way of knowing that this will not be the issue. We have no way of knowing that the funeral itself will be anodyne, a kind of narcotic regression in which we are wrapped in the care of others and the gravity and meaning of the occasion. Nor can we know ahead of the fact (and here lies the heart of the difference between grief as we imagine it and grief as it is) the unending absence that follows, the void, the very opposite of meaning, the relentless succession of moments during which we will confront the experience of meaninglessness itself.
As a child I thought a great deal about meaninglessness, which seemed at the time the most prominent negative feature on the horizon. After a few years of failing to find meaning in the more commonly recommended venues I learned that I could find it in geology, so I did. This in turn enabled me to find meaning in the Episcopal litany, most acutely in the words _as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end,_ which I interpreted as a literal description of the constant changing of the earth, the unending erosion of the shores and mountains, the inexorable shifting of the geological structures that could throw up mountains and islands and could just as reliably take them away. I found earthquakes, even when I was in them, deeply satisfying, abruptly revealed evidence of the scheme in action. That the scheme could destroy the works of man might be a personal regret but remained, in the larger picture I had come to recognize, a matter of abiding indifference. No eye was on the sparrow. No one was watching me. _As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end._ On the day it was announced that the atomic bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima those were the words that came immediately to my ten-year-old mind. When I heard a few years later about mushroom clouds over the Nevada test site those were again the words that came to mind. I began waking before dawn, imagining that the fireballs from the Nevada test shots would light up the sky in Sacramento.
Later, after I married and had a child, I learned to find equal meaning in the repeated rituals of domestic life. Setting the table. Lighting the candles. Building the fire. Cooking. All those soufflés, all that crème caramel, all those daubes and albóndigas and gumbos. Clean sheets, stacks of clean towels, hurricane lamps for storms, enough water and food to see us through whatever geological event came our way. _These fragments I have shored against my ruins,_ were the words that came to mind then. These fragments mattered to me. I believed in them. That I could find meaning in the intensely personal nature of my life as a wife and mother did not seem inconsistent with finding meaning in the vast indifference of geology and the test shots; the two systems existed for me on parallel tracks that occasionally converged, notably during earthquakes. In my unexamined mind there was always a point, John's and my death, at which the tracks would converge for a final time. On the Internet I recently found aerial photographs of the house on the Palos Verdes Peninsula in which we had lived when we were first married, the house to which we had brought Quintana home from St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica and put her in her bassinet by the wisteria in the box garden. The photographs, part of the California Coastal Records Project, the point of which was to document the entire California coastline, were hard to read conclusively, but the house as it had been when we lived in it appeared to be gone. The tower where the gate had been seemed intact but the rest of the structure looked unfamiliar. There seemed to be a swimming pool where the wisteria and box garden had been. The area itself was identified as "Portuguese Bend landslide." You could see the slumping of the hill where the slide had occurred. You could also see, at the base of the cliff on the point, the cave into which we used to swim when the tide was at exactly the right flow.
The swell of clear water.
That was one way my two systems could have converged.
We could have been swimming into the cave with the swell of clear water and the entire point could have slumped, slipped into the sea around us. The entire point slipping into the sea around us was the kind of conclusion I anticipated. I did not anticipate cardiac arrest at the dinner table.
Y _ou sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends._
_The question of self-pity._
People in grief think a great deal about self-pity. We worry it, dread it, scourge our thinking for signs of it. We fear that our actions will reveal the condition tellingly described as "dwelling on it." We understand the aversion most of us have to "dwelling on it." Visible mourning reminds us of death, which is construed as unnatural, a failure to manage the situation. "A single person is missing for you, and the whole world is empty," Philippe Ariès wrote to the point of this aversion in _Western Attitudes toward Death._ "But one no longer has the right to say so aloud." We remind ourselves repeatedly that our own loss is nothing compared to the loss experienced (or, the even worse thought, not experienced) by he or she who died; this attempt at corrective thinking serves only to plunge us deeper into the self-regarding deep. _(Why didn't I see that, why am I so selfish.)_ The very language we use when we think about self-pity betrays the deep abhorrence in which we hold it: self-pity is _feeling sorry for yourself,_ self-pity is _thumb-sucking,_ self-pity is _boo hoo poor me,_ self-pity is the condition in which those feeling sorry for themselves _indulge,_ or even _wallow._ Self-pity remains both the most common and the most universally reviled of our character defects, its pestilential destructiveness accepted as given. "Our worst enemy," Helen Keller called it. _I never saw a wild thing / sorry for itself,_ D. H. Lawrence wrote, in a much-quoted four-line homily that turns out on examination to be free of any but tendentious meaning. _A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough / without ever having felt sorry for itself._
This may be what Lawrence (or we) would prefer to believe about wild things, but consider those dolphins who refuse to eat after the death of a mate. Consider those geese who search for the lost mate until they themselves become disoriented and die. In fact the grieving have urgent reasons, even an urgent need, to feel sorry for themselves. Husbands walk out, wives walk out, divorces happen, but these husbands and wives leave behind them webs of intact associations, however acrimonious. Only the survivors of a death are truly left alone. The connections that made up their life—both the deep connections and the apparently (until they are broken) insignificant connections—have all vanished. John and I were married for forty years. During all but the first five months of our marriage, when John was still working at _Time,_ we both worked at home. We were together twenty-four hours a day, a fact that remained a source of both merriment and foreboding to my mother and aunts. "For richer for poorer but never for lunch," one or another of them frequently said in the early years of our marriage. I could not count the times during the average day when something would come up that I needed to tell him. This impulse did not end with his death. What ended was the possibility of response. I read something in the paper that I would normally have read to him. I notice some change in the neighborhood that would interest him: Ralph Lauren has expanded into more space between Seventy-first and Seventy-second Streets, say, or the empty space where the Madison Avenue Bookshop used to be has finally been leased. I recall coming in from Central Park one morning in mid-August with urgent news to report: the deep summer green has faded overnight from the trees, the season is already changing. _We need to make a plan for the fall,_ I remember thinking. _We need to decide where we want to be at Thanksgiving, Christmas, the end of the year._
I am dropping my keys on the table inside the door before I fully remember. There is no one to hear this news, nowhere to go with the unmade plan, the uncompleted thought. There is no one to agree, disagree, talk back. "I think I am beginning to understand why grief feels like suspense," C. S. Lewis wrote after the death of his wife. "It comes from the frustration of so many impulses that had become habitual. Thought after thought, feeling after feeling, action after action, had H. for their object. Now their target is gone. I keep on through habit fitting an arrow to the string, then I remember and have to lay the bow down. So many roads lead thought to H. I set out on one of them. But now there's an impassable frontierpost across it. So many roads once; now so many cul de sacs."
We are repeatedly left, in other words, with no further focus than ourselves, a source from which self-pity naturally flows. Each time this happens (it happens still) I am struck again by the permanent impassibility of the divide. Some people who have lost a husband or wife report feeling that person's presence, receiving that person's advice. Some report actual sightings, what Freud described in "Mourning and Melancholia" as "a clinging to the object through the medium of a hallucinatory wishful psychosis." Others describe not a visible apparition but just a "very strongly felt presence." I experienced neither. There have been a few occasions (the day they wanted to do the trach at UCLA, for example) on which I asked John point blank what to do. I said I needed his help. I said I could not do this alone. I said these things out loud, actually vocalized the words.
I am a writer. Imagining what someone would say or do comes to me as naturally as breathing.
Yet on each occasion these pleas for his presence served only to reinforce my awareness of the final silence that separated us. Any answer he gave could exist only in my imagination, my edit. For me to imagine what he could say only in my edit would seem obscene, a violation. I could no more know what he would say about UCLA and the trach than I could know whether he meant to leave the "to" out of the sentence about J.J. McClure and Teresa Kean and the tornado. We imagined we knew everything the other thought, even when we did not necessarily want to know it, but in fact, I have come to see, we knew not the smallest fraction of what there was to know.
W _hen something happens to me,_ he would frequently say.
_Nothing will happen to you,_ I would say.
_But if it does._
_If it does,_ he would continue. If it did, for example, I was not to move to a smaller apartment. If it did I would be surrounded by people. If it did I would need to make plans to feed these people. If it did I would marry again within the year.
_You don't understand,_ I would say.
And in fact he did not. Nor did I: we were equally incapable of imagining the reality of life without the other. This will not be a story in which the death of the husband or wife becomes what amounts to the credit sequence for a new life, a catalyst for the discovery that (a point typically introduced in such accounts by the precocious child of the bereaved) "you can love more than one person." Of course you can, but marriage is something different. Marriage is memory, marriage is time. "She didn't know the songs," I recall being told that a friend of a friend had said after an attempt to repeat the experience. Marriage is not only time: it is also, parodoxically, the denial of time. For forty years I saw myself through John's eyes. I did not age. This year for the first time since I was twenty-nine I saw myself through the eyes of others. This year for the first time since I was twenty-nine I realized that my image of myself was of someone significantly younger. This year I realized that one reason I was so often sideswiped by memories of Quintana at three was this: when Quintana was three I was thirty-four. I remember Gerard Manley Hopkins: _Margaret, are you grieving / Over Goldengrove unleaving?_ and _It is the blight man was born for, / It is Margaret you mourn for._
It is the blight _man_ was born for.
We are not idealized wild things.
We are imperfect mortal beings, aware of that mortality even as we push it away, failed by our very complication, so wired that when we mourn our losses we also mourn, for better or for worse, ourselves. As we were. As we are no longer. As we will one day not be at all.
Elena's dreams were about dying.
Elena's dreams were about getting old.
Nobody here has not had (will not have) Elena's dreams.
_Time is the school in which we learn, / Time is the fire in which we burn_ : Delmore Schwartz again.
I remember despising the book Dylan Thomas's widow Caitlin wrote after her husband's death, _Leftover Life to Kill._ I remember being dismissive of, even censorious about, her "self-pity," her "whining," her "dwelling on it." _Leftover Life to Kill_ was published in 1957. I was twenty-two years old. Time is the school in which we learn.
**18.**
**A** t the time I began writing these pages, in October 2004, I still did not understand how or why or when John died. I had been there. I had watched while the EMS team tried to bring him back. I still did not know how or why or when. In early December 2004, almost a year after he died, I finally received the autopsy report and emergency room records I had first requested from New York Hospital on the fourteenth of January, two weeks after it happened and one day before I told Quintana that it had happened. One reason it took eleven months to receive these records, I realized when I looked at them, was that I myself had written the wrong address on the hospital's request form. I had at that time lived at the same address on the same street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan for sixteen years. Yet the address I had given the hospital was on another street altogether, where John and I had lived for the five months immediately following our wedding in 1964.
A doctor to whom I mentioned this shrugged, as if I had told him a familiar story.
Either he said that such "cognitive deficits" could be associated with stress or he said that such cognitive deficits could be associated with grief.
It was a mark of those cognitive deficits that within seconds after he said it I had no idea which he had said.
According to the hospital's Emergency Department Nursing Documentation Sheet, the Emergency Medical Services call was received at 9:15 p.m. on the evening of December 30, 2003.
According to the log kept by the doormen the ambulance arrived five minutes later, at 9:20 p.m. During the next forty-five minutes, according to the Nursing Documentation Sheet, the following medications were given, by either direct injection or IV infusion: atropine (times three), epinephrine (times three), vasopressin (40 units), amiodarone (300 mg), high-dose epinephrine (3 mg), and high-dose epinephrine again (5 mg). According to the same documentation the patient was intubated at the scene. I have no memory of an intubation. This may be an error on the part of whoever did the documentation, or it may be another cognitive deficit.
According to the log kept by the doormen the ambulance left for the hospital at 10:05 p.m.
According to the Emergency Department Nursing Documentation Sheet the patient was received for triage at 10:10 p.m. He was described as asystolic and apneic. There was no palpable pulse. There was no pulse via sonography. The mental status was unresponsive. The skin color was pale. The Glasgow Coma Scale rating was 3, the lowest rating possible, indicating that eye, verbal, and motor responses were all absent. Lacerations were seen on the right forehead and the bridge of the nose. Both pupils were fixed and dilated. "Lividity" was noted.
According to the Emergency Department Physician's Record the patient was seen at 10:15 p.m. The physician's notation ended: "Cardiac arrest. DOA—likely massive M.I. Pronounced 10:18 p.m."
According to the Nursing Flow Chart the IV was removed and the patient extubated at 10:20 p.m. At 10:30 p.m. the notation was "wife at bedside—George, soc. worker, at bedside with wife."
According to the autopsy report, examination showed a greater than 95 percent stenosis of both the left main and the left anterior descending arteries. Examination also showed "slight myocardial pallor on TCC staining, indicative of acute infarct in distribution of left anterior descending artery."
**I** read this paperwork several times. The elapsed time indicated that the time spent at New York Hospital had been, as I had thought, just bookkeeping, hospital procedure, the regularization of a death. Yet each time I read the official sheets I noticed a new detail. On my first reading of the Emergency Department Physician's Record I had not for example registered the letters "DOA." On my first reading of the Emergency Department Physician's Record I was presumably still assimilating the Emergency Department Nursing Documentation Sheet.
_"Fixed and dilated" pupils. FDPs._
Sherwin Nuland: "The tenacious young men and women see their patient's pupils become unresponsive to light and then widen until they are large fixed circles of impenetrable blackness. Reluctantly the team stops its efforts.... The room is strewn with the debris of the lost campaign..."
_Fixed circles of impenetrable blackness._
_Yes. That was what the ambulance crew saw in John's eyes on our living room floor._
_"Lividity." Post-mortem lividity._
I knew what "lividity" meant because it is an issue in morgues. Detectives point it out. It can be a way of determining time of death. After circulation stops, blood follows the course of gravity, pooling wherever the body is resting. There is a certain amount of time before this pooled blood becomes visible to the eye. What I could not remember was what that amount of time was. I looked up "lividity" in the handbook on forensic pathology that John kept on the shelf above his desk. "Although lividity is variable, it normally begins to form immediately after death and is usually clearly perceptible within an hour or two." If lividity was clearly perceptible to the triage nurses by 10:10 p.m., then, it would have started forming an hour before.
An hour before was when I was calling the ambulance.
_Which meant he was dead then._
_After that instant at the dinner table he was never not dead._
_I now know how I'm going to die,_ he had said in 1987 after the left anterior descending artery had been opened by angioplasty.
_You no more know how you're going to die than I do or anyone else does,_ I had said in 1987.
_We call it the widowmaker, pal,_ his cardiologist in New York had said about the left anterior descending artery.
Through the summer and fall I had been increasingly fixed on locating the anomaly that could have allowed this to happen.
In my rational mind I knew how it happened. In my rational mind I had spoken to many doctors who told me how it happened. In my rational mind I had read David J. Callans in _The New England Journal of Medicine:_ "Although the majority of cases of sudden death from cardiac causes involve patients with preexisting coronary artery disease, cardiac arrest is the first manifestation of this underlying problem in 50 percent of patients.... Suddencardiac arrest is primarily a problem in patients outside of the hospital; in fact, approximately 80 percent of cases of sudden death from cardiac causes occur at home. The rate of success of resuscitation in patients with out-of-hospital cardiac arrest has been poor, averaging 2 to 5 percent in major urban centers.... Resuscitation efforts initiated after eight minutes are almost always doomed to fail." In my rational mind I had read Sherwin Nuland in _How We Die:_ "When an arrest occurs elsewhere than the hospital, only 20 to 30 percent survive, and these are almost always those who respond quickly to the CPR. If there has been no response by the time of arrival in the emergency room, the likelihood of survival is virtually zero."
In my rational mind I knew that.
I was not however operating from my rational mind.
Had I been operating from my rational mind I would not have been entertaining fantasies that would not have been out of place at an Irish wake. I would not for example have experienced, when I heard that Julia Child had died, so distinct a relief, so marked a sense that _this was finally working out:_ John and Julia Child could have dinner together (this had been my immediate thought), she could cook, he could ask her about the OSS, they would amuse each other, like each other. They had once done a breakfast together, in a season when each was promoting a book. She had inscribed a copy of _The Way to Cook_ and given it to him.
I found the copy of _The Way to Cook_ in the kitchen and looked at the inscription.
" _Bon appetit_ to John Gregory Dunne," it read.
_Bon appetit_ to John Gregory Dunne and Julia Child and the OSS.
Nor, had I been operating from my rational mind, would I have given such close attention to "health" stories on the Internet and pharmaceutical advertising on television. I fretted for example over a Bayer commercial for a low-dose aspirin that was said to "significantly reduce" the risk of a heart attack. I knew perfectly well how aspirin reduces the risk of heart attack: it keeps the blood from clotting. I also knew that John was taking Coumadin, a far more powerful anticoagulant. Yet I was seized nonetheless by the possible folly of having overlooked low-dose aspirin. I fretted similarly over a study done by UC–San Diego and Tufts showing a 4.65 percent increase in cardiac death over the fourteen-day period of Christmas and New Year's. I fretted over a study from Vanderbilt demonstrating that erythromycin quintupled the risk of cardiac arrest if taken in conjunction with common heart medications. I fretted over a study on statins, and the 30 to 40 percent jump in the risk of heart attack for patients who stopped taking them.
As I recall this I realize how open we are to the persistent message that we can avert death.
And to its punitive correlative, the message that if death catches us we have only ourselves to blame.
Only after I read the autopsy report did I begin to believe what I had been repeatedly told: nothing he or I had done or not done had either caused or could have prevented his death. He had inherited a bad heart. It would eventually kill him. The date on which it would kill him had already been, by many medical interventions, postponed. When that date did come, no action I could have taken in our living room—no home defibrillator, no CPR, nothing short of a fully equipped crash cart and the technical facility to follow cardioversion within seconds with IV medication—could have given him even one more day.
The one more day _I love you more than._
_As you used to say to me._
Only after I read the autopsy report did I stop trying to reconstruct the collision, the collapse of the dead star. The collapse had been there all along, invisible, unsuspected.
Greater than 95 percent stenosis of both the left main and the left anterior descending arteries.
Acute infarct in distribution of left anterior descending artery, the LAD.
That was the scenario. The LAD got fixed in 1987 and it stayed fixed until everybody forgot about it and then it got unfixed. _We call it the widowmaker, pal,_ the cardiologist had said in 1987.
_I tell you that I shall not live two days,_ Gawain said.
_When something happens to me,_ John had said.
**19.**
**I** have trouble thinking of myself as a widow. I remember hesitating the first time I had to check that box on the "marital status" part of a form. I also had trouble thinking of myself as a wife. Given the value I placed on the rituals of domestic life, the concept of "wife" should not have seemed difficult, but it did. For a long time after we were married I had trouble with the ring. It was loose enough to slip off my left ring finger, so for a year or two I wore it on my right. After I burned the right finger taking a pan from the oven, I put the ring on a gold chain around my neck. When Quintana was born and someone gave her a baby ring I added her ring to the chain.
This seemed to work.
I still wear the rings that way.
"You want a different kind of wife," I frequently said to John in the first years of our marriage. I usually said this on the way back to Portuguese Bend after dinner in town. It was typically the initial volley in those fights that started as we passed the refineries off the San Diego Freeway. "You should have married someone more like Lenny." Lenny was my sister-in-law, Nick's wife. Lenny entertained and had lunch with friends and ran her house effortlessly and wore beautiful French dresses and suits and was always available to look at a house or give a baby shower or take visitors from out of town to Disneyland. "If I wanted to marry someone more like Lenny I would have married someone more like Lenny," John would say, at first patiently, then less so.
In fact I had no idea how to be a wife.
In those first years I would pin daisies in my hair, trying for a "bride" effect.
Later I had matching gingham skirts made for me and Quintana, trying for "young mother."
My memory of those years is that both John and I were improvising, flying blind. When I was clearing out a file drawer recently I came across a thick file labeled "Planning." The very fact that we made files labeled "Planning" suggests how little of it we did. We also had "planning meetings," which consisted of sitting down with legal pads, stating the day's problem out loud, and then, with no further attempt to solve it, going out to lunch. Such lunches were festive, as if to celebrate a job well done. Michael's, in Santa Monica, was a typical venue. In this particular "Planning" file I found several Christmas lists from the 1970s, a few notes on telephone calls, and, the bulk of the file, many notes, again dating from the 1970s, having to do with projected expenses and income. A mood of desperation permeates these notes. There was a note made for a meeting with Gil Frank on April 19, 1978, when we were trying to sell the house in Malibu to pay for the house in Brentwood Park on which we had already put down a $50,000 deposit. We could not sell the house in Malibu because it rained all that spring. Slopes fell. The Pacific Coast Highway was closed. No one could even look at the house unless they already lived on the Malibu side of the washout. Over a period of some weeks we had only one viewer, a psychiatrist who lived in the Malibu Colony. He left his shoes outside in the driving rain to "get the feel of the house," walked around barefoot on the tile floor, and reported to his son, who reported to Quintana, that the house was "cold." This was the note made on April 19 of that year: _We must assume we will not sell Malibu until end of year. We have to assume the worst so that any improvement will seem better._
A note made a week later, I can only think for a "planning meeting": _Discuss: Abandon Brentwood Park? Eat the $50,000?_
Two weeks later we flew to Honolulu, thinking to escape the rain and sort out our dwindling options. The next morning when we came in from swimming there was a message: the sun had come out in Malibu and we had an offer within range of the asking.
What had encouraged us to think that a resort hotel in Honolulu was the place to solve a cash shortfall?
What lesson did we take from the fact that it worked?
Twenty-five years later, confronted with a similar shortfall and similarly deciding to sort it out in Paris, how could we have seen it as economizing because we got one ticket free on the Concorde?
In the same file drawer I found a few paragraphs John had written in 1990, on our twenty-sixth anniversary. "She wore sunglasses throughout the service the day we got married, at the little mission church in San Juan Bautista, California; she also wept through the entire ceremony. As we walked down the aisle, we promised each other that we could get out of this next week and not wait until death did us part."
That worked too. Somehow it had all worked.
Why did I think that this improvisation could never end?
If I had seen that it could, what would I have done differently?
What would he?
**20.**
**I** am writing now as the end of the first year approaches. The sky in New York is dark when I wake at seven and darkening again by four in the afternoon. There are colored Christmas lights on the quince branches in the living room. There were also colored Christmas lights on quince branches in the living room a year ago, on the night it happened, but in the spring, not long after I brought Quintana home from UCLA, those strings burned out, went dead. This served as a symbol. I bought new strings of colored lights. This served as a profession of faith in the future. I take the opportunity for such professions where and when I can invent them, since I do not yet actually feel this faith in the future.
I notice that I have lost the skills for ordinary social encounters, however undeveloped those skills may have been, that I had a year ago. During the Republican convention I was invited to a small party at a friend's apartment. I was happy to see the friend and I was happy to see her father, who was the reason for the party, but I found conversation with others difficult. I noticed as I was leaving that the Secret Service was there but lacked even the patience to stay long enough to learn what important person was coming. On another evening during the Republican convention I went to a party given by _The New York Times_ in the Time Warner building. There were candles and gardenias floating in glass cubes. I could not focus on whoever I was talking to. I was focused only on the gardenias getting sucked into the filter at the house in Brentwood Park.
On such occasions I hear myself trying to make an effort and failing.
I notice that I get up from dinner too abruptly.
I also notice that I do not have the resilience I had a year ago. A certain number of crises occur and the mechanism that floods the situation with adrenaline burns out. Mobilization becomes unreliable, slow or absent. In August and September, after the Democratic and Republican conventions but before the election, I wrote, for the first time since John died, a piece. It was about the campaign. It was the first piece I had written since 1963 that he did not read in draft form and tell me what was wrong, what was needed, how to bring it up here, take it down there. I have never written pieces fluently but this one seemed to be taking even longer than usual: I realized at some point that I was unwilling to finish it, because there was no one to read it. I kept telling myself that I had a deadline, that John and I never missed deadlines. Whatever I finally did to finish this piece was as close as I have ever come to imagining a message from him. The message was simple: _You're a professional. Finish the piece._
It occurs to me that we allow ourselves to imagine only such messages as we need to survive.
The trach at UCLA, I recognize now, was going to happen with or without me.
Quintana resuming her life, I recognize now, was going to happen with or without me.
Finishing this piece, which was to say resuming my own life, was not.
When I checked the piece for publication I was startled and unsettled by how many mistakes I had made: simple errors of transcription, names and dates wrong. I told myself that this was temporary, part of the mobilization problem, further evidence of those cognitive deficits that came with either stress or grief, but I remained unsettled. Would I ever be right again? Could I ever again trust myself not to be wrong?
_Do you always have to be right?_ He had said that.
_Is it impossible for you to consider the possibility that you might be wrong?_
Increasingly I find myself focusing on the similarities between these December days and the same December days a year ago. In certain ways those similar days a year ago have more clarity for me, a sharper focus. I do many of the same things. I make the same lists of things undone. I wrap Christmas presents in the same colored tissue, write the same messages on the same postcards from the Whitney gift shop, affix the postcards to the colored tissue with the same gold notary seals. I write the same checks for the building staff, except the checks are now imprinted with only my name. I would not have changed the checks (any more than I would change the voice on the answering machine) but it was said to be essential that John's name now appear only on trust accounts. I order the same kind of ham from Citarella. I fret the same way over the number of plates I will need on Christmas Eve, count and recount. I keep an annual December dentist's appointment and realize as I am putting the sample toothbrushes into my bag that no one will be waiting for me in the reception room, reading the papers until we can go to breakfast at 3 Guys on Madison Avenue. The morning goes empty. When I pass 3 Guys I look the other way. A friend asks me to go with her to hear the Christmas music at St. Ignatius Loyola, and we walk home in the dark in the rain. That night the first snow falls, although only a dusting, no avalanching off the roof of St. James', nothing like my birthday a year ago.
My birthday a year ago when he gave me the last present he would ever give me.
My birthday a year ago when he had twenty-five nights left to live.
On the table in front of the fireplace I notice something out of place in the stack of books nearest the chair in which John sat to read when he woke in the middle of the night. I have deliberately left this stack untouched, not from any shrine-building impulse but because I did not believe that I could afford to think about what he read in the middle of the night. Now someone has placed on top of the stack, balanced precariously, a large illustrated coffee-table book, _The Agnelli Gardens at Villar Perosa._ I move _The Agnelli Gardens at Villar Perosa._ Beneath it is a heavily marked copy of John Lukacs's _Five Days in London: May 1940,_ in which there is a laminated bookmark that reads, in a child's handwriting, _John—happy reading to you—from John, age 7._ I am at first puzzled by the bookmark, which under the lamination is dusted with festive pink glitter, then remember: the Creative Artists Agency, as a Christmas project every year, "adopts" a group of Los Angeles schoolchildren, each of whom in turn makes a keepsake for a designated CAA client.
He would have opened the box from CAA on Christmas night.
He would have stuck the bookmark in whatever book was on top of that stack.
He would have had one hundred and twenty hours left to live.
How would he have chosen to live those one hundred and twenty hours?
Beneath the copy of _Five Days in London_ is a copy of _The New Yorker_ dated January 5, 2004. A copy of _The New Yorker_ with that issue date would have been delivered to our apartment on Sunday, December 28, 2003. On Sunday, December 28, 2003, according to John's calendar, we had dinner at home with Sharon DeLano, who had been his editor at Random House and was at that time his editor at _The New Yorker._ We would have had dinner at the table in the living room. According to my kitchen notebook we ate linguine Bolognese and a salad and cheese and a baguette. At that point he would have had forty-eight hours left to live.
Some premonition of this timetable was why I had not touched the stack of books in the first place.
_I don't think I'm up for this,_ he had said in the taxi on our way down from Beth Israel North that night or the next night. He was talking about the condition in which we had once again left Quintana.
_You don't get a choice,_ I had said in the taxi.
I have wondered since if he did.
**21.**
**S** he's still beautiful," Gerry had said as he and John and I left Quintana in the ICU at Beth Israel North.
"He said she's still beautiful," John said in the taxi. "Did you hear him say that? She's still beautiful? She's lying there swollen up with tubes coming out of her and he said—"
He could not continue.
That happened on one of those late December nights a few days before he died. Whether it happened on the 26th or the 27th or the 28th or the 29th I have no idea. It did not happen on the 30th because Gerry had already left the hospital by the time we got there on the 30th. I realize that much of my energy during the past months has been given to counting back the days, the hours. At the moment he was saying in the taxi on the way down from Beth Israel North that everything he had done was worthless did he have three hours left to live or did he have twenty-seven? Did he know how few hours there were, did he feel himself going, was he saying that he did not want to leave? _Don't let the Broken Man catch me,_ Quintana would say when she woke from bad dreams, one of the "sayings" John put in the box and borrowed for Cat in _Dutch Shea, Jr._ I had promised her that we would not let the Broken Man catch her.
_You're safe._
_I'm here._
I had believed that we had that power.
Now the Broken Man was in the ICU at Beth Israel North waiting for her and now the Broken Man was in this taxi waiting for her father. Even at three or four she had recognized that when it came to the Broken Man she could rely only on her own efforts: _If the Broken Man comes I'll hang onto the fence and won't let him take me._
She hung onto the fence. Her father did not.
I tell you I shall not live two days.
What gives those December days a year ago their sharper focus is their ending.
**22.**
As the grandchild of a geologist I learned early to anticipate the absolute mutability of hills and waterfalls and even islands. When a hill slumps into the ocean I see the order in it. When a 5.2 on the Richter Scale wrenches the writing table in my own room in my own house in my own particular Welbeck Street I keep on typing. A hill is a transitional accommodation to stress, and ego may be a similar accommodation. A waterfall is a self-correcting maladjustment of stream to structure, and so, for all I know, is technique. The very island to which Inez Victor returned in the spring of 1975—Oahu, an emergent post-erosional land mass along the Hawaiian Ridge—is a temporary feature, and every rainfall or tremor along the Pacific plates alters its shape and shortens its tenure as Crossroads of the Pacific. In this light it is difficult to maintain definite convictions about what happened down there in the spring of 1975, or before.
**T** his passage is from the beginning of a novel I wrote during the early 1980s, _Democracy._ John named it. I had begun it as a comedy of family manners with the title _Angel Visits,_ a phrase defined by _Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable_ as "delightful intercourse of short duration and rare occurrence," but when it became clear that it was going in a different direction I had kept writing without a title. When I finished John read it and said I should call it _Democracy._ I looked up the passage after the 9.0 Richter earthquake along a six-hundred-mile section of the Sumatran subduction zone had triggered the tsunami that wiped out large parts of coastline bordering the Indian Ocean.
I am unable to stop trying to imagine this event.
There is no video of what I try to imagine. There are no beaches, no flooded swimming pools, no hotel lobbies breaking up like rotted pilings in a storm. What I want to see happened under the surface. The India Plate buckling as it thrust under the Burma Plate. The current sweeping unseen through the deep water. I do not have a depth chart for the Indian Ocean but can pick up the broad outline even from my Rand McNally cardboard globe. Seven hundred and eighty meters off Banda Aceh. Twenty-three hundred between Sumatra and Sri Lanka. Twenty-one hundred between the Andamans and Thailand and then a long shallowing toward Phuket. The instant when the leading edge of the unseen current got slowed by the continental shelf. The buildup of water as the bottom of the shelf began to shallow out.
_As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end._
It is now December 31, 2004, a year and a day.
On December 24, Christmas Eve, I had people for dinner, just as John and I had done on Christmas Eve a year before. I told myself that I was doing this for Quintana but I was also doing it for myself, a pledge that I would not lead the rest of my life as a special case, a guest, someone who could not function on her own. I built a fire, I lit candles, I laid out plates and silver on a buffet table in the dining room. I put out some CDs, Mabel Mercer singing Cole Porter and Israel Kamakawiwo'ole singing "Over the Rainbow" and an Israeli jazz pianist named Liz Magnes playing "Someone to Watch Over Me." John had been seated next to Liz Magnes once at a dinner at the Israeli mission and she had sent him the CD, a Gershwin concert she had given in Marrakech. In its ability to suggest drinks at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem during the British period this CD had seemed to John spectrally interesting, recovered evidence of a vanished world, one more reverberation from World War One. He referred to it as "the Mandate music." He had put it on while he was reading before dinner the night he died.
About five in the afternoon on the 24th I thought I could not do the evening but when the time came the evening did itself.
Susanna Moore sent leis from Honolulu for her daughter Lulu and Quintana and me. We wore the leis. Another friend brought a gingerbread house. There were many children. I played the Mandate music, although the noise level was such that no one heard it.
On Christmas morning I put away the plates and silver and in the afternoon I went up to St. John the Divine, where there were mainly Japanese tourists. There were always Japanese tourists at St. John the Divine. On the afternoon Quintana got married at St. John the Divine there had been Japanese tourists snapping pictures as she and Gerry left the altar. On the afternoon we placed John's ashes in the chapel off the main altar at St. John the Divine an empty Japanese tour bus had caught fire and burned outside, a pillar of flame on Amsterdam Avenue. On Christmas Day the chapel off the main altar was blocked off, part of the cathedral reconstruction. A security guard took me in. The chapel was emptied, filled only with scaffolding. I ducked under the scaffolding and found the marble plate with John's name and my mother's name. I hung the lei from one of the brass rods that held the marble plate to the vault and then I walked from the chapel back into the nave and out the main aisle, straight toward the big rose window.
As I walked I kept my eyes on the window, half blinded by its brilliance but determined to keep my gaze fixed until I caught the moment in which the window as approached seems to explode with light, fill the entire field of vision with blue. The Christmas of the Buffalo pens and the black wafer alarm clock and the neighborhood fireworks all over Honolulu, the Christmas of 1990, the Christmas during which John and I had been doing the crash rewrite on the picture that never got made, had involved that window. We had staged the denouement of the picture at St. John the Divine, placed a plutonium device in the bell tower (only the protagonist realizes that the device is at St. John the Divine and not the World Trade towers), blown the unwitting carrier of the device straight out through the big rose window. We had filled the screen with blue that Christmas.
**I** realize as I write this that I do not want to finish this account.
Nor did I want to finish the year.
The craziness is receding but no clarity is taking its place.
I look for resolution and find none.
I did not want to finish the year because I know that as the days pass, as January becomes February and February becomes summer, certain things will happen. My image of John at the instant of his death will become less immediate, less raw. It will become something that happened in another year. My sense of John himself, John alive, will become more remote, even "mudgy," softened, transmuted into whatever best serves my life without him. In fact this is already beginning to happen. All year I have been keeping time by last year's calendar: what were we doing on this day last year, where did we have dinner, is it the day a year ago we flew to Honolulu after Quintana's wedding, is it the day a year ago we flew back from Paris, _is it the day._ I realized today for the first time that my memory of this day a year ago is a memory that does not involve John. This day a year ago was December 31, 2003. John did not see this day a year ago. John was dead.
I was crossing Lexington Avenue when this occurred to me.
I know why we try to keep the dead alive: we try to keep them alive in order to keep them with us.
I also know that if we are to live ourselves there comes a point at which we must relinquish the dead, let them go, keep them dead.
Let them become the photograph on the table.
Let them become the name on the trust accounts.
Let go of them in the water.
Knowing this does not make it any easier to let go of him in the water.
In fact the apprehension that our life together will decreasingly be the center of my every day seemed today on Lexington Avenue so distinct a betrayal that I lost all sense of oncoming traffic.
I think about leaving the lei at St. John the Divine.
A souvenir of the Christmas in Honolulu when we filled the screen with blue.
During the years when people still left Honolulu on the Matson Lines the custom at the moment of departure was to throw leis on the water, a promise that the traveler would return. The leis would get caught in the wake and go bruised and brown, the way the gardenias in the pool filter at the house in Brentwood Park had gone bruised and brown.
The other morning when I woke I tried to remember the arrangement of the rooms in the house in Brentwood Park. I imagined myself walking through the rooms, first on the ground floor and then on the second. Later in the day I realized that I had forgotten one.
The lei I left at St. John the Divine would have gone brown by now.
Leis go brown, tectonic plates shift, deep currents move, islands vanish, rooms get forgotten.
I flew into Indonesia and Malaysia and Singapore with John, in 1979 and 1980.
Some of the islands that were there then would now be gone, just shallows.
I think about swimming with him into the cave at Portuguese Bend, about the swell of clear water, the way it changed, the swiftness and power it gained as it narrowed through the rocks at the base of the point. The tide had to be just right. We had to be in the water at the very moment the tide was right. We could only have done this a half dozen times at most during the two years we lived there but it is what I remember. Each time we did it I was afraid of missing the swell, hanging back, timing it wrong. John never was. You had to feel the swell change. You had to go with the change. He told me that. No eye is on the sparrow but he did tell me that.
PERMISSIONS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material.
_Columbia University Press:_ Excerpt from "Re-Grief Therapy" by Dr. Volkan from _Bereavement: Its Psychosocial Aspects,_ edited by Schoenberg, Gerber, Wiener, Kutscher, Peretz, and Carr. Copyright © 1975 by Columbia University Press. Reprinted by permission of Columbia University Press.
_Harcourt, Inc. & Faber and Faber Ltd.:_ Excerpt from "East Coker" in _Four Quartets_ by T. S. Eliot. Copyright © 1940 by T. S. Eliot and renewed 1968 by Esme Valerie Eliot. Reprinted by permission of Harcourt, Inc. and Faber and Faber Ltd.
_Eugene Kennedy:_ Excerpt from a letter written by Eugene Kennedy to Joan Didion. Reprinted by permission of the author.
_Liveright Publishing Company:_ Excerpt from "Buffalo Bill's." Copyright 1923, 1951, © 1991 by the Trustees for the E. E. Cummings Trust. Copyright © 1976 by George James Firmage, from _Complete Poems: 1904–1962_ by E. E. Cummings, edited by George J. Firmage. Reprinted by permission of Liveright Publishing Company.
_Massachusetts Medical Society:_ Excerpt from "Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest—The Solution Is Shocking" by David J. Callans from _The New England Journal of Medicine_ (August 12, 2004). Copyright © 2004 by Massachusetts Medical Society. Reprinted by permission of Massachusetts Medical Society.
_Earl McGrath:_ Excerpt from a poem written by Earl McGrath. Reprinted by permission of the author.
_New Directions Publishing Corp.:_ Excerpt from "Calmly We Walk Through This April's Day" by Delmore Schwartz from _Selected Poems: Summer Knowledge._ Copyright © 1959 by Delmore Schwartz. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.
_The New York Times Agency:_ Excerpt from "Death Comes Knocking" by Bob Herbert from _The New York Times_ (November 12, 2004). Copyright © 2004 by The New York Times Co. Reprinted by permission of The New York Times Agency.
_Oxford University Press:_ Excerpt from "Spring and Fall," "Heaven-Haven," "No Worst," and "I Wake and Feel" by Gerard Manley Hopkins from _The Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins,_ 4th ed., edited by W. H. Gardner and N. H. MacKenzie (1970). Reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press on behalf of the British Province of the Society of Jesus.
_Random House, Inc.:_ Excerpt from "Funeral Blues," copyright 1940 and renewed 1968 by W. H. Auden from _Collected Poems_ by W. H. Auden. Reprinted by permission of Random House, Inc.
_Viking Penguin:_ Excerpt from "Self-Pity" by D. H. Lawrence from _The Complete Poems of D. H. Lawrence_ by D. H. Lawrence, edited by V. de Sola Pinto & F. W. Roberts. Copyright © 1964, 1971 by Angelo Ravagli and C. M. Weekley, Executors of the Estate of Frieda Lawrence Ravagli. Reprinted by permission of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
**JOAN DIDION
THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING**
Joan Didion was born in California and lives in New York City. She is the author of five novels and seven previous books of nonfiction.
ALSO BY JOAN DIDION
_Where I Was From_
_Political Fictions_
_The Last Thing He Wanted_
_After Henry_
_Miami_
_Democracy_
_Salvador_
_The White Album_
_A Book of Common Prayer_
_Play It as It Lays_
_Slouching Towards Bethlehem_
_Run River_
_Acclaim for Joan Didion's_
**THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING**
"Achingly beautiful.... We have come to admire and love Didion for her preternatural poise, unrivaled eye for absurdity, and Orwellian distaste for cant. It is thus a difficult, moving and extraordinarily poignant experience to watch her direct such scrutiny inward."
— _Los Angeles Times_
" _The Year of Magical Thinking_...[is] told in some of the plainest, yet most eloquent prose you'll ever encounter. Everyone who has ever lost anyone, or will ever lose anyone, would do well to read it."
— _The Seattle Times_
"[ _The Year of Magical Thinking_ ] is a work of surpassing clarity and honesty."
— _The Washington Post Book World_
"This book is about getting a grip and getting on; it's also a tribute to an extraordinary marriage."
— _The New Yorker_
"Unforgettable.... Both personal and universal. She has given the reader an eloquent starting point in which to navigate through the wilderness of grief."
— _Chicago Sun-Times_
"Stark and engrossing."
— _San Francisco Chronicle_
"It's a work that touches on surprisingly uncharted territory....[ _The Year of Magical Thinking_ ] is a work of much majesty."
— _The Christian Science Monitor_
"An exacting self-examination...also a heartbreaking...love letter, engrossing in its candor.... Didion illuminates the bond between husband and wife."
— _The Boston Globe_
FIRST VINTAGE INTERNATIONAL EDITION, FEBRUARY 2007
_Copyright © 2006 by Joan Didion_
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 2006.
Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:
Didion, Joan.
The year of magical thinking / Joan Didion.—1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Didion, Joan. 2. Novelists, American—20th century—Family relationships.
3. Dunne, John Gregory, 1932–2003—Death and burial. 4. Novelists,
American—20th century—Biography. 5. Journalists—United States—
Biography. 6. Mothers and daughters—United States. 7. Widows—United
States—Biography. 8. Didion, Joan—Marriage. 9. Didion, Joan—Family.
10. Loss (Psychology). 11. Grief. I. Title.
PS3554.133Z63 2005
813'.54—dc22
[B] 2005045132
_Author photograph © Brigitte Lacombe_
www.vintagebooks.com
eISBN: 978-0-307-27972-9
v3.0
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1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to spray devices for applying liquids to ground surfaces from a moving vehicle, and more particularly, the invention relates to an improved spray device for mounting upon a wheeled carrier for applying low volumes of agricultural chemicals such as pesticides and plant growth regulators in a manner to prevent dribble from the applicator and subsequent plant burn.
2. Discussion of the Prior Art
There are a number of known types of spray devices which are available for the ground application of various types of treatment liquids, such as herbicides, insecticides, fungicides, fertilizers, plant growth regulators and other agricultural chemicals. Most often, such applications are accomplished by the use of suitable spray nozzles which may be mounted upon vehicles through an intermediate boom or extension device. A chemical storage tank of suitable capacity is mounted upon the vehicle and is in fluid communication with the spray nozzles whereby the nozzles can be directed to apply the product upon either a generally horizontal spray target area, such as golf course turf or farm growing areas or on generally vertically extending target spray areas, for example, the shrubbery and other growth that can be present immediately adjacent to the lateral edges of vehicular highways.
One suitable spray device for this purpose has been developed by the present applicant and forms the subject matter of a copending patent application entitled "Ground Spray Applicator", filed July 15, 1986, Ser. No. 885,773, now U.S. Pat. No. 4,760,963.
The previously available agricultural spray devices, including the device described in the said copending patent application all generally exhibited a common problem in that the nozzles exhibited a tendency to drip or dribble during spraying whereby droplets or an accumulated amount of liquid chemical composition could be developed at the spray nozzles and could be dripped directly upon the ground surface, rather than be distributed as part of a uniform fine spray mist pattern. Normally speaking, when the spray target area comprised a relatively rough or unfinished area, for example the lateral edges of most highways, then the inherent dribble attendant with the spray equipment was either not noticeable or not of sufficient consequence to require any changes in the equipment. However, when the spray target area comprised an agriculturally improved and finished area, for example, the fairways and greens of a golf course, then such dribble was both noticeable and unacceptable. Prior workers in the art have become aware of the unacceptable nature of the spray dribble when the liquid chemical droplets settled to the ground. The droplets would then apply an increased concentration of liquid chemical product upon a greatly decreased agricultural surface than would normally be encountered when the material was delivered in the usual fine spray or mist configuration. Such chemical concentration could easily burn or otherwise damage the effected turf areas, thereby killing the grass in a highly visible manner that was entirely unacceptable and inexcusable.
Additionally, following completion of a spraying operation, the main chemical supply valve was then normally or electrically functioned to close the valve. The valve closure usually resulted in trapping a small quantity of liquid chemical in the hose or hoses intermediate the chemical storage tank and the spray nozzles. This trapped material could often escape through the nozzles to thereby fall upon the ground in concentrated form, to additionally cause unintentional grass burn. While such dribble or dripping could be considered to be inherent in the usual spray apparatus of the type currently available for agricultural chemical delivery, and even though there must be a small amount of liquid chemical inherently remaining in the hoses after shut off of the main supply valve, the need remains to find a simple solution to the dribble problem to prevent damage to finished grass areas.
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This invention relates to a method for the treatment and prevention of climacteric disorders during aging in males, such as increased incidence of cardiovascular diseases, etc., which may be associated with the continuous reduction in serum testosterone levels in men as they age, and becomes problematic in middle-age, with a nitric oxide synthase substrate (e.g., L-arginine), a nitric oxide donor or both, in combination with androgen hormone replacement therapy (HRT) and/or an aromatase inhibitor, which provides an increase in endogenous testosterone levels.
It is now well known that HRT, such as estrogen treatment, improves or reverses the adverse effects of the decrease in sex steroid secretion by the ovaries during menopause in women. Estrogens have also been shown to improve mood and psychological well-being in postmenopausal women and they also prevent atrophic changes in the genital tract. Estrogens have been shown to effect arterial tone and this may help to explain the reduction in hot flushes observed in postmenopausal women with estrogen therapy.
One of the most exciting recent advances in biology and medicine is the discovery that nitric oxide is produced by endothelial cells and that it is involved in the regulation of vascular tone, platelet aggregation, neurotransmission and immune activation (Furchgott and Zawadzki, 1980; Moncada, Palmer and Higgs, 1991; Ignarro, 1991). Nitric oxide is an important mediator of relaxation of the muscular smooth muscle (Montada, Palmer and Higgs, 1991) and was formerly known as EDRF (endothelin-derived relaxing factor) (Furchgott and Zawadzki, 1980; Moncada, Palmer and Higgs, 1991). Nitric oxide is synthesized by the oxidative deamination of a guanidino nitrogen of L-arginine by at least three different isoforms of a flavin-containing enzyme, nitric oxide synthase (Moncada, Palmer and Higgs, 1991). Synthesis of nitric oxide has been shown to be competitively inhibited by analogues of L-arginine; NG-nitro-L-arginine methyl ester (L-NAME), NG-monoethyl-L-arginine (LMMA), N-iminoethyl-L-ornithine (L-NIO), L-monomethyl-L-arginine (L-NNMA) and L-NG-methylarginine (LNMA) and Nw-nitro-L-arginine (L-NA).
Nitric oxide elevates levels of cGMP (1,3,5-cyclic guanosine monophosphate) within the vascular smooth muscle to produce relaxation and to reduce blood vessels tone (Moncada, Palmer and Higgs, 1991). Nitric oxide binds to heme and thus activates soluble guanylate cyclase (Ignarro, 1991) to increase the cellular content of cGMP. It has long been recognized that nitrovasodilators, such as nitroprusside and nitroglycerin, inhibit vascular smooth muscle contractility to produce relaxation or to reduce vascular tone. These agents have been used since the late 1800's as vasodilators. However, only recently has the mechanism of action of these compounds been realized. Nitrovasodilators are now classified as nitric oxide donors because they are metabolized to release nitric oxide (Moncada, Palmer and Higgs, 1991). The long-used nitrovasodilators may be regarded as substitution therapy for a failing physiological mechanism. Nitric oxide is also produced by macrophages and other immune cells.
There is a substantial body of evidence from animal experiments that a deficiency in nitric oxide contributes to the pathogenesis of a number of diseases, including hypertension, atherosclerosis and diabetes, and erectile dysfunction in men (Moncada, Palmer and Higgs, 1991). There are many recent studies showing that the inhibition of nitric oxide synthase dramatically increases blood pressure. The inhibition of nitric oxide synthesis with L-NNMA, L-NA or L-NAME causes long-lasting elevation in blood pressure and suggests that its reduction may contribute to the pathogenesis of hypertension (Moncada and Palmer, 1992). Furthermore, L-NAME-treatment potentiates presser responses to angiotensin II, vasopressin and norepinephrine. Also, in patients with pregnancy-induced hypertension, release of nitric oxide by umbilical vessels in blunted (Pinto et al, 1991) and the physiological decrease in blood pressure in pregnant spontaneous hypertensive rats was shown to depend on endothelial nitric oxide (Ahokas, Merces and Sibai, 1991). Additionally, infusion of L-NA increases blood-pressure in pregnant rats and potentiates responses to vasopressors (Molnar and Hertelendy, 1992). These studies suggest that impaired nitric oxide synthesis may be an important mechanism in the etiology of cardiovascular problems.
Nitric oxide synthesis and nitric oxide effector system (cGMP-dependent relaxation mechanism) are thought to be regulated by steroid hormones. There is an increase in cardiovascular diseases in women following menopause and which may be related to the decrease in sex steroids and an alteration in nitric oxide. Female steroid hormones have been shown to modulate endothelium-dependent relaxation of vascular smooth muscle by nitric oxide. Estradiol treatment of rats causes increased nitric oxide production by vascular tissues, whereas progesterone counteracts this phenomenon (Miller and Van Houtte, 1991). It is well known that pregnancy is associated with an increase in cardiac output and a decrease in the resistance of virtually all the vascular beds in the body. Although the mechanism of this phenomenon is not known, it could be associated with changes in nitric oxide production or effects as a result of elevated steroid hormone levels. One important observation with regard to the above mechanism is that antiprogestins (RU 486) elevate blood pressure in animals (Kalimi, 1989) and they produce hot flushes in humans, both males (Grunberg et al., 1993) and females (Kettel et al., 1991). The hot flushes may be mediated by the steroid action on the release of nitric oxide. Hot flushes are a primary symptom in menopausal and postmenopausal women and they are relieved by both estrogen and progesterone (Avis et al., 1993).
Another symptom of climacterium in both men and women is osteoporosis. There is also growing evidence that nitric oxide mediates steroid (estrogen and/or progestin) effects on bones (C. W. G. M. Lowik et al., J. Clin. Invest., 93:1465-1472 (1994); T. P. Kasten et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 88:2936-2940 (1991); M. Zaidi et al., Bone 14:97-102 (1993); A. S. M. Towhidul Alam et al., Bioscience Reports 12:369 (1992)).
The studies described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 153,345, filed Nov. 16, 1993, show that nitric oxide and the subsequent relaxation of the uterus is controlled by progesterone. The relaxation effects of the nitric oxide substrate, L-arginine, are greater in late pregnancy when progesterone levels are elevated in pregnant rats. Also there is greater uterine relaxation with L-arginine when uterine strips are taken from nonpregnant, ovariectomized rats treated with progesterone. In addition, treatment with pregnant rats with the nitric oxide inhibitor produces signs and symptoms of preeclampsia (e.g., hypertension, fetal retardation and proteinuria--the classical triad of preeclampsia). These symptoms are related to the decrease in vascular resistance and placental perfusion. Preeclampsia is a well known model of atherosclerosis as the decrease in placental perfusion is accompanied by increased fibrin deposition in placental vessels and increased thrombus formation (Roberts et al., 1989). Thus, nitric oxide substrates and/or donors alone or in combination with estrogen and progesterone are particularly efficacious for hormone replacement therapy to prevent climacteric symptoms (climacterium) such as atherosclerosis, hypertension, hot flushes, etc. in women.
EP 0441 119 A2 discloses the use of L-arginine in the treatment of hypertension and other vascular disorders. It suggests that the mechanism by which L-arginine is effective for this purpose is because it may be the physiological precursor of "the most powerful endothelial-derived releasing factor, nitric oxide." The use of L-arginine in combination with other pharmaceutically active agents is not discussed in this publication.
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In Romania exista 10 operatori de trenuri privati, insa doar 4 dintre acestia au legaturi intre marile orase din tara. Cat costa sa circuli cu trenurile private si in cat timp ajungi la destinatie, comparativ cu "performantele" trenurilor CFR, afli din tabelul de mai jos.
Dati click pe harta pentru a mari imaginea.
Pe ce rute castigi cu trenurile private
O calatorie cu trenurile private este, in cele mai multe cazuri, la jumatate din pret comparativ cu una prin CFR. De exemplu, asa cum poti observa in tabelul de mai jos, un bilet pe ruta Bucuresti-Brasov costa 25 lei la companiile private Softrans si Regiotrans, pe cand la CFR ai plati dublu.
Companie feroviara Ruta Timp Pret CFR (timp/pret) Softrans Bucuresti - Brasov 2:30 25 lei 2:42 / 50,5 lei (rang: InterRegio) Bucuresti - Craiova 2:52 30,5 lei 2:56 / 62 lei (InterRegio) Craiova - Brasov 5:45 47,5 lei 5:41 / 102,05 lei (InterRegio) Bucuresti - Constanta* 2:24 40 lei 2:25 / 62 lei (InterRegio) Regiotrans Bucuresti - Brasov 2:55 25 lei 2:42 / 50,5 lei (rang: InterRegio) Bucuresti - Craiova 3:41 30,5 lei 2:56 / 62 lei (InterRegio) Bucuresti - Pitesti 2:26 17 lei 2:00 / 36 lei (InterRegio) Bucuresti - Curtea de Arges 3:12 20,5 lei 2:45 / 16 lei (Regio) Craiova - Brasov 6:50 47,5 lei 5:41 / 102,05 lei (InterRegio) Brasov - Iasi 8:27 57,5 lei 9:39 / 123,65 lei (IR+IR+R) Brasov - Zarnesti 0:50 4,5 lei Nu exista rute Brasov - Intorsura Buzaului 0:46 5,5 lei Nu exista rute Bucuresti - Constanta* 2:42 45 lei 2:25 / 62 lei (InterRegio) Interregional Cluj-Napoca - Bistrita Nord 2:40 16 lei 2:43 / 31 lei (IR+R) Transferoviar Bucuresti - Buzau (Regio) 2:10 19 lei 2:43 / 19 lei (R)
1:54 / 41 lei (IR) Bucuresti - Galati 4:10 30,5 lei 4:08 / 62 lei (InterRegio) Galati - Barlad 2:38 16 lei Nu exista rute Titan Sud (Bucuresti) - Oltenita 1:46 9,5 lei Nu exista rute Cluj-Napoca - Oradea (Regio) 3:10 21,5 lei 3:55 / 21,5 lei (Regio)
2:38 / 46 lei (InterRegio)
*Trenurile private pe ruta Bucuresti-Constanta circula doar vara.
Timpul de calatorie cu trenuri private este mai mic
Trenurile private castiga teren si la durata calatoriei. In multe dintre exemplele de mai sus, trenurile private ajung mai devreme cu cel putin 10 minute. Nu ar fi o diferenta foarte mare fata de trenurile CFR, insa daca revenim la criteriul pret, sesizam o "distanta" foarte mare intre oferta statului si oferta particularilor.
In trenul Regiotrans, pe ruta Bucuresti-Brasov
Facilitati in plus
Trenurile private ies in fata cu o facilitate foarte importanta: vanzarea biletelor direct in tren. Daca la CFR nu putem cumpara biletul de la "nasu'", in trenurile private putem urca linistiti, fara sa mai stam la coada la casa de bilete, mai ales daca ajungem mai tarziu in gara. Biletele se vand in tren pentru ca, de fapt, nu pot fi cumparate din gari. Singura exceptie este Gara de Nord din Bucuresti, unde exista doua case ale companiei Regiotrans. Biletele nu sunt cu loc in tren, asa ca le poti cumpara direct de la controlor sau direct de pe site-ul companiei. Cel putin intre Bucuresti si Brasov, trenul a fost destul de gol intr-o zi de duminica.
Atentie, insa, daca vrei sa calatoresti cu Softrans. Daca planuesti sa cumperi biletul direct din tren, s-ar putea sa nimeresti o cursa prea aglomerata si sa nu gasesti un loc pe scaun. Cel mai indicat ar fi in acest caz sa faci rezervare online. Am testat si noi trenul Hyperion al Softrans si am avut parte de o calatorie in picioare din Azuga pana in Bucuresti. Din fericire, calatoria a durat o ora si 40 de minute, mult mai putin decat cu un tren CFR.
In trenul Hyperion al Softrans, pe ruta Brasov-Bucuresti
In ce priveste confortul, trenul Regiotrans este similar cu trenurile Regio ale CFR, doar ca primul circula mai repede si opreste doar in localitatile mai mari. Lucrurile se schimba, insa, radical daca urci in Softrans. E un tren modern, cu design colorat la exterior si interior, dotat cu automate de cafea (1 leu paharul), sucuri si snacks-uri, ecrane pe care sunt derulate reclame si un sistem de anuntare a statiilor, ca la metrou. Diferenta este usor sesizabila la confortul scaunelor. Deci putem spune ca CFR nu este mai prejos. Dar designul si ambianta din Softrans iti dau senzatia ca te afli undeva prin Occident, nu ca traversezi Romania.
Citeste si: CFR Calatori preia traficul de pasageri RegioTrans
Sursa foto: Tren al companiei Softrans/Wall-Street.ro
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Life and politics from the Sunshine State's best city
Nick Saban - page 4
Tonight’s contenders for college football’s national championship, top-ranked Clemson and No. 2 Alabama, have proud histories of success with their respective programs. Combined, they have won 15 previous championships. OK, Alabama has 14 of those, but number 15 should not come easy, if at all, tonight. The odds makers list the Crimson Tide as a touchdown favorite, but that will only motivate Coach Dabo Swinney and the Tigers. “We’re not the favorites, but we’re no damn underdog” he roared to…
Regardless of the outcome of Monday night’s College Football Playoff championship game between No. 1 Clemson and No. 2 Alabama, a case can be made that no team in the history of the sport has had a better run than the Crimson Tide under coach Nick Saban. If Alabama beats the Tigers to win a fourth national title in seven seasons, the argument may be settled. There was talk early in the season after Alabama lost to Mississippi that the…
Chicago Bears offensive coordinator Adam Gase was hired Saturday as the Miami Dolphins’ ninth coach since 2004, and he’ll try to end the team’s seven-year playoff drought. Gase was the NFL’s hottest coaching candidate among assistants, and at 37, he becomes the league’s youngest coach. He also interviewed with the Eagles, Browns and Giants and had been considered the front-runner for the Dolphins job. The Dolphins chose him after interviewing six other candidates. “We did exhaustive research on all of…
Greeting sportsfans, I’m Brent Toast of ESPN, along with former Heisman winner Johnny Twitt. Welcome to the most important event of 2016, the college football national championship! Who will prevail? Will it be the Clemson University Tigers, led by evangelical whackjob Dabo Swinney, or the Crimson Tide of Alabama, coached by gazillionaire and part-time Bond villain Nick Saban? But first, let’s look at the second-most important event of 2016, the race for the White House. Who’s playing with his hand…
The Houndstooth hat. The tearaway jerseys. Sweet Home Alabama. Big Al the Elephant. Rammer Jammer. Deacon Blues. Little Debbie. The Bear. The Nicktator. Legion Field. Yeah, Alabama football has a nice history. The Tide tries to add to that in Monday night’s national championship game. When it comes to the lore of the sport, the Tide is probably behind only Notre Dame, and Alabama fans won’t even admit to that. This is the thing that seems to separate Alabama. Nebraska…
Does the University of Alabama have any room left in its trophy case? Yes, from the way the Crimson Tide looked in a 38-0 walloping of Michigan State in the College Football Playoff Semifinals on Thursday night. It brought Alabama coach Nick Saban within a week of his fifth national championship game. Of course, the Tide would have to beat the unbeaten Clemson Tigers in next week’s title game. Few schools have won the way the Tide has won, however,…
The trophy is his. All he has to do is pick it up and take it home. For Nick Saban, that always seems to be Saban, the head coach at Alabama — the Bear de jour, so to speak — is two wins away. Just two. All he has to do is beat Michigan State tonight, then beat the winner of the Oklahoma–Clemson game. Any other result will feel like an upset. Again. Such are expectations. It’s Saban and the Pips. Every…
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Platelet kinetics in the pulmonary microcirculation in vivo assessed by intravital microscopy.
Growing evidence supports the substantial pathophysiological impact of platelets on the development of acute lung injury. Methods for studying these cellular mechanisms in vivo are not present yet. The aim of this study was to develop a model enabling the quantitative analysis of platelet kinetics and platelet-endothelium interaction within consecutive segments of the pulmonary microcirculation in vivo. New Zealand White rabbits were anesthetized and ventilated. Autologous platelets were separated from blood and labeled ex vivo with rhodamine 6G. After implantation of a thoracic window, microhemodynamics and kinetics of platelets were investigated by intravital microscopy. Velocities of red blood cells (RBCs) and platelets were measured in arterioles, capillaries and venules, and the number of platelets adhering to the microvascular endothelium was counted. Kinetics of unstimulated platelets was compared with kinetics of thrombin-activated platelets. Velocity of unstimulated platelets was comparable to RBC velocity in all vessel segments. Unstimulated platelets passed the pulmonary microcirculation without substantial platelet-endothelial interaction. In contrast, velocity of activated platelets was decreased in all vascular segments indicating platelet margination and temporal platelet-endothelium interaction. Thrombin-activated platelets adhered to arteriolar endothelium; in capillaries and venules adherence of platelets was increased 8-fold and 13-fold, respectively. In conclusion, using intravital microscopy platelet kinetics were directly analyzed in the pulmonary microcirculation in vivo for the first time. In contrast to leukocytes, no substantial platelet-endothelium interaction occurs in the pulmonary microcirculation without any further stimulus. In response to platelet activation, molecular mechanisms enable adhesion of platelets in arterioles and venules as well as retention of platelets within capillaries.
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Cerebrovascular segmentation of TOF-MRA based on seed point detection and multiple-feature fusion.
The accurate extraction of cerebrovascular structures from time-of-flight (TOF) data is important for diagnosis of cerebrovascular diseases and planning and navigation of neurosurgery. In this study, we proposed a cerebrovascular segmentation method based on automatic seed point detection and vascular multiple-feature fusion. First, the brain mask in the T1-MR image is detected to enable the extraction of the TOF brain structure by simultaneously acquiring the TOF image and its corresponding T1-MRI. Second, local maximum points are detected on three maximum-intensity projections of TOF-MRA data and then be traced back in three-dimensional space to detect seed points for the initialization of vascular segmentation. Third, the TOF-MRA image and its corresponding vesselness image are fused to enhance vascular features on the basis of fuzzy inference for the extraction of whole cerebrovascular structures, particularly miniscule cerebral vessels. Finally, detected seed points and multiple-feature fused enhanced images are provided to the procedure of region growing, and cerebrovascular structures are segmented. Experimental results show that compared with traditional methods, the proposed method has higher accuracy for vascular segmentation and can avoid over- and under-segmentations. The proposed cerebrovascular segmentation method is not only effective but also accurate. Therefore, it has potential clinical applications.
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Winter 2001
In the North End, community grows by itself–but for how long? Five years ago, when I first told my Cambridge friends I was moving to Boston’s North End, they said I would be disappointed. My Italian grandmother notwithstanding, I wouldn’t find the sense of community and civic life I was looking for, they said, because(...)
WELLFLEET–The tourists may leave each fall, but Wellfleet’s 3,100 year-round residents lend character to a town already rich with shops, restaurants, and spectacular seaside vistas. This Lower Cape community brings together artists, shellfishermen, retirees, and Yankee traditionalists. Yet some say the town’s very diversity has contributed to its difficulties finding the right person to run(...)
Robert Moses became a legend of the Civil Rights Movement dodging bullets and taking beatings as he organized voter registration drives in Mississippi. Today, he is battling ignorance of a different kind, teaching African-American children across the country how to do–and understand–mathematics. And he considers himself no less a civil rights crusader now than he(...)
ATHOL–Cable-access television broadcasts of town meetings, board of selectmen sessions, and other municipal gatherings usually attract few viewers, even when they are repeated endlessly at all hours of the day and night. But on occasion, the performance of municipal duties takes a riveting turn, presenting to citizen-viewers high drama, if not low comedy. North of(...)
Massachusetts is basking in the economic glow of a record low unemployment rate, which dipped to just over 2 percent last fall. But not all parts of the state share this good fortune. As of October, the cities of Lawrence and New Bedford reported unemployment rates more than double the statewide average. Levels of joblessness(...)
The modern American worker, the most productive and prosperous in history, lives in an increasingly transient society where extended family support networks are stretched thin or are nonexistent, where there are fewer “stay-at-home” parents, and where many single-parent families have to both make ends meet and care for young children. All of these broad societal(...)
Working families in Massachusetts need and deserve the protection of a fair, paid family and medical leave policy that covers all workers. At some point in our lives, all of us will be confronted with a serious personal or family medical emergency. And everyone agrees that newborns and newly adopted children need time to get(...)
Almost two months before the DOE’s online conference, Senate President Thomas Birmingham launched the State Senate E-vents by personally engaging in a 32-minute chat with students at Everett High School. It was the first in what’s billed as a series of online discussions about public policy between senators and schoolchildren. The September 26 exchange, an(...)
The streaming video made Commissioner David Driscoll’s face look like it was melting, and the thread of conversation in the chat room was hard to follow. But other than that, the Department of Education’s interactive forum went off without a hitch. The November 15 Internet event, or “e-vent” as it was called, was the first(...)
PHOENIX–It’s not easy being clean. At least not the first time around. Arizona’s Clean Elections Law was passed in a statewide referendum in 1998, the same year Massachusetts approved its own. But, unlike the Massachusetts law, which applies for the first time to the elections in 2002, the Arizona system went into effect last year.(...)
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Ingredients
Recipe Directions
1. Throw the ingredients in a tiny bowl.
2. Grab a spoon and take the bowl back to your TV.
3. Mix it together while you're watching TV because it can take a little while to mix properly, especially if your coconut oil is hard. It'll look really dry at first, but don't add any extra anything. Just go with my measurements and mix it together slowly and carefully with a spoon. Within a minute you'll get the texture seen in my above pic.
The Rawtarian's Thoughts
Picture this... You've just had dinner. You're watching TV on the couch. Your non-raw husband pulls out a little chocolate bar beside you, and you wish you could have a little taste of chocolate too. What do you do? You run into the kitchen and make my 1 minute raw chocolate fudge, that's what!
It's so quick that you can do it in a commercial break, and...it only requires three ingredients.
You'll notice that this makes a very tiny serving size, so you'll want to make it in a tiny bowl so that you can stir it properly against the sides of the bowl. I use little tiny custard bowls.
This raw chocolate fudge is really sweet so you don't need much of it to get a nice hit of sweet chocolate flavour. This recipe reminds me of my tiny raw halvah recipe, actually, since they are both tiny sweet snacks you can pull together very quickly.
Recipe Photos
Nutrition Facts
Nutritional score: 84 out of 100
This recipe is very low in Calories, Carbohydrates, and Sodium.
This recipe is low in Fat.
This recipe is a noteworthy source of Protein, Dietary Fiber, and Iron.
All
Paula's Review
Raw chocolate fudge in 1 minute
5
5 out of 5
I'm a beginner and I'm learning all about the ingredients used in a raw-vegan world and I'm still in the experimenting stage. This recipe is amazing! I just can't believe how good it turned out. I actually added some walnuts and spread it all on a wax paper to give it the shape of a real chocolate. An hour later the most amazing and delicious chocolate I've ever had was satisfying my sweet tooth. And my husband and my son devoured it. Thank you!!
Kait's Review
Raw chocolate fudge in 1 minute
2
2 out of 5
Wow. This was so intense I couldn't eat it. It was super bitter and powdery, sorry rawtarian. At first I added 2 tsp cashew butter but that didn't help, so I added another teaspoon of sweetener (I used a vegan honey substitute). It was more palatable but still too powdery. Then i added some soy milk. And some more. But it still tasted powdery. So I added more coconut oil and then another teaspoon of sweet freedom. It's much better now. In retrospect I wondered whether it might have worked better using avocado at the start instead of coconut oil, as it would have compensated for the liquid, the added fat, and might have improved the texture. It definitely hit the chocolate spot.
Awesome! I loved this recipes. It is super easy and quick,which is perfect for me. It was a bit bitter, but I think I may have used too much cocoa powder. (I use cocoa because cacao tastes too bitter to me.) Overall, great recipes though. You're awesome L-J!!
This information is not intended to replace a one-on-one relationship with a qualified health care professional and is not intended as medical advice. I encourage you to make your own health care decisions based upon your research and in partnership with like-minded, qualified health care professional(s). I wish you success on your raw journey!
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559 F.2d 1220
Lucasv.Matthews
No. 76-2039
United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
7/19/77
S.D.Ohio
AFFIRMED
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OBJECTIVES: 1. To disseminate and coordinate sickle hemoglobin education in the community; 2. To counsel patients with sickle cell disease and their families and establish ongoing relationships with hospitals, clinics and other health agencies; 3. To develop educational materials on sickle hemoglobin to be used locally, nationally and internationally; 4. To make available to the medical community and general public a resource for the laboratory diagnosis of sickle and other hemoglobin variants; 5. To determine the molecular structure and intermolecular contact sites of hemoglobin S in sickle cell fibers; 6. To understand the mechanisms of translational and transcriptional control of the synthesis of specific hemoglobins; 7. To study the renal adaptation of patients with sickle cell anemia to overproduction of uric acid and the association of hyperuricemia and gout; 8. To determine monocyte bactericidal capacity in patients with sickle cell anemia and restore same in vitro by incubation with sickle serum cleared of red cell fragments; 9. To ascertain whether variations in severity of anemia among patients with sickle cell anemia are due primarily to differences in rate of red cell production or in red cell destruction and whether regulation of erythropoiesis is defective in such patients; 10. To study the role of prophylactic transfusion therapy in care of pregnant patients with sickle cell anemia.
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1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a laminated transparent plastic material and a novel polymerizable monomer. The laminated transparent plastic material may be used as a transparent material for a glazing material such as outside windows of vehicles, rail way trains, airplanes or the like required to have good visibility, protecting function and safety, windows of the partition plates in the vehicles, airplanes or the like, outside windows of various buildings and edifices, and parts of roofs, ceilings and walls through which light is introduced thereinto, or as a protective cover for measuring instruments or various machines and apparatuses.
The polymerizable monomer may be useful as a starting material for producing high hardness transparent resins which can be resin materials for laminated transparent plastic material.
2. Description of the Related Art
Inorganic glass is excellent not only in transparency, but also in various other physicals properties, and therefore, it is widely used as a transparent material.
However, inorganic glass is easily broken and the shape of the broken piece is dangerous so that it has been problematic from the standpoint of safety. Moreover, various lightweight materials have been recently demanded, and therefore there is a strong tendency that inorganic glass as a transparent material is replaced by transparent resins and composite resin.
Heretofore, transparent thermoplastic resin shaped articles, in particular, those of polymethyl methacrylate resin, polycarbonate resins and the like, have been used for various purposes since these molded articles are excellent in transparency, mechanical properties, in particular, impact resistance, further, workability and productivity, and have also good appearance. Examples of applications of transparent thermoplastic resin molded articles include glazing materials, for example, windows for buildings such as educational or cultural facilities, sports facilities, railway station buildings and the like, a part of roofs, protecting walls such as shelter for superhighway and the like, and water tanks for aquariums.
In addition, transparent thermoplastic resin shaped articles are used as protective covers for liquid crystal apparatuses and lighting apparatuses, and display apparatuses such as those for computers, and further, signboards and indicating boards.
However, these resins are linear polymers and therefore, do not always have sufficient surface hardness, stiffness, heat resistance and chemical resistance. For purposes of improving these physical properties, silicone resins and acrylic resins are generally used for hard coating treatment, but in this case the solvents should be selected from very limited types of solvents from the standpoints of chemical resistance.
Further, according to the present level of coating technique, the thickness of the coating film is at most about 0.1 mm.
Therefore, the surface hardness and chemical resistance of such resins can be fairly improved, but in view of the available maximum thickness of the coating film as mentioned above, it can not be expected to improve so far as heat resistance and stiffness. And when molded products of such resins are used as various members, thick molded products are required to prevent the members from deforming due to outer pressure or wind pressure.
As a transparent resin excellent in surface hardness and having an improved impact strength, diethylene glycol diallyl carbonate resins are widely known, but the volume shrinkage is as high as 14% and a long time is required until the polymerization is completed and moreover, the impact strength is still insufficient.
As mentioned above, there have not yet been found resins which can be satisfactorily used as a transparent material such as glazing materials.
In order to solve the above-mentioned problems in prior art, there are proposed various laminated resins as shown below.
(1) A laminated resin composed of a polymer or copolymer of monomer components containing a polymerizable monomer of (meth)acrylic acid esters as a substrate and a polymerizable monomer or prepolymer of (meth)acrylic acid ester capable of giving a more flexibility applied to the surface of the substrate or poured in between two sheets of the substrates to laminate the two substrates (Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. Sho 53-2576); PA1 (2) A laminated resin composed of a polyurethane layer and an acrylic polymer layer, the two layers being independent from each other and simultaneously being penetrated into each other (Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. Sho 63-252738); PA1 (3) A laminated resin composed of a polycarbonate resin molded product and a cured film of a ladder type silicone type oligomer formed on the surface of the polycarbonate resin molded product with an intervening (meth)acrylic acid ester copolymer (Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. Hei 3-287634); PA1 (4) As a laminated resin intending to improve weatherability which is further demanded for resins used as a transparent material, a laminated resin produced by laminating a thermoplastic resin of high weatherability with a substrate of acrylic resin (Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. Hei 3-30945). PA1 (5) There are proposed laminated resins produced by laminating a polymethyl (meth)acrylate resin to a polycarbonate resin molded product excellent in impact resistance so as to impart heat resistance and weatherability (U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,810,815, 3,933,964), but so far an improvement in surface hardness and stiffness can not be expected. In view of the foregoing, there have not yet been found novel materials for transparent resin molded products which possess satisfactory characteristics widely usable in industry, for example, as glazing materials. PA1 Y is selected from the group consisting of ##STR12## n is an integer of 1-4, m is an integer of 1-6, PA1 (n+m) is an integer of at least 3, PA1 when n=1, X is oxygen or sulfur, PA1 when n.gtoreq.2, X or X's are all oxygen or all sulfur, one or PA1 two X's are oxygen while the other X or X's are sulfur, or PA1 one X is sulfur while the other X or X's are oxygen. PA1 R.sub.1 is selected from the group consisting of hydrogen and methyl, PA1 Y is selected from the group consisting of ##STR18## n is an integer of 1-4, m is an integer of 1-6, and (n+m) is an integer of at least 3. PA1 R.sub.1 is selected from the group consisting of hydrogen and methyl, PA1 1 is of zero or one, PA1 i and j are integers of one or more, PA1 when 1 is zero, i=j=one, PA1 when 1 is one, (i+j) is 4 or less, PA1 when j is one, X is oxygen or sulfur, PA1 when j.gtoreq.2, X's are all oxygen or all sulfur, one X is oxygen and the other X or X's are sulfur, or one X is sulfur and the other X or X's are oxygen. PA1 and the like. PA1 (2) Compounds produced by reacting isopropenylphenol with a compound having both at least one of the above-mentioned functional groups (8) and (5) and at least one of functional groups capable of reacting with the phenolic hydroxyl group of isopropenyl phenol such as --COOH, --COCl, haloalkyl, --SO.sub.3 R (R=alkyl or aryl), --NCO, --NCS, epoxy and the like. PA1 (3) Compounds produced by reacting isopropenylphenol with a compound having both at least one functional group capable of reacting with the phenolic hydroxyl group of isopropenylphenol and PA1 (4) Compounds produced by reacting a compound having at least one epoxy group with isopropenylphenol to open the ring and reacting the resulting product with (meth)acrylic acid or its acid chloride. PA1 esterification reaction of the phenolic hydroxyl group of isopropenyl phenol with --COOH or --COCl group of the above-mentioned compounds; PA1 etherification reaction with haloalkyl, --SO.sub.3 R (R is alkyl or aryl); urethane forming reaction with --NCO group, --NCS group; PA1 an etherification reaction product produced by reacting a compound having at least one haloalkyl and at least one --OH group in one molecule with isopropenylphenol, for example, PA1 an etherification reaction product produced by the reaction of PA1 an esterification reaction product produced by the reaction of a compound having, in one molecule, at least one of --COOH, --COCl and --COBr and at least one of haloalkyl with isopropenylphenol, for example, PA1 an esterification reaction product produced by the reaction of PA1 3-bromopropionyl chloride, PA1 (1) a compound producible by a carbamic acid esterification reaction of the phenolic hydroxyl group of isopropenylphenol with the isocyanate group of isopropenyl-.alpha.,.alpha.-dimethylbenzylisocyanate; PA1 (2) a compound producible by subjecting a compound having an aliphatic residue having or not having oxygen atom, alicyclic ring, heterocyclic ring or aromatic ring, or alicyclic residue with 1-2 epoxy groups or thiirane groups to a ring-opening reaction using isopropenylphenol, and reacting the resulting --OH group or --SH group formed by the ring opening reaction with the isocyanate group of isopropenyl-.alpha.,.alpha.-dimethylbenzylisocyanate to effect a carbamic acid esterification reaction or a thiocarbamic acid esterification; PA1 (3) a compound producible by subjecting a compound having an aliphatic residue having or not having oxygen atom, alicyclic ring, heterocyclic ring or aromatic ring, or alicyclic residue with both at least one haloalkyl group capable of reacting with a phenolic hydroxyl group of isopropenylphenol and at least one of --OH group and --SH group to an etherification reaction with the phenolic hydroxyl group of isopropenylphenol, and then reacting the --OH group and/or --SH group with the isocyanate group of isopropenyl-.alpha.,.alpha.-dimethylbenzylisocyanate to effect a carbamic acid esterification reaction and/or thiocarbamic acid esterification reaction. PA1 CH.sub.2 .dbd.CH--C(.dbd.O)--O--, CH.sub.2 .dbd.C(CH.sub.3)--C(.dbd.O)--O--, ##STR51## though the ratio can not be absolutly determined since it varies depending on the kinds of functional groups and structures of monomers, when the ratio of --SH group is low, the impact resistance can not be sufficiently improved. On the contrary, when the ratio of --SH group is high, the resulting polymer becomes rubbery and the surface hardness and stiffness are lowered to a great extent.
These techniques have some drawbacks as to some physical properties. Technique (1) above can improve impact resistance while the surface hardness is not satisfactory. When the sheet of technique (2) above is used alone, the stiffness is not sufficiently assured and the surface hardness is not always sufficient.
Technique (3) can improve the surface hardness while the stiffness is not satisfactory. Technique (4) gives a relatively excellent impact resistance and an improved weatherability while the stiffness and surface hardness are not satisfactory.
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Read the important 'REAL FOOD' news and articles today!
The American Cancer Society Admitted That Untreated Cancers Often Go Away Naturally
While researching the use of alternative therapies that were utilized by Suzanne Somers, we came across doctors and media outlets who desperately tried to malign her reputation. Their responses were so hasty that they accidentally revealed statistics that are not normally shared with the public.
“We’re finding that about 25 to 30 percent of some cancers stop growing at some point, that can make some treatments look good that aren’t doing anything. Until doctors figure out how to identify which patients have cancers that won’t progress, the only option is to treat everyone.”
While some people might consider 25 to 30 percent to be a relatively low percentage, this is actually much higher than the success rate for chemotherapy. The true life-long cure rate bounces between 2 and 4 percent for orthodox treatments. When compared, 30% suddenly becomes a very impressive figure with a gain of 10 times. Of course, this number speaks only for those who supposedly get no treatments at all. Alternative therapies get better life-long cure rates than 30%, but these numbers are not discussed publicly by medical officials, and rarely in private. Why aren’t these figures ever given to patients who are diagnosed with cancer? Why are they instead told the lie that they will certainly die if they refuse chemotherapy and radiation when almost the opposite is true?
We have searched tirelessly for the success rates of those who decided to walk away from all treatments for several years, but we only found it when the American Cancer Society stumbled in its attempts to defend its bruised reputation from meekly Susan Somers. Why didn’t they publicly release those numbers before? The recovery of Suzanne Somers was obviously quite embarrassing for them, because not only is she one of many who has cured herself of cancer permanently (not just 5 years of survival) but she also went public about her experiences with alternative treatments. Had she religiously followed the orthodox therapies, she would have had a 96% chance of not being alive, and her protracted death would have been truly horrific.
The quotation cited earlier makes another interesting point. Doctors really have no clue which cancers will progress, and which ones will not. Therefore, we must ask if early testing is really a good idea. With early testing, not only do the tests actually stimulate cancers through radiation, cutting, and poisoning, but doctors frequently discover anomalies that would otherwise naturally disappear if left alone. They always treat those abnormalities, and the patients almost always die from the treatments. People nowadays die from the treatments instead of the cancers, and this is shown in the establishment’s own statistics. Whenever a body is exposed to chemotherapy, cancers will strike sooner or later regardless of whether they existed initially. All chemotherapy drugs are carcinogenic, and they weaken all healthy cells. This is admitted in the official literature for adverse effects for all of the so-called anti-cancer medications, and massive cellular destruction is officially a part of standard treatments by design. They claim that their medicines attack the weaker cancer cells, but they actually do that by attacking all of the cells, and thereby the very immune system that is so critical for recovery.
“Call it the arrow of cancer. Like the arrow of time, it was supposed to point in one direction. Cancers grew and worsened. But as a paper in The Journal of the American Medical Association noted last week, data from more than two decades of screening for breast and prostate cancer call that view into question. Besides finding tumors that would be lethal if left untreated, screening appears to be finding many small tumors that would not be a problem if they were left alone, undiscovered by screening. They were destined to stop growing on their own or shrink, or even, at least in the case of some breast cancers, disappear.”
— Gina Kolata, the New York Times, October 26, 2009
The success rate of curing cancer is not going to rise much in orthodox medicine, because it is unwilling to consider any less profitable methodologies. A rise in orthodox cancer treatment success rates would indicate that their methods of calculating cure rates have changed, not the actual survival rates. It is how the science of modern medicine is cooked. Barely surviving for 5 years is currently counted as a successful cure, but patients usually die between the 5 and 10 year mark. It is called “cooking the books” in accounting circles. Most people are shocked when they learn that those who die during drug trials are censored from the records, because the departed did not “complete the study”. Getting killed in an experimental drug trial actually helps a drug company’s chance of getting that drug approved, because those who get the sickest are not counted.
“Success of most chemotherapies is appalling… There is no scientific evidence for its ability to extend in any appreciable way the lives of patients suffering from the most common organic cancer… Chemotherapy for malignancies too advanced for surgery, which accounts for 80% of all cancers, is a scientific wasteland.”
If the cancer industry were really concerned about scientific progress, then it would not hide its own statistics. Truth does not fear investigation. Instead, its numbers are repeatedly covered up, and the scientific community eliminates from its ranks anyone who refuses to accept the establishment’s zealous dogma. It is not science. It is politics, and a very deadly form of it.
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Statements on Get Holistic Health about health issues aren't meant to identify, treat, cure, or protect against illness. For those who have a health problem of any sort speak with your health care specialist. Material shown by Get Holistic Health is for educational purposes only and isn't meant to substitute for the recommendation of a doctor and other medical professional.
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Just beyond San Francisco’s city limits lies 640 acres of land that could help solve some of California’s biggest problems.
A developer wants to build 4,400 new homes there — one of the largest projects recently proposed in one of the country’s most unaffordable regions. The development would overlook a railway that drops riders into the heart of San Francisco in 15 minutes, reducing the need for cars and cutting the greenhouse gas emissions that come from them.
State and regional leaders have endorsed the project. But its fate rests with Brisbane, a city of 4,700 people that annexed the property 55 years ago. And no one, not even the developer, thinks Brisbane’s residents will approve all 4,400 homes.
“Unfortunately, we believe that their ceiling is going to be below that,” said Jonathan Scharfman, the general manager for the developer, Universal Paragon Corp.
The project, Brisbane Baylands, reveals how few incentives local governments have to accept large developments — even as the state is pushing to lower housing costs and funnel growth toward existing cities and nearby mass transit to combat climate change. Brisbane residents are wary of a project that could triple the city’s population. Under California’s tax system, Brisbane also earns more money if it rejects the current plan in favor of potential alternatives with more hotel rooms and space for businesses — but no homes.
The Bay Area’s dire need for housing makes the debate over the Baylands project “particularly painful,” said Ben Metcalf, director of the state Department of Housing and Community Development.
“It is frustrating that as a state and as a constellation of local jurisdictions we are constantly making decisions that aren’t the best for alleviating poverty, housing affordability, furthering our state’s economy or meeting our climate change goals,” Metcalf said.
For their part, some Brisbane residents feel besieged by pressure from housing activists, business groups, state lawmakers, San Francisco politicians, newspaper editorials and others beyond the city’s boundaries. An old rail yard and garbage dump contaminated the land, and opponents contend they want to protect anyone who might decide to live there even after regulators approve a cleanup. More than that, Brisbane residents say, outsiders don’t understand how much the Baylands project would upend their community.
“We’re a small town,” City Councilman W. Clarke Conway said at a meeting on the project last fall, “and we’re a small town by choice.”
Bill Dettmer, left, speaks with a group of men who regularly meet and discuss local politics and civic issues at Madhouse Coffee in Brisbane, Calif. Dettmer thinks a developer should be allowed to build housing on an old rail yard in the city. (Josh Edelson / For The Times)
Brisbane’s main drag is Visitacion Avenue. It slopes upward for five blocks, starting at a city park and continuing through mom-and-pop shops, cafes and restaurants. The rest of Brisbane comprises office parks, a strip mall and mostly single-family homes built throughout the town’s hills.
“This is the land that time forgot,” said Greg Lee, 55, an electrical engineer who has lived in the city for more than two decades.
San Bruno Mountain, which rises a quarter-mile into the sky, is Brisbane’s landmark, and residents have fought to preserve it. In the 1960s, they blocked a developer from leveling the mountaintop and building enough new homes for 70,000 people. In 1980, after years of battling another massive project on the mountain, residents received a last-minute reprieve from the federal government, which declared San Bruno a critical habitat for the endangered callippe silverspot butterfly.
Anti-development fervor has continued. About a decade ago, a city councilman suggested sidestepping a state housing law that requires cities to plan for growth by zoning for homes where nothing would ever get built — the bottom of Brisbane’s lagoon.
Residents’ efforts to protect Brisbane’s small-town feel make large changes hard to accept, said Paul Bouscal, 58, a San Francisco water department employee who has lived in the area since 1982.
The Baylands, he said, plays on fears of Brisbane getting big.
“For our town to grow like that, it would be too much, too fast,” Bouscal said.
It might be easier for residents and elected officials to welcome growth if the city received more tax dollars for doing so. But the opposite is true.
Because of tax limits established in 1978 by Proposition 13, local governments generally receive more revenue from sales and hotel room taxes than property taxes. Proposition 13 limited property tax rates to 1% of a home’s taxable value and restricted how quickly that taxable value could increase after a purchase.
Last year, Brisbane hired a consultant who found that the city would net $1 million a year in tax revenue by approving the Baylands. But if the city instead approved a project with lots more commercial space, a larger hotel and no housing, Brisbane would gain $9 million annually — an amount equivalent to more than half the city’s current day-to-day operating budget.
Developers are always going to face opposition because of residents’ concerns about their communities changing, said Mark Stivers, a longtime state housing policy staffer. But the tax system is another big reason the state has a housing shortage, he said.
“I’d like to think if just the fiscal incentives were reversed, if a city could make as much money off housing as they could retail, we’d be having a very different conversation in California,” Stivers said.
Jonathan Scharfman, general manager of Universal Paragon Corp., describes the area where his company hopes to build a 4,400-unit housing development. (Josh Edelson / For The Times)
Debate over the Baylands has divided the town and dominated Brisbane politics for at least a decade. More than half of Brisbane residents said in a 2015 city-sponsored poll that they were OK with some housing on the Baylands site. But just 3% backed a project of more than 4,000 homes such as the developer is proposing.
Bill Dettmer, 63, spent a recent morning at Madhouse Coffee, one of the city’s main gathering spots, trying to convince skeptical neighbors that the city should support the housing. Dettmer moved to Brisbane 50 years ago and does maintenance work in the city.
“I see a lot of stuff,” Dettmer said. “I see beds in garages. You have to increase the [housing] supply. If you really want to help out people, let them live in dignity. It just seems like a no-brainer.”
Many local opponents cite the land’s history — not hostility to growth — for why they’re against the project. San Francisco used to dump its garbage on the site, and a railroad company repaired its trains there. Longtime residents remember watching tires burn.
Scharfman, the developer’s general manager, said Universal Paragon Corp. will clean up the land and won’t begin building until all environmental agencies responsible say it’s safe. He likened the process to how an old rail yard at San Francisco’s Mission Bay was cleaned up and now has thousands of homes.
Still, some Brisbane residents say they don’t trust regulators will get it right, because what’s known about the toxicity of chemicals can change over time. Even though they won’t live in the Baylands, opponents believe they have a responsibility to shield those who might.
“Why do we have a seat belt law? Why do we have a helmet law? They’re anti-stupidity laws to protect the general population,” said Michele Salmon, 63, who was born and raised in Brisbane.
Salmon said she understood housing problems were real and lamented the lack of space to accommodate a growing population.
“I do feel sorry that the younger generation is not going to get to live the life that we did,” she said. “But it’s a different time.”
State and regional officials have few tools to push Brisbane. Every eight years, the state tells every city and county to plan for the construction of a certain number of new homes to accommodate planned population growth. Between 2007 and 2014, Brisbane’s goal was 401 houses. Developers built a little more than a third of that target, but the city faces no consequences for the lack of home building.
Similarly, regional agencies such as the Assn. of Bay Area Governments have to plan for urban growth as part of the the state’s climate change efforts. California won’t meet its greenhouse gas reduction targets, regulators have said, without a significant reduction in driving fueled by more people walking, biking and using mass transit. The Baylands project and its 4,400 homes next to a Caltrain station are written into the region’s climate change proposal, but that means nothing for the project’s actual approval.
“This is a plan, an expectation of how we could grow,” said Leah Zippert, an Assn. of Bay Area Governments spokeswoman. “It is not a mandate to build. It’s not a mandate to do anything.”
The Brisbane City Council plans to make a key decision on the Baylands this summer, including whether it supports any housing on the site. But the council expects to put that proposal on the ballot next year. Brisbane’s residents will be the ones with the last word.
liam.dillon@latimes.com
@dillonliam
ALSO
Gov. Jerry Brown says the state’s housing crisis is his next priority, but reaching a deal won’t be easy
California lawmakers have tried for 50 years to fix the state’s housing crisis. Here’s why they’ve failed
California won’t meet its climate change goals without a lot more housing density in its cities
Updates on California politics
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Panama City Beach Pirates
The Panama City Beach Pirates were an American soccer team that plays in the Southeast Division of the USL Premier Development League (PDL), the fourth tier of the American soccer pyramid. The club was founded in 2007 as the Panama City Pirates and played in the PDL in 2008 and 2009, before folding due to financial constraints. However, the club was revived in 2011 under new ownership to begin play again in the PDL in 2012. After the 2014 season the Pirates again ended their program.
The team plays its home games in Panama City Beach, Florida at Mike Gavlak Stadium on the campus of Arnold High School, where it had played since 2008. The team's colors are black, white and red.
History
Early days
The Panama City Pirates were founded in 2007 to begin play in the USL Premier Development League, the fourth tier of the American soccer pyramid. The team received a great deal of local fanfare and publicity, but found the early going tough in competitive terms, losing their opening two games, both to Central Florida Kraze on consecutive dates. Despite a couple of battling ties, the Pirates didn't pick up their first victory until the first weekend of June, with a 3–2 win at home over Nashville Metros. The Palm Beach Pumas were defeated 6–0, 7–0 and 5–0 in their three games in June. C.D. Harris and Bruno Conceição scored 12 of the Pirates' 18 goals against the Pumas between them, and helped the team enjoy a seven-game unbeaten streak which included a 1–0 win over Bradenton Academics, and an unexpected 3–0 victory over the Central Florida Kraze. In the latter game they playing with 10 men for over half an hour. Their late-season charge wasn't enough for them to make the playoffs, and their last-day defeat to Bradenton left them in 5th place in the Southeast in their first year. C.D. Harris and Bruno Conceição were the season's top scorers, with 10 and 7 goals respectively.
The team folded in April 2010, just weeks before the start of the 2010 PDL season, when owners Laird and Nanette Hitchcock informed the league there were no financial resources with which to continue running the club.
2012 season
In November 2011, the club was resurrected as the Panama City Beach Pirates under the new ownership of Eehab Kenawy, Jill Holt, and Amy Dalton to once again play in the USL PDL in 2012.
The Pirates played in the Southeast Division of the Southern Conference of the PDL, along with the Ocala Stampede, Orlando City U-23, IMG Bradenton Academics, VSI Tampa Bay, Mississippi Brilla, Fort Lauderdale Schulz Academy, and FC Jax Destroyers.
The Pirates finished the season in 6th place, with 16 points in the regular season and a 4–3–1 home record, and 6–7–3 overall.
2013 season
The Pirates held open tryouts for the 2013 PDL season on January 12–13 and February 9–10 at Pete Edwards Field in Panama City Beach, with the season set to begin on May 2, 2013.
The Pirates clinched a playoff spot after defeating Ft. Lauderdale Schulz Academy 2–0 at home on July 13, 2013; this was the first time the Pirates made it to the post-season.
The season came to an end in Austin, Texas, in a loss to the home-town Aztex 0–4 in the Southern Conference semi-finals to end the season with a 10–4–1 record.
Colors and badge
The Pirates use black Adidas Tiro 11 jerseys at home and red as visitors, with official USL numbers. The Front sponsor for the 2012 & 2013 jersey is the Panama City Beach Visitor Bureau.
Stadium
Mike Gavlak Stadium; Panama City Beach, Florida (2008–2009, 2012–2015)
Pete Edwards Field; Panama City Beach, Florida (2012–2015, Practice Facility)
Average attendance
Attendance statistics are calculated by averaging each team's self-reported home attendances from the historical match archive at https://web.archive.org/web/20100105175057/http://www.uslsoccer.com/history/index_E.html.
2008: 270
2009: 357
2012: 450
2013: 457
Club culture
Mascot
Captain Jack the pirate has been the official mascot of the Panama City Beach Pirates since the team was reestablished during the 2012 season. He can be found at home games roaming the sideline and cheering on his beloved team.
Head coaches
Bill Elliott (2008–2009)
Greg DeVito (2012–2015)
Year-by-year
References
External links
Official site
Press Release
Category:Association football clubs established in 2007
Category:Association football clubs disestablished in 2015
Category:Soccer clubs in Florida
Category:2007 establishments in Florida
Category:2015 disestablishments in Florida
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Jhonnes
Jhonnes Marques de Souza (born 22 April 1984) is a Brazilian football defender who last played for FC ViOn Zlaté Moravce in the Fortuna Liga.
Biography
Born in Londrina, Paraná, Jhonnes was signed by Londrina Junior Team in 2004, the youth team of Londrina (later became two separate entity). He also trailed at Serie A team Udinese but failed to sign a contract, as Italian clubs were restricted to sign any non-EU player.
Slovenia
In September 2004 he left for Slovenian side Domžale along with Juninho. In February 2005, his contract with Londrina Junior Team was extended to 31 December 2008 and Lucas also joined him at Domžale. He played 20 league matches in 2005–06 season. In 2006-07 season he left for Celje. In January 2007, his contract with Londrina Junior Team was extended again, to 31 December 2011.
Returned to Brazil
In January 2008. he joined Náutico. and in February left for Treze. He also trailed at German side TuS Koblenz in January 2009, played a friendly.
In February 2009, he was signed by Londrina. In April, he was signed by Arapongas.
Return to Europe
He was loaned to Croatian side Hrvatski dragovoljac in August 2009.
In August 2010, he finally terminated his contract with Junior Team Futebol (ex-Londrina Junior Team) and left for Latvia side Liepājas Metalurgs, played 8 times and scored 2 goals in Latvian Higher League.
In February 2011, he signed a contract with Újpest FC. and in September 2011 he signed for NK Varaždin.
References
External links
Profile at imscouting.com
Category:1984 births
Category:Living people
Category:Brazilian footballers
Category:Londrina Esporte Clube players
Category:Clube Náutico Capibaribe players
Category:NK Hrvatski Dragovoljac players
Category:Újpest FC players
Category:NK Varaždin players
Category:FC Tobol players
Category:FC ViOn Zlaté Moravce players
Category:Kazakhstan Premier League players
Category:Brazilian expatriate footballers
Category:Expatriate footballers in Slovenia
Category:Expatriate footballers in Croatia
Category:Expatriate footballers in Latvia
Category:Expatriate footballers in Hungary
Category:Expatriate footballers in Slovakia
Category:Expatriate footballers in Kazakhstan
Category:Association football central defenders
Category:Sportspeople from Londrina
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Computadores em Foco - Guia de Segurança On-line
Remove Adware.video-high and Stop Ads
What Is Adware.video-high?
Adware.video-high, or simply Video-high, is an adware program. This means that after it has been installed on your computer, it will start bombarding you with advertisements whenever you try to browse the web. Although Adware.video-high has supposedly been developed to help you view only videos in higher resolution, it will do no such thing. What is more, this application has been installed on your computer without your permission. Security specialists definitely recommend not trusting it. Instead, you should remove it from your computer as soon as possible.
Where Did Adware.video-high Come from?
As we mentioned, Adware.video-high has been installed unbeknownst to you. This has been achieved through bundled downloads. It has been discovered that this program is attached to the installers of Jollywallet, TornTV, and the like. Contudo, it may also come with free programs with better reputation. There are a few things you can do to prevent the accidental installation of Adware.video-high on your PC:
Avoid websites that distribute third-party software
Rather than skipping through the installation, pay attention to the information you are presented
Opt for Advanced/Custom installation. Por aqui, you will be able to refuse the installation of the additional software
What Does Adware.video-high Do?
Adware.video-high will be attached to your browser as soon as it has been installed. Então, it will immediately start showing advertisements. The program is compatible with Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, and Google Chrome. You will be shown numerous ads each time your surf the net. Além disso, the ads you are shown may be related to your recent browsing. Adware programs can collect data on the user’s browsing and use it to show targeted advertisements. They can also share the information they have gathered with third parties.
Why is Adware.video-high Dangerous?
While the program itself is not dangerous, its activities can prove to be. Adware programs are quite often exploited by malicious parties. This can result in users getting redirected to a harmful website when clicking on the ads. These websites can try a few things:
Fool you into sharing your personal and financial information. They may claim you have won some sum of money, for instance
Trick you into downloading a virus that will steal your information
Attack your system with malware directly
Even though adware programs are low-level threats, they can attract some larger problems if they are kept on the computer. This is why you need to remove Adware.video-high as soon as possible.
How to Remove Adware.video-high
Here are the steps you need to take to get rid of the adware:
Go to Control Panel and open the list of programs.
Find the program (video-high).
Uninstall it.
Sure, you may have removed this adware, but there is a possibility that there are others. What is more, your system is obviously vulnerable if adware has managed to infiltrate it. It is highly advised that you acquire a reliable antimalware tool. Not only will it rid the system of all intruders, but it will also protect it against any future attempts at compromising it.
What Is Adware.video-high?
Adware.video-high, or simply Video-high, is an adware program. This means that after it has been installed on your computer, it will start bombarding you with advertisements whenever you try to browse the web. Although Adware.video-high has supposedly been developed to help you view only videos in higher resolution, it will do no such thing. What is more, this application has been installed on your computer without your permission. Security specialists definitely recommend not trusting it. Instead, you should remove it from your computer as soon as possible.
Where Did Adware.video-high Come from?
As we mentioned, Adware.video-high has been installed unbeknownst to you. This has been achieved through bundled downloads. It has been discovered that this program is attached to the installers of Jollywallet, TornTV, and the like. Contudo, it may also come with free programs with better reputation. There are a few things you can do to prevent the accidental installation of Adware.video-high on your PC:
Avoid websites that distribute third-party software
Rather than skipping through the installation, pay attention to the information you are presented
Opt for Advanced/Custom installation. Por aqui, you will be able to refuse the installation of the additional software
What Does Adware.video-high Do?
Adware.video-high will be attached to your browser as soon as it has been installed. Então, it will immediately start showing advertisements. The program is compatible with Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, and Google Chrome. You will be shown numerous ads each time your surf the net. Além disso, the ads you are shown may be related to your recent browsing. Adware programs can collect data on the user’s browsing and use it to show targeted advertisements. They can also share the information they have gathered with third parties.
Why is Adware.video-high Dangerous?
While the program itself is not dangerous, its activities can prove to be. Adware programs are quite often exploited by malicious parties. This can result in users getting redirected to a harmful website when clicking on the ads. These websites can try a few things:
Fool you into sharing your personal and financial information. They may claim you have won some sum of money, for instance
Trick you into downloading a virus that will steal your information
Attack your system with malware directly
Even though adware programs are low-level threats, they can attract some larger problems if they are kept on the computer. This is why you need to remove Adware.video-high as soon as possible.
How to Remove Adware.video-high
Here are the steps you need to take to get rid of the adware:
Go to Control Panel and open the list of programs.
Find the program (video-high).
Uninstall it.
Sure, you may have removed this adware, but there is a possibility that there are others. What is more, your system is obviously vulnerable if adware has managed to infiltrate it. It is highly advised that you acquire a reliable antimalware tool. Not only will it rid the system of all intruders, but it will also protect it against any future attempts at compromising it.
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{
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
}
|
Pulse oximetry is at present the standard of care for the continuous monitoring of arterial oxygen saturation (SpO2). Pulse oximeters provide instantaneous in-vivo measurements of arterial oxygenation, and thereby provide early warning of arterial hypoxemia, for example.
A pulse oximeter comprises a computerized measuring unit and a probe attached to the patient, typically to his or her finger or ear lobe. The probe includes a light source for sending an optical signal through the tissue and a photo detector for receiving the signal after transmission through the tissue. On the basis of the transmitted and received signals, light absorption by the tissue can be determined. During each cardiac cycle, light absorption by the tissue varies cyclically. During the diastolic phase, absorption is caused by venous blood, tissue, bone, and pigments, whereas during the systolic phase there is an increase in absorption, which is caused by the influx of arterial blood into the tissue. Pulse oximeters focus the measurement on this arterial blood portion by determining the difference between the peak absorption during the systolic phase and the constant absorption during the diastolic phase. Pulse oximetry is thus based on the assumption that the pulsatile component of the absorption is due to arterial blood only.
Light transmission through an ideal absorbing sample is determined by the known Lambert-Beer equation as follows:Iout=Iine−εDC, (1)where Iin is the light intensity entering the sample, Iout is the light intensity received from the sample, D is the path length through the sample, ε is the extinction coefficient of the analyte in the sample at a specific wavelength, and C is the concentration of the analyte. When Iin, D, and ε are known, and Iout is measured, the concentration C can be calculated.
In pulse oximetry, in order to distinguish between the two species of hemoglobin, oxyhemoglobin (HbO2), and deoxyhemoglobin (RHb), absorption must be measured at two different wavelengths, i.e. the probe includes two different light emitting diodes (LEDs). The wavelength values widely used are 660 nm (red) and 940 nm (infrared), since the said two species of hemoglobin have substantially different absorption values at these wavelengths. Each LED is illuminated in turn at a frequency which is typically several hundred Hz.
The accuracy of a pulse oximeter is affected by several factors. This is discussed briefly in the following.
Firstly, the dyshemoglobins which do not participate in oxygen transport, i.e. methemoglobin (MetHb) and carboxyhemoglobin (CoHb), absorb light at the wavelengths used in the measurement. Pulse oximeters are set up to measure oxygen saturation on the assumption that the patient's blood composition is the same as that of a healthy, non-smoking individual. Therefore, if these species of hemoglobin are present in higher concentrations than normal, a pulse oximeter may display erroneous data.
Secondly, intravenous dyes used for diagnostic purposes may cause considerable deviation in pulse oximeter readings. However, the effect of these dyes is short-lived since the liver purifies blood efficiently.
Thirdly, coatings such as nail polish may in practice impair the accuracy of a pulse oximeter, even though the absorption caused by them is constant, not pulsatile, and thus in theory it should not have an effect on the accuracy.
Fourthly, the optical signal may be degraded by both noise and motion artifacts. One source of noise is the ambient light received by the photodetector. Many solutions have been devised with the aim of minimizing or eliminating the effect of the movement of the patient on the signal, and the ability of a pulse oximeter to function correctly in the presence of patient motion depends on the design of the pulse oximeter. One way of canceling out the motion artefact is to use an extra wavelength for this purpose.
A further factor affecting the accuracy of a pulse oximeter is the direct electrical crosstalk between the circuitry driving the LEDs and the circuitry receiving the signal from the photodetector. Due to crosstalk of this type, non-optical signal components may superimpose on the signal received and thus cause erroneous oxygen saturation readings. This problem does not exist with conventional pulse oximeters using wide pulses, but has surfaced with the current trend towards lower power consumption, which is essential for battery operated oximeters, for example. Lower power consumption calls for narrower pulses for driving the LEDs, the narrower pulses being more vulnerable to this type of crosstalk. The problem is further aggravated if the tissue of the patient is thicker than normal, whereby the signal received from the photodetector is weaker than normal.
It is an objective of the invention to bring about a solution by means of which it is possible to decide whether this type of crosstalk is present and whether it will cause erroneous results in the oxygen saturation measurements. A further objective of the present invention is to bring about a solution by means of which the measurement can be performed so that the crosstalk, even if strong, will not cause erroneous readings.
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{
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
}
|
Gear up for awesome robot-to-vehicle action with this fierce MEGATRON figure! In robot mode, the leader of the DECEPTICONS can whip his 2 swords out of his hidden scabbard for a double-fisted assault against his AUTOBOT enemies. When he needs even more power to mow them down, convert him to jungle tank mode! Keep converting him back and forth so he can handle whatever his enemies throw at him!
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{
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
}
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Archive for December, 2006
Have you walked into some place like a bar and heard a song you liked but couldn’t identify, and wished you had some way to get more information before the next track came on? Have you been flustered anytime for not being able to exactly place a song that sounds vaguely familiar? If you’ve answered yes to at least one of these questions, you should check out Shazam, a music discovery engine, based out of the United Kingdom.
I had read about Shazam around the time of its launch a year or so ago. All you had to do was to dial 2580 on your mobile phone, hold the phone close to the source of music for around 10 seconds. After a few seconds, you got a text message with the song data.
I got a chance to use Shazam during my recent trip to London.
At a McDonald’s restaurant near the Bank Underground Station, I heard a song that I liked. Since I hadn’t heard this song before, I was curious to know more and decided to put Shazam to work. I dialed 2580. After 20 seconds or so, the call was automatically terminated and I got the following SMS from Shazam a few seconds later.
Wow, Shazam had identified the song!
I tried another song — this time a familiar Jethro Tull number (“A Gift of Roses”) from my MP3 player. Here’s what I got back from Shazam.
Wow, I could now vouch that Shazam had correctly identified the number!
I was curious to figure out how Shazam responds to live music. I got a chance to check this out the next day while I was at the Greenwich Market (just outside the Cutty Sark for Maritime Greenwich DLR station). I saw a young lady playing a western classical piece on the violin. When I “submitted” this music to Shazam by dialing 2580, I got back an SMS saying Shazam couldn’t tag the track suggesting that the music should be loud enough.
To me, this song was much louder than the one Shazam had successfully identified the previous day at McDonald’s. So, Shazam’s inability to identify the Greenwich Market piece is probably because (a) it can tag only recorded music (not live music), or (b) its collection excludes western classical music, or (c) its collection does not include this specific western classical piece. A quick glance at Shazam’s website did not yield a definitive answer.
Shazam costs 25p per track — whether Shazam manages to identify the track or not. Shazam also offers to sell the ringtone at a cost of 300p.
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{
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
}
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Penicillium infrapurpureum
Penicillium infrapurpureum is a species of the genus of Penicillium.
References
infrapurpureum
Category:Fungi described in 2014
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{
"pile_set_name": "Wikipedia (en)"
}
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Sunday, 4 September 2011
The Google guys have been cooking up some very interesting stuff in the labs again. I took a look at the new trending service called Google Correlate today. Not entirely sure of its commercial value as an online free tool but it appears quite nifty.
One has to have a Google login in order to access the following site: http://www.google.com/trends/correlate but once in it is quite easy to navigate. One is able to trend web search data the Google has been collecting for many years. You can draw a line graph and the software will then match that profile to the closest profile it can find. One can also type in a web search string and it then finds the closest trend to that. For example, being in the Insurance industry, I typed in "Motor Vehicle Accidents" and the top 4 returned search trends are "vehicle accidents" (duh), "city planning", "questionnaires" and "battered women". The correlation between MVA's and battered women is strong (0.8744). I guess the big question is why? One is also able to upload a data file of time stamped data in order to find the closest correlation.
I guess one just needs to be mindful of the fact that these trends are not actual events but trends of search patterns. I would be interested in hearing from anybody who has used this technology in order to bring real life business use cases to life.
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{
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
}
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Further evidence for masculinization of female rats by males located caudally in utero.
The morphology and behavior of female rodents is partially masculinized as a result of residence near males in the same uterine horn (Clemens effect). Two hypothetical mechanisms have been proposed to account for this effect. In the first hypothesis ("contiguity") androgens secreted by males in utero are proposed to diffuse across the amniotic membrane, reaching adjacent fetuses. In the second hypothesis ("caudal male") androgens are transported via the cervical-to-ovarian blood flow and may diffuse directly between closely apposed uterine veins and arteries. This study was designed to test directly which of these mechanisms appears more influential in masculinizing the morphology of female rats. Pregnant Sprague-Dawley rats were decapitated early on Day 22 of gestation and pups were Caesarean delivered. Their anogenital distance and body weight were recorded, location in utero coded by means of footpad tatooing, and each litter fostered to a maternal female. Measurements were taken again when the animals were weaned. Statistical analysis revealed that the presence of one or more males caudal to a female in the uterine horn has a more critical influence on that female's morphology than contiguity per se. Such a mechanism may result in partial masculinization of dimorphic behaviors later in life.
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{
"pile_set_name": "PubMed Abstracts"
}
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881 N.E.2d 97 (2008)
AGT, Inc.
v.
City of Lafayette
No. 79A04-0606-CV-322.
In the Court of Appeals of Indiana.
February 12, 2008.
NAJAM, J.
Unpublished memorandum decision. Affirmed.
MATHIAS, J. Concurs.
BRADFORD, J. Concurs.
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{
"pile_set_name": "FreeLaw"
}
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DROP TABLE IF EXISTS t1;
CREATE TABLE t1(c1 BIT NULL COMMENT 'This is a BIT column');
SHOW TABLES;
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t1
SHOW CREATE TABLE t1;
Table Create Table
t1 CREATE TABLE `t1` (
`c1` bit(1) DEFAULT NULL COMMENT 'This is a BIT column'
) ENGINE=ENGINE DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1
DROP TABLE t1;
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CREATE TABLE t1(c1 TINYINT NULL COMMENT 'This is a TINYINT column');
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Table Create Table
t1 CREATE TABLE `t1` (
`c1` tinyint(4) DEFAULT NULL COMMENT 'This is a TINYINT column'
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CREATE TABLE t1(c1 SMALLINT NULL COMMENT 'This is a SMALLINT column');
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`c1` smallint(6) DEFAULT NULL COMMENT 'This is a SMALLINT column'
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CREATE TABLE t1(c1 MEDIUMINT NULL COMMENT 'This is a MEDIUMINT column');
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SHOW CREATE TABLE t1;
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t1 CREATE TABLE `t1` (
`c1` mediumint(9) DEFAULT NULL COMMENT 'This is a MEDIUMINT column'
) ENGINE=ENGINE DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1
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CREATE TABLE t1(c1 INT NULL COMMENT 'This is a INT column');
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t1 CREATE TABLE `t1` (
`c1` int(11) DEFAULT NULL COMMENT 'This is a INT column'
) ENGINE=ENGINE DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1
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CREATE TABLE t1(c1 INTEGER NULL COMMENT 'This is a INTEGER column');
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t1 CREATE TABLE `t1` (
`c1` int(11) DEFAULT NULL COMMENT 'This is a INTEGER column'
) ENGINE=ENGINE DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1
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CREATE TABLE t1(c1 BIGINT NULL COMMENT 'This is a BIGINT column');
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t1 CREATE TABLE `t1` (
`c1` bigint(20) DEFAULT NULL COMMENT 'This is a BIGINT column'
) ENGINE=ENGINE DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1
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CREATE TABLE t1(c1 DECIMAL NULL COMMENT 'This is a DECIMAL column');
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t1 CREATE TABLE `t1` (
`c1` decimal(10,0) DEFAULT NULL COMMENT 'This is a DECIMAL column'
) ENGINE=ENGINE DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1
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CREATE TABLE t1(c1 DEC NULL COMMENT 'This is a DEC column');
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`c1` decimal(10,0) DEFAULT NULL COMMENT 'This is a DEC column'
) ENGINE=ENGINE DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1
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CREATE TABLE t1(c1 FIXED NULL COMMENT 'This is a FIXED column');
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`c1` decimal(10,0) DEFAULT NULL COMMENT 'This is a FIXED column'
) ENGINE=ENGINE DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1
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CREATE TABLE t1(c1 NUMERIC NULL COMMENT 'This is a NUMERIC column');
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t1 CREATE TABLE `t1` (
`c1` decimal(10,0) DEFAULT NULL COMMENT 'This is a NUMERIC column'
) ENGINE=ENGINE DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1
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CREATE TABLE t1(c1 DOUBLE NULL COMMENT 'This is a DOUBLE column');
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`c1` double DEFAULT NULL COMMENT 'This is a DOUBLE column'
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CREATE TABLE t1(c1 REAL NULL COMMENT 'This is a REAL column');
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t1 CREATE TABLE `t1` (
`c1` double DEFAULT NULL COMMENT 'This is a REAL column'
) ENGINE=ENGINE DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1
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CREATE TABLE t1(c1 DOUBLE PRECISION NULL COMMENT 'This is a DOUBLE PRECISION column');
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t1 CREATE TABLE `t1` (
`c1` double DEFAULT NULL COMMENT 'This is a DOUBLE PRECISION column'
) ENGINE=ENGINE DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1
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CREATE TABLE t1(c1 FLOAT NULL COMMENT 'This is a FLOAT column');
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`c1` float DEFAULT NULL COMMENT 'This is a FLOAT column'
) ENGINE=ENGINE DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1
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CREATE TABLE t1(c1 DATE NULL COMMENT 'This is a DATE column');
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t1 CREATE TABLE `t1` (
`c1` date DEFAULT NULL COMMENT 'This is a DATE column'
) ENGINE=ENGINE DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1
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CREATE TABLE t1(c1 TIME NULL COMMENT 'This is a TIME column');
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t1 CREATE TABLE `t1` (
`c1` time DEFAULT NULL COMMENT 'This is a TIME column'
) ENGINE=ENGINE DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1
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CREATE TABLE t1(c1 TIMESTAMP NULL COMMENT 'This is a TIMESTAMP column');
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`c1` timestamp NULL DEFAULT NULL COMMENT 'This is a TIMESTAMP column'
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CREATE TABLE t1(c1 DATETIME NULL COMMENT 'This is a DATETIME column');
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t1 CREATE TABLE `t1` (
`c1` datetime DEFAULT NULL COMMENT 'This is a DATETIME column'
) ENGINE=ENGINE DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1
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CREATE TABLE t1(c1 YEAR NULL COMMENT 'This is a YEAR column');
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t1 CREATE TABLE `t1` (
`c1` year(4) DEFAULT NULL COMMENT 'This is a YEAR column'
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CREATE TABLE t1(c1 TINYBLOB NULL COMMENT 'This is a TINYBLOB column');
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t1 CREATE TABLE `t1` (
`c1` tinyblob COMMENT 'This is a TINYBLOB column'
) ENGINE=ENGINE DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1
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CREATE TABLE t1(c1 BLOB NULL COMMENT 'This is a BLOB column');
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`c1` blob COMMENT 'This is a BLOB column'
) ENGINE=ENGINE DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1
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CREATE TABLE t1(c1 MEDIUMBLOB NULL COMMENT 'This is a MEDIUMBLOB column');
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SHOW CREATE TABLE t1;
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t1 CREATE TABLE `t1` (
`c1` mediumblob COMMENT 'This is a MEDIUMBLOB column'
) ENGINE=ENGINE DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1
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CREATE TABLE t1(c1 LONGBLOB NULL COMMENT 'This is a LONGBLOB column');
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t1 CREATE TABLE `t1` (
`c1` longblob COMMENT 'This is a LONGBLOB column'
) ENGINE=ENGINE DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1
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CREATE TABLE t1(c1 TINYTEXT NULL COMMENT 'This is a TINYTEXT column');
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SHOW CREATE TABLE t1;
Table Create Table
t1 CREATE TABLE `t1` (
`c1` tinytext COMMENT 'This is a TINYTEXT column'
) ENGINE=ENGINE DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1
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CREATE TABLE t1(c1 TEXT NULL COMMENT 'This is a TEXT column');
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t1 CREATE TABLE `t1` (
`c1` text COMMENT 'This is a TEXT column'
) ENGINE=ENGINE DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1
DROP TABLE t1;
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CREATE TABLE t1(c1 MEDIUMTEXT NULL COMMENT 'This is a MEDIUMTEXT column');
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SHOW CREATE TABLE t1;
Table Create Table
t1 CREATE TABLE `t1` (
`c1` mediumtext COMMENT 'This is a MEDIUMTEXT column'
) ENGINE=ENGINE DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1
DROP TABLE t1;
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CREATE TABLE t1(c1 LONGTEXT NULL COMMENT 'This is a LONGTEXT column');
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t1 CREATE TABLE `t1` (
`c1` longtext COMMENT 'This is a LONGTEXT column'
) ENGINE=ENGINE DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1
DROP TABLE t1;
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Tables_in_test
|
{
"pile_set_name": "Github"
}
|
Homonyms in Modern English
Курсовой проект - Иностранные языки
erable, it is difficult to establish exact criteria by which disintegration of polysemy could be detected. The whole concept is based on stating whether there is any connection between the meanings or not, and is very subjective. Whereas in the examples dealing with phonetic convergence, i.e. when we said that case1 and case2 are different words because they differ in origin, we had definite linguistic criteria to go by, in the case of disintegration of polysemy there are none to guide us; we can only rely on intuition and individual linguistic experience. For a trained linguist the number of unrelated homonyms will be much smaller than for an uneducated person. The knowledge of etymology and cognate languages will always help to supply the missing links. It is easier, for instance, to see the connection between beam a ray of light and beam the metallic structural part of a building if one knows the original meaning of the word, i.e. tree (OE beam, Germ Baum), and is used to observe similar metaphoric transfers in other words. The connection is also more obvious if one is able to notice the same element in such compound names of trees as hornbeam, white beam, etc. The conclusion, therefore, is that in diachronic treatment the only rigorous criterion is that of etymology observed in explanatory dictionaries of the English language where words are separated according to their origin, for example, in the words match1 a piece of inflammable material you strike fire with (from OFr mesche, Fr meche) and match (from OE gemcecca fellow).is interesting to note that out of 2540 homonyms listed in a dictionary only 7% are due to disintegration of polysemy, all the others are etymologically different. One must, however, keep in mind that patterned homonymy is here practically disregarded. This underestimation of regular patterned homonymy tends to produce a false division. Actually the homonymy of nouns and verbs due to the processes of loss of endings on the one hand and conversion on the other is one of the most prominent features of dissent-day English. . It may be combined with semantic changes as in the pair long (adj.) - long (verb). The explanation is that when it seems long before something comes to you, you long for it (long (adj.) comes from OE lang, whereas long (v.)comes from OE langian, so that the excision Me longs means it seems long to me.opposite process of morphemic addition can also result in homonymy. This process is chiefly due to independent word-formation with the same affix or to the homonymy of derivational and functional affixes. The suffix -er forms several words with the same stem: trail - trailer a creeping plant vs. trailer a caravan, i.e. a vehicle drawn along by another vehicle. The suffix -s added to the homonymous stems -arm- gives arms (n.) Weapon and arms (v.) Supplies with weapons. In summing up this dichromatic analysis of homonymy it should be emphasized that there are two ways by which homonyms come into being, namely convergent development of sound form and divergent development of meaning (see table below). The first may consist in:
(a) phonetic change only,
(b) phonetic change combined with loss of affixes,
(e) independent formationhomonymous bases by means of homonymous morphemes. The second, that is divergent development of meaning may be
(a) limited within one lexico-grammatical class of words,
(b) combined with difference in lexico-grammatical class and therefore difference in grammatical functions and distribution,
(c) based on independent formation from the same base by homonymous morphemes.process can sometimes be more complicated. At dissent there are at least two homonyms: stick(noun1) - insert pointed things into, a highly polysemantic word, and the no less polysemantic stick (noun) a rod.the course of time the number of homonyms on the whole increases, although occasionally the conflict of homonyms ends in word loss.
2.3 Practical approach in studying homonyms
The synchronic treatment of English homonyms brings to the forefront a set of problems of paramount importance for different branches of applied linguistics: lexicography, foreign language teaching and machine translation. These problems are: the criteria distinguishing homonymy from polysemy, the formulation of rules for recognizing different meanings of the same homonym in terms of distribution, and the description of difference between patterned and irregular homonymy. It is necessary to emphasize that all these problems are connected with difficulties created by homonymy in understanding the message by the reader or listener, not with formulating ones thoughts; they exist for the speaker only in so far as he must construct his speech in a way that would divert all possible misunderstanding.three problems are so closely interwoven that it is difficult to separate them. So we shall discuss them as they appear for various practical purposes. For a lexicographer it is a problem of establishing word boundaries. It is easy enough to see that match, as in safety matches, is a separate word from the verb match to suit. But he must know whether he is justified in taking into one entry match, as in football match, and match in meet ones match ones equal. Can the English verb bear in bear a burden, bear troubles, bear fruit, bear offspring be viewed as a single word or as a set of two or perhaps even more homonyms? Similarly, charge, in charge the gun, charge the man with theft, charge somebody a stiff price can be viewed in several ways.the synchronic level, when the difference in etymology is irrelevant, the problem of establishing the criterion for the distinction between different words identical in sound form, and different meanings of the same word becomes hard to solve. The semantic criterion which ultimately is reduced to distinguishing between words that "have nothing in common semantically" and those that "have something in common" and therefore must be taken as one lexical unit, is very vague and hopelessly subjective. Nevertheless the problem cannot be dropped altogether as upon an efficient arrangement of dictionary entries depends on the amount of time spent by the readers in looking up a word: a lexicographer will either save or waste his readers time and effort.solutions differ. It is a widely used in English lexicography to combine in one entry words of identical phonetic form showing similarity of lexical meaning or, in other words, revealing a lexical invariant, even if they belong to different parts of speech. In post-war lexicography in our country a different trend has settled. The Anglo-Russian dictionary edited by V. D. Arakin makes nine separate entries with the word right against four items given in the dictionary edited by Hornby. The necessary restriction is that different sources must be traced within the history of the language. Words that coincided phonetically before they penetrated into the English vocabulary are not taken into account. The etymological criterion, however, may very often lead to distortion of the dissent-day situation. The English vocabulary of to-day is not a replica of the Old English vocabulary with some additions from borrowing. It is in many respects a different system, and this system will not be revealed if the lexicographer is guided by etymological criteria only. A more or less simple, if not very rigorous, procedure based on purely synchronic data may be prompted by transformational analysis. It may be called explanatory transformation. It is based on the assumption that if different senses rendered by the same phonetic complex can be defined with the help of an identical kernel word-group, they may be considered sufficiently near to be regarded as variants of the same word; if not, they are homonyms.the following set of examples:
. The voice-voicelessness distinction ... sets up some English consonants in opposed pairs...
. In the voice contrast of active and passive ... the active is the unmarked form.first variant (voice 1 may be defined as sounds uttered in speaking or singing as characteristic of a particular person, voice 2 as mode of uttering sounds in speaking or singing, voice 3 as the vibration of the vocal chords in sounds uttered. So far all the definitions contain one and the same kernel element rendering the invariant common basis of their meaning. It is, however, impossible to use the same kernel element for the meaning dissent in the fourth example. The corresponding definition is: "Voice - that forms of the verb that excises the relation of the subject to the action". This failure to satisfy the same explanation formula sets the fourth meaning apart. It may then be considered a homonym to the polysemantic word embracing the first three variants.procedure described may remain helpful when the items considered belong to different parts of speech; the verb voice may mean, for example, to utter a sound by the aid of the vocal chords. This brings us to the problem of patterned homonymy, i. e. of the invariant lexical meaning dissent in homonyms that have developed from one common source and belong to various parts of speech.a lexicographer justified in placing the verb to voice with the above meaning into the same entry with the first three variants of the noun? The same question arises with respect to after or before - disposition, conjunction and adverb.elder generation of English linguists thought it quite possible for one and the same word to function as different parts of speech. Such pairs as act n - act v, back n -
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Q:
Photography concepts using SX20
I've bought a Powershot sx20 half a year ago and I'm quite happy with it although I know it doesn't compare to a DSLR.
I've learning photography on my own: bought a 58mm ring and some filters (cpl, nd8, macro, star cross). I've got chdk to save in RAW so later with Photoshop I can reduce the noise of the pictures (and also use post-processing techinques to enhance them), and I'm using chdk's histogram to check if the picture has a good range.
But there are some concepts I'm not fully understanding:
1) Aperture priority: even in the widest range mode, where it has from 2.8 to 8, I don't see any difference in the picture. I know that AP is used for DOF, and that P&S have huge DOF because of the sensor size, but then why is this mode here? What's supposed to do in a P&S?
2) Manual Focus: the slider goes from 0cm to infinity (Depending on the zoom) and even you have the option to see a zoomed zone in the center of the picture for a refined focus, I don't see much difference between little steps. May it be because it's an electronic viewfinder instead of optical?
3) Exposure: I've read that you should get a proper exposure. There is an indicator that warns me if the picture is going to be too dark or too bright, but the only options I have to change the exposure are the shutter speed and ISO, which I always try to be at 100 in order to avoid noise (of course during daylight or in a well-lit room). How can I know if it's really proper? Right now I have a post processing plugin in photoshop which does exposure compensation so I'm checking how much does the picture change.
Thanks, I hope these questions are clear enough.
A:
1) Aperture priority: even in the
widest range mode, where it has from
2.8 to 8, I don't see any difference in the picture. I know that AP is used
for DOF, and that P&S have huge DOF
because of the sensor size, but then
why is this mode here? What's supposed
to do in a P&S?
You are correct in saying that a P&S has a huge DOF, however on these types of cameras the Av mode is often used as an alternative for Macro (little flower icon) mode. Having the aperture wide open is a common characteristic of Macro photographs.
2) Manual Focus: the slider goes from
0cm to infinity (Depending on the
zoom) and even you have the option to
see a zoomed zone in the center of the
picture for a refined focus, I don't
see much difference between little
steps. May it be because it's an
electronic viewfinder instead of
optical?
I'd definitely agree that it's far more difficult to see focus adjustments on an LCD (the electronic viewfinder) rather than an optical eyepiece. Again, it's not an entirely useless feature, but rather a more advanced version of a possibly pre-existing function. Setting focus in manual on your P&S would be useful when shooting landscapes (the mountains or hills icon, normally) or again if shooting Macro (little flower).
3) Exposure: I've read that you should
get a proper exposure. There is an
indicator that warns me if the picture
is going to be too dark or too bright,
but the only options I have to change
the exposure are the shutter speed and
ISO, which I always try to be at 100
in order to avoid noise (of course
during daylight or in a well-lit
room). How can I know if it's really
proper? Right now I have a post
processing plugin in photoshop which
does exposure compensation so I'm
checking how much does the picture
change.
I dare say the comments above handled this nicely: read up, research. You'll understand it, it's something all photographers have to wrap their heads around.
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Q:
Qual é o papel e responsabilidade das tecnologias HTML, CSS e JavaScript na criação do front-end?
Com essas três tecnologias HTML, CSS e JavaScript pode ser desenvolvido todo front-end ou client-side de um determinado site.
Sendo assim, eu gostaria de saber qual é o papel e responsabilidade que cada uma dessas tecnologias citadas acima desempenha na criação do front-end de um determinado site e quais são as diferenças delas em relação uma com a outra?
A:
Resumidamente:
HTML - Configuração dos elementos
CSS - Estilizar exibição dos elementos
JS - Lógica e dinâmica dos elemento
Em um exemplo prático, se eu quiser ter um quadrado azul que tenha uma contagem de segundos de 1 até 50. Para isso, primeiro nomearia o quadrado no HTML, depois diria que ele tem a forma quadrada e a cor azul no CSS e faria a lógica de contagem de números no Javascript. Exemplificando, temos:
//JAVASCRIPT
var meuQuadrado = document.getElementById("meu-quadrado");
var contagem = 0
var repeticao = setInterval(function(){ //loop da contagem
if(contagem == 100){ //se a contagem chegar a 100
clearInterval(repeticao); //pára a contagem
}
meuQuadrado.innerHTML = contagem; //exibo a contagem dentro do quadrado
contagem++; //aumenta a contagem
},1000)
/* CSS */
#meu-quadrado{
color: white; /*cor da fonte */
font-size: 170px; /* tamanho do texto */
text-align: center; /* posição do texto */
background-color: blue; /* cor do fundo */
width: 200px; /* largura */
height: 200px; /* altura */
}
<!-- HTML -->
<div id="meu-quadrado"></div>
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[Recurrence of multicavitating cardiac myxoma].
A 24 years-old female patient with congestive heart failure and clinical, electrocardiographic and radiologic findings compatible with pulmonary stenosis. Angiocardiography study diagnosed a tumor of the right ventricule (RV). Large tumor of the RV and smaller tumors of the left atrium were removed by surgical treatment. Six years later, a 2 cm tumor was identified in the RV. The tumor's growth was accompanied by bidimensional transthoracic echocardiograms. After 6 years a transesophageal echocardiogram showed three tumors, one in the RV and one in each of the right and left atria. These tumors were successful removed by new surgical treatment.
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RAW plotting to kill Hafiz Saeed?
Bangalore, Aug 9: While the Indian establishment continues to flay Pakistan for killing five soldiers at Poonch sector in Jammu and Kashmir, Pakistani security agencies have claimed to have discovered a network of RAW (Research and Analysis Wing), India's intelligence agency, on the country's soil which was allegedly hatching a plot to kill Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, founder of terror outfits like Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaamat-ud-Dawa (JuD).
According to a report published in a Pakistani newspaper Pakistan Today a couple of days ago, the plot to kill Saeed came into light during probe into the gruesome killing of the chief security officer of Saeed, Khalid Bashir in May.
According to the report, intelligence sources claimed that the plot to eliminate Saeed and his close aides was finalised in Dubai allegedly by a RAW agent identified by the name Vinod. Sources added that the RAW had engaged two local jihadi activists from Gujranwala with the help of an unidentified Pakistani handler.
Bashir was lifted from Lahore by Zafar Qayyum and Bilal Ahmed Cheema, enlisted by the RAW while they were at play in Afghanistan and his body full of injury marks was found from the Upper Chenab Canal in Sheikhupura on May 17, the report quoted the sources saying.
During interrogations, it was learnt from Zafar and Cheema that the Pakistani handler told them that Bashir was an Indian agent who was working against the JuD's interests. The man worked with the JuD for over 25 years and was considered to be a close aide of Saeed.
His death had shocked Saeed, accused of plotting the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, for Bashir had negated several assassination attempts on Saeed and was also in charge of coordinating every movement of the leader.
Bashir's family told the police later that he had received a phone call fon tMay 14 night and was invited for dinner meeting the next day. When he did not return home, his family went to the JuD leadership. Meanwhile, it was informed by an unidentified caller that Bashir had been kidnapped.
Sleuths later gathered Bashir's call data records and it was seen that the call he had received was made from a SIM card, which allegedly belonged to the RAW handler. The two jihadists were arrested with the help of two numbers traced from the SIM card.
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Q:
Django deployment on heroku not working
I created a personal portfolio website for myself using django and it also includes a blog. You can see the exact directory listing and source code in my github repository by clicking here
I have the procfile and the requirements.txt file as said in the heroku website and did the following in command prompt as directed by heroku :
$ heroku login
$ heroku git:clone -a appname
$ cd appname
$ git add .
$ git commit -am "make it better"
Then collectstatic --noinput error occurred so I did this:
heroku config:set DISABLE_COLLECTSTATIC=1
Then I again repeated the deployment process and this time the deployment was successfull. And then I opened the app but the website did not appear. Instead this appeared.
Please help me deploy this website.
A:
You are probably developing on Windows. Heroku, like most deployment environments, uses Linux; in that environment the file system is case-sensitive. Your Templates directory should be called "templates".
Please note also you should not be committing a lot of this stuff to either Github or Heroku. In particular the venv directory at the base level, and the pycache directories inside each directory, should be excluded. You can use the git exclude functionality to ensure they are not added.
Also it is very strange that you have named your templates with ".php" extensions. There is no PHP involved here.
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In general, the electrical device comprises a variety of different kinds of electrical components, some of which can be removed from the electronic device depending on what is actually being required. In other words, some of the electrical components are detachably disposed in the electronic device. The heat dissipation component is designed for when the electrical device has been fully loaded with electrical components, which is called a “fully-loaded state”. In general, when the electrical device is in use, there are still some spaces left in the electrical device in order to accommodate other electrical components in the future. In addition, the heat dissipation component operates to produce an airflow flowing inside the electronic device to generate a flow field. However, the flow field in the “full-loaded state” is different from the flow field when the electronic device is not fully loaded with electrical components. Accordingly, the heat dissipation which is applied to the “fully-loaded state” may not provide the same heat dissipation for the electronic device when it is not fully loaded.
For example, a fan generates an airflow flowing toward a cooling fin set that is located over a central processing unit and toward the multiple memory slots that are fully loaded with multiple memories, namely, the airflow may flow through the cooling fin set and the memory slots uniformly. However, when the memory slots are not fully loaded, that is, some of the slots are not connected with the memories, a part of the airflow, which flows to the cooling fin set when the memory slots are fully loaded, flows to the memory slots instead of flowing to the cooling fin set, because the wind resistance at the memory slots is decreased. Nevertheless, the heat generated by the central processing unit is usually greater than the heat generated by the memory module, and the maximum allowable temperature (the maximum temperature at which the component can operate normally) of the central processing unit is lower than that of the memory module. When the server operates, even if the actual temperature of the central processing unit substantially approaches its allowable temperature, the actual temperature of the memory module is still much lower than its allowable temperature. Therefore, if increase airflow to the cooling fin but decrease airflow to memory slots and some of the heat generated by the central processing unit is transferred to the memory module, it not only keeps the memory module operating normally, but also decreases the temperature of the central processing unit. On the other hand, when not a lot of airflow is flowing through the cooling fin set or dissipating the heat of the central processing unit, the central processing unit may not operate normally because the actual temperature of the central processing unit is higher than the allowable temperature.
People in the industry dispose the virtual memory module on the memory slot, which cannot work but has the same shape as the real one. Accordingly, the flow field inside the electrical device corresponds to the original flow field when the electronic device is fully loaded with the electronic components and the wind resistance at the memory slots keeps same as that when memory slots are fully loaded. However, it increases the cost and the virtual memory module may be removed after the additional memory module has been disposed.
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Search This Blog
If You Read My Blog, You Have to Make this.
You have to make this. I'm not kidding. I've already sounded the alarm for my family and close friends. This isn't even a recipe I came up with, but it was so amazing I need to share it. Look at the picture. That's all it takes. Tomatoes. Butter. Onion. Salt. You can make it, and you should.
This recipe inspiration came from none other than.... food52. You guys can tell me if you have been using this recipe for years and years, but I have not. It is such a delightful find due to it's simplicity and depth of flavor.
I kind of feel like I'm abandoning my mom and grandma because I basically grew up surviving on spaghetti and meatballs. (Not really, but it was a staple). But when they both test out this recipe, they will understand why we must add it to our repertoire of tomato sauces.
For all you cooks out there that have your trademark tomato sauce, give this one a shot. I promise you will be a believer.
Tomato Sauce with Onions and Butter
(by Marcella Hazan)
1-2 lbs fresh tomatoes (blanched, peeled and roughly chopped)
3-5 tbsp butter (depending on how many tomatoes you use)
1 medium onion (peeled and halved)
sea salt
I have adapted this recipe only minutely. Bring a pot of water to a boil. Cut an "X" on the bottom of each tomato. Blanche the tomatoes into the boiling water for 1 minute. No more! Drain, and when the tomatoes cool the skin should be easy to peel off. Cut up into rough chunks.
Toss the tomatoes, butter, onion and salt into a medium to large sauce pot. Simmer, uncovered over medium-low to medium heat for 45 minutes. Mash the tomatoes up occasionally with your mixing spoon so it turns into a fairly smooth sauce.
Taste and add salt as necessary. You can either choose to keep the onion (I broke it up a little bit with the spoon and kept some chunks) or you can discard it altogether.
I served this sauce with sauteed garlic mushrooms over cappellini pasta. Serve the sauce however you like, with some freshly grated Italian cheese!
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Smokers report a number of difficulties with current smoking tonics and smoking substitutes on the market. Smoking tonics and substitutes refers to products that are used by smokers not looking to quit the activity, but instead have something that they can use or do which substitutes for or addresses the activity or condition in places or situations where they cannot smoke by law, regulation or common courtesy. Some of these products include gums, lozenges or smokeless devices that do not contain nicotine, which is often used in nicotine replacement therapies (“NRT”) for smoking cessation. Government regulation of nicotine products is unclear. For example, the FDA is currently studying whether or not products containing nicotine can be sold without a new drug application (“NDA”) and without going through clinical studies and a formal FDA approval process. Smoking tonics and substitutes are distinguished from FDA-approved smoking cessation products.
There are a number of traditional, established dietary supplement and/or herbal remedies that offer effective tonics or substitutions for smokers in environments where they otherwise cannot smoke. One of these is the herb Lobelia, also known as Indian Tobacco.
Lobelia is currently sold by herbalists and by retailers specializing in herbal remedies and dietary supplements as a “Respiratory Tonic.” Descriptions of the herb in an online pharmacopeia published by the University of Maryland states this, “Lobelia (Lobelia inflata), also called Indian tobacco, may be used as an herbal remedy for respiratory conditions such as asthma, bronchitis, pneumonia, and cough. Native Americans historically have smoked lobelia as a treatment for asthma. In the 19th century, American physicians prescribed lobelia to induce vomiting in order remove toxins from the body. Because of this, it earned the name “puke weed.” Today, lobelia is considered effective in helping clear mucus from the respiratory tract, including the throat, lungs, and bronchial tubes. Although few studies have evaluated the safety and effectiveness of lobelia, some herbalists today incorporate lobelia into a comprehensive treatment plan for asthma.
Various herbalists and naturalists have traditionally recommended that lobelia be vaporized using heat in order to avoid the by products of ignition and burning that accompany smoking and absorption of the herbal supplement. And, various retailers offer the advice to vaporize the supplement and sell heat implemented vaporizers. These vaporizers utilize heat to produce an ingestible vapor-like mist. And, these vaporizers are large, bulky and difficult to use in environments where smokers can no longer smoke, for example, social or workplace environments. As a result, lobelia vaporization is not considered a suitable or appropriate smoking tonic or substitute.
Accordingly there is a need in the art for an improved lobelia vaporization product and method of use.
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After getting our unofficial Instagram app for Windows Phone, people’s eyes turned the next big thing in social media: Snapchat (www.snapchat.com). For those who don’t know (and who are over 25), Snapchat is a new messaging service that’s super popular on iOS and Android. It’s trick? Photos you send auto-delete themselves after a set amount of seconds. And yes, it’s coming to Windows Phone--unofficially and officially.
Quick back story
Much like Instagram, Snapchat relies on private APIs that controlled by the developers of the service. In theory, they could open it up to third-party developers, but like Instagram they want to control the experience. Part of that experience is disabling screen-captures of expiring photos—after all, that defeats the whole purpose. Indeed on iOS and Android, if you screen-cap the pic, it will tell the other person that you did. Best VPN providers 2020: Learn about ExpressVPN, NordVPN & more While iOS and Android both have official clients, Windows Phone is on the sidelines, again. But that's all about to change. The Unofficial Version(s)
First look: Swapchat for Windows Phone
We can tell you definitively that there are currently two groups of developers working on Snapchat for Windows Phone. How? Like Instagram, APIs can be cracked and it’s not exactly too hard to do so for such a simple service. One of those in development is Swapchat, made by two developers under SRC Apps. The app is in private beta now and it works, basically, as advertised. You can register, add contacts and yes, send photos (if the other party is on iOS and Android, it will notify you that they screen cap’d the image, but not vice versa). Notifications don't yet work, but we'll chalk that up to being a beta.
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Background {#Sec1}
==========
Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) is estimated to affect 0.2 % of the population \[[@CR1], [@CR2]\]. As the most common inherited cardiac disease, HCM is characterized by asymmetrical septal hypertrophy \[[@CR3], [@CR4]\]. The phenotypes are ranging from minor to severe life-threatening status \[[@CR5]\]. Left ventricular outflow tract (LVOT) obstruction is responsible for disabling symptoms in a large proportion of patients and confers a worse prognosis. HCM is the most common cause of sudden cardiac death (SCD) in people aged less than 35 years. In fact, it is more common for HCM patients to develop to severe progressive heart failure than SCD.
Septal myectomy is considered as the gold standard for septal reduction therapy in patients with dynamic LVOT obstruction \[[@CR6]\]. The long-term mortality for hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy (HOCM) patients with septal myectomy reduction therapy decreases to 1.4--1.8 % \[[@CR7], [@CR8]\]. Septal myectomy has contributed to the overall reduction in mortality and provided survival equivalent to that of the general population \[[@CR9]\]. The operative technique of HOCM has undergone evolution from classic Morrow surgery to extensive resection. Extensive septal myectomy surgery has evolved into a comprehensive repair technique for LVOT obstruction and abnormality of the mitral apparatus \[[@CR10]\]. Extension of the myectomy area leads to improved surgical effect. Currently, there are limited data addressing long-term outcome of extensive septal myectomy in Chinese patients with HOCM. In the present study, we sought to report the early and late clinical and echocardiographic outcomes of Chinese HOCM patients who underwent extensive septal myectomy surgery.
Methods {#Sec2}
=======
HOCM patients {#Sec3}
-------------
This study was carried out in 139 consecutive HOCM patients treated with extensive surgical myectomy in Cangzhou Central hospital and Shandong Chinese Medical Hospital from Jan 1, 2008 to May 31, 2011. Patients were eligible for inclusion in surgical intervention if they met the following two criteria \[[@CR11]\]: 1) LVOT pressure gradient ≥50 mmHg at rest or with physiological provocation by transthoracic echocardiography; 2) presence of severe symptoms despite prior appropriate medical therapy with beta-receptor blocker and calcium channel blocker. All patients were evaluated by consultant cardiologists. Although they were given medical therapy, they still had severe symptoms attributable to LVOT obstruction. The review of hospital records and analyses of preoperative data, operative reports, postoperative and follow-up echocardiography were carried out. In this study, perioperative period was defined as time period from surgical preparation to 30 days after extensive septal myectomy. The study had full approval from the Ethics Boards of Cangzhou Central hospital and Shandong Chinese Medical Hospital.
Surgical procedure {#Sec4}
------------------
Operations were carried out under mild hypothermic cardiopulmonary bypass with total anesthesia as previously described \[[@CR12], [@CR13]\]. The heart and ascending aorta were exposed by a longitudinal median incision in sternum. Cannulas were inserted into superior vena cava, inferior vena cava and ascending aorta to establish cardiopulmonary bypass. Through a transverse aortotomy, the aortic valve was exposed and cardiac asystole was induced by cold blood antegrade cardioplegia. Hypertrophic septum and mitral valve were exposed sufficiently by pulling right coronary aortic valve. A Ross retractor was used to display the muscular septum. The superior borderline of septal resection located at 3 mm below right coronary sinus valve. Resection started from middle of right aortic sinus and moved 10--12 mm horizontally toward commissure of left sinus valve and right sinus valve. Longitudinal resection usually reached the root of mitral papillary muscle, length of which ranged from 45 to 50 mm. In order to reduce LVOT gradient, the thicknesses of the left ventricular wall and interventricular septum need to be nearly normal by visual inspection.
The following extended procedures were performed as previously described \[[@CR14], [@CR15]\]: 1) The resection was continued toward the mitral valve annulus and apically to the bases of the papillary muscles. 2) All areas of papillary muscle fusion to the septum or ventricular free wall are divided, and anomalous chordal structures and fibrous attachments of the mitral leaflets to the ventricular septum are excised. 3) Plication of the anterior mitral leaflet (AML) was performed if there were indications by selection criteria including floppy and lax anterior leaflet, AML ≥ 3.0 cm, mitral regurgitation ≥ 2+, systolic anterior motion (SAM), and/or absence of rheumatic or other intrinsic mitral valve disease. Intraoperative transesophageal echocardiography (TEE) was used routinely. TEE assessment was performed after weaning from cardiopulmonary bypass to evaluate adequacy of LVOT and mitral valve function.
Postoperative monitor was carried out to maintain proper cardiac preload and appropriate colloid infusion. Beta-receptor blocker or calcium-channel blocker was applied routinely. Low-dose vasoactive drugs were used when hemodynamic circulation fluctuated.
Echocardiography {#Sec5}
----------------
During hospital stay, preoperative transthoracic echocardiography was performed for HOCM patients and intraoperative TEE was applied routinely. The adequacy of the resection and the LVOT gradient were assessed immediately by transthoracic echocardiography after surgery and transthoracic echocardiography was repeated before or on the day of hospital discharge. During outpatient follow-up period, patients had transthoracic echocardiography detection at every visit. A careful analysis of septal hypertrophy, abnormalities of the mitral valve, and subvalvular apparatus was performed. LVOT gradient was detected at rest and with provocation by transthoracic echocardiography. Specific details of mitral valve length, SAM, and mitral regurgitation were evaluated. Images were captured on cine loops at the time of the detection. M-mode from long axis view was used to measure interventricualr septal (IVS) thickness and diastole left ventricular inner diameter (LVID~d~). M-mode from short axis view was used to measure thickness of left ventricular wall. Ejection fraction (EF) was automatically calculated by the measurement package.
Follow-up {#Sec6}
---------
The follow-up period averaged 5.6 ± 0.9 years for HOCM patients. Follow-up data were derived from medical charts and LVOT gradient information was obtained from the record of transthoracic echocardiography detection at every outpatient visit. Our primary endpoints included all-cause death and cardiac death during follow-up. Cardiac death was defined as a death resulting from heart failure or SCD. SCD was defined as an abrupt loss of consciousness within 1 h after the onset of acute symptoms, and the cause of death could not be attributed in the postmortem examination. All patients were assigned New York Heart Association (NYHA) classification based on symptoms.
Statistical analysis {#Sec7}
--------------------
Continuous variables were expressed as mean ± SD otherwise described as proportion. *χ* ^2^ test was used to compare categorical variables. For continuous variables, one-way ANOVA was used to analyze the data among three groups and then paired *t* test was performed for the comparison between two groups. The Kaplan-Meier method was used to draw survival curve and calculate survival rate and cumulate hazard. Difference was considered statistically significant when *P* \< 0.05. All statistical tests were performed using SPSS software package 19.0 for Windows.
Results {#Sec8}
=======
Clinical characteristics {#Sec9}
------------------------
Clinical characteristics of 139 HOCM patients with mean age 43 ± 15 years were shown in Table [1](#Tab1){ref-type="table"}. Females were more than males. Body mass index was 28 ± 8 kg/m^2^ and heart rate was 74 ± 5 beat/min. All patients received medical therapy with beta-receptor blocker or calcium channel blocker. Most patients had severe preoperative symptoms including dyspnea, chest pain, and syncope. Family history of HCM was presented in 54.7 % of subjects. Hypertension, diabetes and dyslipidemia were prevalent in the HOCM patients. The majority of HOCM patients belonged to NYHA III.Table 1Clinical characteristicsVariablesValues*n*139Age (y)43 ± 15Male52 (37.4 %)Body mass index (kg/m^2^)28 ± 8Heart rate (beat/min)74 ± 5SBP (mmHg)113 ± 12DBP (mmHg)73 ± 9Symptoms Dyspnea133 (95.7 %) Chest pain73 (52.5 %) Syncope33 (23.7 %)Hypertension44 (31.7 %)Diabetes25 (18 %)Dyslipidemia101 (72.7 %)Family history of HCM76 (54.7 %)Medical therapy Beta-receptor blocker16 (11.5 %) Calcium channel blocker43 (30.9 %)*SBP* systolic blood pressure, *DBP* diastolic blood pressure
Perioperative events and complications {#Sec10}
--------------------------------------
Adjunctive surgical procedures were summarized in Table [2](#Tab2){ref-type="table"}. Overall, cardiopulmonary bypass time was 133 ± 40 min and aorta cross-clamp time was 85 ± 26 min. Postoperative intensive care unit (ICU) stay time was 3 ± 3 days. Mechanical ventilation time was 24 ± 15 h. Postoperative hospital stay time was 10 ± 5 days.Table 2Adjunctive proceduresProcedure*n* (%)Age (y)CABG11 (7.9 %)56 ± 16LV aneurysmectomy2 (1.4 %)40 ± 17MV replaement7 (5 %)46 ± 14MV repair17 (12.2 %)44 ± 9AV repair4 (2.9 %)61 ± 19TV repair6 (4.3 %)42 ± 16*CABG* coronary artery bypass graft, *LV* left ventricle, *MV* mitral valve, *AV* aortic valve, *TV* tricuspid valve
The 139 patients had no early death within 30 days after extensive septal myectomy. Perioperative arrhythmia was shown in Table [3](#Tab3){ref-type="table"}. In this study, perioperative arrhythmia events included atrial fibrillation, atrial premature beat, ventricular premature beat, atrioventricular block, left bundle branch block, left anterior fascicular block and right bundle branch block. There was a preoperative history of atrial fibrillation in 13 patients while postoperative new atrial fibrillation occurred in 11 patients. In total, there were 16 patients suffering from atrial ventricular block after surgery. Permanent pacemaker was implanted for 8 (5.8 %) patients with complete atrioventricular block. None of the patients needed implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) during early postoperative period. In addition, retraction injury to aortic valve leaflets occurred in 5 patients. One patient needed the mechanical support of intra-aortic balloon pump (IABP) immediately following surgery. Postoperative pleural effusion happened in 25 patients. Hemodialysis was used for 2 patients. Two patients were subjected to second intubation and 1 patient underwent tracheotomy. Second transfer to ICU was required for 1 patient on postoperative 7th day.Table 3Postoperative arrhythmiaArrhythmiaNumberPercentageAtrial fibrillation2417.3 %Atrial premature beat75.0 %Ventricular premature beat42.9 %Atrioventricular block1611.5 %Left bundle branch block3424.5 %Left anterior fascicular block107.2 %Right bundle branch block53.6 %
Clinical and echocardiographic follow-up {#Sec11}
----------------------------------------
Clinical follow-up was 5.6 ± 0.9 years (minimum 1.2 years and maximum 7.9 years). Four patients were lost to late follow-up. Overall survival was 100.0, 99.3, 99.3, 98.5 and 97.8 % at 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 years, respectively (Fig. [1](#Fig1){ref-type="fig"}). One patient died of cardiac origin and 2 patients had undiagnosed sudden death.Fig. 1Kaplan-Meier curve for HOCM patients during follow-up period. Survival rate and log survival rate decreased whereas cumulate hazard gradually increased during follow-up time. The survival rate was 100 % at the first year after surgery and then decreased to 99.3 % at the second and the third year. The survival rate was 98.5 % at the fourth year and reduced to 97.8 % at the fifth year
Follow-up outcomes indicated the symptoms were significantly attenuated and physical abilities were increased. Improvement in NYHA class was shown in Fig. [2](#Fig2){ref-type="fig"}. The proportion of NYHA III and IV decreased from preoperative 58 to 19 % at 2.5 years after surgery while it reduced to 11 % at 5 years after operation. LVOT gradient decreased form preoperative 84 ± 17 mmHg to 12 ± 3 mmHg at 2.5 years after surgery and it further reduced to 6 ± 3 mmHg at 5 years after surgery (*P* \< 0.05, Fig. [3](#Fig3){ref-type="fig"}). Compared with the level of preoperative IVS thickness, IVS thickness decreased by 32 % at postoperative 2.5 years and maintained the same low level at postoperative 5 years (*P* \< 0.05, Fig. [3](#Fig3){ref-type="fig"}). LVID~d~approximately increased by 10 % at postoperative 2.5 years and 5 years, compared with the level before surgery (*P* \< 0.05, Fig. [3](#Fig3){ref-type="fig"}). Similarly, EF was significantly elevated at 2.5 years and 5 years after extensive septal myectomy (*P* \< 0.05, Fig. [3](#Fig3){ref-type="fig"}). By transthoracic echocardiography detection, mitral regurgitation was ameliorated for patients after surgery. There were 52 % of patients showing moderate mitral regurgitation and 8 % of patients had severe mitral regurgitation before surgery. Preoperative mild mitral regurgitation existed in 40 % of patients. With extensive septal myectomy, both severe mitral regurgitation and moderate mitral regurgitation disappeared. The proportion of postoperative mild mitral regurgitation increased to 89 and 11 % of patients did not have mitral regurgitation any more.Fig. 2Improvement in cardiac function after extensive septal myectomy. The numbers of patients in NYHA Class I-II and NYHA Class III-IV were calculated before surgery, 2.5 years and 5 years after surgery, respectively. *χ* ^2^ test was performed to analyze the differences among groups. There was significant difference in preoperative and postoperative cardiac function (*P* \< 0.05). There was no difference in cardiac functions between 2.5 years after surgery and 5 years after surgery (*P* \> 0.05). *n* = 59 for NYHA Class I-II and *n* = 80 for NYHA Class III-IV before surgery; *n* = 110 for NYHA Class I-II and *n* = 25 for NYHA Class III-IV at 2.5 years after surgery; *n* = 117 for NYHA Class I-II and *n* = 15 for NYHA Class III-IVat 5 years after surgery Fig. 3Changes in echocardiographic parameters during follow-up period. **a**. Changes in LVID~d~ during follow-up. **b**. Changes in IVS thickness during follow-up. **c**. Changes in LVOTG during follow-up. There was significant decrease in LVOTG at 2.5 years and 5 years after surgery. **d**. Changes in EF during follow-up. EF was elevated at 2.5 years and 5 years after extensive septal myectomy. LVID~d~: diastole left ventricular inner diameter; IVS: interventricular septal; LVOTG: left ventricular out tract gradient; EF: ejection fraction. ^\*^ *P* \< 0.05 vs preoperative group, ^\#^ *P* \< 0.05 vs 2.5 years group
Discussion {#Sec12}
==========
The present study included a relative large of Chinese HOCM patients who were treated by extensive septal myectomy in two hospitals. Our results showed that extensive septal myectomy significantly reduced LVOT obstruction, mitral regurgitation and HOCM-related symptoms. Cardiac function was obviously increased by surgical treatment. Extensive septal myectomy and adjunctive procedures could be an efficacious and low-risk therapy in Chinese HOCM patients. It gives predictable, immediate, and durable remodeling of the LVOT which translates into long-term control of symptoms.
Extensive septal myectomy surgery in HOCM {#Sec13}
-----------------------------------------
HOCM, as a common type of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, is mainly characterized by asymmetric septal hypertrophy, LVOT obstruction, diastolic dysfunction, cardiac ischemia as well as arrhythmia \[[@CR16]--[@CR18]\]. The aim of medical therapy is to abolish the catecholamine-induced effects that may exacerbate LVOT obstruction and to decrease heart rate which allows longer time for diastolic filling \[[@CR17], [@CR19], [@CR20]\]. However, the early improvement for HOCM patients is often followed by clinical symptomatic impairments after conservative management with beta-blocker and/or calcium antagonist \[[@CR21]\]. With septal myectomy reduction therapy, the long-term mortality for HOCM patients could significantly decrease to 1.4--1.8 % \[[@CR7], [@CR8]\].
Left ventricular septal myectomy was firstly reported by Cleland in 1963 and Morrow subsequently revealed the good clinical and hemodynamic outcomes of myectomy surgery \[[@CR22]\]. Isolated septal myectomy mainly resected the bulge part of the hypertrophic septum. Some intraventricular anomalies such as mitral apparatus-related anomalies existed in HOCM patients. Under the condition, isolated septal myectomy could not diminish SAM of mitral valve and relieve LVOT obstruction completely \[[@CR10]\]. Marwick et al. reported that up to 20 % of patients with isolated septal myectomy were placed back on cardiopulmonary bypass because of inadequate resection \[[@CR23]\]. An inadequate length of septal excision was the most common reason of recurrent LVOT obstruction after myectomy \[[@CR24]\]. Extensive septal myectomy to the midventricular level, with or without shaving of the papillary muscles, could eliminate the LVOT gradient and SAM-induced mitral regurgitation \[[@CR25]\]. Knyshov G et al. performed a cohort study in HOCM patients and their results showed that LVOT gradient of HOCM patients reduced from 113.3 ± 14.9 mmHg to 17.3 ± 10.2 mmHg after extensive septal myectomy surgery \[[@CR26]\].
Follow-up outcomes of extensive septal myectomy surgery {#Sec14}
-------------------------------------------------------
Until now, there are limited data addressing long-term outcomes of extensive septal myectomy in Chinese HOCM patients. Wang et al. showed that extensive septal myectomy provided excellent relief from LVOT obstruction (91.8 ± 25.1 to 14.3 ± 13.4 mmHg, *P* \< 0.05) and satisfactory clinical outcomes for 93 HOCM patients at early and mid-term follow-up \[[@CR27]\]. Their study showed that the 30-day and in-hospital mortality was 0 % \[[@CR27]\]. After surgery, limiting symptoms were decreased while physical abilities were increased \[[@CR27]\]. In our study, the resection size was extended to release adhesion of mitral papillary muscle with left ventricular wall and satisfactory operative effects and clinical outcomes were obtained. The symptoms of HOCM patients undergoing extensive septal myectomy procedure in our study were obviously mitigated after operation. Echocardiography results by our study showed LVOT gradient and septal width of HOCM patients were significantly reduced whereas their LVID~d,~ and EF were increased after surgery. The most common postoperative complication was arrhythmia, which mainly consisted of left bundle branch block, atrial fibrillation, atrioventricular block and so on. In current study, the types and prevalence of perioperative arrhythmia were similar to the previous reports \[[@CR28]--[@CR30]\].
Conclusion {#Sec15}
==========
Extensive septal myectomy and adjunctive procedures provide excellent relief of symptoms and improve cardiac function in Chinese HOCM patients with minimal surgical risk. Further studies with larger number and longer follow-up were expected to aim at examining the clinical outcomes of extensive septal myectomy surgery.
Ethics approval and consent to participate {#Sec16}
------------------------------------------
The authors stated that the study had full approval from the Ethics Boards of Cangzhou Central hospital and Shandong Chinese Medical Hospital.
AML
: anterior mitral leaflet
EF
: ejection fraction
HCM
: hypertrophic cardiomyopathy
HOCM
: hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy
ICU
: intensive care unit
IVS
: interventricular septal
LVID~d~
: diastole left ventricular inner diameter
LVOT
: left ventricular outflow tract
NYHA
: New York Heart Association
SAM
: systolic anterior motion
SCD
: sudden cardiac death
TEE
: transesophageal echocardiography
**Competing interests**
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
**Authors' contributions**
Concept/design: LY; Data collection/analysis/statistics: LL, X-JL, X-NK, F-JD; Drafting article: LY, Y-LM; Approval of article: LY. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Funding {#FPar1}
=======
This study was supported by National Science and Technology Supporting Program (No. 2013BAJ57B08) and Hebei Talents Fund (No.2014000021769G283).
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In Business: Pet Paradise
Pet Paradise Greenville offers overnight boarding, day camp, grooming, and veterinary services. This state-of-the-art resort equipped with a five-star staff provides a safe, clean, and fun environment for all four-legged guests and peace of mind for their owners.
Pet Paradise Greenville will also feature the following amenities:
• On-site live-in team member
• Small dog lodging in Tiny Town, play and boarding area
• Spacious, climate-controlled indoor/outdoor & indoor-only suites
• Paradise Park, a dog park with all day camp, play and splash pad
• On-site Veterinary Clinic and monthly wellness packages
• Synthetic grass play areas
• Zero entry bone-shaped swimming pool
• Shaded play yards, cooling zones & misting Stations
• Peaceful, private cat condos
“Our new Greenville resort is our first in South Carolina and features design enhancements and amenities directly related to customer and employee feedback,” said Fernando Acosta-Rua, Pet Paradise CEO.
Book your reservation online at Pet Paradise Greenville and sign up for a free Get Acquainted Day to meet our staff, take a tour, and get a free day of camp.
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1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to animal pen slat repair methods and more particularly pertains to a new slat replacement system for removing damaged slats and inserting new slats in an animal pen.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The use of animal pen slat repair methods is known in the prior art. U.S. Pat. No. 5,792,394 describes a method for repairing pen slats of an animal pen. Another type of animal pen slat repair method is U.S. Pat. No. 3,656,729 having a mold for casting a T-shaped slat useable in slotted floors. U.S. Pat. Nos. 974,372, 3,469,816 and 710,391 each have a mold for forming a T-shaped slat for use in animal pens. U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,659,276 and 5,120,186 each have an apparatus for handling loads.
While these devices fulfill their respective, particular objectives and requirements, the need remains for a system that includes certain improved features allow for damaged slats to be removed and replaced with new slats.
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These are edited (and spoiler-free) excerpts from the conversation.
This story started with an email from a listener named Tyler. What made you think it should be an episode of “Reply All”?
PJ VOGT I think Alex and I both get really frustrated when something should be solvable and it’s not, or when it upsets our idea about how the world should work. Either this song should exist or the guy made it up. The fact that there was some evidence that it existed and yet it seemingly hadn’t been documented anywhere really bothered me.
I also related to both the little problem of having a song stuck in your head that you can’t find and the bigger problem of having a snag in your brain that won’t go away until you fix it.
In the episode, we follow along as you run into a number of dead-ends. How do you balance creating and maintaining suspense with delivering an ending that justifies the journey?
VOGT I think if you can solve the problem too easily, or if solving it doesn’t teach you anything, than it’s not a good radio story. With this one, things just kept escalating. At one point I talked to a quantum physicist because Tyler had this theory that he’d somehow slipped into an alternate universe. I think you want to take the listener into an interesting world so that they feel good about spending time there. We eventually realized that this one was secretly a documentary about late ’90s alt-rock.
ALEX GOLDMAN As long as you’re learning something about the world, we find that the process of reporting is generally pretty interesting. There are times when we’ll pursue something that ends up being both a dead end and boring, and those are the stories that don’t make it to air.
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Dialysis frequency versus dialysis time, that is the question.
We reviewed a number of prospective randomized and multiple retrospective cohort studies of different dialysis prescriptions: longer dialysis time, at a frequency of at least three times a week, or a frequency of daily hemodialysis with a shorter dialysis time. Interestingly, the retrospective analyses have generally found significant survival benefits in the intensive dialysis groups, whereas more modest effects were observed in the prospective randomized controlled trials. The reason for this discrepancy may be related to the retrospective nature of the studies and possible selection bias; for example, the patients who were prescribed more frequent dialysis may have had more difficulties with volume control or high blood pressure. In contrast, the randomized controlled trials of increased dialysis frequency, which have shown indirect and modest benefits in complex coprimary end points, have small sample sizes and are plagued with difficulties in recruitment and compliance with the randomly allocated more frequent dialysis. This review, which attempts to balance the potential benefits of more frequent dialysis with the burden on the patient's lifestyle, an increased risk of access malfunction, as well as societal costs of such intensive dialysis prescriptions, concludes in favor of the conventional three times per week dialysis (at a minimum) but at longer dialysis times than is currently prescribed based on the Kt/Vurea metric alone.
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There is nothing like the adorable antics of otters to cheer you up if you're having a tough day -- or to simply entertain you when you need a mental health break in the mid-afternoon. We've gathered up some super cute videos of river otters and sea otters that are sure to make you giggle.
Otter pups bounce and squeak like little rubber toys
Who knew they could sound just like bouncing squeaker balls! This group of river otters seem like they're straight out of a cartoon.
Otter juggles pebbles
The best part is how it keeps grabbing more stones to make sure the juggling stays a challenge!
Cute otters chasing a toddler
Fun at the aquarium for the animals and the kids. We're sure this game of chase could have gone on for hours.
Baby otter enjoys getting tickled!
Need we say more?!
Sea otter plays basketball to keep in shape
This sea otter has a fun way of keeping healthy and young. Combine a ball, a basketball hoop, and some fish treats and you have one athletic otter!
Otters at the Smithsonian National Zoo rocking out on a keyboard
They may not be the most musically talented bunch, but they go at it with enthusiasm.
Cheeky otter explores this couple's jeep
Otters are curious and smart, and love to explore. And that includes the interior of tourist cars. This little guy hopped in to have a sniff and stayed for awhile!
Orphaned sea otter pup gets adopted
This last video will tug at your heart strings, and have you feeling pretty good about the world.
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Together We Are Wider Than Anything.
We stood up and measured ourselves against everything we could find. We measured the tips of our fingers to the points of our elbows and compared them to the panels in the wooden doors, lining them up precisely; edging palms up, straightening each ulna. We took the edges of each eye and we spun and spun until we knew exactly how many Mississippi’s it took eye to eye around the backs of our living minds. How tall are you compared to this fern? Here, let me place your finger in the crack of the wooden floorboard. It’s but a fingernail wide; the baby, that is. Where is your nose in relation to this light switch? We compared ourselves to the world and this we did every Sunday; Our only way to distinguish between life and death.
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Jonah Raydio has long time friend and all around awesome human Paul Bonanno this week! Instead of music we talk about porn, then we talk about music among other delightful topics. Check out “Intimate Indiscretions” directed by Paul Bonanno and written by Paul Bonanno and Jeff Kauffmann. And if you live in San Francisco or Phoenix you can see Jonah do some comedy at the Stand Up Live in Phoenix, Arizona on October 3 and at the Punchline in San Francisco, California on October 10, 11, and 12!
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Q:
Color of Last Ball?
A box contains 731 black balls and 2000 white balls. The following process is to be repeated as long as possible. Arbitrarily select two balls from the box. If they are of the same color, throw them out and put a black ball into the box(enough black balls are available to do this.) If they are of different colors, place the white ball back and throw the black ball away. Which of the following is correct?
A) The process can be applied indefinitely with out any priori bound.
B) The process will stop with a single white ball in the box
C) The process will stop with a single black ball in the box.
D) The box will stop with box empty.
E) None of the above.
This is what i thought:
The process can't be applied indefinitely as in each step no.of balls are decreased by one.
Also box can't be empty. I think the answer might be (E) as the process might end with white or black ball.
A:
Hint: Every time you apply the process, the number of balls decreases by 1 and the parity of the number of black balls changes. You have to apply the process an 2730 times to get down to one ball; what does this tell you about the parity of the number of black balls at the end?
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> From: [eLinux.org](http://eLinux.org/CR48-JavaVNC "http://eLinux.org/CR48-JavaVNC")
# CR48-JavaVNC
# Installing VNCViewer
### NOTE: Your device needs to be [rooted](http://eLinux.org/CR48-rooting "CR48-rooting") before you can continue.
- Open up a shell on the cr-48, and
` sudo su mkdir /mnt/stateful_partition/opt (if you haven't already) cd /mnt/stateful_partition/opt wget http://www.calliesfarm.com/chromeos/java.tar.gz wget http://www.calliesfarm.com/chromeos/vncviewer.tar.gz tar -zxvf java.tar.gz tar -zxvf vncviewer.tar.gz rm -rf java.tar.gz vncviewer.tar.gz ln -s /usr/bin/java jre1.6.0_23/bin/java mv vncviewer/vncviewer /usr/bin`
- After it's installed, you should be able to run
` vncviewer`
- However, since there are no close window widgets, there's two ways
to disconnect.. either navigate to the vnc server icon once
connected, and tell it to disconnect you. or, kill it from the
terminal.
[Back to CR48 Home](http://eLinux.org/CR48 "CR48")
[Category](http://eLinux.org/Special:Categories "Special:Categories"):
- [CR48](http://eLinux.org/Category:CR48 "Category:CR48")
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What better day to mourn our old republic than Memorial Day? Proclaimed by Civil War veterans in 1868 to commemorate the dead, today it evokes memories of past conflicts and those that are ongoing – all of which were (and are) the catalysts of this country’s degeneration into an empire.
Yes, all of them, including especially World War II, the “good war” which even “antiwar” liberals valorize. It was that conflict that globalized the ambitions of our political class and put us on the road to empire. It was the one in which the modern precedent for outrageous incursions on our civil liberties was set: the mass internment of Japanese-Americans (and, yes, Germans and Italians), censorship of the press, and the series of “sedition” trials that targeted war opponents on the right as well as the left (which even the American Civil Liberties Union made no effort to oppose).
The parallels with our own time are myriad: even as we observe this solemn holiday with barbecues and self-congratulatory parades, the Senate has just finished debating the extension of key elements of the “Patriot” Act, that “most unpatriotic of acts,” enacted at the peak of the post-9/11 hysteria. Section 215 of the Act has been interpreted by the government (and its Star Chamber known as the “FISA court”) to allow for the mass collection of Americans’ electronic communications and phone data: in effect, universal surveillance without an individual warrant.
While there is still a chance the Senate will renew these provisions, including Section 215, before the deadline passes, that was made unlikely thanks to Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) and a group of two other Republicans and eight Democrats who effectively filibustered. Every American who values liberty and longs for the revival of the republic our forefathers left to us owes the Senator a huge “Thank you!” I’ve been critical of Sen. Paul, but in this very important case he deserves unequivocal praise and support.
Of course, the real hero of this rearguard action against the new authoritarianism is Edward Snowden, the NSA contractor who risked his life and liberty to reveal our government’s crimes against the Constitution. That he still is forced to live in exile in Russia is proof enough that the task of taking our country back from the War Party is very far from over.
We can fight a rearguard action against the assault on the Constitution, and even win a battle here and there, but we cannot defeat them unless the motive power of their victories is cut off – that is, as long as America’s foreign policy of perpetual war continues unabated.
This is the source of the malign energy that gave – and continues to give – the new authoritarianism its legitimacy and power. At the height of the post-9/11 madness, the answer to every objection to the Patriot Act and its successors was “Don’t you know there’s a war on?” Andrew Sullivan and his fellow “war bloggers” were particularly fond of this retort: it was supposed to silence us dissenters, and send us, shame-faced, into the shadows. And it did, to a large extent – except on this web site, of course. Those few who spoke out, like Noam Chomsky and Susan Sontag, were pilloried by the War Party for expressing any doubts about our elevated moral status as a nation. The left – or what passes for it today – was silenced, while on the right the militarist spirit went virtually unopposed but for Ron Paul and those few libertarians (and paleoconservatives) who refused to kneel before the altar of the war god.
Those dark times seem far away, but rest assured they could return in an instant. We are but one terrorist attack away from their recurrence – with consequences that would make the immediate post-9/11 era look like a libertarian paradise.
One thing is all too clear this Memorial Day: we’ve learned nothing from the past. Our armies continue to occupy foreign lands, while our drones torture those we have yet to invade. The blowback from these murderous expeditions is bound to be felt in the “homeland,” and so we’ve set up an entire department of government, with a huge and ever-growing budget, devoted to deflecting the blows aimed at us. Has there ever been a greater admission of guilt on the part of any aggressor?
If we continue on this course, the future isn’t hard to predict. Sooner or later one of those blows will hit us again, perhaps in a way that will prove more devastating than 9/11 – and that will signal the beginning of the end. The end, I mean, of constitutional government in America: the end of the Founders’ dream and the beginning of a long slide into the abyss of tyranny. We’ll retain the forms of republican government, minus the content, and the Constitution will still be kept under glass as a relic to be worshipped but not observed.
Yet there is hope. The American people are not quite the sheep many of the most embittered dissenters imagine them to be. Sure, they go about their own concerns, mostly indifferent to alarms rung by people such as myself: they like their pleasures and are not easily aroused. But once they are aroused – watch out!
I am reminded of the words of that old prophet of doom, Garet Garrett, who wrote at the end of his prescient polemic, Rise of Empire (1951), the following words:
“What you have to face is that the cost of saving the Republic may be extremely high. It could be relatively as high as the cost of setting it up in the first place, one hundred and seventy-five years ago, when love of political liberty was a mighty passion, and the people were willing to die for it.”
I hope it doesn’t come to that, but if it does – well, then so be it.
No, I don’t want it to come to that, but it very well may. That’s why I’ve devoted a good part of my adult life to this web site and the cause it champions: opposition to our foreign policy of relentless aggression and its domestic corollary, the steady erosion of the Bill of Rights. I don’t want to be a revolutionary, at least in the literal sense: I’d much rather be out in the back yard this Memorial Day barbecuing, as opposed to writing subversive tracts such as this.
Unfortunately, these days it is subversive to be a traditionalist who reveres the legacy of the Founders. It’s considered treasonous, as I discovered when it was revealed that the FBI was – and maybe still is – investigating me because of what I write and what I believe.
When I found out about that investigation I literally cried: I laid down on my bed and sobbed for a good twenty minutes, uncontrollably and unashamedly, as my astonished and bewildered significant other looked on. I cried for what has been lost.
But I didn’t let my sorrow stop me from fighting back: indeed, it redoubled my determination to fight – and win.
But I can’t win if I’m fighting all by myself. I need your help to win this battle. Antiwar.com can’t exist in a vacuum: we must have the support of our readers if we’re going to continue. And you know that a site such as this has never been more necessary than it is now.
Our Spring fundraising drive is about midway through, and the going is rather slow. We’re getting lots of donations, perhaps more than ever, but the amounts are noticeably smaller. We are grateful beyond words for every penny, yet we must make our fundraising goal or else face draconian cutbacks that will have a deleterious and very obvious impact on our coverage.
No, we don’t have any eccentric billionaires paying our bills, and for that I’m actually grateful: I don’t think either myself or the rest of the Antiwar.com staff would take too kindly to being told what to write and what to cover. That is the price we’d have to pay for foregoing these fundraisers, and it’s far too high for us to even consider it.
We really need to pick up the pace of our fundraising, and soon, if we’re going to avoid what could be bad news for the many thousands of readers who have come to depend on this site for the real news about our endless “war on terrorism.” Your donation is one-hundred percent tax-deductible – and isn’t that a good enough reason to divert a portion of your involuntary contribution to the war machine to the cause of peace?
Yes, the war clouds are gathering and the vultures are circling overhead – but all is not lost. Help us keep the spirit of hope alive – make your donation today.
NOTES IN THE MARGIN
You can check out my Twitter feed by going here. But please note that my tweets are sometimes deliberately provocative, often made in jest, and largely consist of me thinking out loud.
I’ve written a couple of books, which you might want to peruse. Here is the link for buying the second edition of my 1993 book, Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement, with an Introduction by Prof. George W. Carey, a Foreword by Patrick J. Buchanan, and critical essays by Scott Richert and David Gordon (ISI Books, 2008).
You can buy An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard (Prometheus Books, 2000), my biography of the great libertarian thinker, here.
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Q:
Conditional If Statement applied to dataframe
I am trying to iterate in a pythonic way (i.e. without a loop) through a dataframe in order to create a new columns based on whether the condition was met. In particular, given a dataframe of daily returns, I would like to create a new column that tells me whether either an upper limit or lower limit was crossed (limit is symmetric, but stock specific, so each row might have a different limit, called std in the df below) , something like this:
import pandas as pd
dict = [
{'ticker':'jpm','date': '2016-11-28','returns': '0.2','returns2': '0.3','std': '0.1'},
{ 'ticker':'ge','date': '2016-11-28','returns': '0.2','returns2': '0.3','std': '0.1'},
{'ticker':'fb', 'date': '2016-11-28','returns': '0.2','returns2': '0.3','std': '0.1'},
{'ticker':'aapl', 'date': '2016-11-28','returns': '0.2','returns2': '0.3','std': '0.1'},
{'ticker':'msft','date': '2016-11-28','returns': '0.2','returns2': '0.3','std': '0.1'},
{'ticker':'amzn','date': '2016-11-28','returns': '0.2','returns2': '0.3','std': '0.1'},
{'ticker':'jpm','date': '2016-11-29','returns': '0.2','returns2': '0.3','std': '0.1'},
{'ticker':'ge', 'date': '2016-11-29','returns': '0.2','returns2': '0.3','std': '0.1'},
{'ticker':'fb','date': '2016-11-29','returns': '0.2','returns2': '0.3','std': '0.1'},
{'ticker':'aapl','date': '2016-11-29','returns': '0.2','returns2': '0.3','std': '0.1'},
{'ticker':'msft','date': '2016-11-29','returns': '0.2','returns2': '0.3','std': '0.1'},
{'ticker':'amzn','date': '2016-11-29','returns': '0.2','returns2': '0.3','std': '0.1'}
]
df = pd.DataFrame(dict)
df['date'] = pd.to_datetime(df1['date'])
df=df.set_index(['date','ticker'], drop=True)
That should be transformed, such that I obtain a new column which contains the respective day's return, if the upper/lower threshold was crossed, if it wasn't crossed, it should just contain the last day's return (so returns2).
dict2 = [
{'ticker':'jpm','date': '2016-11-28','returns': '0.2','returns2': '-0.3','std': '0.1','sl': '0.2'},
{ 'ticker':'ge','date': '2016-11-28','returns': '-0.2','returns2': '0.3','std': '0.1','sl': '-0.2'},
{'ticker':'fb', 'date': '2016-11-28','returns': '0.05','returns2': '-0.3','std': '0.1','sl': '-0.3'},
{'ticker':'aapl', 'date': '2016-11-28','returns': '-0.2','returns2': '0.3','std': '0.1','sl': '-0.2'},
{'ticker':'msft','date': '2016-11-28','returns': '0.2','returns2': '-0.3','std': '0.1','sl': '0.2'},
{'ticker':'amzn','date': '2016-11-28','returns': '-0.2','returns2': '0.3','std': '0.1','sl': '-0.2'},
{'ticker':'jpm','date': '2016-11-29','returns': '0.2','returns2': '-0.3','std': '0.1','sl': '0.2'},
{'ticker':'ge', 'date': '2016-11-29','returns': '-0.2','returns2': '0.3','std': '0.1','sl': '-0.2'},
{'ticker':'fb','date': '2016-11-29','returns': '0.2','returns2': '-0.3','std': '0.1','sl': '0.2'},
{'ticker':'aapl','date': '2016-11-29','returns': '-0.2','returns2': '0.3','std': '0.1','sl': '-0.2'},
{'ticker':'msft','date': '2016-11-29','returns': '0.2','returns2': '-0.3','std': '0.1','sl': '0.2'},
{'ticker':'amzn','date': '2016-11-29','returns': '-0.2','returns2': '0.3','std': '0.1','sl': '-0.2'}
]
df2 = pd.DataFrame(dict2)
df2['date'] = pd.to_datetime(df2['date'])
df2=df2.set_index(['date','ticker'], drop=False)
I am trying to keep this flexible (so it works for more than just 2 columns with returns) and efficient (so that it works on very large dfs.
Can anyone suggest an approach?
A:
Working on df2.
# Make columns numeric
df2[["returns", "returns2", "std"]] = df2[["returns", "returns2", "std"]].astype(float)
# Create new column using returns2 (we'll overwrite it in . moment)
df2["output"] = df2["returns2"]
# Mask whether returns crosses std
m = df2["returns"].abs() > df2["std"]
# Overwrite that mask onto new column
df2.loc[m, "output"] = df2.loc[m, "returns"]
If you want to extend this to more than 2 columns then we'd need to understand the criteria for which column to select but the process would be the same: you build a mask that matches your criteria and you apply it.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "StackExchange"
}
|
Cytomegalovirus Viremia in HIV-1 Subtype C Positive Women at Delivery in Botswana and Adverse Birth/Infant Health Outcomes.
We evaluated the association between maternal cytomegalovirus (CMV) viremia during pregnancy and adverse birth and infant health outcomes in HIV-infected mothers and their HIV-exposed uninfected infants. HIV-positive women and their infants were followed prospectively from pregnancy through 2 years postpartum in the "Tshipidi" study in Botswana. We analyzed the association between detectable CMV DNA in maternal blood at delivery and adverse birth outcomes (stillbirth, preterm delivery, small for gestational age, or birth defect), as well as infant hospitalization and mortality through 24 months. We measured CMV DNA in blood samples from 350 (77.1%) of 454 HIV-positive women from the Tshipidi study. The median maternal CD4 count was 422 cells/mL, and median HIV-1 RNA at entry was 3.2 log10 copies/mL. Fifty-one (14.6%) women had detectable CMV DNA. In unadjusted analyses, detectable CMV DNA was associated with higher maternal HIV-1 RNA [odds ratio (OR) 1.4, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.1 to 1.9], presence of a birth defect (OR 9.8, 95% CI: 1.6 to 60.3), and occurrence of any adverse birth outcome (OR 2.0, 95% CI: 1.04 to 3.95). In multivariable analysis, we observed a trend toward association between detectable maternal CMV DNA and occurrence of any adverse birth outcome (adjusted OR 1.9, 95% CI: 0.96 to 3.8). Maternal CMV viremia was not associated with infant hospitalization and/or death by 24 months. Approximately 1 in 6 HIV-positive women in Botswana had detectable CMV DNA in blood at delivery. The presence of maternal CMV viremia had a borderline association with adverse birth outcomes but not with 24-month morbidity or mortality in HIV-exposed uninfected children.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "PubMed Abstracts"
}
|
Estimated Reduction In The Face Value Of SFP Entitlements
The Department of Agriculture and Rural Development today announced a reduction in the face value of SFP entitlements that will be applied in 2014.
EU Regulations adopted in December 2013 set out changes that have to be implemented in 2014 prior to the introduction of CAP Reform from 2015. Part of these relate to the fact that from this year, CAP support will be funded from the new 2014-2020 EU budget and so the value of existing SFP entitlements have to be adjusted to align with the available funding.
Under the EU budget settlement, the Pillar 1 support budget for 2014-2020 has been reduced to reflect the fact that compulsory modulation, which was previously subtracted from SFP entitlements before payments were made, has been transferred permanently to the EU rural development budget.
There has also been a small change to the overall value of the CAP budget.
Given these changes, the face value of existing SFP entitlements will now have to be reduced and will now more closely reflect what they are actually worth in terms of payments to farmers. Therefore, the unit face value of all current SFP entitlements held in 2014 will be reduced by approximately 9.25%. However, in practical terms, the actual amount of SFP paid out from 2014 claims will fall by only around 1%. This will also depend on whether financial discipline reductions are required in 2014 to respect the EU CAP budget ceiling.
A more precise calculation of the actual reduction will be confirmed later in the year and applied prior to 2014 SFP payments being issued. When this is completed, farmers will be given further information on the new value of the SFP entitlements that they hold. There will be no compulsory or voluntary modulation applied to SFP in 2014.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
}
|
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