This morning I received a message from my Best Man, David Spitz. He's in London for the year and writing a great travel weblog called... well, that's the thing. David's looking for a new name. So what should it be? Check out the link and see what you think. Here are David's suggestions (my fav is 'Overseas Mail'):
The focus is on travel and cultural experiences (food, arts, theater, etc). The original title, A Year in London, did not really fit because much of the narrative takes place outside of London, not to mention outside of the year.
The new candidates are:
Digital Postcard (current working title of http://davidspitz.wordpress.com) or Overseas Mail (has a nice symbolic ring, but does it fit?) or Overseas Wire (or Wires?) or Wire Transfers (with Overseas Wires and Digital Postcards as categories) or Other (you choose!)
I am pleased to report that my father continues to improve in his alertness and articulation. I am attaching a photo I took of him over the weekend that well reflects his determined spirit. He still shows signs of confusion. He remains weak. He is also far from the point of being able to make the daily decisions that are necessary to live on one's own. I am very happy, however, that he is now able to hold small conversations, and to express his state of mind. This means that he can consider what he wants to do after he completes ‘sub acute’ rehabilitation (which still won’t be for several weeks).
I thought I would attach in this update a report from my mother, who was able to sit in on a therapist meeting yesterday morning at the rehabilitation center. Here is her report:
I went up today for the 9 AM team meeting. Carl seemed pretty alert – he was in the dining room having breakfast and saw me from afar and waved. He wheeled himself back to the room after breakfast. I mentioned how much I enjoyed seeing Christine [Panero] on Sunday, that it had been so long since I had seen her. And he said “over 20 years”, The speech therapist said his talking is so much better although he still gets confused sometimes with answering questions.
The team said they were delighted with his progress but thought there was still much more to be made – that he was nowhere near plateauing out. But we all did talk about where to go next. Everyone—including Carl—agreed that going back to Block Island to live was out of the question – he would need to drive etc. etc., and he will need assistance. So we all agreed we would shoot for Assisted Living—and their goal is to help him (and us) get him prepared for that. He said he “has a lot to think about”. He did not seem interested in a place in NYC. He seems to treasure his visits from his BI friends. He had gotten a card from a whole bunch of them and a gardenia plant. He was obviously touched. I said I did not know them and he said “that is because you do not hang around the Beachhead”. Tell everyone how much Carl enjoys visitors, that he is very touched by everyone’s concern, and that he also loves cards, that he can read them.
After the difficulties of the past few weeks, I thought we could all use a break. Since this is a family blog, it occurred to me that it might be fun to introduce our extended kin to this forum. I couldn't think of a better place to start than with my most interesting relative, Baby Carl.
Baby Carl is my father's half brother. He is so named bacause my father is also Carl, and my father's father was also a Carl. So in my family you have Big Carl (my grandfather), Little Carl (my father), and Baby Carl (my half uncle). Baby Carl wasn't raised by my grandfather, who suffered from wanderlust and nearly died trying to build a hunting lodge in Somalia. (You can read a little about that episode here.) So Baby Carl goes by another last name--Cestari.
If this wasn't interesting enough, Baby Carl has distingished himself in his profession by becoming a master teacher of something called 'gutterfighting.' This is a philosophy of hand-to-hand combat that combines martial art dicipline and dirty tricks to deliver the greatest and swiftest lethality, should you really need to kill someone in a fight. Baby Carl can explain it much better than I can. You can read one of his manifestos here, including these short-cut tips to mortal combat:
*Attack the throat with the INTENTION of crushing it! No brainer.
*Attack the anterior/lateral carotid triangle. One of TWO primary KO points. Kyusho/Dim Mak this *AIN'T! Just "hammer" the bastard. Fast, hard and often is the key phrase!
*Attack the cervical spine/C-1 - dens bone attachment.
*Attack the head/brain case. Now here we get interesting. The goal in attacking the head should be, in my opinion, to cause ACUTE TRAUMATIC BRAIN INJURY. Other possible injuries are secondary. *Attack with the intention of causing massive "coup contra coup" brain trauma, either through translational or rotational impact. Cause severe "kinking" of the brain stem, either by hyper flexion or extension. Forget the "death touch" stuff. THIS IS HOW people in the real world get Fucked up.
What does this all mean? Baby Carl has starred in a series of videos demonstrating his fighting techniques that have become the rage of the underground extreme-fighting types. The videos now retail for hundreds of dollars. Fortunately, a few choice clips are available on You Tube. You will recognize Baby Carl by his missing his ring finger on his right hand. You will also notice that we Paneros fight dirty.
