Monday, November 12, 2012

Beyond Moonstone and Broken Stone



I didn't tell you the whole story.

Back in South County, along the coast of Rhode Island. The day that I stood on the seaweed and garbage-strewn edge of a chewed-away beach. Sizing it up. Whole chunks devoured. Agape, I stood surveying a wounded shoreline, gnashed and sliced with mechanical precision, a chainsaw steel-toothed-blade slashing. Here you are Lil Rhody: a newly chiseled ribbon of beachfront.

That's what she said to me, Hurricane Sandy, as she flossed her choppers. I listened further. My ears buzzed with the saw's vibration. A tinnitus. Hiss. (I wondered if her steely jaw hurt as much as mine did after a night of vigorous grinding.)

Now exposed a foot or more above the shiny, sabulous floor are three concrete septic tanks. Now an orange net of fencing assuredly tells visitors to not climb wood stairs, to not roam wood decks. We don't know what's safe. We don't know what might give under foot. Or what might topple overhead. And who knows, in this cycle of storms, how long it will take before we are able to tend to this beach's wounds.

Sandy's hiss lingered. Driving Rhode Island's roads I had noticed how all the trees, with the exception of evergreens, in the area and around the state had been prematurely shorn bare. Another reminder that our fall has not been like ordinary falls past. None of the seasons, truly, have been like those past, and there has been, undeniably, altered weather patterns throughout the year, a change in our climate, and I feel the loss. The resulting melancholy that grips me has become inescapable.

*   *   *

Out there, where the continent ends, a mob of seagulls swarmed above the churning waters, in search of... Something. Food. Companionship. Entertainment. They jostled above the smooth-stoned jetty, eyed its pummeling by the wildly relentless surf. They squawked discordantly, and hustled easily through knotty wind, steeling crab-scrap from one another. Scrap is plenty and they are a greedy lot. They are no better than ambulance-chasing lawyers, they are opportunists. (This explains their longevity, as well their repulsiveness.) Go away, you opportunistic kleptomaniacs!

Why are seagulls called seagulls when they are not confined to the sea? In fact, they do not venture far out above the ocean, and very often, they are found inland: at freshwater lakes, in the parking lots of football stadiums or theaters, or at big-boxed shopping centers that sadly occupy corner lots of every other town in America.

*   *   *

But before I'd reached the beach in South County, before stopping by at the Shopping Center in Westerly that I manage, before assessing the damage to a pylon sign, I had visited my dermatologist, Dr. Kirk in East Greenwich. There, I had the angry, seething mole—a mole that had for many summer nights kept me awake, this, the mole from which I could not vacation, a mole that had burrowed into the fold of my right armpit and maddened my mental health—excised, as well as another bothered mole that had, like any good, large-pawed mole, dug itself a home and taken a seat on the backside of the equator of my body. The waistline is not a sitting or nesting area. It is too heavily trafficked by garments of the day and evening. There, fine silks, cashmeres and cottons carouse, and stumble, get caught, on anything in their way. They do not appreciate this. Neither does the no-sitting area. So there, they are hewn down like all the trees or tree limbs that fell just days before. Or like any tree that does not bear good fruit. They are hewn almost precisely like trees, only on a smaller, more sterile scale: a numbing agent applied to the area via syringe not only numbs the mole and its underlying/surrounding skin, but also puffs it up into a small mound so that the now protruding and exposed bugger may be sliced from its nest by a hand-held straight edge blade. It is more efficient, in fact, than cutting the tree, as no stump remains, no inviting perch or tunnel.


There, Dr. Kirk said, as she placed a Band Aid over both wounds. All set. We’ll send them for biopsy, but there is absolutely nothing suspicious looking about these moles. I’d be highly surprised to hear back that they’re anything but that.

She is good, Dr. Kirk—calming and approachable and never in a hurry. She is right, too. I am called days later with the news: everything is fine. This was different news, though, from the news of that of a mole I had removed from my left arm three weeks earlier. That call had in it a word that scared me: atypical. But that too, I learned, meant that it was fine. For the time being.

*   *   *

Why are seagulls ugly and terns pretty? They are of the same lineage (though recent DNA testing reveals a fissure in family sequence). Is it because the Lilliputian terns seem harmless? Surely they're too tiny to cause trouble. Look at their flimsy homes, a crazy quilt of sticks and flotsam. They shop busy flea markets for colorful trinkets but they don't grab at things and they don't haggle. Dinnertime is thoughtful pecking. They smile sweetly. They mind themselves. Terns are charmers. Gulls are pests: loud, pushy, domineering, smart but too smart for their own good. Gulls have jaws of steel. Chops known as "prophylactic unhinging jaws." This means their premaxillary and mandible portions of the beak can detach, unhinge, to create a larger space for the consumption of larger prey. (And I wonder if their jaws crack as loudly as mine when I attempt to open it fully.) But unhinge has another meaning: deranged, or unbalanced.

*   *   *

So now, I was off to Westerly, and then, the drive down to the ocean, just beyond the breachway, and then sitting in my car on the far side of Wawaloam Drive in Weekapaug, at the edge of Block Island Sound. There, I left the car and stood on the rocks shoring up the earth, the roads, the shingled cottages beyond. There, is where and when I felt the pain. My backside, the waist, hurt like it hurt when, as a twelve-year-old, I was flung into the yew hedges of my neighbor’s yard. I’d been the goalie in a pick-up soccer game with the boys. I went out of the box for the big save and was rewarded by an offensive check into the dense and unfriendly yew. When I returned to the net, bruised and in pain, having placed my hand on a cheek where the sun doesn’t shine, I discovered I was profusely bleeding. This was followed by a sprint back home, across the street, and a quick car ride to the ER (not to mention a particularly embarrassing sewing session that did not include making smocks).

(Maybe this was when the grinding started.)

*   *   *

Deranged or unbalanced is what I think of seagulls. Deranged or unbalanced is how I felt as I continued to survey the seaside. At the very least, unbalanced. Unbalanced at the hands of warm, wind-blasts, at the hands of an ever expanding topsy-turvy climate. Awestruck, too, I was. But that's a bit of a deranged thought process in and of itself. All this destruction and I am awestruck? Another thing, too, was happening, but I didn't know it then.

*   *   *

Standing on the stone wall I placed my hand on the backside of the equator. I was wearing a cotton crewneck, a wool sweater over that, and a cashmere blend cape over that. I’d bled through all the layers. My phone was in my hand. Through the phone the dermatologist’s office instructed: Cover the blood-gushing gape and have someone apply pressure directly to the wound. It just needs pressure, a woman said, twenty minutes of pressure and it will stop.

What? It was gushing! Well, Ok, maybe not gushing, but it was determined. Someone was not around. Napkins were in the car.

Click-clicking my iPhone, gnash-gnashing my teeth, I captured as many sea-foam-over-grey-rock photos as I was able before bleeding to death. I’d thought I would need to (or should) return to East Greenwich, to Dr. Kirk’s office. I thought I’d be taking more time to myself exploring the coastline, sizing up the damage, photographing shock. Now, the trajectory of my day would change, and I was angry! I had to care for a damned dead mole. In the car, I crammed a mound of napkins over the drenched Band Aid, sat with my right elbow pressed hard into the seat’s leather back, with the palm of my right hand pressing harder into my sweater-draped back, into the napkins, into the Band Aid, into the damned dead mole, and drove out to Route 1 toward Moonstone Beach Road. 

My arm was still contorted behind my back when I pulled over beyond Moonstone’s cordoned off entrance. There, I stopped to take more pictures, but not of shock, rather, of calm—a serene field across from the water. The entrance to the field, part of a farm, was restricted by a green, metal tube swing-gate on which I swung my tired, tingling right arm. It had been at least twenty minutes since the phone call. I blotted the deceased mole with a clean napkin, which revealed small red spots upon inspection, as if the mole was speaking from his grave. You know, here's the thing about moles, they burrow deep, they have sharp claws, and unique blood cells. They have a special hemoglobin protein that allows them to take big gulps of air and then burrow deeply for longs periods of time, living off the oxygen-stash. In this way, they can become attached to their habitat. I wondered if I’d done the right thing, evicting the mole. No, that’s kind. I murdered him. He’d become a part of me, his doppelganger a reminder. Perhaps this is why, when Dr. Kirk said, Use Vaseline and keep the wound covered, it will reduce scarring, I said I didn’t care about a damn scar on my equator.

*   *   *

A cursory internet search reveals that pigs, cats and dogs are known to grind their teeth for mostly benign reasons ranging from boredom to dehydration; stress, too, is documented as a possible factor. In her book “Zoobiquity: What Animals Can Teach Us About Health and the Science of Healing,” Dr. Barbara Natterson-Horowitz (with writer Kathryn Bowers) tells us that the bighorn sheep of the Canadian Rockies gnash their teeth right down to the gums while scraping hallucinogenic lichen off boulders. In other words, they are doing it for the fix. This I can understand. 

Gerald P. Curatola, D.D.S., an oral health expert who reports for Dr. Oz, maintains that teeth grinding is a side effect of stress "snowballing," and caused, in large part, by our environment—a changing environment, with its "political upheaval, war and violence in the Middle East, the fallout from a monumental 9.0 earthquake and devastating Tsunami in Japan, followed by an unparalleled radiological disaster from several critically damaged Japanese nuclear  reactors, combined with the continued domestic stress of a staggering national debt, weak national economy, and persistent high unemployment"—that profoundly affects our psyche. 

I become stressed just reading these words. 


What Curatola recommends is a regimen of exercise, vitamin supplements, and a devotion to meditation or prayer. Meditation or prayer. Meditation. Prayer. (I would need to work on this.)


Seagulls, those carpetbaggers, they don’t have teeth to grind, only a beak with one appendage known as an egg tooth, a tool used solely for chipping open the egg shell, which falls away after the gull hatches from its speckled egg—the tooth’s purpose, obsolete.
*   *   *

I caught myself jaw clenching at the gate. Military helicopters, three of them, circling above the farm disturbed its sereneness, and encroached into my field photographs. They whirled around continuously as I stood there, until I decided I was tired of the irruption. What were they looking for three days post-Sandy? I blotted my wound again. It didn’t help.

Beyond Moonstone, beyond broken stone walls, beyond shredded structures and vegetation, beyond the Theatre By the Sea, I pulled my car into the entrance of a small beach, this being the beach of exposed septic tanks and winged mobs. On the battered shore, more so than by the shopping center, is where bleached thoughts began to color. They were out, adjusters, assessing the damage, calculating the cost of repair or replacement. A coastline dotted with inspectors, assessors, calculators—what’s covered, what’s not. I wondered about the limits of our insurance; our capacity for endurance. A mole may be covered. Many moles may be covered. TMJ treatment, though not much, especially out of network, may be covered. Shopping centers may be covered. Beach homes may be covered. Maybe many beach homes. Boardwalks and boats and beach cabanas may be covered. All of this might, might, be covered by the best flood and wind insurance in the state, in the country. But what happens when something catastrophic blows in, off the Atlantic, or twists through the dappled plains or majestic purple mountains? What happens when the hard-packed earth starts to shake and crack wildly from coast to coast? What happens when the seas rise and spill over onto our highways and through our valleys, our cities, our suburbs? What happens when these events begin to occur with some regularity? Am I being too dramatic? Do you not think that our climate might change to this extent? I don’t know it will. Who knows? But if it does, what amount of insurance will we need to recover from these events? How deep are our pockets? How deep are our insurers pockets? The limits, the limits

All right, I was upset. Unhinged, there, on the beach still bleeding, thoughts unique to my particular neuroses manifesting. But there I stood: awestruck, dumbstruck, stormstruck, molestruck, jawstruck. Bleeding.

She was called a perfect storm, Sandy: the convergence of hurricane, a low-pressure system and a high-pressure system. The same elemental mix, the same characteristics, as the sea storm of which Sebastian Junger wrote in The Perfect Storm. The difference: Sandy found her way inland. 

*   *   *

Our American folklore includes a story told and written, in various versions, by the Latter Day Saints. It is known as The Miracle of the Seagulls, which goes, roughly, like this:

Salt Lake City, late May, 1848. Millions of Mormon crickets that have swarmed across the Mountain West pause in the sagebrush, vestigial wings tucked under black armor, salivating, their blinking, wide eyes frozen, absorbing what lay before them, a feast—fields of budding crops that had been planted the previous fall by a league of Latter Day Saints, pioneers, who’d crossed the Great Divide, traveling by wagon, foot, or handcart, several months through valleys, mountains, plains, rivers, and rock, west, toward the Great Basin, and are now, this very May, readying themselves for the germinal soil’s first harvest. This is the harvest on which the survival of a nascent settlement relies. This is the crop for which the Mormon cricket warriors slobber, intent on replicating Egypt’s ancient plague of locusts.

The cricket warriors pounce on fields’ new product and commence their casual but methodical plunder—beans, squash, corn, wheat, melon. They do not discriminate. Their aim is to take it all. For three weeks the hard-shelled guerrillas’ high-pitched calls are heard. Until, early June, when armies of gulls of the Great Salt Lake swoop in, across the Great Basin and onto the fields, mopping the cropland of crickets. For nearly three more weeks avian fleets sweep the fields until the entire cricket regiment has been devoured. The seagulls have saved the Mormons from certain starvation.

Hear, hear! Seagulls are guardians! No—more—miracle workers, saviors. 

Phooey, some people say, this event was nothing more than seagulls doing what seagulls naturally do

But does this make it any less a miracle?

*   *   *

I was staring out at the waters, now, at seagulls swooping, diving, dancing with the surf. Warm, westerly winds were blowing off the sea. Once the barometric pressure dropped, the seagulls who made it through this storm system must have quite literally high-tailed out of harms way, far, far from the coastline. (Some gull types already attending a migration path.) A long way they must have flown for safety. And that, too, suddenly seemed awesome. They’d instinctively taken refuge, returning only when they wouldn’t any longer be knocked silly by high winds. Back they were, the seagulls, flying, flapping, squawking, fishing, sorting rubble; and that is how I left them, on the beach, admiring their tenacity, my jaw feeling slack, my head clear. They seemed less of a mob than they did a congregation; their squawk more like melody than cacophony. Soon, most everything would be restored; the beach cabana’s missing boards replaced, beachfront smoothed and leveled, homes shored up and rebuilt, although, maybe, set back a bit further from the shore.

Making my way back inland, on Matunuck Beach Road, I pulled over to take photos of rolled hay bales set on the ochre fields of a farm when my phone rang. Dr. Kirk was instructing me to return to her office to have my backside crater electrically cauterized. I would surrender to this, I told her (wondering if my insurance would cover the procedure) though I’d almost forgotten the excision, or how I’d panicked a bit by all the bleeding. Turning the engine back on, I swiped my backside with another napkin to confirm the shock treatment's necessity. There was nothing—the napkin was clean.


*   *   *

Along the temperate equator that circles and separates Earth’s northern and southern hemispheres, equidistant from the northern and southern poles, where daylight and darkness split the day fifty-fifty, there is no distinction in seasons. Winter, spring, summer, fall are all the same. The very same. Imagine.

Climate scientists warn us that global warming and climate change increases the odds for more catastrophic storms like Sandy, and may well result in the Dust Bowlification of America’s Southwest. Rising sea levels will make storms more intense, more destructive. Climate researcher Richard S. J. Toi, of Dublin’s Economics and Social Research Institute, tells us that “Climate change is the mother of all externalities: larger, more complex, and more uncertain than any other environmental problem.”

Whether or not the changing climate and warming seas are man-made or designed by Mother Nature, we are assured that this is the way of the world right now. There, undoubtedly—in New England and around the world—will be more gnashing, grinding, howling and hissing. No amount of insurance will change this. I can only pray that adaptation and major adjustments mitigate our losses. I wonder how our even-tempered equator will fare. I hope with less scarring than mine.

I hope the seagulls don’t disappear.

21 comments:

  1. this morning i heard a report about doomsday survivalist people in texas stocking up for a disaster of global proportions. (what a way to start the day!) it made me think of cormac mccarthy's book THE ROAD. and now this. oh jayne, the seagulls.

    perhaps i am in a gloomy mood. this piece of yours got to me. that's good, though....you hit home. yeah, you did, because i wonder if i would want to be hanging around in a world where there were no seagulls. i got thinking about a creature as tough and determined and likely to survive disaster as this one. if the seagull doesn't make it, would i want to live in what's left of a world like that?

    i hope they don't disappear either....

    and, jayne, that irksome jaw of yours, and now a hole in your back... i DO wish you speedy relief.

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    1. Doomsday survivalist. One might say that we're all, always been, doomsday survivalists. What, well, there is a doomsday! Heh. Haven't read The Road--heard that it did well for itself, but I'm afraid I may never get to The Road. At least not in the near future. :/

      The seagulls, I know, pests, yet purpose. I agree, if the seagull doesn't make, well, I don't think we would make it.

      I've learned to live with chronic pain, Mignon. It's been long time. Most days are good, I get out into the fresh air and enjoy life--but other days, aarrgghh.... I suppose it would help, at least w/the jaw--if I wore my night guard more often. ;)

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  2. i have always loved seagulls - they got personality, they adapt, they evolve, that's cool.

    i find it so interesting how "rebuild' is used as inspiration in the media - to rebuild right where the house should never have been built in the first place. i read a conservationist talking about the vicious cycle that our government has those individuals in - "We build in places prone to flooding. We do that largely because subsidies encourage it. Federal flood insurance is a way the entire country subsidizes building and rebuilding in places destined for repeated hits."

    It's got to change. Humanity has to stop thinking they can control the earth, that we are somehow superior. They want to rebuild the boardwalk and artificial beaches - I would so love it if these funds could be spent on rebuilding in SAFER locations, not in areas where they never should have been to start. Katrina-esque.

    Gorgeous tale...

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    1. I wonder if we can adapt as well as the seagulls, EG. Having been in the legal/real estate field for more than twenty years, I can tell you that I have seen an amazing amount of really, really bad decisions when it comes to zoning. Often, it boils down to politics, rather than what is best for our environment--what makes the most sense. We need thoughtful building. We have greedy building.

      I would imagine that the changing climate will force us to rethink where we build. I hope. It's not too easy to add on new dunes or seawalls. ;)

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  3. what a complex tapestry you weave here, jayne. you've conducted an exquisite orchestration of the desirables and the undesirables, the beauty of our oceans and the increase in superstorms due to global warming and a polemic of the pain that occurs when we try to excise something natural from existence or wish it away (moles, seagulls?) yet wonder if that is for the best. i am happy to hear that you have a positive answer in your case, as waiting for test results is a form of hell. you always challenge my thinking, and i am grateful for that as well as the new word in my vocabulary: sabulous.

    xoxo

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    1. Thank you, Amanda. I had some doubts about whether or not this piece may have been too, um, convoluted, but I'm glad you related. You, who are so connected to the earth, would though. ;)
      Now, I think I need to move away from my obsession with the changing climate and false seasons. (Well, to be honest, I don't know how I'll escape that obsession.)

      The wait. Yep. Always the hardest part, and always where my imagination leads the way. Glad to have answers, and happy to keep watching. :)

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  4. This was quite a journey to read through and it left me giddy with thoughts and flickering images.
    Sometime in early August I read somewhere (reliable) that thousands of gannets flew away, en masse, from their nesting grounds in Newfoundland, abandoning their solitary chick. As far as I know Gannets have only one chick a year and safeguarding it is the key to their survival. Possible explanations include loss of fish and increasing water temps.
    Stuff like that makes me grind my teeth and worse. Some days I think I know that it's too late for meditation and prayer.

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    1. I don't know why I haven't yet traveled to our seabird capital, Newfoundland, Sabine. We often go to Canada, have been to New Brunswick a few times, but have not gotten far enough north, and I would love to see that part of the world. Especially those remarkable nesting grounds.

      Thanks for that gannet story, I'll be going off on another kind of trip--the internet--soon, to investigate!

      Meditation. Prayer. Never too late, Sabine. Always worth a try. (She, who hasn't had one successful meditative moment in her life!, says. ;)

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  5. Seagulls are rats with wings but it was always fun throwing french fries in the air as a kid and watching them swoop and swarm... and don't mention to certain factions in this country about global warming, they'll just spout off about god's will or some such nonsense... and damn does that picture make me miss the Atlantic, the rough and tumble northern part most.

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    1. Rats w/wings. Heh. I thought those were bats! Bats I don't mind so much, on those warm summer nights they snap up the mosquitos in the back yard.

      The photo was taken at a beach that I'm careful not to name--because it's beautiful, unpopulated and situated in a pretty special place--and I don't want that to get around. ;)

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  6. Flying rats and cockroaches may be the only ones to survive, or so it seems at times when we humans bury our heads in the sand or look the other way but here Jane, you face "it" head on. This is some of the beautiful writing I've seen in a long time.
    Now, you've got me wondering should I excise or not my itchy stomach wart that keeps demanding attention. Ha.

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    1. Ru - How I hope we face it! About the moles--if you haven't already been, I would encourage you to see a dermatologist for, at the very least, a skin scan. We should all have a base line read of the constellations that dot our bodies. Peace of mind, too. Bothersome warts--off w/their heads! :)

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  7. Awesome piece, Jayne.

    I felt so many emotions while reading this post...I was right there with you the entire ride.

    Over the years, we've (the human race) put so much crap into our air, water, and land...and we've taken so much without giving back. We've spilled into our precious oceans, and buried mounds of garbage that will never disappear and renamed these dumps as parks and golf courses. I always love going to a landfill park with several methane flames burning, don't you? What a stink. Is it any wonder that the earth is regurgitating?

    I am so sorry for your beautiful RI beaches...I pray for a healing of the land, and your moles.

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    1. Loree- The other day I threw out all the plastic in my house. The kids thought I'd gone bonkers. Bring back glass containers! I say. You can wash and reuse those, you know? And they don't leach. You can even put them in your dishwasher! (Can you believe that some people still put PLASTIC in their dishwashers??) Ok, that's my final word. Yup. What a stink.

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  8. What a fascinating post because you think "celestially" and then tie all of these subjects together. I am sending you healing thoughts, Jayne. The mole removal sounds painful and annoying-bordering on exasperating in the aftermath. Hopefully, this will resolve quickly. So much devastation from your description. It mazes me what power the weather has. Here's hoping that you are on a healing route! :)

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  9. Correction: "It mazes me" (:D) should of coure read, "It amazes me". I'm glad I re-read my comment and was able to laugh at myself! : )

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    1. Thanks for those thoughts, Michael. Oh, the mole removal is a thing of the past now--prertty much fully healed! Though the scars will be a lingering reminder (of the excision and the hurricane), but, really, I don't mind so much having battle scars. ;)

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  10. You can put plastic in the dishwasher without too much trouble, but don't put it in the microwave...(cancer). Which brings me back the term I have heard from the pathologists, "Abnormal Growth."
    Let's neither one of us have to decipher such horrible words ever again, eh?

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    1. No, never the nuker! Yikes. To think how often I used to... way back when... I don't think plastic should go in the dishwasher, either. I'll bet we'll hear more news about that in the future. You know what else I don't put in the dishwasher? Wood. Anything w/wood handles doesn't make the cut. Nor do pots and pans or wine glasses. Sheesh--why the heck do I have a dishwasher?!

      Yeah, I'm hoping I don't have to decipher any medical terms. I'm not good with that sort of thing. :/ Hope the same for you, too, Nessa. :)

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  11. As I get Older, one of the many things that frustrate me is how long it takes for simple aches & pains; bumps & bruises to heal or just stop hurting. The Earth seems to take longer & longer to heal from it's disasters. My prayer is that the earth heals well from Sandy, with very few scars. My prayer also is that you heal well from your proceedure. You captured oh so well what we all viewed the day after Sandy. Stay well!

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  12. It is funny how you forget things. Long ago I lived in East Greenwich (nice town) and seeing it in print made me remember that my favorite eatery used to be The East Greenwich House of Pizza (RIP).

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