Oliver Sacks

       More Letters From Paradise
         Oliver Sacks and Me

Oliver Sacks is dead! The name Oliver Sacks may not be a household word. He was born July 9, 1933, and died of terminal cancer in his Greenwich Village New York home, August 30, 2015. He was the world renowned neurologist, author, and professor of neurology at New York University of Medicine.

His name may not be familiar, but the motion picture "Awakenings," filmed in 1990, starring Robin Williams, Robert DeNiro, Julie Kavner, and Ruth Nelson was based upon a famous neurological clinical study made by Dr. Sacks.

Shortly following World War I, there was a great epidemic of sleeping sickness, and some few survivors became frozen in sleep for decades! Dr. Sacks gave them a new drug LDOPA, and they were brought back from the past into a strange new world.

All the details can be found in his book "Awakenings," available from Amazon. Another famous book has the very odd title "The Man Who Mistook His Wife For His Hat." Also purchased from Amazon.

Oliver Sacks was more than a neurologist and author. He rode a BMW motorcycle, lifted weights (600 lbs.a record ) and swam every day.

Why am I so interested in Dr. Sacks, the neurologist? It is because I am being treated by Dr. Eliza Hagen, another neurologist. There is nothing like having a brain seizure to cause one to become interested in neurology. Following a ten hour brain operation, Dr. Lee, a South Korean near surgeon planted 68 platinum coils in my brain. Dr. Hagen has me on what we  call a "Five Year Plan," and Teena  and I agree that "If it's not broken, don't fix it ".   I have been seizure-free for two and a half years, but still on medication twice a day. The early days following my seizure were pure hell. One of the side-effects of one medicine was thoughts of suicide! I had never even thought of suicide. And we live on the 30th floor! But things got righted out, and it's all good. Scared the hell out of us! All good now so far.

      Aloha
      Grant

All You White People

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        All You White People

Some time ago my friend Paul returned to the mainland for a visit. He said that he wanted to have some Indiana home-grown sweetcorn and tomatoes. He was surprised to see all those white people.

I told the story to my Chinese, American-born dentist. He had a similar experience while visiting China. "They all looked the same," he said.

The point I am trying to make is that here in Hawaii, there is such an ethnic mix it is sometime called chop suey, and we all take it for granted. One such example is that the driver license tests are written in eight different languages! Our Governor is Korean, while the State Superintendent of Schools is Japanese. Our dentist mentioned above is assisted by a Samoan woman. The hygienist is Vietnamese. Our family doctor who recently retired, is Japanese. His replacement is an Indian woman.

Our condo security guards are Hawaiian, Chinese, Samoan, and Haole. The word "haole" (how-lee) is a Hawaiian term meaning white or foreigner.

If you call Sears for the repair of your dishwasher, your repairmen could be a Chinese and a Filipino. And it doesn't matter what your ethnicity is. We have come to accept it for what it is. The ethnic diversity adds much richness to our lives.

Recently, Teena received a call from a woman on the mainland, wanting to ask about a particular hotel. Teena told her that the hotel is excellent and managed and staffed by Japanese. Hearing that, she chose another hotel and found to her dismay, the same situation she was trying so hard to avoid.

There are a lot of problems here in paradise, but race and ethnicity is not one of them. In fact, there is a very funny Hawaiian song in which several ethnic groups are made fun of. Nobody gets mad. As they say here "Ain't no big 'ting."

           Aloha
           Grant

From the Back of the Plane

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      From the Back of the Plane

I am sure that many of you remember when commercial flying was fun. Wide seats with wide armrests, free food served in coach class, and free movies.

In the good old days, Pan American, T.W.A. and other airlines carried passengers who were all well dressed, and were treated accordingly. Remember? Smoking was viewed as alright too. (cough cough)

Teena and I just returned home from a visit to the mainland. We flew both ways aboard Alaska airlines. The plane was the new Boeing 737 800 and 900 series. They are real happy with their new aircraft, but we are not! I would just like to get my hands on those designers and have them squeeze into their new slim, little padding, tiny armrests, and take a long ride and see how they would feel later. They have stretched the plane so more more passengers can be carried. Do I sense a profit motive here? Also the center aisle must be only fourteen inches wide, because the cart traveling  up and down it must be all of twelve inches wide. And if you are seated in an aisle seat, you are bumped repeatedly.

Some sort of I Pad is available to rent for $10.00. Restrooms up front and three in the rear of the plane for the rest of the herd.

In all fairness, I should mention that the prices for both food and drink are reasonable.  

In closing this rant I feel I should mention that you can avoid $25. per bag fee until boarding boarding when they will check it for you with no charge. But  I will have to admit that the plane carried us safely both ways, and isn't that what it is supposed to do?

      Aloha
      Grant

The Wright Brothers

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        The Wright Brothers

For centuries men have looked at the birds flying in the sky, with envy. One ancient Greek myth tells of a man named Icarus, who fashioned wings of feathers and wax. But when he flew too close to the sun,the wax melted and he plunged into the sea.

It was Leonardo DaVinci, who made the first intensive study of flying. His famous notebooks show drawings of bird's wings, and a man recalling in a machine for flying.

The dream of flying became real through the efforts of two brothers Wilber and Orville Wright. Working alone in their Dayton, Ohio bicycle shop they read all the information about gliders, and even constructed a wind tunnel in order to study wing shapes.

But their story is best told in the new biography "The Wright Brothers," by David McCullough, the two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. I feel that this book is one of the best biographies I have ever read.

I fear that if I write too many details of the book it will ruin it for any reader. Charlie Taylor, a brilliant mechanic built  a four cylinder motor  which delivered 8 horsepower to the two hand-carved spruce propellers, eight and a half feet long , via a chain link drive.

The story of those test flights at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina and all the rest of the story I will leave to the book. But I will mention that the Wright Brothers home and bicycle shop can be visited at Henry Ford's Greenfield Village Museum, Dearborn, Michigan. If you are ever in the Detroit area, be sure to visit it.

The only other event which can compare to the Wright brothers, is when Neal Armstrong carrying a patch from their 1903 airplane, stepped out onto the moon.

       Aloha
       Grant

Don't Fence Me In

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         Don't Fence Me In

I passed a wall the other day and saw that it was built of lava rock. Nothing unusual about this, as lava rock is found all over the Hawaiian Islands, having been created by volcanoes. But this wall set me to thinking about walls and fences. I came to two conclusions. First, walls and fences are used to define territory. I think this is best expressed by the poet Robert Frost,in his poem "Mending Wall." In it he writes that "Stone fences make good neighbors."

The second reason for walls and fences is to keep people and animals either in or out. The first settlers in America built log walls in order to keep Indians out.

At a later date settlers would fell trees and then using steel wedges, split the logs into rails. Do you remember that Lincoln was a rail splitter? These rails would be crossed over near each end, and placed in a zig zag fashion across a field, thus creating a fence.

I remember years ago seeing stump fences marking out fields in Northern Michigan. The settlers would dig around the stumps of trees and then use oxen or horses to pull the stumps out of the ground, in order to create a fence when placed side by side with other stumps.

Next I began to think about fences, and tried to list them all. I began with the common woven wire fence which comes in a roll and is stapled to wood posts stuck in the ground or fastened to narrow steel posts. A good fence was said to be one that was "horse high, and sheep tight."

There are many other types of woven wire fence, one is called "chicken wire." You can guess what it is used for. And there are many others.

But perhaps the simplest fence is a single wire strand attached to a post and charged with electric current. This often works well as long as the battery remains charged. One time it didn't work so well, was when a big pig of mine simply walked to the fence, and with her nose pushed the insulator up, and walked out to freedom. That pig could really run!

Another single strand of fence was invented by a man name Joseph Gladden. It was called barbed wire, because sharp barbs were clamped on the wire at intervals. Sold in rolls and two strands would make a fence. This led to the wars between the cattlemen and the farmers. A popular song of the 1940's sung by the cowboy singer Gene Autry, was "Don't Fence Me In," in which he laments the fencing of the wide open plains.        There were many different kinds of barbs used and they make an interesting collection. I once had such a collection stapled to a barn siding board.

With the coming of World War I, barbed wire was put other uses. The war on the Western front became strung with miles of barbed wire to keep the enemy away. Wire cutters became standard equipment in the British Army. But before leaving the topic of WWI. should mention that the iron fences around wealthy British homes were cut off, and sent off to be melted,and used in the war effort.

Today the barbs on wire have been replaced with even more cruel razor blades. These are use by our military and on top of prison walls.    

Enough about fences. What about walls? The first one which come to mind is found in Homer's epic poem the "Iliad," which tells about the ancient war between the Trojans and the Greeks." I don't remember how high the walls of Troy were, but they frustrated the Greeks so much that they had to use the ruse of the wooden horse in order to gain entry.

Another wall is of course the "Great Wall of China," which was built to keep out nomadic peoples, and is about 13,171 miles long. I read somewhere that it is the only man-made structure which can be seen on Earth from the Moon. Inside Beijing today there are walls which enclosed the "Forbidden City" of the emperor.

Another famous wall was built by the Romans starting in the year 122 A.D. It is called "Hadrian's Wall," named for the Roman emperor at that time. It makes the northern-most part of the Roman Empire. It runs across Northern England 73 miles from Solway Firth on the East, to the Irish Sea on the West.It was built to keep out the warlike people known as Picts. Highly fortified and guarded  by Roman legions. We know which legions built the wall, as they left their name on it. Such a long way from sunny Italy.

Other walls which came to mind are adobe brick used in the Southwest and Mexico. In Mexico broken glass bottles are often seen imbedded in the cement on the top of walls. Remember the Alamo? Texans do. Adobe again. As a kid living there I am ashamed to admit that I kicked off a piece as a souvenir.

I remember seeing stone walls built by the Aztec people where they placed small stones in the cement joints between the stone blocks. Most unusual. And in Kentucky I saw a wall of stacked slate built by slaves.

There are a whole host of materials for walls. Concrete,glass,plastic, and of course brick. Roman bricks tell you when the brick was made, and in what year. Thomas Jefferson had a brick wall built in a serpentine shape which would give the wall more support than a straight wall.

Two other walls we are all familiar with are the Berlin Wall that separated Communist East Germany from West Germany, and the wall built by the U.S. to prevent Mexican people from coming here to live.

If you are reading this, I feel it is long enough. But I leave you with one other type of wall. It is a wall built by the Masai tribe of Kenya, Africa. It is built of thorn bushes to keep their cattle safe from lions.

     Aloha
     Grant

Can You Hear the Birds Singing?

      More Letters From Paradise
    Can You Hear the Birds Singing?

No, of course you can't because you are using your earbuds. Can you see the tree above you that is filled with yellow flowers, and they  carpet the sidewalk? No, because you are only looking at your phone or tablet. Do you hear the tapping of heels on the sidewalk, or the emergency vehicle racing on a rescue mission? No, you are still in the "zone" with your earbuds. Do you see the woman pushing the baby, and guy on the bike riding towards you? No, you are still looking at your phone or tablet. Do you see that the ocean surf has risen, and or that that the grass on Diamond Head is brown, little and dry? No, you are still looking on your phone or tablet.

Do you know that the traffic light has turned green, and that is why the car behind you is honking his horn? You were sending a text on your phone.

Do you sometimes wonder why you missed the floor you were supposed to exit? Do you suppose that it had something to do with your phone?

I will bet you never hear the singing lessons coming from an apartment above. Too bad, she has a lovely voice. Earbuds again.

Not to beat this theme to death, but I would point out that there is a wonderful world out there, just waiting for you to pull off your earbuds and drop your phones.

      Aloha
      Grant

Louis Armstrong

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         Louis Armstrong

Unless you are a big jazz buff, or listen to National Public Radio, you may not know the following story. I heard Garrison Keillor tell the story this morning. It is so good that I want to pass it along to you.

 Today is President Obama's birthday. Born here in Honolulu, in spite of what Donald Trump says. He shares this date with the late great Louis Armstrong.

Louis was born a poor kid in New Orleans. He used to sing for pennies, and he kept them in his mouth so that the big kids couldn't get them. He came to be called "Satchel Mouth." Later it became simply "Satchmo." He worked for a Jewish couple who were coal dealers. They bought him a tin trumpet. Because they had been so kind to him, he wore a star of David around his neck for the rest of his life.

      Aloha
      Grant
p.s. Read about the discovery of a diary on my  blog. morelettersfromparadise.blogspot.com