My R-knee replacement op was rescheduled for 7:30am on Fri. 28 AUG; post-op doc & nurses saw me as rapidly recovering (vs last year's L-knee op.) so I was discharged from the Kaiser Hospital on Sun 30 AUG at 2pm.
I'm back in my apt. w/Reggie; phone me there at 1-408-247-1943; e-mailing's better: billcostley@yahoo.com
I'm chipper, alert & can even proofread this only 3 days post-op. Once I've taken my 1st Percocets of the day, R-knee pain gradually shuts off while I take my scheduled post-op pills. I'm expecting a Visiting Physical Therapist tomorow.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
HAWTHORNY THOTS
Just wrote & sent this2 NPR/S.F./KQED-FM "Perspective" (2min.) audio-feature heard often daily. (update: next day) Hi Bill Thanks for your interest in Perspectives.Unfortunately, I'll have to respectfully decline the submission. Mark Trautwein Editor, Perspectives
HAWTHORNY THOTS
by Bill Costley (Jr.)
As Fall approaches, tho I now live at the bottom of San Francisco Bay, my thots drift back to Massachusetts Bay, & where I was born: Salem. You can’t be from Salem & never encounter Hawthorny thots.
Guilty from birth for John Hathorne, who’d tried & condemned the innocents of the Great Witchcraft Hysteria of 1692, he changed his family name to Hawthorne by deftly inserting a w, but long-inherited shame continued to obsess him.
Centuries later, my Glasgow-born father would hide his physical shame – ‘the heartbreak of psoriasis’ – from people by only swimming at the U.S. Naval Air station beach hidden behind the Salem Willows amusement park, assuring me “It’s not because of dissipation.” (Whatever that was, I wondered as a boy.)
Decades later, I was complicatedly miserable in Salem at 43, having broken up with a young New England Conservatory-trained pianist to return to Scotland (& she to Switzerland.) Returning to Salem, I sat in the noonday sun on the naval jetty a few yards from the Custom House where Hawthorne had once worked, a few yards from the House of Seven Gables Settlement House where my Polish-speaking mother had been taught to speak Yankified American-English.
I watched something moving & wrote about it:
"Wet Dreams" speedboat cuts a wake btw us
as I cast pebbles @ nrby lobster-buoy 3278J,
its one red star-on-white bobbing as
I cast my thoughts towards you,
like handfuls of pebbles,
none touching you @ all.
I think of you on Lac Neuchatel
w/ its palisades, spinnakers, utterly unlike
sober Salem's as my heart treads water, like
a heavy black bird, rising to 1',
skimming out of the innah hahbah.
[from my neosonnet series "Hammered Silver" written in Scotland, England & New England, 1985.]
(26 AUG 09)
HAWTHORNY THOTS
by Bill Costley (Jr.)
As Fall approaches, tho I now live at the bottom of San Francisco Bay, my thots drift back to Massachusetts Bay, & where I was born: Salem. You can’t be from Salem & never encounter Hawthorny thots.
Guilty from birth for John Hathorne, who’d tried & condemned the innocents of the Great Witchcraft Hysteria of 1692, he changed his family name to Hawthorne by deftly inserting a w, but long-inherited shame continued to obsess him.
Centuries later, my Glasgow-born father would hide his physical shame – ‘the heartbreak of psoriasis’ – from people by only swimming at the U.S. Naval Air station beach hidden behind the Salem Willows amusement park, assuring me “It’s not because of dissipation.” (Whatever that was, I wondered as a boy.)
Decades later, I was complicatedly miserable in Salem at 43, having broken up with a young New England Conservatory-trained pianist to return to Scotland (& she to Switzerland.) Returning to Salem, I sat in the noonday sun on the naval jetty a few yards from the Custom House where Hawthorne had once worked, a few yards from the House of Seven Gables Settlement House where my Polish-speaking mother had been taught to speak Yankified American-English.
I watched something moving & wrote about it:
"Wet Dreams" speedboat cuts a wake btw us
as I cast pebbles @ nrby lobster-buoy 3278J,
its one red star-on-white bobbing as
I cast my thoughts towards you,
like handfuls of pebbles,
none touching you @ all.
I think of you on Lac Neuchatel
w/ its palisades, spinnakers, utterly unlike
sober Salem's as my heart treads water, like
a heavy black bird, rising to 1',
skimming out of the innah hahbah.
[from my neosonnet series "Hammered Silver" written in Scotland, England & New England, 1985.]
(26 AUG 09)
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Brekkers
I arise to soak TJ's
mini-shredded-wheats
in Nestle's Nesquick,
(chocolate-flavored),
contemplative cocoa
suffusing mini-fiber.
(23 AUG 09, Santa Clara CA)v2
mini-shredded-wheats
in Nestle's Nesquick,
(chocolate-flavored),
contemplative cocoa
suffusing mini-fiber.
(23 AUG 09, Santa Clara CA)v2
Saturday, August 22, 2009
No-Cost Health Care
Remote Areas Medical Foundation (RAMF) http://www.ramusa.org/, "Pioneers of No-Cost Health Care" is an all-volunteer non-profit medical group (based in TN) who serve remote underpopulated areas of the USA. This time they have set up massive free clinics in major cities (like L.A. & DC) to show that major urban USA is as badly off as Appalachia, a brilliant political stroke by some dramatic genius high up in RAMF who apparently realized they had the means to produce this great public drama at this time & did it to shame the American Heartland. A doctor went to one of these RAMF clinics 50 miles from where he grew up & was ashamed to find people just like those he grew up with desperately standing in long lines for dental work & a wide range of medical procedures, & was interviewed on national TV about what it did to him to see this; generally, Americans can't bear being ashamed; he was.
Sound nite'S Sleep
A sound nite's sleep is either the
cheapest or least affordable cure
for what ails us here in the USA.
Health Care here is no longer truly
affordable in any sane sense, though
desperately needed by everyone, &
the only certain employer nowadays.
Thank you, Remote Area Medical
Foundation for rescuing us alive.
(22 AUG 09, Santa Clara CA)v2
cheapest or least affordable cure
for what ails us here in the USA.
Health Care here is no longer truly
affordable in any sane sense, though
desperately needed by everyone, &
the only certain employer nowadays.
Thank you, Remote Area Medical
Foundation for rescuing us alive.
(22 AUG 09, Santa Clara CA)v2
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Battle over Health Care
The conservative
health care plan:
undermine any
Democrat plan
for all Americans
to have affordable
health care,
then scare
older people
by making it
be imagined that
older Americans
will be euthanized
when they become
sick & disabled.
- Ginny Beecher Zeitman
(20 AUG 09, Santa Clara CA)
health care plan:
undermine any
Democrat plan
for all Americans
to have affordable
health care,
then scare
older people
by making it
be imagined that
older Americans
will be euthanized
when they become
sick & disabled.
- Ginny Beecher Zeitman
(20 AUG 09, Santa Clara CA)
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Fearing Any Fear
Kenneth Fearing
feared denunciation.
Fearing fear, we fear
anything fearable.
We fear taxes, fearing
we’ll never be able
to afford them now
Obama’s spending
trillions, forgetting
Dubya did for years.
Republicans want you
to forget all that; they
want you to fear any
spending: fear Any.
(19 AUG 09, Santa Clara CA)v2
feared denunciation.
Fearing fear, we fear
anything fearable.
We fear taxes, fearing
we’ll never be able
to afford them now
Obama’s spending
trillions, forgetting
Dubya did for years.
Republicans want you
to forget all that; they
want you to fear any
spending: fear Any.
(19 AUG 09, Santa Clara CA)v2
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