Detroit Snowmaggedon 2022

I wasn't going to say anything. I weren't. I was jes' gonna let it drop. But sometimes, y'know, a feller cain't help hisself.

Last week on February 2 were were supposed to have a blizzard for the generations here in the D. Accuweather was calling for 1 to 2 feet of snow as late as the wee hours of that Wednesday morning. And what did we get?

Not two foot of snow, that's fer sure. Not even one foot so far as I could tell.

According to Click On Detroit from Detroit's Channel 4, no one anywhere near Detroit had anything like a foot of powder. Most of the City and suburbs were between 3 and 6 inches. You have to go to Flint, hardly in the Detroit area, to even sniff at a foot of accumulation. where there was an 11 inch snowfall. Yet all the way up until the morning of Wednesday, February 2, we were supposed to be absolutely slammed.

I say again, for the umpteenth time, and so much so that even I'm becoming sick of it, this is another reason why I don't automatically trust 'experts'. It is why I cannot trust science because it's science or government because it's government (for from where did most weather projections come from but The scientfic-governmental complex?). They can't tell me, within scant hours of the snow arriving, how much to expect. But that Miami will be underwater in 2100 due to bizarre weather or climate change or global warming or whatever the damn concept is labeled these days is to be taken as an absolute fact.

I don't believe you. Until you can be closer to the truth closer to home, I cannot believe you. You can't tell me what to expect in modern times, when the event is right around the corner. Don't tell me you are certain of things 78 years off. That's not being a scientist. But it might be a charlatan.

A Hole in the...Leg?

Well, the X-rays and MRI I had recently showed that I have ankle tendonitis. Take Aleve, stay off it as much as possible, ice the area, and so on and so on. That I get; that I can handle.

What intrigues me are what else was found via the medical procedures. It seems I have holes at the base of each leg bone, the tibia and the fibula, right where they come into the ankle joint.

After eliminating the dangerous possibilities which the condition may have suggested (and there is nothing dangerous, I am assured) the orthopedic specialist called them 'benign deformities' and nothing more. We would likely have never even known they were there without having had the X-rays and MRI.

So I have a hole in my leg. Beats a hole in the by a fair margin I suppose.

Joe's No

For as cantankerous as he could be, there were many axioms of me Grandpa Joe's which were rather profound in their own right. One was that, almost always, if you had to have an answer right now, this very moment, the answer is no.

I believe that part of the point was that he, personally, wasn't going to be rushed into anything. If Joe Cosgriff was going to do something it would be on his time and his way. Never mind, God love him, that when he wanted his way he didn't mind putting the rush on you. But to be fair, that typically involved work issues around the Shop. It was his Shop, so his rules. I get that; I even have a certain respect for it.

Yet beyond either of those points, there's something to be said for never (or almost never) being pressured into making a choice. It invites rash, unreflective thought processes. Yes, sometimes a decision must be made now, whenever there's a true emergency situation. We simply must do the best we can in such circumstances. Still, be honest: how often are we really facing that type of case?

Rushing into decisions is precisely what gets us into trouble. I will, yes, I will, use the recent COVID hysteria as an example. We were pressed into accepting extreme rules and extreme revisions in our lives, both personal and business. Panic overruled a rational thought process, and panic rarely affords us wise decision making. But something had to be done now, dammit.

What are we today because of that attitude? We have ruined lives, ruined businesses, and ruined friendships even. I know I've been unfriended by several on Facebook because of COVID rendering calm, clear thought into the abyss. And where are we at? Exactly where cooler heads way back in early 2020 when this all began predicted we would be: in a world where nothing we did had any actual affect on the virus or its spread. In a world where the virus was never so bad as the presumed experts within the scientific governmental complex insisted we would be. We aren't dying in record numbers. If we had, en masse, said no, we won't do it, we'd have avoided all sorts of calamity.

If someone has to have a decision now the answer should be no. Me Grandpa Joe said so, and I'm with him. 

The Very Serious Doctor

My doctor is a good doctor. He is also a very serious doctor in fact. That's fine, of course, and laudable. Yet it sets him up where he can't seem to take jokes.

As a result of the MRI I had done this past Monday to analyze the ankle pain I've been having, he called to tell me that the results indicated acute tendonitis. That's not so bad. His instructions were to stay off my feet as much as possible for a couple weeks, and to take Aleve, as it is the best over the counter medication for my condition. He advised me, "Take it twice daily, with food."

"Oh, okay. You mean with potato chips or chocolate cake, then?" I was asked, clearly believing the joke was obvious.

"What? Oh, no, no, no," he responded after a reflective pause. "Take it with your breakfast, with something like oatmeal or cereal, then again with your dinner. Eat something substantial with each tablet." He was completely serious. I could see it over the phone.

I agreed to follow his advice. Maybe I should take it more seriously anyway.

Once Upon a Time, in a Snowstorm Long Ago

It's winter, and we're dealing with a snowstorm here in Detroit. While outside making my third pass at shoveling snow, I see a guy stuck sideways on the street. Well, I'd appreciate help in similar need, so when I'm done with my walk I go to help.

I push, hard, and we get nowhere. A neighbor comes to help too, and we begin rocking the car back and forth for 15 minutes; nothing. I fall forward - hard - twice. Nothing. My shoulder is killing me now. But you help folks, right?

We finally get the guy out into the two track which currently serves as Avery Avenue. He drives 50 feet down the street and parks. He was only trying to move his car closer to his front stoop.

You are bloody kidding me. In the first major storm of the season in Detroit, me and a neighbor work our tails off so that you can get your car two houses closer to home in circumstances where NOTHING WAS GOING TO HAPPEN TO IT.

I ought to send him my chiropractor's bill.

The Wrong Side of the History

The list of useless words and phrases I've discovered over the years is growing almost exponentially as time goes by. I'm here today to register another such phrase: being on The Right Side of History.

The main problem with that idea is history hasn't actually happened yet. We do not know, nor can we possibly know, how what we do today will affect tomorrow. Until history plays out, we simply cannot have any rational idea of exactly how right (or how wrong, yes) history will prove to be. Our grandchildren, not us poor souls debating among ourselves in 2026, will understand the right and wrong of it better than we possibly can. We might make useful, educated guesses on what is to come. Indeed, we have to try. But no one knows what the future brings. Anyone who asserts they are on the right side of history are guilty of hubris, for history does not yet exist and they are not fortune tellers.

I will let pass with limited comment that the phrase is really only meant by our liberal friends to call our conservative friends shallow and stupid. We are not on the 'right' side of history so far as they are concerned simply because we disagree with them. But we will be charitable today and leave it at that, because, in fairness, the hollowness of the remark applies generally.

In that sense, I will point out that the use of the phrase is inherently dismissive, and therefore arrogant when employed by any user. It is indeed no more than calling your opponent stupid and ignorant, or worse. The form is the same as the argumentum ab auctoritate, the argument from authority. Because we (and we could anybody, I remind you) believe X is true, you are wrong to think it is not. 

How about we avoid all manner of insult and explain why a proposition is true? I'm not ready to believe scientists, whoever they may be and whatever they may say, merely because they're scientists. They're as human as anybody, and could be wrong. They are subject to personal prejudices exactly as the rest of us are. As such, they need to show me, they are obliged to show me, why their science is right. I then have the right (in fact very nearly a duty) to raise objections which, if valid, the scientist must be able to refute on clear scientific and/or philosophic grounds. Otherwise, all we're actually dealing in is scientism, the idea that science is right because, well, science.

That's simply not a valid argument. In the end, the right side of history is being put today on the wrong side of the equation. The side it belongs on is simply the x variable our algebra teachers tried vainly to get us to consider ages ago.

Impressions on an MRI

Yesterday morning, as I related to one and all, I had an MRI of my foot done. Although I have had an MRI before, it was of my head. It showed nothing.

There: I beat every one of you to the punchline.

The main difference with a foot exam is that I wasn't put all the way into the machine. That actually felt more odd than when I was slipped into the unit head first back in 2016. I was surrounded by the thing then. With my foot, I was aimed in backwards, so to speak, so that the top half of me was outside. It gave me the vague feeling of being swallowed up. Then too, the ceiling above where I lay had a tranquil landscape for me to gaze upon. Unfortunately it caused me to feel like I was experiencing Edward G. Robinson's dying scene from Soylent Green. I have felt more mentally comfortable.

On top of that, the television in the men's change room (I had to put on a hospital gown for the procedure) had a readout in the upper corner which claimed that it was Saturday, August 18, at 8:17 AM. That too made me less than confident in the proceedings.

Physically, I felt as though I were swaying mildly all through the MRI. The tech said that might have been a side affect of the procedure, as the MRI was set at one and a half times the pull of the Earth's gravity. That, she said, can throw off the patient's equilibrium. 

Perhaps. But it made it that much harder to keep my damn foot immobile for the 40 minutes or so the exam took. 

Ah well. She told me, the tech, that is, that they got a good solid look at the ankle. So come on now, Doc, let me know what ails me.