Where the buffalo roam?

Whoever would have thought that they roam near mile marker 130 on route 80 in Ohio?  This is, in fact, very near where the Belted Galloway cows and calves romp, although on the other side of many lanes of traffic.  I look forward to driving back along that stretch on Tuesday, to see what else there is to see.  

I've been driving from Ann Arbor, Michigan to points east (Philadelphia, New Jersey, Massachusetts) for too many years now, and always see new things.  In the past several months, though, I have a new car (thanks, Deb!) which sits about 18" higher off the ground than does my beloved 18-year old Miata; it's a whole new world up there in the relative stratosphere.  I can see over bridge abutments, beyond the scrub growing at the roadside and what I see is often boggling.  Who knew there were beaver dams and ponds several yards from the screaming traffic?Makes you wonder what you'd see from the cab of an 18-wheeler.

  

Who knew a small herd of American bison graze in a pasture abutting the west-bound lanes of Route 80?  It was still on the early, foggy side when I drove past so they loomed suddenly and hugely out of the mist.  How could they be so big, so far away?  How large they must be if you were to stand next to them!  And to think man almost wiped them off the face of the earth, a depradation of incredible hubris.  I think of that scene in the movie, "Dances with Wolves", the buffalo hunt; Kevin Costner's character shoots a buffalo mere feet before it barrels into and over a child.  I remember reading about that scene, that the shot was set up with an elderly, very tame buffalo, to whom the child was feeding the equivalent of buffalo cookies.  Still, that kid was one brave person to get near that animal.  

Allow me briefly to digress and say how much better the book, "Dances with Wolves", is than the move.  Not to imply that I don't like the movie and have warm feelings toward Kevin Costner!  Especially since he appeared in a Mr. Stadium Laundromat t-shirt in "The Upside of Anger".  Mr. Stadium laundroworld is in the literal and figurative shadown of the University of Michigan football stadium and is where I spent years of my life, doing laundry.  Before I became a full-fledged grown-up and got my own washer-drier.  

I've long believed that having your own washing machine made you a grown-up; and that having your own fruit trees meant you were settled down.  I've had both at my lovely house, which we've just sold.   

Guard puppies in a cathedral

On Thursday, the class I just taught took a field trip to visit various historic sites and museums in Cebu City:  the Yap San Diego, the Casa Gorordo, the museum of the Cathedral, and the Fort San Pedro down at the harbor. 

The cathedral museum has a guard dog:  a large, beautiful animal who had had puppies within the past several weeks.  These puppies seem to have the run of the ground floor of the museum.  They followed up as we looked at some of the Cathedral's treasures, including an altar (10' x 4' x 4'?) that is encased in silver, cast in high relief with scenes of the life of Christ.  Here, too, was a wheel about 2 feet in diameter, fixed in a frame, which you spin by turning a handle.  Twelve bronze bells are affixed to the outside of the wheel's rim, with the open mouths of the bells facing outward.  As you turn the wheel, the bells ring.  It's a lovely sound. 

One of the guard puppies even tried to climb the stairs with us to the second floor. He made it only part way, stopped and yapped for a bit, and then went to sleep under the stair until we went down, at which he tumbled back down the stairs after us.  

Back in Cebu City, Philippines

I have been in Cebu City, Philippines, for over about 10 days - my second trip here in 13 months.  Because I am back in the same city, teaching at the same university, staying in the same wonderful hotel, I am not as mad-dog about exploring and experiencing the city.  Half-mad, perhaps. 

When I arrived at the hotel, some staff remembered me from the two-week stay last year.  I was welcomed "home".  The same at the library where I'm teaching:  warm welcome, catching up on what's happened in the intervening year, slipping back into relationships. 

I explored some new areas of the city, especially the Tabo An market.  This is smaller than the Carbon market, and seems to specialize in dried fish (it is very near Pasil, the main fresh fish market).  Heaps of dried fish, virtually every vendor selling the same things.  One would wonder how they all survive, but for the obvious fact that they do!  One stand sold a dried fish about 10" long, still colored a brilliant indigo blue.  You must wonder what it looks like alive, under the water, swimming:  it's enough to make one want to take up scuba diving, just to satisfy that curiosity. 

There was much at the market and, indeed, throughout the city, that can confuse and concern.  One sees what appear to be heavy bedsteads tucked into corners of the market or simply placed on the sidewals.  During the day, the bedsteads are covered with items for sale or with tools and materials of trade.  I've even seen a little forge on a bedstead on a sidewalk, with the smith pounding away.  (And, in a market, have seen charcoal burners producing the charcoal for the little forges and for street vendors' fires to cook food.)  At night, things of the day are stowed beneath the bedstead and screens put up around it, or curtains rolled down from a frame or the underside of the house against which the bedstead is pushed, and there you have it:  a place to sleep.  Lives are lived in a space not as bit as an American double bed.  

back in Cebu City, Philippines

Flat-chested in a breast-enhanced world

August 3, 1998 - the nurse-practitioner finds a lump in my right breast, a lump that hadn't been there in June (I don't know if I did my breast self-exam in July). 

August 8 1998 - I learn I have breast cancer 

September 3, 1998 - I have a modified radical mastectomy

September 4, 1998 - I start a post-breast life

I've never particularly identified my self with my body.  It was easy, therefore, to deide not to have reconstructive surgery after my mastectomy.  One breast here or there --what the hell?  It never, ever occured to me taht anyone - and I mean *anyone* - could in this or any other lifetime have anything to say to me about my decision.  Turns out that lots of people thought they had the perfect right and, perhaps, obligation to comment upon my decision and, by logical extension, me.  

Several months after my mastectomy, when all possible swelling had gone down, I went to a clinic that fitted me for a prosthetic breast.  This was a breaast-like object to slip inside a brassiere.  I wore it, opposing a true breast, one day.  I could not stand it!  It was cold, weird, slumping this way and than when a real breast would have gone that way and only then, this.  After a few hours, I reached down inside my shirt and took it out.  Now what?  It was an expensive thing, this externalized breast.  Looking to protect it, I put it into my very heavy, padded mitten, figuring it would be safe there.  True; and not true. 

At the end of that aday, I suited up to go outside and walk the 0.75 cold miles home.  I had stuff to check out at the library's circulation desk, so carried my mittens in my hand until I was really ready to got out into the cold, cruel world.  I put everything down on the desk:  the books I wanted to take home, my mittens.  And then, it happened.  The silicone breast-like object slithered out of my mitten, shimmied there on the circulation desk, hesitated on the edge, and then fell to the floor at the feet of a complete stranger.  

What does one say in such a situation?  Memory draws a convenient veil over it. 

And yes, this is the back story for what I'm trying to say. 

Some days ago, I took a taxi from a hotel in Makati, Manila, Philippines, to the airport.  The driver called me "sir" for much of the first kilometers.   (Let me fill in:  I had a second mastectomy, with no reconstructive surgery.  I am concave-chested.  The muscles above where breasts would be, ramin.  The absence of breast tissue below makes me look concave.)  During the course of the drive, the driver and I talked about this and that, and - out of the blue - my body.

"Are you a man or a woman?  You have no breasts," he said,  looking at me in the taxi's rear-view mirror.  

"I have money to pay you for the trip to the airport.  That's all you need to know."  I was shocked and, as a result, rude.

Minutes of silence.

"Excuse me, ma'am.  I am concerned about you.  Do you have a family?"  It was exquisitely clear that he thought me less a woman (let's not een talk about being less a person) for not having breasts.  I said that I was fine, strong, competent, secure:  even though his questions made me doubt all that.  

Belted Galloway Cow

If you've never seen a Belted Galloway Cow, do a Google image search now and take a look.  Is such a perfect thing true?  The strict delineation of black/white/black is, to my eye and mind, totally captivating.  Surely these must be happy-go-lucky beasties, if their physical aspect is so charming. 

A few days ago, I drove from Philadelphia to Ann Arbor, Michigan.  Wanting the most direct route, I drove route 80 across much of Pennsylvania and through Ohio to Maumee.  Somewhere vaguely west of Cleveland, I passed a farm on the south side of the highway.  A large field was full of Belted Galloway cows with little calves, probably only a few days old.  The coloration charming on an adult is mind-boggling on a tiny calf.  I wanted to pull to the side and dash across 6 lanes of traffic to worship at the fence line.  I won't claim that good sense prevailed:  it was the intimidating presence of tractor-trailer trucks that kept me moving.  And in Ohio, one tractor is allowed to pull three trailers.  This is as unnatural and baby Belted Galloways are supremely true to nature.