Author Archives: bk

To the Point

Posted on April 20, 2012 by bk

If there’s one thing I get a big kick out of, its people watching on forums. The world seems to have no shortage of opinions, often their expression can be ironic, funny, senseless, or thought provoking. This is to say that I have been both educated and entertained by ...

Plainclothes Veterans

Posted on April 19, 2012 by bk

The way that our military operations have changed in the last couple of decades is remarkable. Today’s soldier is not the sad sack GI of my era and before. Called upon to operate sophisticated equipment, they also act in capacities far from the reach of previous milita ...

Posted Messages

Posted on April 18, 2012 by bk

I had these thoughts about postal mail. The post office has been in the news lately because of cutbacks. The post office is called for in the Constitution, the framers certain that the nation needed a method of reliable and totally private message delivery. I got an ad in th ...

A Scar in Memory

Posted on April 17, 2012 by bk

The bar was crowded. People were literally wedged inside, chest to chest, shoulder to shoulder and back to back. You’d think it was a holiday weekend if you were at home, back in the world, but this was downtown Saigon on an average Tuesday night. It was the same every ...

Curse of the Jellyfish

Posted on April 16, 2012 by bk

I was pondering the mysteries of life last night. Laying in bed in the darkness, I was just thinking in free form as I waited to fall asleep. It suddenly dawned on me that I didn’t like jellyfish, and for the life of me I couldn’t figure out what part they played ...

Lessons of the Heart

Posted on April 13, 2012 by bk

“Mujer Americana, Quédate lejos de mí, mujer americana, déjame ser…” my radio sang to me. I’d never heard the Guess Who’s American Woman done by a mariachi band before. It kind of changed everything about the song. I took another hit off my b ...

Clarity of Purchase

Posted on April 12, 2012 by bk

The phone rang and I picked it up. It was a robo-call from Sears letting me know that the garden tractor I bought was due to be delivered in the morning. I was excited. There’s nothing like a garden tractor to make a guy smile. “If you are the party that ordered ...

Tired and Retired

Posted on April 11, 2012 by bk

It seems like a lot of my life is being consumed by financial issues ever since I applied for a mortgage. Wow, what a can of worms that kind of thing opens. The first thing I ran into was stuff on my credit report.

Legacy of Disaster

Posted on April 10, 2012 by bk

I’m watching my in-laws twist in the wind. It’s kind of agonizing to watch the process, to see family getting a raw deal in life. The fact that they’re getting sort of screwed by what was supposed to be a legacy gift from the family matriarch only makes it ...

That’s Heavy, Man

Posted on April 9, 2012 by bk

In the Myeloma Beacon during May of 2010, Boris Simkovich, commenting on weight changes during chemotherapy said: In many types of cancer, patients often experience a lot of weight loss. The weight loss is often so significant that it can undermine the success of the treatme ...

Woe and Wow

Posted on April 6, 2012 by bk

I feel like I have nesting urges. Since I started swelling up like a boiled sausage my doctor has told me to keep my feet elevated. So I’ve got as many pillows at the foot of my bed as I do at the head of it. Like my first name, my amazing folding  futon has become a ...

Caught in a Net

Posted on April 5, 2012 by bk

“Without control, information on the Internet is dangerous.” These words were uttered by a proponent of child vaccinations during a PBS program that looked at the controversy surrounding vaccinations and autism. There have been similar statements made in regards ...

Collateral Worries

Posted on April 4, 2012 by bk

In dealing with Multiple Myeloma the focus stays pretty much on the cancer. But there are a lot of secondary issues that victims of the cancer must confront. As I write this I’m trying to not think about the pain in my sternum and spreading under my rib cage. My doctor ...

Not an Egyptian Queen

Posted on April 3, 2012 by bk

It started with edema. My feet felt worse than usual one day and I looked down at them to see that they’d swollen up considerably. I don’t mean to sound dramatic, but I couldn’t help but think of balloon animals as I peered at them.  My ankle bone, normall ...

The Summary

Posted on April 2, 2012 by bk

When the aliens were first perceived, astrophysicists mistook their ship for a newly discovered planet. Radio telescopes had returned information that was indistinguishable from other planets in far constellations. SETI, the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence, had ser ...

Breaking Bad (news)

Posted on March 30, 2012 by bk

Don was resistant to share his diagnosis with his family. Loving them as much as he did, he didn’t want to weigh them down with worries about him, or worse yet, scaring them. So he kept his diagnosis secret, quietly taking his oral dose therapy. He actually got away wi ...

Delivering the Loads

Posted on March 29, 2012 by bk

It was hot. The inside of the plane was cavernous but there wasn’t room to move easily, the space taken up by cargo. The air smelled like hot oil and jet fuel with a touch of something chemical. The plane was lumbering, occasionally pitching because of air pockets. I w ...

Do It My Way

Posted on March 28, 2012 by bk

There’s a website for people to experiment with ideas called TED. There are video talks on it that are pretty interesting, if you take some time to watch the videos. There are also essays to read. They have a few different forums as well, one where you talk about ideas ...

Flying Mobility Scooters

Posted on March 27, 2012 by bk

Taking a wheelchair on a commercial airlines flight is no big deal. You can roll right to the door of the aircraft and then leave it; the airline will stow it for you. When you arrive at your destination, your chair will be waiting for you just outside the plane’s door ...

An App for That

Posted on March 26, 2012 by bk

I was watching this video and thinking that it made a tremendous amount of sense. As I was lamenting that there really ought to be a way to apply it to Multiple Myeloma, I realized I was reinventing the wheel. The various forums and websites that exist are a microcosm of th ...