Pre Op

Part of the industrial-strength medical world I now inhabit is a visit to the pre-operation screening department, where they nail your insurance, draw some blood, try to figure if you have sleep apnea, and let you know that You Can Always Say Stop.

Well, unless you're unconscious.

I did raise some of the crummier aspects of my last surgical adventure. There was some tut-tutting and at least one nurse who said if the air tube really is killing you, pull it out. If you're awake, you don't need it.

Mound City

At the beginning of the Civil War the Federals moved quickly to secure Little Egypt, the land between the Mississippi and Ohio rivers at the bottom of Illinois. Strategic border territory, even though in a Northern state.

Once secure, the area was a headquarters and provisioner of the River War. Cairo was a communications center and Fort Defiance was at the confluence of the rivers. Just up the Ohio was Mound City, where much of the Federal fleet was built, anchored and maintained.

Today Cairo is a wreck of an old city, like a set for one of those post-apocalyptic films. And its even poorer and more wrecked little cousin is Mound City.

But Mound City was once a great river port, as it says on a marker that is one of the best things left in the town.

"The Marine Ways - During the Civil War, the naval depot of the Western Fleet was located at Mound City. Here the keels of three of the famous Eads ironclad gunboats were laid, and a large force of workmen were employed to keep the fleet in fighting trim. The Marine Ways, still in operation, are 400 yards south of here. Erected by the State of Illinois, 1935."

So I navigated the Jetta 400 yards south, more or less, down some shabby streets, through a gate in a levee, to a desolate stretch of the Ohio River's bank, looking across to Kentucky. The Marine Ways may still have been in operation in 1935, but no longer. There is very little there. No signs, no markers.

But there is something.

Boat ramps. They have a certain dignity. There is nothing else.


Who knows if they are Civil War era. But this was Marine Ways, certainly. Now unattended. One big flood and I doubt anything will be left.

I know a little of the history, though, and it is grand. To you, Mound City, home of the ironclads.

Long Drive

Today a drive to Indiana for a meeting, and back. Just me, the Jetta, my thoughts, over about 400 miles.

Not a bad way to review the bidding. What is odd is that with each turn, the project falls a little farther away from the general pattern. You begin to hear a lot less of the stock patter from doctors - "so, what happens when we are in this situation is...." To really mix up the metaphors: we have left behind the blocking and tackling, and gone to signals called on the field and broken field running.

It's OK. I was never really enough of a jock to do much broken field running. Happy to start, it has a nice leather-helmet stiff-arm college backfield sound to it.

About a year ago, before all this cancer stuff kicked up, I did a similar drive and stopped at Carlyle Lake, in Illinois, where it was mostly me and a lot of gulls, geese, other big winter birds. Some in line formations, high in the sky.

They were back in the sky today, in greater numbers. Sheets of them. We were south of the lake, and I think they were heading for open water.

Not Washington's birthday, more like Lincoln's

They moved the surgery up, to next Monday, President's Day. I guess the markets will be closed. Good thing, you never know what the global financial reaction will be...

One thing I have learned is that when the doc wants to move things up, you should. There is a little cancer bad guy in there shooting darts, and he doesn't hit the bullseye every time. In fact he misses the board a lot. So cutting down on his time at the mark is a good thing, even if it puts stress (which this will) on one's professional life.

Last year's events turned out great in many ways, especially the reactions of my partners and associates, how they stepped up and covered and kept our clients protected and their matters under control. Great. But I let it happen to an extent where I have had to kind of bust my way back into a couple of things, and that's not so great. This time I'm going to try to treat this more like the flu.

Back At Bat

The main emphasis of post-cancer-treatment treatment is testing, to see if it's come back. Evidently the first year is very typically when it does.

In my case, evidently it has.

After the radiation treatment, we let things calm down for some months, then went back to the radiologists' kit bag and did CT scans, visual inspections, and finally a PET scan, my first since long ago. PET scans are where they inject you with a tracer, lie you down on a bed, and run you under a big machine. It detects metabolic activity that indicates cancer.

This new one, done about ten days ago, showed some faint activity on the right side of my neck. (The first time round was the left.) So my surgeon, the cool New Zealander, brought me in and did an ultrasound - the thing they use with pregnant moms to see their babies - and found two lymph nodes that seemed irregular. He did a needle biopsy, and the pathologists' results are now in. The tissues are "suspicious", which according to Dr. Haughey translates to something like a 75 percent risk of cancer.

So, back under the knife, with a procedure very much like last year's. Put me to sleep, remove a large sample of the nodes, test, and if cancerous go in and take out a lot of surrounding tissue. Plus the doc takes what he calls his "little telescopes" to look around the oral cavity and see if can find anything suspicious, which one often does with head and neck cancer.

In my case, of course, we will be resuming the hunt for the occult primary - the primary cancer that we never found the first time. I am starting to think of this as like the hunt for Osama Bin Laden - send in some Special Forces with lasers and get Occulta Bin Cancer.

I go in on Washington's birthday (New System, Julian Calendar), February 22. An auspicious start. Back up at bat, swinging for the fences again.

Fort Girardeau

Once the Civil War broke out, the cities of the border states came into play, nowhere more than in Missouri. The major cities were fortified and the populations - of St. Louis and elsewhere - were put under marshal law.

In connection with my interest in the River War, I checked out Cape Girardeau, where the Federals moved to secure the city with a system of forts - Forts A, B, C, and D - and batteries called Fort Girardeau. Fort D, the principal fort and the only one remaining, is on high bluffs overlooking the Mississippi, some miles upriver from the convergence with the Ohio River at Cairo. It has a commanding view of the Missisippi and the new bridge over the river (the handsome Bill Emerson Memorial Bridge) is a little upstream.



Today's Fort D is located in a poor part of town, maintained by the city and the American Legion. A stone fort at the center of the site and stone gates were built in the 1930's by the WPA.










Some the earthworks remain.

They appear to be as originally sited, although evidently they were reestablished by the WPA.












I did find pieces of what could be the old stone fortifications, with no identifying markers, on the north side of the site


The town fathers of Cape Girardeau seems to position the place as a John Wesley Powell site, which I guess makes sense, as indicated in their website:


"In the summer of 1861 at the beginning of the Civil War, four forts were built around the strategic city of Cape Girardeau on the orders of General John Frèmont. Fort D was designed by German-American engineers from St. Louis. The forts were built by soldiers of the 20th Illinois Infantry, Bissell's Engineers of the West and local militia under the direction of Illinois Lt. John Wesley Powell. Powell, who would later gain fame as the explorer of the Grand Canyon, was detached from his regiment by a newly appointed general... Ulysses S. Grant, in order to raise a local company to man the forts. This Powell did, and his new Battery F served the forts until leaving for the Battle of Shiloh. Fort D featured as many as five cannons, the largest of which could fire a 32-pound cannon ball. The fort was manned throughout the Civil War. Of the four earthen forts only Fort D still exists, an intact survivor thanks to civic action in the 1930's..."

My own take is that Fort D is one of the last surviving examples of Civil War fortifications in Missouri. It is not grand, and its most immediate overlook is a big trashyard between it and the river. But if the trash and the views to the new bridge were cleared, it would be an amazing site.

Dragons

Back in the old days of US v. USSR I used to wonder if it was their economic failures, alone, that made the difference. The sensibility - kind of articulated by an old Robin Williams vehicle, "Moscow on the Hudson" - was that the real failure of the USSR was its failure to deliver consumer goods. There was political and artistic repression, to be sure. But since Khrushchev, the people had found ways to read Ayn Rand and listen to Charlie Parker. The real problems were that they had to stand in line for bread and couldn't buy blue jeans.

Which took me to the next question, and I asked it many times: what if the communists learned how to make economics work? Would that ensure the triumph of the left?

The USSR didn't figure it out, of course. But has China? Has its ability to deliver goods, jobs, infrastructure, et cetera overwhelmed the public desire for a free plebiscite once in a while?

I think the answer is yes.

But that doesn't mean that China will sail bumplessly into the future. They have too much history of political violence. I think the violence, when it comes, will not be because people want a vote and a free press. The impelling forces will be darker - maybe nationalism, Han racism, regionalism - than a democratic instinct. I think - although I have no proof - that the bourgeois democrats have been bought off, and others will make the next revolution against the emperor.