Rick’s Rants and Raves

Anne’s aunt Margi lives in Vermont, and Anne has been dying to visit for years. This year we finally were able to make the trip. Here is the complete Flickr Set.

• We left home Sunday morning to begin the 12-14 hour drive. We were planning on stopping somewhere in New York, but we left that detail to be determined. Along the way, we stopped at the Chautauqua Institution, which Anne described well.
• We stopped for the night in Utica, NY, stayed at the Best Western, and ate at Babe’s Macaroni Bar and Grill. Babe’s was fabulous, and introduced us to what is evidently a Utica specialty: Chicken Riggies–chicken rigatoni with a “pink sauce”, bell peppers, and onions. Service was great and the food was just the right amount for some road-weary travelers. The Best Western was OK, at best. The worst part was the significant gap around our door. When a cigar smoker walked by our door around 4AM, the stench woke Anne.  She struggled to fall back asleep, but eventually managed it. As a result we had a bit of a slower start in the morning than originally planned.
• On day two, Monday, we drove from Utica into Vermont, via Troy. We stopped for lunch in Rutland, VT and tried to hit a couple of local restaurants that had been mentioned in our AAA guide book. The first 3 we stopped at were closed, and in desparation we went to a Chinese buffet. That was a mistake that fortunately didn’t last beyond our dining experience–the food was stale, mediocre, overcooked, and just a bit scary. The kids didn’t seem to mind, and I kept my thoughts to myself just long enough to get out of the door.
• We arrived at the Swett residence, Turtle Cove (full size), around 3:30PM which was twilight in northern Vermont in the mountains. We unloaded, and snuggled in with the animals: Ivy, Hazel, and Fluffy.
• Day three, Tuesday, began with sledding on freshly fallen snow, and ice skating on the pond. For a while in the morning it rained and snowed at the same time, so we got quite wet while skating.

See also Part 2, Part 3.

I’m incredibly fortunate to have known all four of my grand-parents. My grandmother Bennett died just before I turned 30, and the rest are still living. One of the reasons Anne and I returned to Columbus after Emily was born was so that our children could know their great-grandparents. They’ve been fortunate enough to have known seven (include step-greats).

Tonight I visited my grandfather Bennett–he’s 94 and was recently diagnosed with prostate cancer. I feel very guilty that I hadn’t seen him for several months primarily due to our busy lives; he lives only 10 minutes from my house. He’s been to our house for nearly every Thanksgiving in the last decade, and frequently for Christmas and kids’ birthdays. I wish it had been more.

He recently moved to a full nursing facility where he’ll likely spend his final days. How soon those final days will come is difficult to tell, but he confided to me that he was pretty sure they were not far off.

My grandfather greeted me with the same question he nearly always did “Are you making lots of money?” to which I responded with a chuckle “I’m doing my best, grandpa, doin’ my best.” Despite being a withering 90 pounds, his grip as he shook my hand was stronger than some of my fellow cubicle dwellers. The whole time we talked, he sipped slowly on a cherished McDonald’s strawberry milkshake.

We talked about his great-grand kids. We talked about his wife. We talked about his roommate. We talked about his habit of not wearing pajamas. It was only after he pointed out that he always wears shoes in bed that I realized he simply didn’t bother to disrobe at night. He wears shoes because the floors in the “institution” –as he’s fond of calling it–are cold and slippery. His black tennys resolve both issues. And for a man of ultimate practicality, changing into pajamas at night was simply unnecessary.

He told me about the most recent book he checked out of the library: Caesar and Christ, by Will Durant. He lamented that his Greek and Latin weren’t what they used to be, and that this will probably be the last book he ever checks out. Shortly after this comment, he complained that his brain wasn’t working well all the time. Holy crap, I hope my brain works that well at 94–I’m astonished that he was able to describe the title and author of the book such that I could easily find it on Amazon, not to mention that he still remembers some Greek and Latin.

While I talked with my Grandfather, I found my attention drawn by two competing distractions: his roommate’s TV, and an elderly woman across the hall. The TV was tuned to something resembling Bay Watch with cheek-baring-near-thong bikinis. The roommate was asleep. I was the only one in the room who noticed the bare cheeks. The elderly woman across the hall let out a mournful “Someone please help me” every 5-7 seconds. The whole time I was there. I think this woman has been in every nursing facility I’ve ever visited. The nursing staff had clearly tended to her pleas in prior hours, days, weeks, and was no longer worried about meeting her needs.

I asked my grandfather if it would be OK to have the kids visit. He told me he would enjoy that, but was afraid he wasn’t much to talk to, and that he might scare the kids in his present condition. He seemed smaller, and older, but still much the man I knew years ago. He spoke his great-grandkids’ names with deliberation–”Nath–an” and “Em–il-y” but at least he remembered their names, their birthdays (approximately), and that he bought his last car in 1997 that got 37 miles to the gallon on the freeway.

When he claimed for the second time that he had run out of things to say (though he hadn’t really the first time he said that) I took it to mean that he was getting tired. He asked me to turn down the volume on the TV and lay his bed down before I left. He choked back a few tears of gratitude that I had come to visit. I promised to return with the kids tomorrow.

Here is a wonderful waste of time. It took me 10-15 minutes to get all the way through it, but I seem to have a knack for this stuff. There are 20 levels of moving stuff around so that you can get a designated crate or barrel into a designated location. Not a bad exercise for playing with balance and center of gravity. I’m guessing my kids will like it.

A few months ago, I wondered if it were possible that the amount of calories absorbed from food could vary from person to person. In fact, recent research has shown that not only is caloric absorption likely to vary from person to person, but can vary over time for one person.

When I wrote my blog post, I didn’t have any idea what could cause the variation. I figured it was something about our bodies themselves. As it turns out, bacteria that thrive in our intestines likely cause significant variations in the amount of calories we can extract from food. Of course the research is still new, and it was done on mice, but it still looks very promising.

Biologist Jeffrey Gordon of Washington University in St. Louis became quite well known a few years ago for a group of very skinny mice in his lab. The mice were skinny because they had no bacteria in their intestines. Gordon had kept them completely bacteria-free. If a bacteria-free mouse eats, food passes right through the intestine, significantly undigested.

So without bacteria, the mouse can eat and eat and eat and never gain weight. But when Gordon exposed the mice to “this big, bad, dirty world,” as Gibson calls it, the mice suddenly turned their food into more calories and gained weight. So bacteria matter. Apparently, they can digest food far more efficiently.

So researchers now are focusing on learning more about the 500+ species of bacteria that live in our guts and what impact they have on all kinds of stuff in addition to digestive efficiency: “stomach ulcers, … asthma, hay fever, allergies and eczema”. It is entirely possible that an anti-biotic could be developed to kill some of the more efficient food digesters, allowing food to pass through less digested, and allowing the person to lose weight while eating full meals. It really could be the magic weight-loss pill so many have been seeking.