August 24: Slaughterhouse Five, Predestination, Strike

The parade pranced, staggered and reeled to the gate of the Dresden slaughterhouse, and then it went inside.  The slaughterhouse wasn't a busy place any more.  Almost all the hooved animals in Germany had been killed and eaten and excreted by human beings, mostly soldiers.  So it goes.

The Americans were taken to the fifth building inside the gate.  It was a one-story cement-block cube with sliding doors in front and back.  It had been built as a shelter for pigs about to be butchered.  Now it was going to serve as a home away from home for one hundred American prisoners of war.  There were bunks in there, and two potbellied stoves and a water tap.  Behind it was a latrine, which was a one-rail fence with buckets under it.

There was a big number over the door of the building.  The number was five.  Before the Americans could go inside, their only English-speaking guard told them to memorize their simple address, in case they got lost in the big city.  Their address was this:  "Schlachthof-funf."  Schlachthof meant slaughterhouse.  Funf was good old five.

So, we have finally reached Slaughterhouse Five.  The place where Billy (and Vonnegut, I believe) survived the firebombing of Dresden.  It has taken close to two hundred pages of time hopping and flying saucer rides and nervous breakdowns.  The entire book has led up to this building, this moment in history.  It seems sort of like fate, although I don't think that Vonnegut put much store in the idea of predestination.

When you think about it, predestination would make life so much easier, especially if you knew what your predestination was.  For example, right now in the healthcare system where I work, there is a great possibility that the registered nurses will be going on strike.  If that happens, the outpatient surgery center where I work will most likely close down for the duration of the strike.  That would leave me without an income, or healthcare.  Needless to say, this prospect makes me more than a bit uneasy.

I wish that I knew right now about the strike.  It would allow me to sleep more easily.  Let me plan for the future a little more.  Instead, I'm stuck in this slaughterhouse of uncertainty.  I don't know when (or if) the bombs are going to start falling.  Just like every other person on the planet.

I simply have to take it one day at a time right now.  Of course, I'm trying to make some plans, provide my family some stability.  Nothing's really panned out so far.  Now, if I were Billy Pilgrim, I would already know what I'm going to do.  I would know how everything is going to turn out.

Instead, it's all about faith.  A lot of faith.

Saint Marty is thankful tonight for his jobs.

July 27: Tiny Horseshoe, Modern Medicine, Healthcare System

Listen:

Billy Pilgrim says he went to Dresden, Germany, on the day after his morphine night in the British compound in the center of the extermination camp for Russian prisoners of war.  Billy woke up at dawn on that day in January.  There were no windows in the little hospital, and the ghostly candles had gone out.  So the only light came from pinprick holes in the walls, and from a sketchy rectangle that outlined the imperfectly fitted door.  Little Paul Lazzaro, with a broken arm, snored on one bed.  Edgar Derby, the high school teacher who would eventually be shot, snored on another.

Billy sat up in bed.  He had no idea what year it was or what planet he was on.  Whatever the planet's name was, it was cold.  But it wasn't the cold that had awakened Billy.  It was animal magnetism which was making him shiver and itch.  It gave him profound aches in his musculature, as though he had been exercising hard.

The animal magnetism was coming from behind him.  If Billy had had to guess as to the source, he would have said that there was a vampire bat hanging upside down on the wall behind him.

Billy moved down toward the foot of his cot before turning to look at whatever it was.  He didn't want the animal to drop into his face and maybe claw his eyes out or bite off his big nose.  Then he turned.  The source of the magnetism really did resemble a bat.  It was Billy's impresario's coat with the fur collar.  it was hanging from a nail.

Billy now backed toward it again, looking at it over his shoulder, feeling the magnetism increase.  Then he faced it, kneeling on his cot, dared to touch it here and there.  He was seeking the exact source of the radiation.

He found two small sources, two lumps an inch apart and hidden in the lining.  One was shaped like a pea.  The other was shaped like a tiny horseshoe.  Billy received a message carried by the radiations.  He was told not to find out what the lumps were.  He was advised to be content with knowing that they could work miracles for him, provided he did not insist on learning their nature.  That was all right with Billy Pilgrim.  He was grateful.  He was glad.

If I were Billy, I wouldn't investigate the lumps either.  Billy is promised miracles if he doesn't get curious.  His response isn't fear or nagging doubt.  His response is thankfulness and joy.  That's a pretty good reaction to something miraculous.

Of course, the natural human inclination is curiosity.  The need to understand and dissect.  Don't get me wrong.  I don't think there's anything wrong with an inquisitive mind.  If it weren't for curiosity, much of modern medical treatment simply wouldn't exist.  I wouldn't be sitting at my keyboard right now with an insulin pump at my side.  In fact, I probably wouldn't be sitting anywhere at all.  I would have died when I was thirteen and ended up in the hospital in a diabetic coma.

Modern medicine is a miracle, and I give thanks for it.  What the business world has done with modern medicine in the United States does not fill me with gratitude.  Medicine in my country is not about saving people's lives.  It's about generating money.  Yes, it's about saving lives, too, but, after that life is saved, the hospital comes after your home if you can't pay your medical bills.  Compassion comes at a price.

I have worked in the healthcare system of the United States for close to 20 years.  I've seen its inner workings up close.  It isn't pretty at times.  A sick person sometimes has to make a choice between lifesaving treatment and bankruptcy.  Being healthy and homeless.  Living in poverty and not living at all.  Those aren't great choices, and unfortunately there are no magical radiation lumps in impresario coats transmitting cures. 

If I sound a little jaded, I am.  This afternoon, I experienced the failings of our healthcare system personally.  Medicine as big business.  So I am a little cranky this evening.  Hating people again.  I really need to get away from the world for a while.

Tonight, Saint Marty is thankful that he hasn't killed anybody today.  Can't say the same for the healthcare system.

April 11: Kidnapped by a Flying Saucer, Winter Storm, Downsizing

Billy now shuffled down his upstairs hallway, knowing he was about to be kidnapped by a flying saucer.  The hallway was zebra-striped with darkness and moonlight.  The moonlight came into the hallway through doorways of the empty rooms of Billy's two children, children no more.  They were gone forever.  Billy was guided by dread and the lack of dread.  Dread told him when to stop.  Lack of it told him when to move again.  He stopped.

He went into his daughter's room.  Her drawers were dumped.  Her closet was empty.  Heaped in the middle of her room were all the possessions she could not take on a honeymoon.  She had a Princess telephone extension all her own--on her windowsill.  Its tiny night light stared at Billy.  And then it rang.

Billy answered.  There was a drunk on the other end.  Billy could almost smell his breath--mustard gas and roses.  It was a wrong number.  Billy hung up.  There was a soft drink bottle on the windowsill.  Its label boasted that it contained no nourishment whatsoever.

This morning, I wouldn't have been surprised if I had been kidnapped by a flying saucer.  Like Billy, I got up in the early morning.  The house was sort of zebra-striped with darkness and the glow of the streetlight outside.  I didn't really want to get out of bed after having a four-day weekend.  Sleeping late, staying up late.

Anyway, Monday morning--a wind storm with 90-mile-per-hour winds.  This morning, a blizzard.  I could barely see the road in front of me.  Followed a set of taillights into work, praying the whole way.  I'm expecting either a dust bowl or tsunami tomorrow morning.  Something Biblical.  Or an alien abduction.

It has been a stressful day.  At work, I was in a terrible mood.  Dealing with the fact that my best friend no longer works with me.  I hated everybody and everything for most of my shift.  I hid it well, though.  I just didn't want to be there.  Felt angry and sorry for myself the entire time. 

When I got home, I learned of another crisis.  Someone close to me lost her job.  Lots of crying and anger and fear and more crying.  I am a fairly level-headed person, even if I'm a poet.  And I have a very low bullshit factor.  Therefore, people turn to me in times of trouble.  I don't mind that.  However, after my smashed car windows, uprooted pine tree, and less-than-optimal workday, I was drowning a little.

I am better now.  I've had dinner (a meatball sub) and watched an episode of The Big Bang Theory.  A dose of normal goes a long way to cure the crazies.  Tomorrow will be another day of stress and anxiety.  I work for a large healthcare system that is currently "downsizing."  Translation:  a lot of good people are getting fired.

But Saint Marty still has a job.  That's something to be thankful for.

March 4: Plenty of Extra Work, Coworkers, Folded Hands

Lurvy picked up a pitchfork and walked away to get some clean straw.  Having such an important pig was going to mean plenty of extra work, he could see that.

Mr. Zuckerman's hired hand, Lurvy, isn't the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but he's a hard worker.  Granted, the humans in Charlotte's Web don't come off as very intelligent.  The Zuckermans and Arables all buy into the spider's little ruse.  Fern is the smartest of the two-legged characters in the book, and she's only eight-years-old.  Yet, there's a certain dignity in all the simple farm folk of White's tale.  They're, as the old saying goes, the salt of the earth.  Honest, no-nonsense people who labor from sun-up to sundown.

At the medical office where I work, I'm surrounded by hard workers.  It's a group of people who've been together for close to 14 or 15 years.  We know each other, care about each other.  We're a dysfunctional family.  We get on each other's nerves, bicker, hold grudges.  In the end, though, there's a great deal of love in the place, whether we admit it or not.

Currently, the huge healthcare system that owns our facility is making monumental changes.  Cutting hours.  Forcing people to look for new jobs.  Eliminating bonuses.  Deleting entire departments.  Everyone with whom I work is looking for extra income.  As you know, I, myself, have to post to a another position somewhere else in the hospital.  I have not been around a more discouraged collection of individuals in my life.

Even though Lurvy has extra work piled on top of his normal farm chores, he never really complains.  He accepts it with grace.  Enthusiasm even.  I am not Lurvy.  Neither are my coworkers.  We all used to be Lurvy.

That's what my prayer intention for this week is:  my coworkers.  I'm asking you to pray for them.  They're all decent people, and they need some hope.  They're my extended family, and they've seen me through some pretty difficult times.  Now, we're all in a lifeboat, and it's taking on water.

So, fold your hands for my coworkers this week.  Say something kind to God for them.

Saint Marty has to get some clean straw for Wilbur now.  He's some pig.

Bless my friends.  Amen.