The Stroke: What Happened to Me and Some Lessons for You

It has been two-and-a-half years since my stroke and I thought it might be a good time to share my story, in part because maybe one day you're have an experience in which you don't know what's going on until a light goes on and you think, "Aha! I'm having a stroke." 

The day began like any other for me. I make my "to do" list with boxes next to each item. hen at item is completed I draw an X in the box. If partially completed I may draw a line diagonally in the box. If it is something important that must be completed that day I may also place a large asterisk alongside the task. And tasks that fail to get completed are copied the next morning to my new "to do" list for that following day.

Frist attempt to brush my teeth. Missed.

On the day of my stroke, my primary task was to be postering in Superior with Michael Shannon, a retired history teacher and friend from the Duluth Dylan Fest group. Before we could put up the Dylan Fest posters I had to meet Zane Bail for coffee at Perk Place to pick up the posters. And on the way I would stop at Walgreens for scotch tape. 

I'd driven the route a hundred times, from my house down Maple Grove to Haines Road, across highway 53 to Arrowhead where I'd make a right turn for the straight shot to Kenwood Shopping Center. As I made the turn on to Arrowhead, I noticed something funny. In my mind I had placed both hands on the steering wheel to make the turn, but my right hand was not where I had placed in on the wheel as I turned. This struck me as peculiar. 

So I was now driving East on Arrowhead, wondering my hand went. It was midmorning so there was no traffc. I turned to look toward the passenger seat and saw that my arm was floating around in the air, just doing its own thing. I drove like this all the way to Kenwood with my disobedient floating arm. I would watch where I was going and then look at this untethered limb, back and forth like that. I replaying this in my mind, at one point it looked like my arm was split open from wrist to elbow, but without blood.

Walgreens is on the left just before the shopping center so I made a turn there and maneuvered into a parking slot. Unfortuntely, I was unable to communicate to my hand to remove the car key, so I scrunched over to remove it wth my left hand. I then walked into the store and stood there. Walgreens was on my list but I had forgotten why.

A woman, perhaps the manager, walked up to me and asked, "May I help you find something?"

I didn't know what to say, or even how to say. Instead, I turned and left the store and returned to my car. Now I had a new dilemma. Was I capable of driving kitty-corner across the street? Using my left hand I managed to place the key in the ignition and get the car started. It was now 10:30 and Zane should be showing up any minute.

Success. I parked the car and got out, hoping Zane would find me. Two minutes later and she was there. My first words, if I remember correctly, were, "I'm having a stroke." 

She repled, "Are you sure?"

Our mutual friend Phil, a poet and anchor in our Dylan Fest team, had had a stroke two years earlier and something he shared with me about his experience snapped my mind awake. Based on my reading book a about stokes I knew that the faster one can get to the hospital, the better the outcome. Zane said, "Get in the car" and we were on the way to the ER.

In Phil's case, he was up on Hawk's Ridge with two friends who noticed a change come over him so that he was walking in circles and talking nonsense. It the out-of-character strangeness that triggered their concern. In my case, it was my own strange behavior that alerted me.

Zane agreed to drive me to the Emergency Room and leave my car at Kenwood. One of us -- possibly Zane -- thought it would be good to call Susie to meet us at the hospital. At this point I wasn't sure how to use my phone, so she pulled out hers. I located Susie's phone number and proceeded to read off the numbers, but something strange was happening. With my eyes I could see her the numbers but with my mouth I was saying different number from what I was reading. Instead of 2-1-8 I said 5-1-0 etc. Zane had a pen out and was writing the numbers on her forearm. 

I looked at what she had written and it was all wrong. "That's not right," I said, and then I read the Susie's phone number again. This time I gave Zane a completely different number sequence. It was as if my brain had become a random number generator, because in my third attempt Zane wrote yet a third iteration of incorrect numbers. 

We came to a stoplight -- or stop sign -- and she said, "Give me your phone." 

At the ER entrance I was placed in a wheelchair and wheeled in. The metal felt exceptionally cold on my right hand.

Very quickly I was taken to a room for a CAT Scan and then to another room where a television set was wheeled in. A doctor from Washington DC was on the screen. He had looked at all the details of my health history and explained that in light of other meds I was taken for another chronic issue, they would have to forego the usual prescribed treatment, a shot that is given as early as possible for stroke victims. In other words, there was nothing they could do.

I was checked in to a room on the 11th or 14th floor with a view of the lake. 

* * * 

What is a stroke? A stroke is a medical emergency that happens when the blood supply to part of the brain is blocked or when a blood vessel in the brain bursts. Without blood and oxygen, brain cells start to die within minutes. According to the CDC, a stroke can cause lasting brain damage, long-term disability, or death.

For valuable informaton on this topic visit Understanding Stroke Warning Signs by The Stroke Foundation.

* * * 

The stroke affected the right side of my face and my right arm from the elbow to the fingertips. It didn't affect my ability to play harmonica, nor my ability to dance. 

Almost Wordless Wednesday: The Influence of Escher

These photos were taken at an M C Escher exhibition that I visited when I was in Florence. There were many surprises, one of the biggest being how many album covers and businesses used his design concepts.

The entire exhibition was phenomenal, and I will share more about it

another time. For some reason I thought I'd already shared that experience

but as it turns out, I now found it in the 2,000 incomplete blog posts 

I've started over the past 19 years.

Related Link: 18 Blog Posts About My Adventures in Italy

One of my Favorite Stories: The Bet by Anton Chekov

What is it about Anton Chekov's story The Bet that gives it such force? From my first reading to the present it never fails to impress me. At the beginning we're given the impression that this story is about which form of punishment is more humane, the death penalty or life imprisonment. It ends by asking what makes a life worth living in the first place. How Chekov accomplishes this in a few thousand words is a powerful achievement.

The Bet

It was a dark autumn night. The old banker was walking up and down his study and remembering how, fifteen years before, he had given a party one autumn evening. There had been many clever men there, and there had been interesting conversations. Among other things they had talked of capital punishment. The majority of the guests, among whom were many journalists and intellectual men, disapproved of the death penalty. They considered that form of punishment out of date, immoral, and unsuitable for Christian States. In the opinion of some of them the death penalty ought to be replaced everywhere by imprisonment for life. "I don't agree with you," said their host the banker. "I have not tried either the death penalty or imprisonment for life, but if one may judge a priori, the death penalty is more moral and more humane than imprisonment for life. Capital punishment kills a man at once, but lifelong imprisonment kills him slowly. Which executioner is the more humane, he who kills you in a few minutes or he who drags the life out of you in the course of many years?"

"Both are equally immoral," observed one of the guests, "for they both have the same object - to take away life. The State is not God. It has not the right to take away what it cannot restore when it wants to."

Among the guests was a young lawyer, a young man of five-and-twenty. When he was asked his opinion, he said:

"The death sentence and the life sentence are equally immoral, but if I had to choose between the death penalty and imprisonment for life, I would certainly choose the second. To live anyhow is better than not at all."

A lively discussion arose. The banker, who was younger and more nervous in those days, was suddenly carried away by excitement; he struck the table with his fist and shouted at the young man:

"It's not true! I'll bet you two million you wouldn't stay in solitary confinement for five years."

"If you mean that in earnest," said the young man, "I'll take the bet, but I would stay not five but fifteen years."

"Fifteen? Done!" cried the banker. "Gentlemen, I stake two million!"

"Agreed! You stake your millions and I stake my freedom!" said the young man.

TO READ THE REST OF THE STORY: CLICK HERE

Are You Ready, Mr. Smith? The Time Is Now

The Time Is Now

The time is now,
you can’t pretend.
You know how this
is going to end.

It’s sound advice,

it’s not a rant.

It’s time to act

don’t say you can’t.

You really don’t 

have time to play.

It’s time to act,

don’t turn away.

Your future now

is on the line,

I know you think

you're doing fine.

Don’t be a clown

or celebrity.

Be the person

you were meant to be.

The time is now, 

so turn the page.

The time is now

to act your age.

The time is now

to zero in.

Today’s the day,

so let’s begin.

Stop playing games

it’s time to choose.

Do you want to win

or plan to lose?

The Accidental President: John Tyler

Everyone seems to know quite a bit about those presidents who served during crisis points in our history: George Washington, Abe Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson during WWI and FDR who held his hand on the rudder for four terms through the Great Depression and most of WWII. As for all those tweeners, how much does the average person know about Millard Fillmore, Martin Van Buren, Grover Cleveland, Chester Arthur and the others who filled the gaps? 

This is why it’s enjoyable, informative, fascinating (choose your own descriptor) to read biographies. I’m currently reading a biography of James Polk who began his political career carrying the water for Andrew Jackson. His career coincided with numerous other familiar names of people whose names we recognize even if we’re fuzzy on details, men like Van Buren, Harrison, Tyler, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster and John C. Calhoun. 

It was this 1844 incident in Tyler’s presidency that caught my attention. Tyler was among 400 dignitaries and friends invited for a Potomac cruise on the USS Princeton, a new steam frigate. The Princeton had three brand new 12-inch 27,000 pound cannon which the Commander was eager to show off. 

Among those on board was a wealthy New Yorker named John Gardiner along with his two daughters. Tyler had taken a fancy for Gardiner's 20-year-old daughter Julia. The president's wife Priscilla had died from a stroke two years earlier while First Lady, the first person in U.S. history to die in the White House.

Captain Robert Stockton was thrilled to have this opportuity to entertain so many guests on his new gunboat and discharged the big guns would make it an even more memorable occasion. Long story short: when the third cannon was lit it exploded, killing a number of guests including John Gardiner himselr. Julia, hearing the news, passed out. Tyler, in what would surely have become a viral video today, whisked her up in his arms and carried her away to safety. Later the two were wed and she became his second First Lady. (Full account here on the History channel.)

 

John Tyler was the 10th President of the United States and the first to become president without being elected. He assumed office as result of death of a sitting president. William Henry Harrison had become the ninth president in .the 1840 election but died one month after taking office in early 1841. Some say Harrison caught the pneumonia that killed him by speaking for too long in inclement weather during his inaugural address.

What's interesting here is that the Constitution did not actually specify that vice presidents become presidents when a sitting president dies in office. Some believed that the VP becomes acting president or president. Tyler settled the matter by declaring that he was indeed president, which set a precedent until it was formalized with the 25th Amendment after the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

EdNote: Harrison must have been a popular figure because in my genealogical line there is a Harrison Newman who was born about that time. (Years later, when U.S. Grant was a national hero, my great-grandfather Grant Newman was born and so named.)

Being the first vice president ever to become president,  Tyler was dubbed the “Accidental President” and opinion was divided on how much power he should assume. When he used the presidential veto to block the creation of a U.S. Central Bank his entire Cabinet resigned (except Secretary of State Daniel Webster, who stayed on for a year to complete the treaty with Britain settling the Maine-Canada border). Tyler immediately assembled a new Cabinet.

Another bit of Tyler trivia: John Tyler holds the record of any U.S. president for the most children fathered (that we know of), 15 in all. Perhaps even more astonishing, as of 2026 (this year) one of Tyler's grandson's is still alive, even though he was born in 1790.

Tyler, a Virginian, was pro-slavery and a strong believer in Manifest Destiny, the concept that it was the mission and duty of the United States to conquer, redeem and re-make the West. In Tyler’s mind westward expansion essentially meant creating more slave states. By the time the Civil War commenced, Tyler had been elected to the Confederate House of Representatives. When Tyler died in January 1862, the Lincoln administration officially ignored his death.

Top of page: Official portrait of President Tyler by George Peter Alexander Healey.

A Literary Dabbler

He was ordinary. That is the kindest thing we can say about him. Nondescript. No one knew where he came from, so being a man of no importance was to say quite a lot.

His eyes were such a pale blue it was difficult to discern where the pool of his irises merged with the surrounding whites, whites that were closer to off-white so that the tone leaned into a mysterious dull grey mist similar to an overcast mid-summer dawn. Like his other features it gave his face a washed out feel. 

When he spoke, which was seldom, the words mingled with a wheezing breathiness that made him hard to understand. People often asked him to repeat himself, but even then he was hard to follow and people would walk away instead of making an effort to capture whatever meaning he was trying to convey.

I used to be that way. His indistinct diction left me muttering to myself so that others sometimes asked that I repeat what I'd said. I now find this funny. I was only talking to myself.

His name was Carlton Pennington. Carlton used to refer to a place before making the leap from geography to personhood. Carl descends from the root ceorl, meaning "a free man" or non-servant peasant. The latter syllable comes from the root tun, meaning town, farm or enclosure.

Pennington is an old Anglo-Saxon name that may have meant Penny Farm. The Penningtons are listed in census records from a thousand years ago. Carlton, it would then seem, had a good pedigree.

We met at a writers group in the Poconos in Eastern Pennsylvania. I was a newby to the group, having recently moved to Lehigh Valley to escape the suffocating expansion taking place in Harrison, New Jersey. Townhouses and condos were metastasizing like malignant tumors. 

Pennington had been a regular with the group, which had been active more than 40 years, I was told. After attending awhile, I noticed that he had yet to share anything he'd written. When I privately commented on this after one of the  meetings, our host shrugged. "He's actually quite perceptive and when he brings something to share it's always good."

Pennington sat in the same chair every Thursday evening, third from the end, next to a window that looked out upon the parking lot and, beyond that, a stand of white pine. In winter the window became a black mirror. During the warmer months Pennington occasionally watched the birds.

He brought a notebook with him, one of those black-and-white composition books schoolchildren use, and kept it on his lap. I never saw him write in it.

For the first several meetings I assumed he was simply shy. Writers groups attract shy people for reasons that should be obvious. We spend months alone arranging words and then discover, to our horror, that someone expects us to read them aloud.

There were eleven of us then. Martha wrote murder mysteries. Tom was working on a Civil War novel he had been revising since the Clinton administration. Ellen wrote poems about her mother. Two others were writing memoirs, though neither appeared to have done anything yet worth remembering.

Pennington listened. Whenever someone finished reading he would nod. That was about it. Then one Thursday in October, Martha turned to him and said, "Carlton, you've been coming here longer than any of us. When are you going to read something?"

Pennington looked toward the window.

It had been raining most of the afternoon. Water wandered down the glass in crooked little rivers. "I can read something," he said.

Everyone became quiet. It was the longest sentence I'd heard him speak. He opened his composition book.

The first thing I noticed was that his hands were trembling. "The man had recently moved to the Lehigh Valley," he began.

I lifted my eyes. There was nothing remarkable in that. Half the people in the room lived somewhere in the Lehigh Valley, but it made me perk up anyways.

"He had come from Harrison, New Jersey."

It seemed a strange beginning and I stopped breathing for a moment.

Pennington continued. "He told people he had moved because he wanted more room. This was partly true. The town where he had lived was disappearing beneath townhouses and condominiums. They seemed to him less like homes than tumors."

Someone chuckled.

I didn't. That was the word I had indeed used, but not at the writers group. I had written it in an email to my brother two months earlier.

Pennington turned the page.

"The man sometimes talked to himself. He had done so since childhood, though in recent years he had begun pretending that he was merely thinking aloud."

Now everyone turned to glance at me.

"That's enough," I said.

Pennington stopped. His pale eyes rose from the notebook.

For the first time I noticed something I hadn't noticed before. They weren't expressionless. They were sad. "I haven't reached the interesting part," he said.

No one laughed.

I asked him where he had gotten what he had written.

Pennington seemed puzzled by the question. "Where does anyone get anything they write?"

"That's not what I mean."

"I know."

He closed the notebook.

The rain tapped softly against the window as Pennington leaned toward me and said something in that breathy, indistinct voice of his.

"What?" I said.

When he repeated it I still couldn't make it out.

He leaned closer. This time I heard him.

"I wouldn't go home by Route 309 tonight," he said.

I stared at him. "Why?"

Pennington slipped the composition book into his satchel.

"That's where the next page begins."

 

A Censorship Case That Might Surprise You

This week I read an article in Reason magazine about a U.S. film maker whose movie The Spirit of '76 landed him in prison for ten years. Damon Root's article zeroes in on a rather scary encounter between the State and free expression. I was well acquainted with the excesses of government during Woodrow Wilson's two terms in the White House. 2000 people were arrested under the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918 for speaking out against the war effort. U.S. federal government aggressively prosecuted people for anti-war speech, criticism of the government or military, or making statements seen as obstructing the war effort or recruitment. Reliable historical accounts have stated that of those arrested, around 1,050–1,055 were convicted. Many received prison sentences (some up to 10–20 years), though others faced fines or shorter terms.

What's bizarre is that filmmaker Robert Goldstein's offense wasn't for making antiwar statements. Writes Root, "Goldstein's 'crime' was producing a silent film about the American Revolution titled The Spirit of '76. Among other things, the film reportedly contained scenes that depicted British troops bayoneting women and children. Because Britain was then an ally of America's in the First World War, the U.S. government quickly suppressed the film and prosecuted Goldstein for interfering with the war effort." 

Under the Espionage Act he was sentenced to 10 years in prison.   

* * *

 

This took place in a country where "Freedom of Speech" is the first amendment to the Constitution. 

What does this have to do with us today? Well, we live in a time when spokespersons are at war over what is acceptable as regards free speech. Who decides what is good and what is bad? Since funding propaganda is included in our nation's budget, how do we know what is true and what is spin? [OK, we already know that spinning is ever ongoing from all sides, Left and Right, media and governments.] Who decides who the good guys and bad guys are in this battle for control of the narrative?

We live in a mediated world. Before entering World War One, very few Americans knew much about Germany, its history and its aims. (The 8 million Germans who had immigrated here, of course,  knew their history.) But as the drums of war began to sound, there were plenty of messages being piped into our brains through the news media, striving to form a national will to take up arms against Kaiser Bill and those German brutes.

But who were these brutes, really? Stories of German aggression were circulated as if Otto Bismarck and later Kaiser Wilhelm were out to take over the world. In point of fact, history didn’t bear this out at all. It was the British Empire that had had a 300 year hold on the world, famously declaring with pride, “The sun never sets on the British Empire.”

The spin was in, and America began creating the rationale it needed for to enter the war. Thus was born the Committee on Public Information (CPI), whose aim was to influence U.S. public opinion to support the war effort. Wilson’s Executive Order 2594 set in motion an ever broadening series of events.

This anti-German sentiment had serious consequences. Hatred was aroused toward German-American citizens and “being anti-German became a way of showing patriotism for the American war effort.” Even though there were more immigrants from Germany than from any other country, many libraries pulled books off the shelves that might be considered pro-German. Laws were passed specifically hostile to German-Americans.

The climate became so paranoid and hateful that by 1918, South Dakota prohibited the use of German over the telephone and in public assemblies of three or more persons. “By the early 1920s, 34 states had passed English-only requirements in their schools. These laws were argued before the Supreme Court in the case of Meyer v. Nebraska.”

Years ago I remember reading about German Americans having their dachshunds murdered by hostile neighbors. These actions were generated by the propaganda machinery of our government, hand-in-glove with the powerful newspaper media network. This anti-German sentiment came directly from the Wilson White House. (He’d formerly been president of Princeton, an idealist and educated fool, which he’d soon have ample opportunity to prove before the end of his second term.)

Getting back to the main point, the Wilson White House had an agenda and used its power  to promote the war effort. Of this I was aware, and the practice of using government power and tax dollars for whatever ends those in power believe is justified continues to this day. I was unaware that a film maker would be sentenced to ten years in prison for a scene portraying an actual historical moment. How many other such imprisonments have taken place in this manner?  

Related Links

Damon Root, 4-16-2026. Remembering the infuriating case of United States v. “The Spirit of ’76.” 

Helen Keller's Forgotten History and Her Letter to Eugene V. Debs

A Look Back: Sedition, Free Speech and the President