How did she do it!

My bee pet!
I am having breakfast on my balcony, overlooking the Hudson and the GW Bridge, high up on the 21st floor, facing the  North/East, enjoying the morning, and there it is —  a bee nesting on this flower or that flower apparently in constant search for more, resting here, resting there.  Now I wonder how did this bee make it all the way up the windy 21 floors to my terrace? How I ask did this bee know that my place offered more than plenty of colorful flowers. Amazing. 

 The book I have just finished was a real page turner as all her books are, Isabel Allende "Island Beneath the Sea" refers to Saint Domingue when it was owned by France, the later name is Haiti, the time is 1770 - 1830 approximately. As always Isabel Allende breathes life into history: the topic is the incredible cruelty and viciousness of slavery, about the sugar plantation owners, the rebellion and emancipation. Narration is by one slave, the main character, and the wealthy and white plantation slave owners exercising  the cruelest treatment of slaves. Slave mothers would rather kill their children than allow them to suffer alive. There are free blacks, mulattoes, maroons, all fine differences in class. The white owners feel extremely superior and are overcome with lust for violence and rape, or maybe they just closed their eyes not to see how overseers handled the slaves to get the most out of them and to increase their harvest. It's a painful story to read and you assume that the white class (with exceptions) were made from a different material,  plastic for instance. The main character Zarité, the slave girl ends up as a young girl with the plantation owner. He rapes her and has two children with her whom he refuses to recognize. When the slave rebellion begins in Haiti it is up to her to save her white master/rapist, her children the white children of the master. There is a long and hard fought journey to freedom, she is unable to disconnect from her master, and surrounded by a series of resilient women. The story continues in New Orleans where they fled to, before New Orleans was part of the States. Voodo inspired folklore and Christianity mix easily. I always like historical novels. For me they work brilliantly in conveying in this case the collision of the forces of enlightenment against the forces of capitalism, greed and prejudice.

I am being sucked into a quagmire!

Ok, I had a mini stroke and I lost vision in one eye completely and certainly do not like it. It's not only that I cannot get used to it — face it: I see less! But what really annoys me (and should not) is how doctors tumble you around. Here a test, there a test, here another one and so on. First all the test in the hospital, ok. than daily checking of blood pressure, then a heart monitor wired to the body for fourteen days, then endless examinations of the eyes, new glasses, then and why not, a walk on the treadmill combined with esophageal echo. This means radio active fluid is injected into the body, you then dance on the treadmill, and as second act you are strapped onto a chair that lifts up and turns an inch sideways every minute. This is for the doctor to assess whether the blood stream into your heart is ok. Everything is fine, I am told when I leave. But why I ask, did this three hour test need to be repeated a few hours later. I asked of course,  and the reply was "One wants to make sure."  Then various ultrasound of the eye before and after, quite interesting;  and loads, I mean loads of colorful pills, the dosage increases steadily, the blood pressure however is not impressed at all and does not go down. The pharmaceutical companies have a good laugh on my account and I decide to order my medicines now from Canada, who again orders from England, who again orders from India and it all arrives here in neat little packages and is much less expensive! 

Well, how timely it  was when a promotional postcard arrived announcing a new play: Dr. Knock, Or the Triumph of Medicine performed at the Mint Theater, 43rd Street between 8+9th Avenue, 4th floor. The play was written by Jules Romains in 1923 — and that was before the discovery of antibiotics and most of our modern-day medicines. Incredibly though, the play still represents modern-day America at the eve of our new healthcare bill.  We meet Dr. Knock who is taking over the office of a country doctor who confides that the population is quite healthy and does not require the services of a doctor a lot. But Dr. Knock turns this around quite quickly and invites people for free to see him. As soon as he meets a new patient he manages to diagnosis one or the other exotic and frightening maladies, and in his matter-of-fact chilling manner tells them that they are very sick. He prescribes plenty of medicines which is also to the benefit of the pharmacist! Familiar? Although he is a self-taught healer without a medical license his business thrives, people stream to him, and he is able to make the extreme perfectly reasonable. And he watches his financial success quite carefully on clip charts. We chuckled, we laughed; it was all too painfully familiar.

Since it was a 2:00 PM performance we decided to walk toward the River and look at the INTREPID, the huge air plane carrier, anchored at the Hudson with all its sea, air, and space structures, a huge hands-on museum and plenty of information about these incredible flight machines. We only had one hour before shut-down and had to rush through, up and down the ladders, onto the bridges (one for the Admiral and one for the Captain), quite amazing. The whole area around there has changed since my last visit to the INTREPID, no more dilapidated piers — the piers are renovated now and reach out far into the Hudson, sprinkled with restaurants, food vendors and since it was evening,  relatively few people. I keep exclaiming how beautiful the West Side is now!