On Becoming a Eunuch

It started one September morning when I got out of bed and peed blood. That wasn’t a good sign, ao I called my primary care physician. She instructed me to go directly to the local hospital.

At the hospital, a urologist performed an ultrasound of my bladder and admitted me for a cystoscopy. This involved inserting a catheter into my penis so he could inspect my bladder by feeding a cystoscope through the catheter up into my bladder by way of my urethra. The cystoscope had a lens that let him inspect my bladder for signs of cancer. He was then able to pass a special tool through the cystoscope to remove several polyps for analysis. Fortunately, I was sedated throughout this procedure.

I awoke in a hospital bed. The first thing I did was push down the sheet covering my lower body and discovered the catheter was still in place. When I saw the size of the catheter and thought about the urologist forcing it into my penis, I was very glad to have been sedated.

Any modesty I had evaporated with this procedure. I had never before had so many people concerned with my manhood. For the next two days, I had nurses checking every few hours for any sign of infection.

On the third morning, two nurses came into my room to remove the catheter. They explained what they were going to do and pulled down the top sheet. One nurse took hold of my penis. The other said to take a deep breath and then exhale when she told me to. When I exhaled, she pulled out the catheter. The pain was brief but intense.

Having two attractive young women handling my penis would be a sublime fantasy in a different situation.

The results of the procedure were not good. My bladder was riddled with cancer.

The urologist explained that I had two choices. It was either a slow, lingering death from cancer or have this very scary operation. As if I really had a choice.

He referred me to Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, the largest hospital in northern New England, for the surgery. There, I met my new urology team. The chief urologist was a large man with a Nordic accent who was all business. The rest of the team were handsome young interns wearing matching dark green scrubs and colorful scrub caps. After more ultrasounds, the team performed another cystoscopy that confirmed the diagnosis of the first one. This time the catheter was gone when I awoke, and I was scheduled for surgery.

The chief urologist explained he would be removing my bladder and my prostate. He said he would take a section out of my small intestine and then reconnect it. The section would be used to create a new bladder. Because this faux bladder didn’t have the necessary muscles to function like a bladder, it could not control the flow of urine. It would be surgically attached to an opening in my abdomen called a stoma, where a plastic pouch could collect the urine. He said it was a complex surgical procedure that would take 4 to 4 1/2 hours, but he had successfully performed many of them before.

He didn’t mention that I would lose all sexual function.

In less than three weeks. My life had dramatically changed.

The morning of surgery, I arrived at the hospital at 6:00 am. I was taken to a small pre-op room, where a nurse instructed me to take off all my clothes, put on a hospital gown and and lie on a gurney. An anesthesiologist came into the room and explained he was going to start anesthesia. He inserted an IV line into my arm and injected something through the line. I began to feel sleepy. As a nurse wheeled me to the surgical suite, he asked me how I was feeling. I replied that I felt like I was being wheeled on a gurney to surgery and then fell asleep.

The procedure went as planned. I awoke the next morning in my hospital room with no pain, thanks to oxycodone. The nurses encouraged me to get up and walk around the unit. I liked walking, but I soon grew bored walking around the big nurse’s station. I decided to leave the unit and walk around the hospital.

DHMC is a large hospital. From the door to my unit, I could walk by the life-size moose sculpture down the North Mall to the main entrance. There, I could turn left down a long hallway to the East Mall, which runs parallel to the North Mall, then turn left down to the end of the East Mall, where a long corridor leads to the nuclear imaging center. Then another left turn down a long corridor past the wonderful Sol Levenson mural back to the moose sculpture. I estimated the whole trip had to be the better part of a mile and planned to walk it every night.

What I didn’t know was that I wasn’t supposed to leave the unit unless accompanied by a nurse. Someone turned me in during my first midnight excursion, and one of my unit nurses was sent to capture me. I was eventually able to convince the urology team doctors that I had no risk of falling and was allowed to tour the hospital alone.

At least four members of the team came together in their scrubs and scrub caps to visit me every morning around 11:00 a.m. They said they would let “the boss” know how I was doing. “The boss” visited me every two days to personally confirm that everything was properly healing.

Specialty nurses showed me how to change my urostomy pouch. The pouch has three pieces: the gasket that makes a water-tight seal around my stoma, the skin barrier that adheres to the gasket and my abdomen, and the pouch that snaps onto the barrier. It’s a simple but reliable device that must be emptied every 2-3 hours and changed every 3-4 days.

Wearing and changing the pouch was humiliating and annoying at first, but I soon grew accustomed to it – particularly when considering the other choice.

I was in the hospital for nine days before I was released. “The boss” said I should continue walking and could gradually resume my daily exercises.

After being home for a day, I was annoyed and depressed at having to do everything for myself again. No button to call a nurse if I wanted something. My lovely wife was a wonderful one-woman support group, but had no intention of being my nursemaid.

As the weeks crawled by, I regained my strength. I was shocked by how much muscle tone I lost by being in bed just nine days. I also lost 20 pounds.

I looked up online how much an adult human bladder weighs and learned it can weigh up to eleven pounds when full. An adult male prostate weighs less than one-half pound. Throw in a few lymph nodes, and it’s still under 12 pounds.

Am I glad I made this choice? Absolutely! Do I like having to wear this pouch for the rest of my life? No!

My cancer is gone for now, but I will continue to have regular follow-up screenings. Whatever the results of those screenings are, I’m grateful to have additional time with my wife, my children, my two granddaughters, and my four great-grandchildren. And additional time to cross things off my to-do list.

A positive outcome of this whole experience is that I no longer have to worry about erectile dysfunction.

The Epstein Quagmire

The American public needs to know who was involved in the sexual abuse of children with Jeffrey Epstein and who was not. I don’t want pedophiles running our county and using their positions to cover their tracks and those of their friends. I particularly want to know if the President of the United States is a pedophile.

This scandal has undermined the confidence of American voters in their government and their elected officials. We can’t tell the bad guys from the good guys. This is not a Republican or a Democrat issue. It’s neither conservative nor liberal. It’s a moral and legal issue.

Child sexual abuse may be the worst crime. It permanently damages the lives of its victims who often live in pain for years. I know from first-hand experience.

We need to know whether our Senators and Representatives support getting this investigation out in the open so voters know the morality of the people they cast their votes for. Please email yours and demand they tell you.

Are All Men Created Equal?

The Declaration of Independence boldly proclaims:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

When the American colonists declared independence from the British crown, they staked their lives on the radical belief that government should exist only with the consent of the governed. After winning their freedom from the tyranny of King George, they embedded this principle into the Constitution that established their new republic.

But what does it really mean to say that “all men are created equal”—nearly 250 years after Jefferson first penned those words?

Competing Views of Equality
Today, Democrats and Republicans often interpret the phrase in very different ways.

Conservative Republicans argue that Jefferson’s words were meant to assert equality only between the colonists and the English aristocracy. They often emphasize that wealth, power, and privilege naturally produce different rules and outcomes for different groups in society. To them, inequality is not a flaw to be corrected, but a reflection of the natural order.

Progressive Democrats, on the other hand, take Jefferson’s words more literally: that all people in America—regardless of wealth, race, gender, or background—should be treated equally under the law. They believe every citizen deserves an equal opportunity to pursue success and happiness, as well as equal responsibility to contribute to society. In this view, government plays a crucial role in leveling the playing field and ensuring fairness.

Equality in a Capitalist Society
Modern capitalism, combined with rapid advances in technology, has tilted the playing field toward the wealthy. Opportunities are concentrated at the top, while responsibilities and burdens fall more heavily on the working class. This imbalance has created a caste system in America.

The wealthy have the money, time, and connections to shape laws and policies in their favor. The working class often has little influence in government beyond casting a vote, while being constantly bombarded with political propaganda.

This raises the question: does a society built on vast inequality still honor Jefferson’s promise of equal rights? In truth, the phrase “all men are created equal” has always been open to interpretation. Scholars debate its meaning through historical letters and speeches. Politicians invoke it to justify their agendas. Everyday Americans must decide for themselves what it means in practice.

So ask yourself:
Do you believe inequality is simply a fact of life, beyond the reach of government to change?

Or do you believe government has a responsibility to help every citizen pursue life, liberty, and happiness—the very rights promised in the Declaration?

The Goal of Equality
When Jefferson wrote those words in 1776, they were not only a statement of purpose but also a goal for the new nation. That goal remains unfinished. To surrender it now—whether to complacency, propaganda, or greed—would be to betray the very ideals that sparked America’s independence.

We cannot allow entrenched privilege and oligarchic power to keep us from striving toward true equality. The promise of “all men are created equal” is not just history—it is a challenge to each generation to bring it closer to reality.

I'm done

I’m done
ruminating on my failures,
rehashing my mistakes,
cowering in my shame,
beating myself up,
discounting my accomplishments,
feeling sorry for myself,
and making excuses.

I’m done
analyzing
my second-grade trauma,
my adolescent depression,
my college shame,
my business failures,
and my financial losses.

I’m eighty-one.
I’m physically fit.
I’m stubborn.
I have cancer.
I don’t give up.
I’m a survivor.

Why school vouchers create economic disparity

The arguments seem to make sense at first. School vouchers allow low-income children to attend better schools. They get to use their allotment for schooling that will make them more productive citizens. It seems so egalitarian.

In practice, however, it doesn’t work that way at all. Here in New Hampshire, they are called “Education Freedom Accounts". The program was sold as a way to help low-income students in bad public schools transfer to better private schools.

What actually happened is that 75% of the students getting voucher money were already enrolled in private and religious schools.

What vouchers have done is to reinforce class discrimination. And wealthy Americans understand that. For all their claims of promoting educational equity, they understand that it gives their children an advantage over working-class children. Their children get to attend private schools on the public dime that leads them to better universities. After college, their children end up with better employment opportunities. And they want it that way. It’s one of their two biggest reasons for championing school vouchers.

The second reason is even more odious. Greed! Vouchers also slash their private school tuition costs at the expense of working-class taxpayers. And now that the limit of income eligibility has been completely eliminated, New Hampshire’s wealthiest families get their tuition paid with your tax dollars.

State Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut has no interest in providing a fair education for all New Hampshire school children. He has advocated for expanding the school voucher program and increasing the amount of public tax dollars going to private and religious schools. He projected that the program would cost $3.3 million. It actually cost $27 million in its first two years of operation.

Here are the facts:

Private school vouchers don’t work in rural New Hampshire.
Vouchers simply don’t provide school choice for students living in rural areas of New Hampshire. If these students are even able to use a voucher, their families probably can’t afford or manage the long, costly commute to a private school.

Private school vouchers don't fully serve low-income students.
The cost of tuition, books, uniforms and fees at private or religious schools that accept vouchers usually exceeds the voucher amount. This makes these schools unaffordable for most low-income families.

Private school vouchers undermine New Hampshire’s public schools.
Vouchers divert desperately needed public resources away from our public school systems to fund the education of a few students at private schools. We could better serve our children by using these funds to make the public schools stronger.

Private school vouchers do not save money for New Hampshire taxpayers.
The reduction in students from those public schools from which students leave for private voucher schools does not decrease their operating costs. It costs the same to run a public school for 200 students as it does for 210, but vouchered students take their share with them. This creates public school deficits and tax increases.

Private school vouchers do not lead to improvements in public schools.
To the contrary – by siphoning off public school funds, vouchers make it more difficult for public schools to make improvements.

As a result, most New Hampshire school vouchers are used by wealthy families whose children never attended public schools in the first place. These families can afford to pay private school tuition without help from working-class taxpayers. Private school vouchers are simply a way for wealthy families to get a taxpayer-funded discount on their private school tuition. And our public schools, which educate 90% of the state’s students, pay the price.

Vouchers not only widen the educational gap between working-class and wealthy families. They reinforce economic disparity.

Jaguar 3.8 Mk. II Sedan

On the first day of my first job after college, I was driving west out of Boston on Route 2 in a decrepit and rusty 1958 Volvo 445 station wagon — one I got for free from the side of a road. It was on its last legs, but it got me to my new job.

It was a warm summer morning, and the driver’s window was open. Suddenly, a pristine white Jaguar 3.8 Mk II sedan with a red accent stripe on the side streaked by at speed. The sound of its exhaust is something I have never forgotten. It was delightful.

To my surprise, the Jag was sitting in the parking lot when I pulled into my work. The owner was walking into the building, so I jumped out of my car and caught up with him. Malcolm Lee was to become one of my lifelong friends.

I was talking on the phone with him recently, when Malcolm told me a story I had completely forgotten — how I saved his life.

Shortly after we met, I went over to visit him with two coffees on a Saturday morning that he had told me he would be working on the Jag. His parents were in Europe, and he had the place to himself for a few weeks.

When I drove down the long driveway, Malcolm was under the Jag doing something. As I approached the car, I discovered the jack had fallen over and pinned him underneath. He begged in a weak voice to help him. I dropped the coffees, reset the jack, and lifted the car off him.

Malcolm was bruised but unhurt. I hate to think what would have happened if I hadn’t decided to stop by.

Soon after, he traded the Mk II for an E-type coupe, but that’s another story.