| Food
& Other Important Things
Making preparations: Unshared knowledge is waste,
by Don Curto
The best way to approach problems such as the one I face now with this column is to get at it directly. Get it out there where we all can take a look at it. I could ignore it or work up a cover story, but that is not the way I work, or think.
I am choosing to be “up front” with the matter of my current health. I have been diagnosed with “end stage COPD,” a lung problem (emphysema), which means the diagnosis is not a very cheery one.
With the help of some really great doctors (and modern chemistry) I have been lucky to avoid any metastasis of prostate cancer for more than ten years.
Earlier this month, a chest x-ray produced a lovely portrait of a poor, lonely “solitary pulmonary nodule” on my right lung, or is it the left lung? The Internet, that wonderfully accessible diagnostic tool, reports “more than half of all solitary pulmonary nodules” are noncancerous. At this stage of my life, fifty-fifty odds are pretty good.
I am not ready yet to write about any “final event;” I do not know now when the end might be scheduled (there is a “dark joke” floating around hospice care that says the date of your departure is tattooed on the bottom of your left foot) and I still feel quite fine about living.
But when more than one doctor tells you you have a “problem”…and you know the diagnosis is correct merely by observing the changes taking place in your body, one is a fool, hiding in fear, if he doesn’t take a really thorough examination of his current status.
If you don’t mind, let’s make this a joint examination, you and me, as much as we are able.
What is the goal? Why would you or anyone care about my current health status? Well, you may sooner or later be in a similar spot.
My personal goal is to live out what remains of my allotted lifetime as fruitfully as possible, causing as little trouble to others as circumstances permit. And perhaps because of what I do during this period and how I live, I may give some help to someone else.
At least, as I have reported before, I plan to gather as much used cooking material as I can to take along to my final resting place and help Monsignor Cappo set up a good Italian kitchen. He misses my food and that is a good thing to know.
The “laws” to the right are not the limit of living truths. But they are pretty good and they encompass a very large life area. This list of truths came to my attention when I first read Sheldon B. Kopp’s book, If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him.
Kopp has died and he left some great writing and some fine thinking behind. The route to seek permission to publish them looks sort of vague. Nevertheless, I will write for permission. In the meantime, I don’t think we do any damage by noting the source.
From time to time, I will be calling upon this list of truths for help in writing future columns.
There is a food part to this column that might be of considerable interest to those of you who have long been on a pilgrimage to find a proper bagel. Where the real bagel resides: New York, Minneapolis, Chicago, Detroit, and now, Madison (Wisconsin).
Quite by accident and with the unsought help of a fellow shopper in Marquette, I was tipped off to a store-bought, pre-sliced frozen bagel made in Madison.
I would gladly sing her name from any available rooftop, but I cannot recall it, if I ever knew it. I guess I didn’t think anyone in these remote shopping places would have discovered a bakery strangely full of dedication, making something that looks like a bagel and, by gosh, is in fact a bagel, not just some rolled up bread dough made to look like a bagel.
They are indeed made in Madison, and they are indeed real bagels, not just impostors. The brand is Bagels Forever and they come in all the varieties of tastes you will likely ever want. They are easy to find, and once you do, you might become addicted.
But here is a strange cost picture: Bagels Forever are packaged in plastic with four to a pack. And they are sold at Econo in Marquette for 99 cents and at Econo in Houghton for $1.11.
The Houghton Festival store sells them for $1.68 per package and Pat’s in Hancock charges $1.75. But then, at both Pat’s stores, in Calumet and Hancock, price structure is erratic and often strangely high. One thing, however, is consistently very good, and that is service.
But, now, to top the price structure, one should go to the Keweenaw Co-op in Hancock: a package of four bagels there is (hold your hat) $2.19. This price figure was passed to me with what seemed to be an attitude asking what my objection might be!
And then, again, are you sure we should let “Christians Mingle,” as a popular TV advertisement keeps urging us. Seems like a potentially dangerous policy to me.
–– Don Curto
An Eschatological Laundry List: Some of the 927 Eternal Truths
• This is it!
• There are no hidden meanings.
• You can’t get there from here, and besides, there’s no place else to go.
• We are all already dying, and we will be dead for a long time.
• Nothing lasts.
• There is no way of getting all you want.
• You can’t have anything unless you let go of it.
• You only get to keep what you give away.
• There is no particular reason why you lost out on some things.
• The world is not necessarily just. Being good often does not pay off and there is no compensation for misfortune.
• You have a responsibility to do your best nonetheless.
• It is a random universe, to which we bring meaning.
• You don’t really control anything.
• No one is any stronger or weaker than anyone else.
• You can’t make anyone love you.
• Everyone is, in his own way, vulnerable.
• There are no great men.
• If you have a hero, look again: you have diminished yourself in some way.
• Everyone lies, cheats, pretends (yes, you too, and most certainly I myself.)
• All evil is potential vitality in need of transformation.
• All of you is worth something, if you will only own it.
• Progress is an illusion.
• Evil can be displaced but never eradicated, as all solutions breed new problems.
• Yet it is necessary to keep on struggling toward solution.
• Childhood is a nightmare.
• But it is so very hard to be an on-your-own, take-care-of-yourself-cause-there-is-no-one-else-to-do-it-for-you-grown-up.
• Each of us is ultimately alone.
• The most important things, each man must do for himself.
• Love is not enough, but it sure helps.
• We have only ourselves, and one another. That may not be much, but that’s all there is.
• How strange, that so often, it all seems worth it.
• We must live within the ambiguity of partial freedom, partial power, and partial knowledge.
• All important decisions must be made on the basis of insufficient data.
• Yet we are responsible for everything we do.
• No excuses will be accepted.
• You can run, but you can’t hide.
• It is most important to run out of scapegoats.
• We must learn the power of living with our helplessness.
• The only victory lies in surrender to oneself.
• All of the significant battles are waged within the self.
• You are free to do whatever you like. You need only face the consequence.
• What do you know…for sure…anyway?
• Learn to forgive yourself, again and again and again and again….
–– From If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him. By the late Sheldon B. Kopp, who compiled a book of great wisdom.
|
