Whose New Year Is It, Anyway?

by Madeleine Kando

Since my mother died, two days shy of her 104th birthday, I have thought a lot about the passing of time. 
But why do I think of time as ‘passing’? Is it like a train passing by as I stand on a platform? That’s not possible since I am on the train.

And why does the train only go in one direction? According to experts, the reason for the arrow of time is the second law of thermodynamics (the law of entropy). There was only one way my mother existed and putting her back together again would violate the second law of thermodynamics. That’s why she no longer exists as my mother.

Nobody really knows what time is, but it doesn’t prevent us from experiencing it. According to Aristotle, this is interlinked with our capacity to perceive change. If I were sitting in a dark room for a week without outside references, how would I know a week had passed? 

But what constitutes ‘change’?

Environmentalist Bill McKibben points out that our inability to respond to climate change is because we perceive change on a ‘human’ level, but cannot perceive change in the sphere of nature. We are ‘fatally confused’ about the nature of time. (Fatally Confused: Telling the Time in the Midst of Ecological Crises, by Michelle Bastian). Our notion of time is specific to our species, for better of for worse.

If you were a mayfly, you wouldn’t be celebrating New Year’s Eve. You wouldn’t even celebrate New Day’s Eve because mayflies in their adult form, don’t live more than one day. They spend two years as larvae immersed in water, but then their one-day clock starts ticking. They swarm to find a mate, fly around a bit, lay their eggs on the surface of ponds and then die, all in a 24 hour span of time. They don’t even have time to eat, which is just as well, since mayflies don’t have a mouth. Does that mean mayflies appreciate their time more than we do? After all, we live about 30,000 times longer!

A fruit fly could potentially celebrate New Week’s Eve, since they live for two weeks. They still have to spend their precious time laying eggs, eat as much rotten fruit as possible and hope they don’t get squashed before their number is up.

A housefly lives a generous two months, which is four times longer than a fruit fly and sixty times longer than a mayfly. It’s like a one year old mayfly meeting a senior citizen housefly.

Mammals are guaranteed a much longer life span than insects. And the bigger a mammal you are, the longer you live. Field mice live about a year or two. They could potentially celebrate New Year’s Eve and make a resolution to eat less cheese, but what’s the point of losing weight when you don’t live to see the benefits?

Elephants live up to 60 years, bowhead whales live 200 years and the Greenland shark can live up 400 years. They should celebrate New Century’s Eve, but remembering a resolution you made a hundred years ago might not be so easy.

One of the longest living beings on earth is the ‘Ming clam’. It can live up to 500 years. Can you imagine having 500 years to live? When a Ming clam is a mere 8 years old, we already spent most of our useful life, at age 48. At the height of the Ming clam’s puberty, we are all long dead and buried. And to vaunt its superiority, the lucky devil keeps on living for another 485 years! 

Who cares about time, when you have so much of it? You can cruise along, violate the minimum speed limit, with not a care in the world. Did you forget about your best friend’s birthday? No harm done, there will be so many more. A Ming clam lives 200,000 times longer than a mayfly. But do they appreciate all that extra time, or do they take it for granted? Unfortunately, the last surviving Ming clam was killed by scientists trying to work out how old he was.

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Fee-fi-fo-fum. A Smelly Adventure

by Madeleine Kando

We are at our friends, the Millers’ for Thanksgiving. They live the super rural life in Northern New Hampshire, in what is called the Great North Woods. There is snow up here already. Just a dusting, but soon our friends will be buried under a thick pack of the white stuff which will remain until the spring.

 

There is a magic feeling about ‘the North Country’, even though it was declared poor enough to qualify for Federal Assistance. People live in trailers, old cars and rusting tractors strewn about on their properties. As we drive towards Canada, big posters with Trump’s grimacing face are visible from the road. This is Trump country through and through. Are they not aware that we have a new President?

This time, our friends had no room for us, so we booked a room online at a local B&B, which looked quite charming, with a panoramic view of the hills and valley. As we are shown our ‘suite’, the pungent odor of some kind of air freshener dampens my enthusiasm.

 

‘Do you mind if we crack a window?’ I ask the hostess. ‘Unfortunately the windows are winterized’ she says. ‘You could keep the door ajar, but make sure you lock it when you leave’.

We unpack and drive to our friends’ house to spend the rest of the evening. It is hidden amongst tall pine trees, at the end of a mile-long driveway. They slowly built a little kingdom on their 200-acre property, which they bought for a pittance many decades ago. There is the barn for their horses, a new building to house an indoor lap pool and a sauna and a structure to house a giant wood furnace. Nathan, the Lord of the Manor, missed his calling by becoming a psychiatrist rather than an architect. He just loves building things.

Late at night, as we drive back to the B&B, we see a large buck stand still in the middle of the road. It doesn’t move, so we slow down to a crawl. Our headlights show every detail of this magnificent creature, and I feel sorry for him. There is a good chance he will be shot the next day or the day after.

 

I can’t sleep because of the pungent odor in the apartment. My husband always says that I should work in the perfume industry because of my excessive sensitivity to smells. I leave my snoring husband’s side and start to comb the apartment. The small fake plug-in Christmas tree on the table looks suspicious, sitting in its metal bucket. A prolonged sniffing does not result in a guilty verdict, but I unplug it anyway and put it outside. I crawl back in bed, but the smell is still there. I get up again and wave my arms like a scarecrow to activate the automatic night light.

  

In the corner of the room, shamelessly emanating fumes, is an electric air freshener. I unplug it, put it in the bathroom and close the door, convinced that I found the source of my misery. I crawl back in bed, but the smell is still there.

 

Now, the gloves are coming off. They must have put a scent tablet in the small, humble looking vacuum cleaner. Out it goes, next to Christmas tree. Back in bed, but the smell persists. I get up for the third time.

 

I notice two empty trash cans next to the sink. Out they go into the dark, cold night, but the smell is still there. I am frantic by now, but have enough common sense to stop myself, before I dismantle the entire suite.

 

As the day breaks, I finally fall asleep, the nauseating smell filling my nostrils. I lost the battle, but not the war. Tomorrow is another day.

   

I dream that I am stuck in quicksand. My back is slowly sinking down, like in a hammock and soon my body will jackknife, my toes touching my nose. As I slowly bend into a giant letter I, I hear little gnomes in the ceiling tap dance and bang on pots and pans. They stand on a blindingly lit stage, their big faces grinning at me. The sound wakes me up and I find that my mattress, which has the firmness of a marshmallow is preventing me from turning on my side. My back is stuck in the dip in the middle. The clanging in the heating system gets louder and faster, until it suddenly stops. The blindingly lit stage in my dream must have been the two porch lights outside the bedroom window, which won’t go off until daylight.

 

It is Thanksgiving morning. I get up, groggy after a sleepless night, and as I drink my morning coffee, I glance out the window. The banned Christmas tree and vacuum cleaner stare back at me, but they don’t look worse for wear. The porch lights are finally asleep. I envy them.

 

We drive the short distance to the Millers’, ready for Joan’s fabulous Thanksgiving meal, which I will selectively participate in, since I have become a vegetarian. ‘How did you sleep?’ asks Joan. The bags under my eyes speak for themselves, but I don’t want to share my nocturnal adventure, for fear of everyone finding out how neurotic I am. ‘Not too bad’ I lie.

 

After dinner, we go for a walk down to one of the ponds. Since it is hunting season, we all wear orange or red, just to be on the safe side. Nathan tells us that it is not uncommon for hunters to drive their truck while they shoot at anything that moves. There is no comfort in knowing that it’s against the law, since hiring a lawyer after you are shot, is not very practical.

 

Nathan is hard of hearing, but he often pretends he doesn’t hear you, when he embarks on one of his long monologues and doesn’t want to get interrupted. He is a born story teller, but his rhythm is slow, with a lot of ‘uhs’ and ‘ums’. By the time he finishes a sentence, it’s hard to remember the beginning. I wonder how he manages to keep his patients awake, as a practicing psychiatrist. Still, his stories are fascinating and full of humor. He is a transplanted New Yorker who didn’t have to learn to be funny. He would have been a great stand-up comedian.

 

Joan, his wife, functions as his mirror. She is not flamboyant, a bit self-effacing, but when push comes to shove, you can tell she wears the pants at their house. She enjoys cooking, smoking dope and yoga. She swims daily in her indoor pool, goes in the hot tub and writes in her journal. She used to make wonderful paintings, but somehow, the creative juices stopped flowing.

 

Their horses, Patrick and Max, are part of the family. Patrick, the pony, is the undisputed boss. Max, a sweet appaloosa, does what he is told. They both look furry this time of year, their winter coats nice and thick. They require a lot of care and are included in Nathan’s will. He gave detailed instructions on by whom, how and where they will be taken care of when he no longer can do so.

It's time to go back to the dreaded B&B. My husband promised he would blow up our air mattress, so I wouldn’t have to spend another night in marshmallow land. He resigned himself long ago to living with a neurotic wife and I see his sleepy eyes follow my progress as I transfer the bedding from the marshmallow bed to the air mattress. I move it around in the living room, like pulling a row boat in the water, to find the best spot. Finally comfortably settled, I am confident that this time, the sandman will not pass me by.

  

I fall asleep and dream that I am sitting in a bar. A group of hunters in camouflage gear are smoking cigars, while they exchange stories about killing. I wake up coughing from all the cigar smoke, my nose filled with the smell of stale tobacco emanating from the couch.

 

I lug the blankets, the sheets and the pillow back to the bed. I am so tired by now, that no amount of marshmallow can keep me awake. Ok. So I lost the war, not just the battle. How was I to know that everything in the apartment was sprayed to mask the smell of tobacco? Even Napoleon would have lost this one, his infantry outnumbered by thousands of enemy soldiers suddenly sprouting out of the battle field.

 

Back home in Boston, I crawl into my king-sized bed, covered by a rock-hard futon. No hint of marshmallows here. No trace of any fragrance in the air. A blissful olfactory void.

 

My husband, who is really good at calling out my obsessive behavior, sets me straight. He likes to rub my nose in it, so to speak, sniff out the truth of the matter: ‘You never appreciate what you have’ he says. ‘What about all the times you prevented the house from exploding because of a gas leak that no one else smelled? What about the spoiled milk that everybody else happily drank? What about the dead rat in the shed? Stop being such a cry baby. Don’t stir up a stink where there is none.’

 

I read a story of a woman who suffers from Hyperosmia, a heightened sense of smell so severe that she can no longer live a normal life. Who am I to complain of a measly air-freshener in the Great North Woods? I should wake up and smell the coffee.

 

Still, it would be nice to give my nose a vacation. Send it to a nose retreat with meditation classes to learn to be accepting of odors. In the meantime, I have to remind myself to pack a clothes pin the next time I travel. leave comment here

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The Red Queen Effect

The Red Queen by Sir John Tenniel 

by Madeleine Kando

In Lewis Carroll's ‘Through the Looking-Glass’, the Red Queen and Alice are constantly running but remain in the same spot. 

They finally stop and Alice says, still panting a little: "Well, in our country, you'd generally get to somewhere else—if you run very fast for a long time, as we've been doing."

"A slow sort of country!" says the Queen. "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!" 

That is exactly how I feel about my life right now. Like being on a treadmill, running and running, just so I can stay in place.

My days are filled with exhausting activities like taking a shower so I won’t get lice, get dressed so I won’t freeze to death, eat so I won’t dwindle away and sleep so I won’t keel over during the day. All that just to stay in place!

The abyss called entropy is lurking behind me, threatening to swallow me up. Who wants to let their fingernails grow into claws, get scabs on their scalp for want of washing their hair, have their teeth fall out if they don’t brush them.

The Red Queen is right: ‘If you want to get somewhere, you have to run twice as fast’. But who has the energy these days? I am quite content to stay in place. It’s exhausting enough.

In evolution, the Red Queen Effect, means that species have to constantly adapt in order to avoid extinction. A rat race, if you ever saw one. That also applies to me and you.

Let me give you a brilliant example: If you are unfortunate enough to be born without dimples in your cheeks, you are never going to have a go at being on TV. I wrote about that before here. But since all anchors on TV have dimples, who is going to keep their jobs? The ones with the deepest and most disfiguring dimples. They are all running in place, dimples and all, to keep their job.

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My Floppy Eyelids

by Madeleine Kando

My left eye is irritated. I wanted to make sure it is not a sign that I am slowly turning blind, so I paid an emergency visit to the eye doctor, before I embark on a month long trip to Hawaii.

She was short and masked. She asked for my age, although it said it right there, on my chart. She probably wanted to make sure that my porch lights were still on at my age.

She looked over the notes that her assistant just jotted down before her majesty walked in.

‘You should drink more’ she said. ‘I already drink too much’, I thought. ‘Look at the bags under my eyes’. She meant water of course, that substance I detest with a vengeance. Unless I am in the middle of the desert of course, which is never.

‘I drink a lot of tea, some coffee and orange juice’, I said in a defensive tone. ‘Coffee and tea don’t count’ she said.’

She started to type vigorously, so she wouldn’t have to make eye contact. I am sure, in her profession, limiting eye contact with the hundreds of eye balls that roll into her office every day is essential. Until she is stuck to them like a siamese twin during the exam. Safer to type and talk to the screen.

‘You are dehydrated. Drinking is good for you. Stops wrinkles. 6 cups a day, at least.’

A long telegraph style conversation followed:

‘Do you have pets?’

‘Yes, I have a cat.’

‘Where does he sleep?’

‘I have had my cat for 10 years.’

She repeated curtly:‘Where does he sleep?’

‘She sleeps where she wants’, I said cheekily.

‘Do you wear make-up?’

‘Yes’

‘You shouldn’t come to an exam with make-up on’.

‘Who do you see?'

‘Xcuse me?'

‘Who is your regular eye doctor?'

‘I don’t remember her name’.

She reads on the chart. ‘Dr. Rankin’.

(Inaudibly)‘So why do you ask me?’

‘Why do you take doxycycline?’

‘Never heard of it.’ 

'It says here you take doxycycline.’

‘Does it go by another name?’

‘No’

‘Is it related to tick bites?’

‘Yes.’

‘I only took it once. For a tick bite’.

‘Do you have dry mouth in the morning?’ 

‘Yes’ 

‘That’s because you don’t drink enough.’ 

‘Could it be because of my medication?' 

… silence …

‘It’s important that you drink at least 12 ½ cups a day. Tea doesn’t count.’

She wheels her stool adroitly to that insanely complicated piece of equipment called a phoropter and taps on the chin rest. For some reason, she has decided to switch from speaking to gesturing. The previous eyeballs must have belonged to a midget, so I have to hunch over to follow her command. Her finger points up, I look up. She taps impatiently to the left of the lens, I look left. Her finger points down, I look down.

She opens my eye vigorously, pulls on my eye lid and (gasp) folds it over. She then presses on my eye lids with great force. She makes a shooing gesture, as if I was a fly, meaning I can sit back.

‘You have occular rosacea. Very common with people who don’t drink enough.’ I want to ask her how much she drinks and how many times a day she has to pee, but then she says:

‘You also suffer from floppy eyelids. When you sleep your lids flop and let stuff in that irritates your eyes. You should massage and use warm compress.’

I am speechless. How can they be floppy? Do they flop about like dog ears in the wind? Or is it a misnomer, like so many other medical terms ? Floppy usually means that something is so flexible that it flops about, like a flag in the wind. Should I do eye lid strengthening exercises?

‘And chia.’ She said, without interruption.

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Living in the Here and Now

by Madeleine Kando

On the advice of my friend Karen, I am trying to live in the here and now. She tells me that it will stop me from worrying and help with my chronic insomnia. That it will bring me bliss and happiness. To tell you the truth, I didn’t think I had a choice. Short of being dead or not yet born, don’t we all live in the here and now?

I am being facetious of course. Living in the here and now refers to the mind, not the body. Although it would be quite a trip to move to the past, body and soul. I could shake hands with Benjamin Franklin and Lincoln. I could kick Hitler in the you know what and give my grandmother a big hug and thank her for all the beautiful books she has written and translated. Still, aside from these brief and novel events, living in the past wouldn’t be all that exciting. I would always know what would happen before it happened.

So, here I am, in the here and now, waiting for bliss and happiness to hit me. I am doing my deep breathing exercises, eyes closed, hands on knees, humming and waiting, waiting and humming… My lower back tightens up. My mind tries to focus on my Mantra, but my brain says ‘You need a drink’. The bliss and happiness is in no hurry to arrive.

And where does it travel from? Is it already in the present or does it live in the future? Instead of waiting for it to arrive, I could move to the future for a while and save it some traveling time. The problem is, the future being so immensely vast, I would have to know whose future to move to. Nothing would prevent me from moving to someone else’s future, let’s say some enlightened Guru, who couldn’t claim that future as his, since it hasn’t happened yet. I could grab his bliss and happiness and drag it to MY here and now. Read more...

The Elephant and the Donkey

by Madeleine Kando

On an island in the sea there lived an elephant family and a donkey family. They were not exactly friends but since it was a great big island they usually kept out of each other’s way and lived their lives peacefully by pretty much ignoring each other. At times they had to interact because, as the donkey was trying to build something, he needed the elephant’s strength and discipline to haul stuff. And when the elephant was trying to figure out a repair job he needed the donkey’s brains and resourcefulness to figure out how to fix it. But all in all, they spent their days avoiding each other as much as possible.

The elephant spent his time stomping about, making sure that nothing was disturbed in his domain. He liked things to be nice and tidy. His waterhole undisturbed by foreign creatures, the sandpit where he liked to roll around in, nice and dry and his little elephant babies all in a row, marching to his beat behind him. And no one dared to oppose his wishes, seeing that he was a great big elephant.

The donkey also liked things his way. He made up for what he lacked in bulk, by his wit and stubbornness. He was an adventurous little fellow. His brood showed him respect even as they wandered off to explore some foreign-looking object on the beach. He didn’t mind that much. He himself was endowed with a curious nature and instinctively realized that stunting his children’s sense of adventure wouldn’t serve them well in the long run. He was clever and because he was so small compared to the elephant, he often covered himself with a lion skin when he went foraging. Even the elephants ran off as they saw him approach, which made him chuckle.

As the island became more popular with the outside world, things started to change. Many other animals were drawn to this beautiful, bountiful island. Some liked to play with the donkeys, others liked to march with the elephants and for a long time life was good on the island. Read more...

Hot Spots, Soft Spots and Bald Spots

by Madeleine Kando

The English language is really good at turning words into versatile tools that can be used for many purposes, like a Swiss army knife. Take the humble little word spot, for instance. With a snap of our fingers, we can make a spot become hot, sweet, tight, bald, cold, dead, soft or blind. And those are just the noun words. We can ‘be spot on’, an adjective, ‘hit the spot’, a direct object, or ‘spot something a mile off’, a verb. We have a knack for breathing life into language by dressing up simple words and send them out into the world to work their magic.

But why stop there? A single one of these ‘compound nouns’ can, itself, take on different meanings. A spot can be hot, but a hotspot can be a place of unusual popularity, a spot where volcanic magma rises through the earth’s crust, an area of political or civil unrest, a place where a wireless Internet connection is available and more recently a place where the Coronavirus is particularly active.

When I drove down dreary Route 9 in Newton the other day, I didn’t think it was unusually popular and there was no magma in sight. My phone didn’t detect a wireless connection and since I didn’t have a dog in the car, I couldn’t check for its infected skin rash.

But I knew I was entering a hotspot. This is the spot where the month before my car had been rear-ended. As I was waiting at the traffic light, I could feel the heat through the floor of the car. I breathed a sigh of relief when the light turned green, but a while later on the highway, my knuckles around the steering wheel turned white. I was approaching another hot spot where not too long ago, I almost flipped my car, when I collided with a ladder that had fallen off the back of a truck.

So you see, as time goes on, it gets harder to find any spots on my way home that are not marred with bad memories. Some spots are so hot, that driving through them is too painful. Many years ago, I found my daughter in a diabetic coma, unconscious on the floor of her dorm. I have tried to rub that spot off, but it just won’t come out, even after all these years. That is definitely a dead zone, in my book. Read more...

Confessions of a Googleholic

by Madeleine Kando


Googling has become my middle name. I am Googling every thought that comes into my head. It’s a disease. ‘Why is my iphone almost the same size as my reading glasses container?’ ‘Why does my sister not like me as much as before?’ ‘Will we ever travel to another star?’ As if Google were my psychiatrist, my mother and my best friend, all rolled into one. I know. It’s a clear sign of either having too much time on my hands, or not enough human contact.

I have replaced my brain with a digital monster. Not too long ago I was a normal person. I wondered and pondered about things, accepted the inevitability of not knowing the answer. That’s what’s fun about wondering and pondering. If there were an answer to everything, it would be the end of thinking, period. If I really really wanted to know the answer to something, I read a book, went to the library, or talked to a flesh and blood person.

I envy my mother. Ata was a natural ponderer. Until her dying day at the age of 103, she had questions, wondering about life after death, why birds can fly and humans cannot. She was almost blind, had been deaf for decades, but her mind was brimming with curiosity. She was not what you call a learned person. She had an artist’s soul that wanted to discover, like a 103 year old Magellan. Once she had a question in her head, she wouldn’t let go and urged everyone to participate in her quest, be it her children, her numerous friends, her orthopedist and the unfortunate handyman who was trying to fix the leak in her bathroom. Deep down, she knew she wouldn’t find a definitive answer, but the exploration was what made her tick. Googling was as foreign to her as a rotary phone to a Gen Zer. Read more...

Liberals and Conservatives; Kind or not, Smart or Not?

Tom Kando

This is a game: I take 3 variables, I cross-tab them, and I formulate some hypotheses about their correlation (or lack thereof).
The variables are:

1. Conservatism vs. Liberalism

2. Kindness or not

3. Being well-informed or not

In other words, an individual can be conservative or liberal; he/she can be a by and large  nice person or what we could call an a...hole; and she/he can be well-educated and intelligently informed or not.

For the sake of simplicity, the three variables are dichotomous. Also, let’s not quibble about the true meaning and nature of being ”nice” as opposed to being an “a...hole”  This is just an experiment, maybe  a fun one, and most of us know an a...hole when we meet one... Also, for the purposes of this experiment, I use a total sample of 200.

If we cross tab these 3 variables, we get 2 x 2 x 2 = 8 possibilities Read more...

European Traffic

by Tom Kando

I am looking forward to our next European trip, this spring. Due to illness, we didn’t get to travel much in 2019. As we get older, international travel becomes more challenging. However, my wife and I haven’t thrown in the towel yet. Unlike many of our friends, we still tough it out driving, taking trains, sleeping at small hotels and walking around foreign cities as much as we are able to, rather than going on cruises.

This year, though, we will not rent a car. We’ll spend a week each in Amsterdam, Paris and Rome, and only a suicidal imbecile would rent a car to circulate in those cities, where public transportation is cheap and efficient, and vehicular traffic is nerve-racking.

Many American drivers find driving in Europe challenging, and many American pedestrians find crossing streets in foreign cities scary.

Actually the single greatest traffic problem overseas is not that Europeans and other foreigners are wild and dangerous drivers. No. By far the greatest risk to your life exists in those countries that still drive on the wrong side of the road, namely on the left. These countries include Australia, Britain, most of the Caribbeans, India and South Africa, courtesy of the former British Empire. They also include Ireland and Japan, and a few other countries that refuse to come to their senses. Read more...

My Doctor is Retiring

by Madeleine Kando

My Doctor is retiring. I told her I wouldn’t allow it, but she wouldn't listen and now I am stuck with the task of finding a new one. When I first became her patient in my twenties, I didn’t bother to find out how old she was. She looked old enough to know her business and young enough to read my chart without squinting, so I figured she would be ok for the next couple of decades. Besides, who thinks about retirement, your own or someone else’s at that age. But I should have done the smart thing, like I did when I got a new dog. I got a young one, so he wouldn’t die on me too quickly.

When she told me the news, I realized that she is one of the people who have known me the longest. Family doesn’t count, since they only know an obsolete version of you. But Doctors keep up with your life’s never ending transformations and transitions. She is the keeper of my body’s entire biography and now, decades later, it amounts to a bulging dossier, full of juicy details. If I was famous, she could sell my body’s dirty secrets for a ton of money to a tabloid magazine.

So here I am, without a doctor, without a gatekeeper. My body’s history floating out there, in limbo. I am supposed to transfer my records to a new doctor, a complete stranger! How do I know I can trust this person with my colonoscopies, my appendectomy, arthroscopic surgeries, MRI’s and cardiac stress tests?

I wonder if my Doctor feels guilty about dropping me like a sack of potatoes, discarded and forgotten. Did she feel bad when I sat on her varnished, faux leather chair and complained about my occipital neuralgia? She didn’t lean over and hold my hand with a pained look in her eyes. Thank God, I hear you say. Doctors are pragmatists. They are fixers, like a car mechanic. I wouldn’t expect Joe down the street to burst out in tears at the sight of my Honda’s broken timing belt. So, why am I so disturbed by the fact that my Doctor is retiring? Finding another fixer should not be such a problem. Read more...

Of Coffee Beans and Boiled Eggs

by Madeleine Kando

This is a children's story, but there is no guarantee

that you won't find it entertaining at any age.

As on most other days, I woke up at six this morning. That's what my body does without even asking for my permission. I gave up on a good night's sleep a long time ago. I go through the morning dragging my body around like a wet rag, until the demands of work and family forces me to ignore the feeling of exhaustion.

Today then, was no different. I stepped into the shower cell on automatic pilot, turned on the hot water and fumbled for the bar of soap with my eyes closed to rub in my face. I must have fallen asleep again, because the slippery egg-shaped object with a faint smell of almonds had suddenly disintegrated.

Instead, I was holding a tiny little miniature whale in the palm of my hand. It wasn't really a whole whale, mostly a mouth with a minuscule whale body. It stared at me with its beady little black eyes, suddenly stopped moving altogether and then spat in my face.

‘Who do you think you are?’ it said with a squeaky, piercing voice. ‘Rubbing me all over your body like that? Have you no shame? All that rubbing has caused my skin to break out. Look at me, I am a mess!’ It rolled over in my hand to show me his white belly, but it kept rolling and wriggling until it slithered its way through my fingers and landed with a flat thud on the floor of the shower cell.

I felt bad that such a small creature would suffer such a painful belly flop, even if it was in a dream. I bent over to pick it up and put it neatly back in the soap container, wondering when I would wake up. Read more...

The Brussels South Station Incident

by Tom Kando

Our European trip this time took us to three countries: We first visited Holland for a week, then we spent a week with our friends in rural Belgium, and then we moved on to Paris, France. 

For our weeks in Holland and in Belgium, we rented a car from Avis. But we didn’t want a car in Paris. Who needs a car in Paris?! No way!

So we drove our Avis car from Holland to Belgium, and we used it there for a week. Then, we planned to return the car in Belgium at the end of our visit to that country, and take the train there to Paris.

The train to Paris is the TGV, the Thalys bullet train. We had to catch it at the Brussels Midi Station - the South Station. So that’s where we also had to return the rented car.

On the morning of our departure from our friends’ house (about an hour outside of Brussels), we punched into the car’s GPS the address of the Avis rental car return at Brussels’ South Station: Rue de France 2. Read more...

Golden Years

by Madeleine Kando 

“With age comes wisdom, but sometimes age comes alone.”

I am old. And goddarn proud of it. Wish I had been old earlier. All those years wasted on being young. But I never could afford being old, you see. What with having to go to work every day, make babies, take care of the little brats, busting my chops to save money to send them off to college. Never even had a moment’s rest. At times I thought: ‘Wow, I wish I were old, so I wouldn’t have to deal with all this crap.’ But that was wishful thinking, or so I thought. I am sure you secretly have those thoughts too.

Well, let me tell you. Where there is a will there is a way. Don’t postpone till tomorrow what you can do today! Clog your arteries, expose yourself to stress, stop sleeping eight hours a night and above all eat and eat - eat all the garbage you can.

I tell you, if you follow this regimen, chances are you will be old before you know it and you can start enjoying what I and many of my fellow oldies enjoy. There is a reason why it’s called ‘The Golden Years’.

When young people tell you they never want to get old, they don’t know what they are talking about. They are soooo infatuated with themselves that they probably think old people want to be young, like them. Are you kidding me? Having to go through the horrors of puberty, the agony of dating, the rejection, the urges, the heart palpitations... no way!

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Obsessive Comparison Disorder

by Madeleine Kando


The eye doctor looked at my chart, then looked at me. My right eye was bloodshot, red as red can be. Like a vampire’s eyes. She placed the chart on the desk and said: ‘Your chart says that you are 75, is that true?’

‘Of course not’ I was tempted to reply. ‘I only wrote that so I would get preferential treatment. People give up their seat in the waiting room, open doors for you and don’t strike up annoying conversations, thinking that you are gaga anyway.’ Instead, I said: ‘Yes I am 75’.

‘You look great for your age’ the doctor said, as she told me to put my chin on the chinrest and peered into my bloodshot eye through the retinal camera. As I was trying to avoid eye contact with someone whose face is a few inches away, I wondered if she looked good for her age. I had no access to her chart, but if she was 50, she looked terrific; if she was 40, she wasn’t too bad looking, but if she was 35, she looked downright awful.

I wondered on what facts she based her statement about my looks. How is one supposed to look at my age? She was a pediatric doctor to whom I had been assigned on an emergency basis, so her judgment could not be based on comparing me with her other patients, who ranged between 2 and 7 year olds. Read more...

The Dunning-Kruger Effect

by Madeleine Kando

“You have to be relatively intelligent in order

to realize how stupid you are” - John Cleese.

Once upon a time a little girl was born. Her mommy and daddy were so proud and happy, that they gave her not just one name but three. That way, if she got bored being called Samantha, she still had two other names in reserve.

She was very well taken care of. There were no brothers or sisters, so everything was hers: her room was hers, her potty and bath toys were hers, her room was hers and especially her mommy! She was ALL hers.

Samantha was very curious to learn about the enormous world she was born in. So many things she had to figure out! Why doesn’t the sun fall out of the sky? Who makes the day turn into night? Where do kittens come from?

Sometimes she asked as many as 300 questions a day and they all needed to be answered because that’s what questions do; they wait for an answer before they go away and make room for the next question.

Samantha was really lucky, however. She didn’t have to go far to get answers to the millions of questions that popped up in her head. Her daddy was right there, on the other side of the room because he worked from home. Read more...

Dionne Warwick

by Tom Kando

On our recent flight to Europe, we met the legendary songstress Dionne Warwick. I am not telling you about this as a silly boast (there is nothing to boast about accidentally bumping into a celebrity, which I am sure has happened to many of you, and which in and of itself means nothing). No, I am telling you this because of the very fun and funny way in which it happened, and mostly because it was an excellent learning lesson for me:

We were on our way to Brussels, Belgium. We had just spent the night crossing the Atlantic, and we landed in Dublin, Ireland, for our connection to Belgium.

We had a couple of hours to spare, so we went shopping a little bit in the duty-free area. I was standing in line to pay the cashier for some minor purchases. Next to me stood a thirty-something man, also buying some trinkets. He courteously said to me “Go ahead, sir.” I thanked him, and we started chatting a bit. He asked me where I was going, and I told him - Brussels, Belgium. I asked him where he was heading. He replied that he and his family were going to some seaside town in England...he couldn’t quite remember the name of the place...

Figures, I thought to myself. Geography isn’t Americans’ forte. Could he mean London, maybe? The guy was probably not an experienced traveler; maybe his first time in Europe? I also thought, how nice, that “common folks” can travel overseas for leisure... Read more...

Why Cannot I be a Turkey?

by Madeleine Kando

Turkeys have invaded our backyard. Two mothers, one with eight babies, the other one with a lonely slightly bigger baby. The eight dwindled down to six, then to four as the spring went by, but finally mother nature settled on a number and the 5 of them have been steadily coming, always accompanied by the second mother and her lonely juvenile.

They used to be these adorable little fluff balls, but now I cannot tell who is who. Is it a mother or a baby? Is it a juvenile? I have to count them to make sure I am looking at the same group that we have been feeding throughout the spring and summer, against the advice of the ‘professionals’.

There is nothing ‘cute’ about them any more. They fight, chase each other, spread their large wings to scare each other off, and once in a while you see one fly into a tree, when they have had enough of the sibling rivalry. Yes, turkeys can fly. Not well, but enough to give the others the finger: ‘Fuck you, I am outa here’.

Now I am wondering: are they really the same turkeys as these cute little balls of feathers that first appeared in our yard? If they are like humans, new cells have replaced every single cell in their body multiple times. Just like new ‘Madeleine’ cells have replaced my cells at least 10 times, depending on which type of cells we are talking about. Except my brain cells; they have never been replaced. If you wonder about the poor quality of my writing, it is because I am writing with the same old brain cells that I was born with 75 years ago. Read more...

Getting there is (Not) Half the Fun

by Tom Kando

My wife Anita and I have been back from Europe for a few weeks. We have finally caught up with the many errands that pile up during one’s absence, so I can now begin to tell you about some of the more “interesting” things that happened during our 4-week journey to Belgium, Paris, Switzerland and Rome.

I use the word “interesting” both in its general positive meaning , and also in the sense of the old Chinese curse wishing someone “an interesting life:”

As one gets older, international travel becomes more challenging, especially for those of us who refuse to throw in the towel, and who continue to travel independently rather than joining guided groups or going on cruises. We still rent cars and brave European traffic, we run around foreign railroad stations and airports for local connections, we take local subways and buses. We do it all, because we value authenticity. We also have friends and relatives in several of the countries to which we go. We are not just tourists. Read more...

The Truth About First Twins

by Madeleine Kando

My twin sister was born 15 minutes after I entered this valley of tears. As we sprinted for the exit, she almost passed the finish line before me, but due to a last-minute trip up, she fell back and I came out first. It was a close call, though, and had it not been for the tight squeeze, it would have been a tie, branding us the first twins ever to be born at the exact same time.

I actually did all the leg work and my sister just went along for the ride, twiddling her little baby thumbs while sitting on her hiney, doing nothing.

This happened a long long time ago, a period in history when parents of twins were popping them out like rabbit turds, blissfully unaware of the extremely hazardous consequences of being a twin. Here you are, trying to take your first breath, exhausted, hungry, covered with slime, expecting all the attention to be focused on you, and then your twin comes along, stealing all the limelight. You get wrapped in a blanket and placed in a container, while everybody is turning their backs on you giving attention to this other thing. Read more...