Larry Brody Post – Page 49 – Larry Brody's Blog

Why I Live in Port Townsend WA…

(by Sergio Amiti/Getty via thestranger.com)

…Well, if I’m honest about it (a phrase I find more and more in current novels by UK writers using the first person), I don’t really live in Port Townsend.

Gwen the Beautiful and I actually live in a small, rural suburb of PT, which is itself a small, rural suburb of Seattle, which once was a small semi-rural city but now is a teeming tech industry bastion, but I don’t want to name that city (officially a village) because even though I expose myself in varying degrees daily on our beloved interwebs, we do value our privacy.

Did I ever tell you about my stalker?

Luckily, that’s from another place and time. What I want to present here now is one of the most positive aspects of life in Port Townsend’s growing corner of the Olympic Peninsula.

I’m talking about the fact that it has one of the largest populations of 1970’s hippies you’ll find anywhere, and the result is that the people in PT are just about as rebellious, creative, colorful, welcoming (and also unwelcoming – you remember how the ’70s hippies were, right?), and independently minded as any group of people can be.

Today’s example is a mention in a column by Jas Keimig that I found at The Stranger.Com yesterday. Here’s that mention in full (because it’s news and that allows me to reproduce it, right? God, I hope I’m right. Anyway:)

Southern resident orcas have rights, too: Port Townsend knows this. Today, the town issued a (nonbinding) proclamation recognizing orcas’ legal rights, the first time an American city council has done so, reports the Seattle Times. What does that include? According to Port Townsend Mayor David J. Faber, orcas have “the right to life, autonomy, culture, free and safe passage, adequate food supply from naturally occurring sources, and freedom from conditions causing physical, emotional or mental harm, including a habitat degraded by noise, pollution and contamination.” And we better respect them!

Yep, PT is that kind of place, and as a result I’m proud to live, um, Port-Townsend-adjacent. Come visit sometime. (Not me, the area. If you want to see Gwen and/or me, get in touch about if first, por favor, and we’ll see if you meet the stringent requirements.)

Heard in the Urologist’s Office

(via moi)

“A catheter is like an ex-spouse. The best day with it is worse than the worst day without it.”

Is this joke tasteless? Of course it is. But I’m doing the best I can to rid myself of everything my recent medical experience, um, loaded into me.

Look at the bright side, beloved visitors. At least I haven’t found an appropriate New Yorker style cartoon illo to accompany this.

Yet.

LYMI,

“How’re you feeling, LB? Everything all right?”

(A peek at the breakfast, lunch & dinner I've been gobbling down to celebrate my 78 years)

I’ve been getting a lot of questions about my health and activities lately, and last Monday I made what turned out to be a feeble attempt to answer them.

By which I mean I added a note to the bottom of my post of part three of Look, Ma!,”Gravity City” Interviews Larry Brody, failing to consider that some friends, family, and other caring people might not have as much interest in the interview as I do.

Turns out the stats for that particular post indicate that a whole lot of people didn’t have much interest, so for those of you who’ve been concerned – and believe you me, I appreciate all the concern to the point of being overwhelmed by it, here’s a slightly edited version of what the note had to say:

A few things in my life have changed over the past several months, and since we’re all buds here, I figure it’s time to risk the dread TMI and fill everyone in.

As many of you have noticed, I’ve had to take TVWriter™ offline and drop all my teaching/mentoring/consulting for health reasons, specifically the return of my prostate cancer (last heard from and regarded by the doctors as gone three years ago) and the accompanying further treatment and surgery.

Cryosurgery, to be exact. An interesting technique involving freezing the cancer cells and thereby sending them to their doom. I went under the medical ice cream scoop (well, I can’t exactly call it a knife), the last week in October, and as of this writing the prognosis is very good, with all the cancer cells previously identified by a new combo PET/CT scan technique not merely gone, but gone, gone, gone, glory hallelujah.

As I write this, I’m feeling pretty damn fine, even though the surgical recovery process is still ongoing. My good spirits for the most part are due to the fact that after 5 weeks of being annoyingly – and sometimes quite painfully – ensconced in the place that catheters traditionally inhabit in situations like mine, my catheter has at last been removed and I can now do exciting things like shower and touch myself and live pretty lead a normal day.

Except for the exercise and dog walking that have defined my normal days for most of my adult life. They’re more limited now but are returning slowly but surely to the excitingly obsessive excess that has characterized pretty much everything I do.

Posting this info (and the interview it originally accompanied) has been a fun way of celebrating my new situation, and know what? It’s even better than all the chocolate birthday cake with pink frosting I’ve been eating for the past few days.

Well, almost better. You know how it is.

Thanks for caring!

LYMI

LB: Live! From Paradise #214 “Different Worlds”

(The Intro above is from this column's previous web incarnation)

by Larry Brody

Our Ford pickup spent a few days at Steve’s Body Shop recently, and when Gwen the Beautiful and I retrieved it, lo and behold! I found myself very happy about a couple of things.

The first thing that brought a smile to my face was the sight of the truck in all its renewed glory. Steve had done a great job of getting rid of all the dents, dings, and scratches caused when a tree fell down onto our camper shell during the ice storm. And there was even an added bonus: The paint matches perfectly.

The second joyful moment came with the realization that Gwen and I didn’t have to drive around in the stripped down mini-vehicle that the insurance company had rented for the 4 days the truck was gone. I don’t like kicking anyone while he’s down, but, come on, Dodge…do you really expect humans to ride in a Caliber?

As Gwen and I were deciding who would drive which vehicle while we headed over to the car rental agency, a couple of Good Ole Boys we didn’t know drove up. I don’t intentionally listen to other people’s conversations, but that doesn’t mean I don’t overhear them. Maybe it’s a survival thing—or, more likely, a writer one—but I’m usually pretty well attuned to what’s being said around me.

The topic of conversation between these Ole Boys wasn’t the car one of them was picking up. Instead it was his wife.

“Whew,” one of them said. “We’re picking up this baby just in time. I’ve got to go to Jonesboro tomorrow, and Edie’ll need the ride.”

“How long you gonna be gone this time?” I heard his friend say.

“Three weeks. Not long enough.”

“You two having trouble?” the friend said.

“What? No, no, I don’t mean it that way. I mean that I can’t make enough money in three weeks. Last time I made the Jonesboro run I had six weeks of ten-hour days. Made out pretty well.”

“Hey, this’ll be better’n nothing, won’t it?”

The friend’s voice sounded a little troubled, almost sad. The first man spoke up quickly. “There’s a job for you somewhere, Matt, you’ll see.”

They went into the office, so I didn’t hear Matt’s reply, if there was one. Didn’t see his face. But I understood his situation. And that of Edie’s husband as well.

The economy had struck again.

Gwen has the gift of being able to stick to a subject. Of being in one conversation at a time. Her conversation. She looked at me closely.

“Larry? Sweetie, what happened to your smile? Do you know you just went blank?”

I answered her question with one of my own. “Have you talked to Rachel lately? Her husband still out of town?”

“As far as I know. Working construction in Springfield. He’s been gone a couple of months.”

“How does she feel about that? About him having to be away in order to earn a living?” I said.

“The way I would,” Gwen said. “Or so I imagine. She’s never said anything except that there’s nothing here and they’ve got a mortgage to pay.”

“Dwayne the Earth Mover’s been working out of town for years. He and Elizabeth only see each other every other weekend. I’ve never heard him complain either.”

“We’re not in Hollywood anymore, honey,” Gwen said. “Nobody’s giving out golden statuettes and big paychecks for farming or driving a bulldozer. Diva behavior gets a person nothing but a kick in the pants.

“Our neighbors do what they’ve got to do” she went on. “They learned long ago to do it without complaining”

“And you know this because…?”

“Because I’m from Oklahoma, where it’s the same life.”

“Hey, I met you in Santa Monica, you know.”

“Where I was miserable. But you didn’t hear me complaining.”

Gwen pulled herself up into the truck. “Meet you at the car place,” she said and started the engine.

Couldn’t let her get too far ahead. I hurried back to the little Caliber, fumbled for the key. The time might come when, like too many other couples, we had to be apart in order to survive, but the thought of that ever happening made me want to do everything I could to stay as close as I could for now.

I’m not complaining, not now. But if life ever takes us that way, then, by all I believe in, I swear I’m going to make one hell of a stink!