CNI Editorial Writing Award Award

 

1999

EDITORIAL   Voters, not school board, should reject candidacy Make no mistake about it, this newspaper is opposed to Charlie Cave's attempt to seek re-election to the Allendale County School Board. We wish he weren't running. The fact that he is running means he still has not accepted responsibility for what he did. By his own admission, he pulled out a knife while on school grounds, while at a school function. His quibbling over the length of the blade is just that. He violated the Safe Schools Act, which he as a school board member had a duty to enforce. The Board's right to remove him from office has been upheld, and a Circuit Court judge ruled that Charlie Cave's actions on that fateful night in December, 1996 "rose to the level of misconduct in office." He is still facing criminal prosecution, including a weapons charge and an assault charge. He has absolutely no moral ground on which to stand, and anyone who votes for him also lacks moral standing. To vote for Charlie Cave will be to say you don't care about safe schools. Someone else, anyone else from that district should step up and run for the seat. But make no mistake about it, this newspaper is completely against the Allendale School Board's decision to fight Cave's re-election by any and all means. This school board had the right to remove him from the board. It does not have any right to get involved in the political process. Right now, all Charlie Cave has done is file to run in a Democratic Party primary. Since no one filed to run as a Republican or as an independent candidate, the election will be decided in the political primary. We agree with the school board that Cave is unfit for this office. If he runs, the voters should vote to keep him out. We think if the voters put him back in office, then the School Board should once more remove him from office. But we do not think that ANY governmental body or agency should start trying to control any election. That is absolutely not the way that things are done in the United States of America. The School Board barely had enough members present last week to hold a meeting, and the vote to proceed with preventing Cave's election was divided, 2-1. If the other member had been present, it probably still would have been a successful vote. But the two members who voted to go ahead with this action have cast a vote for what can only be called repression. The government is trying to control an election. We urge the school board to call an immediate meeting, reconsider this vote, and put faith in the voters of Allendale County. If the voters of his district want Charlie Cave to represent them, then they have to right to cast their votes for him without any government telling them otherwise. If a government agency limits the choices we can make in an election, then it is controlling that election. We cannot say it loud enough. No. Not here, not ever. Judges' comments for CNI's Better Newspaper Contest Friday, July 30, 1999 Amicalola Falls State Park Best Editorial Writing First place: Stephen Guilfoyle, The Allendale County Citizen Leader: "Voters, not school board, should reject candidacy." From the first sentence, this editorial writer takes a strong position and continues to hold his ground throughout. You never doubt where the writer stands, and you can't help but read on after the first enticing paragraphs. The editorial contains enough background to fill in new readers and refresh familiar ones. The writer makes several points sure to make the reader ponder the issues involved. He is also brave enough to stand for democratic principles even when that stance probably won't sit well with some readers. I'm now curious as to how this whole process worked out. Well done. The judge mentioned six "other notables (no awards given):" School board lawyer delays Cave indictment," The Allendale County Citizen Leader; and "Secrecy subverts justice," The People-Sentinel, were among them. I wrote those as well.

 This article appeared in The Catholic News Herald Sept. 1, 2022

Getting Closer to God

Two Scouts tell of their their memorable St. George Trek

By Stephen Guilfoyle

Two Boy Scouts from the Diocese of Charlotte took a long hike this summer through “God’s country.”

Caleb Laney and Joseph Wood were among 70 Catholic Scouts from across the U.S. who tackled the St. George Trek at Philmont Scout Ranch in July.

A 140,000-acre ranch in Cimarron, New Mexico, Philmont is home to the Boy Scouts of America’s premier high adventure camp. Each year, thousands of Scouts venture there for two-week hikes – backpacking 5 to 12 miles a day through isolated wilderness in New Mexico’s Sangre de Cristo Range of the Rocky Mountains at elevations of 6,500 to 12,500 feet, well into the range where altitude sickness kicks in.

The St. George Trek – named for the patron saint of Scouting – is a Philmont adventure designed for older Catholic Scouts who want to deepen their faith while taking on physical challenges. Held every two years, the trek layers on daily Mass, prayer, reflections and deep conversation about life’s purpose to all that Philmont offers.

“The primary goal of the St. George Trek,” Father Mike Santangelo tells folks as trek director, “is to provide participants with an opportunity to consider where God may be calling them.”

At the end of the 11-day challenge, Scouts commit to further discerning their life’s vocation and staying involved in the Church.

Caleb and Joseph were selected to represent the Diocese of Charlotte on the St. George Trek by the Charlotte Diocese Catholic Committee on Scouting.

On July 6, the two Scouts flew 1,500 miles from Charlotte to Albuquerque. They were assigned to different crews when they arrived: Caleb to Crew 1 and Joseph to Crew 3. The 12- to 13-member crews spent the next day getting to know each other, planning and packing, and beginning their reflections and attendance at daily Mass. On July 8, they boarded buses for the Philmont ranch.

Caleb and Joseph’s crews were supposed to hike different paths, meet on Day 6 for a retreat, then hike a few more days back to pick-up points. But not everything went according to plan.

CALEB’S TREK

Like many Boy Scouts, Caleb Laney, 17, wanted to test himself against the rigors of Philmont, but he also wanted more.

Caleb lives in Peachland, population 380, where the closest Boy Scout troop is 589, chartered by Pleasant Hill United Methodist Church in the even smaller town of McFarlan. Both towns are in rural Anson County, 40 miles east of Charlotte. He and his family attend Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Monroe.

Caleb and his sister are the only Catholic students in their high school, he said.

Going on the St. George Trek, Caleb hoped to be around “more Catholics and be around more people my age.”

He was happy to join a dozen Catholic Scouts in Crew 1 – just what he’d hoped for.

On Day 1, Caleb’s crew embarked on the trail to Lovers Leap, then went on to hike around Crater Lake to Miners Park for rock climbing. On Day 3, it was up Black Mountain for black powder rifle shooting, then a Day 4 stop at Cypher’s Mine, where gold had once been discovered and ghosts were said to remain.

Beyond the physical challenges of Philmont, the crews had Mass every day, with opportunities for penance and reconciliation. Two adults – one a priest – hiked with each crew.

Daily Mass “was new to me,” Caleb said. “It was nice, though. A nice quiet part of the day.”

Mass wasn’t at a set time, he said. “It depended on what we wanted to do. If we wanted to go to a peak – say, ‘Let’s have Mass on the peak,’ we’d do that. Or if we wanted to have it around lunch, we’d do that.”

SKIES OPEN UP

On the fifth day, Caleb’s crew began Mass atop Black Mountain, a dominant feature on the Philmont landscape. Then it started to hail.

A hailstorm was no problem for the Scouts, though – they used their ponchos to shield the priest and makeshift altar.

“After the Mass, we got under some trees. Lightning moved in for about 40 minutes,” he said. “After that we had to boogie down the mountain.”

The crew then pressed on for Cimarroncito, a camp area that also features a little covered chapel and outdoor benches, for a mid-trek retreat.

But on Day 6, COVID-19 struck. Someone tested positive and Caleb’s crew was dispatched to Philmont’s quarantine camp.

“We were ‘unclean,’” Caleb joked.

The commissary brought his crew meals each day. The Scouts could venture out for day hikes but had to return to “Quarantine Camp” each night.

Their first day there, it hailed again. They ended up spending the day in their tents.

Yet the Scouts soon made the best of the unexpected situation – setting their sights on climbing the Tooth of Time.

The intimidating rock outcrop along the Santa Fe Trail juts upward 9,003 feet. With a sheer rock face, it has become Philmont’s most recognizable symbol, named for its tooth-like shape and its signal to traders heading west in the 1800s that Santa Fe was only seven days away.

As the Scouts set out for the hike, the day began with clear skies. A crewmate caught a photo of Caleb greeting the morning sun with outstretched arms.

The crew decided to have their final Sunday Mass atop the Tooth of Time.

Caleb appreciated that the St. George Trek didn’t prioritize the religious aspect over the Philmont part, or vice versa. To him, both were important.

“It definitely made me more confident to be around other people my age who are Catholic,” he said. “I absolutely loved being able to have a spiritual journey and have a journey through God’s country.”

JOSEPH’S TREK

At 15, Joseph Wood’s journey began not in a tiny town but in Troop 8 – the largest Catholic troop in one of the largest Catholic parishes in the nation: St. Matthew.

Troop 8 goes on Philmont treks every two years, but Joseph recognized the St. George Trek, with its Catholic component, offered something different.

The longest Joseph had hiked before Philmont was a “shakedown” trek he and Caleb did together on Crowders Mountain in Gaston County, a 10-mile overnight dress rehearsal with full pack and gear to prepare for the St. George Trek.

“At Philmont, it was 50, 60, 70 miles” over the course of 12 days, he recalled.

He knows that because his crew leader’s fitness tracker helped chart their distance, recording 14 miles one day, until it ran out of power and the boys had to switch to rough estimates using maps.

Facebook posts also tracked Joseph’s journey. On July 13, photos show Crew 3 reaching Hunting Lodge Camp, a clearing in the woods with an historic log cabin.

The Scouts are wearing jackets and look considerably grimier than in the fresh-faced photos from their arrival.

Joseph’s crew also embraced daily Mass during their trek, participating in the sacrament of penance, talks and reflections. On July 15, Crew 3 reached Cimarroncito. There Joseph and his crewmates attended Mass with Bishop R. Daniel Conlon, the U.S. bishops’ liaison to the National Catholic Committee on Scouting.

Talks from seminarians, conversion stories, and discussions about the lives of saints made the daylong retreat a reflective time, Joseph said.

The break wasn’t all reflection, however. Crews 2 and 3 also undertook a service project while at Cimarroncito, helping clean up a small part of the nearby “burn scar,” where 27,000 acres had been damaged in a 2018 wildfire.

MIND, BODY AND SOUL

Joseph appreciated the break in the middle from the exhausting trek.

Hiking at a high elevation on the third day, he recalled, “I was having a hard time. My pack was heavy.”

But on Day 6, at retreat, the Scouts rested “mind, body and soul,” Joseph said. After that, “I was ready to do the next half, feeling nice and refreshed.”

The St. George Trek “was more than what I thought it would be,” he said. “I didn’t realize there would be talks; I didn’t know there would be Mass, not every day. I didn’t know how into the faith it was going to be. I was pleasantly surprised by that.”

Doing the trek and absorbing the seminarians’ vocation stories, Joseph began to think about what his own vocation might be.

“They asked, ‘What are you called to do? What do you think God is calling you to?’”

Joseph said he prayed a rosary one night while thinking about those questions.

“While you are out in the backcountry, hiking, you have a lot of time to yourself, thinking …” he said. “I need to pray about it more and ask God what He wants me to do.”

“Philmont, it’s a great experience,” he added. “It’s hard…You learn about yourself. And if you do the St. George Trek, you learn even more about yourself.”

Scouts: Explore your faith

The Charlotte Diocese Catholic Committee on Scouting selects two Scouts for the St. George Trek, which happens every two years at Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico.

The committee covers the registration fee of $925 per person, and families cover travel costs proper hiking gear.

Committee chairman Mike Nielsen encourages more Scouts to apply: “It is a unique opportunity for Scouts to spend nearly two weeks in the backcountry of Philmont Scout Ranch with priests, deacons and seminarians – not only enjoying the beauty and majesty of nature but also exploring their faith, values, morality, spirituality and vocations as young Catholic men and women with fellow Scouts from all over the U.S.”

Caleb Laney

090122 laneyAge: 17

Home: Peachland

Home Church: Our Lady of Lourdes, Monroe

Troop: 589

Chartered by: Pleasant Hill United Methodist Church, McFarlan

Scout Rank: Eagle

Scouting positions of note: Chaplain’s Aide, Senior Patrol Leader

Catholic Scouting awards:

Parvuli Dei (Cub Scouts)

Joseph Wood

Age: 15

Home: Charlotte

Home Church: St. Vincent de Paul, Charlotte

Troop: 8

Chartered by: St. Matthew

Scout Rank: Life

Scouting positions of note: Chaplain’s Aide, Patrol Leader

Catholic Scouting Awards:

Parvuli Dei (Cub Scouts); Ad Altare Dei (Boy Scouts)

Thoughts on the death of a Star Wars comic writer

Tom Veitch, One of the Vanguards of Star Wars' Expanded Universe, Has Died

So, this is an expansion of something I posted last night, on Facebook, giving more detail.

I didn't post it because I liked what he wrote in the Star Wars universe. I did like it.

But I like a lot of "works" by folks, and when they pass, might say something. Might not.

Tom Veitch, however?

He was ... a nice guy.

That's it. Just a nice guy.

Here's my "evidence."

It's a cut and paste I have saved for years, first in a "DocMaker" doc. An early kind of digital magazine format that let you combine art and even clickable actions and sounds.

Resaved it when DocMaker went became obsolete programming to an html file. I can't read it as text, but I can open the "page" in a browser and cut and paste out of it.

It was originally posted on the America Online Star Wars Fan Club. AOLSWFC for "short."

Fas were discussing the new works that were coming out. Among them, Star Wars: Dark Empire. The image on the left above is from the cover of one of the Dark Empire comics.

And there he was. Tom Veitch. The actual writer of the piece.

Engaging with readers and fans. Not just to brag on the work or push sales. Actually, completely the opposite.

Some of what he wrote raised questions among fans. Do Jedi really stay above "anger"?

Subj: Anger and the Jedi

95-10-02 00:24:38 EDT

From: Tom Veitch

SGUILFOYLE says <<As much as he'd like to think it wasn't, Master Thon was full of it when he said it wasn't vengeance. Had to be. Also justice. Also self-defense. But Nomi had an awful pissed off look on her face when she slashed that one guy.>>

The Jedi seem to walk a thin line in battle. On the one hand they fight to defend, to bring justice and peace. On the other hand (or in either hand) they wield one of the most violent hand-weapons ever conceived. Mike Beidler and I were talking about the film BRAVEHEART, which we both agreed is one of the greatest war movies of all time. We seemed to agree that, in many ways, Braveheart is about the same things that Star Wars is about, except Star Wars is a fantasy and Braveheart (supposedly) is about things that really happened. But just put yourself back in time ten thousand or fifteen thousand years, into the "middle ages" of the Galaxy.

Can you imagine a great land battle, with hundreds (or thousands) of lightsaber wielding warriors taking on an opposing army of savage swordsmen in an open plain? Can you imagine the carnage, when those lightsabers cut through the blades and limbs of the enemy?

Well...some Galactic historians say it was never like that. They opine that the Jedi were so versatile in the use of the Force that they simply made all the weapons fly out of their opponents' hands.

The Jedi, they say, seldom, if ever, cut with the lightsword. I dunno. When Obi-Wan pulled his weapon in the Cantina, after years of meditative retirement, I started to wonder.

In the written script and the novel (as we know) he slices aliens left and right: <<The rodent thing had been cleft cleanly down the middle, its two halves falling in opposite directions. The giant multicolored create still stood staring, dazed, at the old human who was poised motionless before it, the shining lightsaber held over his head in a peculiar fashion. The creature's chrome pistol fired once, blowing a hole in the door. Then the torso peeled away as neatly as had the body of the rodent, its two cauterized sections falling in opposite directions to lie motionless on the cool stone.>>

Heavy duty stuff, and probably a small taste of what life was like back in the days of yore, when the only law in town was a well-tuned lightsaber. And yet...there is the tension in the story created by Yoda's admonition to become "passive"... and the darkside monopoly on the emotion of anger. Is a great warrior ever really "passive"?

Is a great warrior never angry? Go see Braveheart and then come back and tell me a great warrior is never angry.

Yer philosopher Jedi, Tom

PS -- Sorry I haven't been around much lately. I can't get too excited bragging about myself or chatting about posters and products for sale, expensive "metal Dark Empire cards" and stuff like that. I'm always up for a thoughtful discussion, if one gets going, though. Or a good joke. And I mean a GOOD joke, SG. ;-)

((This is me back again. I took fake offense at the last item. Because I had tried out in the Star Wars group something I had seen on a Star Trek forum. Star Wars Chicken jokes. They are lame. But people were howling. And that's what I really saved. My entire archive of Chicken jokes, complete with comments and the chicken jokes other people tried to write as well.))

Subj: Re:Anger and the Jedi

95-10-02 02:07:19 EDT

From: SGUILFOYLE

<<<Or a good joke. And I mean a GOOD joke, SG. ;-)>>>

I have a feeling there's going to be some very pissed off capons knocking at your door pretty soon, Mr. Veitch.

Wounded, hurt am I. I have entertained, probably, maybe, at the very most, dozens (OK one dozen, but it's a baker's dozen if you include my mom) with my chicken jokes.

I thought we were buds.

((I do not remember how extensively we had been talking before that post. But I switched gears to discuss another project he had that just came out.))

Anyway, I picked up Superman at Earth's End tonight. Kal-El was looking a lot fluffier than when I last saw him. Different kind of tale. Down note, I was actually kind of grossed out by Clark walking into the funeral pyre and we getting to see a flaming silhouette of his skull. it was almost as disturbing as flashing on Christopher Reeve in a wheelchair on Baba Wawa the other night. I have a clicker to take care of one of those unsettling sights.

Subj: Shadows of the Chicken Jokes

95-10-04 23:41:22 EDT

From: Tom Veitch

<<I have a feeling there's going to be some very pissed off capons knocking at your door pretty soon, Mr. Veitch. Wounded, hurt am I. I have entertained, probably, maybe, at the very most, dozens (OK one dozen, but it's a baker's dozen if you include my mom) with my chicken jokes. I thought we were buds.>>

Enjoy those capons we did, SG. Very fine roasted, and the next day chicken salad we made. A little Ewok pate on the side.

Seriously, though, good Star Wars jokes are hard to come by. I tried all day yesterday to think of one, finally came up with one about two Scottish bounty hunters in a bar, but unfortunately it transgressed AOL's TOS, so I guess it'll have to wait. :-\ T-

Subj: Re:Shadows of the Chicken Jokes

95-10-05 03:08:17 EDT

From: SGUILFOYLE

You can e-mail the joke to me. Make me laugh so hard I'll pee ma kilt. ...

I think the discussion went on in another thread. Because he mentioned Braveheart and talked about Jedi walking over fields of dead people in a great battle, the horror of it, I told him somewhere I thought that, if George Lucas ever got around to making the prequels, Angus MacFayden would make a good young Obi-Wan Kenobi. I had drawn a picture of a young Obi-Wan striding across a battlefield looking devastated, and gave him the MacFayden goatee and he looked a bit like the actor.

Tom didn't agree. Tom was already in tight at Lucasfilm, such as it was, at this time. And Lucas was already beginning to do some work on the prequels. So maybe he knew something I didn't when he disagreed.

We had other discussions, but I didn't save them because there was no obvious appeal to my vanity at the time. And a good chicken joke is hard to come by.

I did them on and off for a few months. At a certain point, I wrote a special "series" of them, based on his series. Star Wars: Dark Chicken.

I keep meaning to get all that stuff I put on the Internet back in the day into some usable form on another blog or website. But life doesn't give me a lot of time.

But I went and found the files again, because of his passing.

And I will go out at some point to the garage and comb through the boxes and find them, the real testament to the kind of guy Tom Veitch was.

At some point we fell out of touch. The AOLSWFC got to be a slightly different place. I was moving on from Cheraw to Barnwell about that time. Maybe I left it before it went belly up. Maybe it was AOL's collapse.

But before I lost touch, we were talking about some of his other stuff. I said it was impossible to find the series that made George Lucas trust him to do a Star Wars comic.

It was called "The Light and Darkness War." Really weird, but in a good way. Forces of light and dark, obviously, fighting (obviously). Leonardi da Vinci hooks up with weird aliens and Vietnam veterans to fight the war.

It was a six-issue series, but I think a limited run. I didn't know at the time, but he got the job doing that comic and had a chance to work with THE Archie Goodwin. A great comic writer and storyteller. I am as jealous of Tom's time with the Goodwin as I am as his time with George Lucas. The comics, like I said, were impossible to get.

But during one of those chats, he had asked for my address, and not thinking the thoughts I would think now in these days of internet privacy, gave it to him.

A little while later, I was surprised to find all six issues delivered to my door. I can't remember where or when exactly it was.

Gratis. Just because we had had some good chats online, and he laughed, though he wouldn't admit it, at a chicken joke or two of mine.

Like I said. He was just a nice guy. I have the comics to prove it.

More on my eye

For anyone wondering what I was babbling about when I talked about my vision the day AFTER I had the cataract removed, take a look at this picture. It's the same picture on both sides.

The pic on the right is how the colors looked out of my right eye — after that cataract had been removed.

The pic on the left is how the colors look in my left eye, which still has a cataract in it.

I have no idea whether the cataract in the right eye was equally as bad, worse, or better.

And this has nothing to do with how well focused anything is. Just what it reported to my eye as the color representation. 

You might not be able to tell, but if you look at the whitest areas (the table and the trim on the wall_ the white on the left isn't quite as white as the white on the left.

I put a completely white block layer over the left side of the picture, than made it about 30 percent transparent. Because that is what the cataract basically is. A crystalline cloud on the lens of your eye.

I go back in a couple of weeks and the doctor will tell me how it is doing and if it is stable enough to get a check on the focus, and see if I can get a new contact lens just for the right eye.

Anyway. This is my boy and his Uncle Johnny from Dec. 14, 2014, when John visited for some Cub Scouting event related to the Pinewood Derby.

BLAST FROM THE PAST: My eye is doing well; I sure hope they ...

From The News & Reporter, Sept. 2, 2009.  

You'd think, with the eyes of the world on not only the politicians involved but also the healthcare industry, because of this big emotional debate going on, an insurance company would be more careful.

Now understand, my insurance company is saying it's just a glitch. It will get fixed, they say. It's getting run through the process again, they say.

But there shouldn't be a glitch. It shouldn't have to be fixed. It was supposedly processed almost six months ago.

    I got a notice from my insurance company last week. It said a $2,800 charge from my eye doctor was denied. Said the policy only covered what was listed and to check the books on what was and wasn't listed. None of the books I've read with my insurance policy go into which specific procedures are or aren't listed. Just what will be paid at what percentage.

    I thought the eye doctor's had handled the pre-approval. They submitted everything, and when it was done, they told me how much I'd have to pay. Before the surgery.

    So it strikes me as a bit odd that I got a denial form, six months later, saying the “patient responsibility” for a $2,800 charge is $2,800.

    Having seen an earlier form indicating a bill for about $2,600 was paid, I thought perhaps a copy of some piece of paper went through the loop after falling off a paper clip. But when I called the eye doctor's business office on Monday, they said the $2,600 was for the surgery itself. There was an anesthesia charge from another office, not as much. There was a facilities charge from the out-patient eye clinic where they did the work.

    Then there was this final charge.

    This charge, basically, relates to the costs of getting me a cornea to transplant.

    Imagine needing a heart transplant, and the insurance will pay for hospital, surgeon and anesthesia, but you were told, “The cost of the heart's all on you.”

    I was a bit incredulous.

    My wife and I went into this knowing we could only do it if it was covered. When we were told what the costs would generally be, after the pre-approval, we thought we could handle it. 

    Of course, we didn't realize how long the recovery would take. I was out of work for a full month, and used up all my sick leave and vacation. My company has a nice thing where you get back a little of what you lost under its family medical leave act policy. But I had to use up all of my leave time first, and be out a little bit longer, before I qualified. It gave me a percentage of my regular, missed pay.

    At the same time, we had a week's furlough to contend with for me, which is lost wages. We have had since May a pay cut she got in her job. We will soon be contending with a week's furlough for my wife, as well.

    We're thankful to still have our jobs, given both the economy and the troubled industry we are both in. But we are also hurting. It's harder to make ends meet.

    So a $2,800 bill for the actual tissue that was placed on my eye had me a trifle concerned.

    Perhaps the guy on the other end of the line could detect a slight, hmm, something in my voice.

    “We can't pay it,” I told the insurance company guy. “Is someone going to repossess my eye?”

    He laughed, but it was a nervous laugh.

    He checked this and looked at that. I told him the billing person at the eye doctor's office said this procedure is covered under Medicare, and an insurance company almost always covers what Medicare covers. So I shouldn't worry, she said. She said they had just gotten the denial, and would put in an appeal.

    The guy accepted the info about Medicare, and did some more “this and that,” and said he would put it through again for payment.

    Just a glitch, he assured me.

    He did not assure me that the insurance would be paying the entire amount, however. Maybe it would. Maybe it would pay 80 percent, and I'd have to pay 20 percent. I can handle that, somehow.

    But since he did not guarantee it would actually be paid, maybe the insurance would still pay nothing.

    So I'm left wondering.

    By the way, I'm going to the eye doctor in a week or so. And the last time I went, I got 20/25 vision wearing my glasses.  So the eye is doing remarkably well.

    I sure hope they let me keep it.

BLAST FROM THE PAST: You might catch me staring ...

 From The News & Reporter, Dec. 24, 2008 

My left eye is going to be bloodshot on St. Patrick's Day.

I'm 100 percent Irish, but it won't be for obvious reasons. I'll be having eye surgery on March 16. I will have a cornea transplant and that's the soonest they can schedule it.

I've had a condition in both my eyes since I was probably 14 called keratoconus.

"Kerato" is a Latin for wart. The conous is the "cone" of my eye, the cornea.

The eye has several parts important to vision. Unbeknownst to me for the longest time, the part you would think does most of the focusing, the lens, inside the eye, actually does about 20 percent of the focusing.

I don't have a wart like one might get on his thumb, but there is a distortion of the tissue that covers the eye. You can't see it to look at it, because the tissue is very thin, and the tissue is also transparent.

But the tissue that bends the light to where it hits the lens is distorted. 

I've had it since I was in high school. We've tried a bunch of things. Contact lenses were once thought to help. I once had to wear a soft contact lens on one eye, over which they placed a hard contact. That was back when I was in college. It was annoying, and actually irritating.

Just recently, they suggested we try a new type of contact lens. It had a soft edge with a "semi-hard" center.

The contact lens in both instances was to take the place of my damaged cornea.

The piggyback didn't work too well that semester in college. The new-type lens didn't work at all most recently.

In my college years, at two separate times, I had surgery then. Long name for the procedure, but it was a graft. They put a little bit of someone else's cornea on top of mine. It was intended to stabilize my vision. It did well enough. I still needed glasses to see good, but my eye worked well enough.

I continued to see the doctor who did my surgery up until a few years ago. He doesn't do this anymore, I understand. He passed me off to another doctor in his practice. It's actually a family operation, and I have a lot of trust for what was done. I had two procedures done on my eyes then. You see, you only do one at a time.

Anyway, my former doctor said that he was amazed how long the grafts had held up, but they were beginning to go.

The vision in my left eye is atrocious, and the plan, right now, is to do that eye. But my right eye is actually a bit more fragile, despite giving me substantially better vision. And I wonder if I'm making the right choice.

I'm not much of a daredevil, but I'd almost like to do them both at once.

I'm amazed at how the technology has come in certain respects. For other problems of the eyey, cataracts, etc., they can use a laser to reshape the eye. But not this.

I don't hear much about the graft being done, though I've fallen off the National Keratoconus Foundation's mailing list since it merged with another eye disease group.

But this procedure that was done at a hospital when i was 19 will now be done on an outpatient basis at my doctor's office.

There will be pain. But I remember what happened the last time. I had it done over the summer, so it didn't interfere with college courses, not that much. The vision problem did interfere with it.

I've had my prescription changed about four times in the past year, and we didn't get one the last time I went in. Thought it could perhaps survive.

I'm sure it's hard to do any job if you can't read. But reading is about 90 percent of my job. There's this solid waste plan for Chester County that I've been dying to delve into, sitting on my desk.

My right eye is fragile, I think, because it's been carrying the load for so long. So after the shock to my left from the surgery subsides, it will take some time for the vision to settle in to what it will be. I'll have stitches in my eye for almost a year, though some will come out sooner, and some will "pop" too early and cause something between an itch and pain like a molecular sized needle stock in your eye.

When they told me what day I was going to have surgery, I had the opening line of my column right away. 

I thought it was funny, and it had the added benefit of outraging one of my sisters and my mother.

"How can you make a joke about this?" they wanted to know.

It's the easiest thing in the world to make fun of it. If you can't, then it owns you.

It's an established procedure. I think this doctor is about my age. I might be a little weirded out if he were younger, but that will have to happen someday, right?

And while there's some humor to be made at the situation, and it will certainly get funnier as the day approaches and they ask you all those silly questions, we have to take it seriously.

I've never really had good vision in my life, but if something does go wrong, what I have today might be the best vision I'll ever remember as an adult. There's a lot to lock in. My gorgeous bride, my smiling, blue-eyed son are foremost among the things I will have to memorize.

So you might catch me staring.

PS: I wrote the following short, short column a few days before my 2009 surgery, right before I took what was supposed to be a week off and turned into a month off.

’tis no time for Irish jokes, me ma says

Originally published in The News & Reporter, March 11, 2009 

I’ve written about my eye problems before and written about my upcoming surgery in a column when it was scheduled. I joked about it, because of the timing.

I’ll be having it Monday, March 16. St. Patrick’s Day “Eve,” so I wrote I’d have a bloodshot left eye on St. Patrick’s Day, but not for obvious reasons. That made my mother and sisters a bit angry.

Normally around St. Patrick’s Day, I try to regale my readers with Irish jokes or tell them at length about Irish music and songs and writing.

But we are a pretty busy bunch of folk here at The News & Reporter these days. So I have to appease my sisters and mother and we have to do “important” work.

A good newspaper does have a sense of humor, but times are tight on space these days.

The N&R will be closed on Monday. Please get your items to our staff for next Wednesday’s paper as early as you can. I’ll be out for a week. If you need to get a news story in, please call Travis Jenkins or Nancy Parsons Tuesday through Friday.

Thanks for your well wishes. and I promise to treat my new cornea better than the old. No more using it to hammer nails into the wall.

Sorry. Forgive. Please allow me a little bit of humor in my last column before I go under the knife.

Headed to the black market because of shortage

It was my 13-year-old son, altar boy and Boy Scout and all-around good kid, who suggested I go to the black market in my quest.

We will get to that.

It's subtle, but you might have noticed some people are losing their minds right now, some with irrational fears and some with rational concerns about the "novel" coronavirus COVID-19.

My wife, son and I had just returned from a cruise on the Caribbean, and we left from and returned to the port of Fort Lauderdale. If you hadn't heard, Port Everglades has had a some trouble with at least one ship arriving.

Thankfully it was after our cruise ship, so we dodged that bullet.

But I didn't heed what my cousin in England was writing on Facebook, Had I reacted then, we might not be in the pickle we're in at our household.

No toilet paper.

Somewhere over the years, we joined Costco. When we had our son, and started buying a LOT of milk, we compared the cost of a gallon of milk there to the cost of the cheapest gallon of milk nearer to our home. Buying two gallons a week at Costco, we figured would be saving about a buck a week.  Milk savings alone would cover the annual cost of our membership and the slightly longer drive.

"That's thinking smart," we thought.

"You're cheaper off," as Jimmy Breslin wrote during the 1970s stagflation days of his mother-in-law's comparison shopping.

So that's what we did. And we picked up some other things in bulk, saving some money here and there.

Somewhere along the line, we stopped buying the milk there, though it's not like my son has stopped drinking it.

But we settled into the in-store brand of toilet paper, Kirkland.

I don't want to get into the intricacies of toilet paper (it's two-ply). They also sell Scott Tissue, which claims to be single-ply, but I don't think so. I think it is an atom thick. It's not like real toilet paper. It's like a virtual simulation of where toilet paper ought to be in reality. Not good.

At Costco, the Kirkland brand is twice as thick as the Scott brand, but still cheaper.

And as we kind of settled on this as our brand, along the way, I guess I kind of forgot how to shop for toilet paper.

In the Coronavirus Pandemic crisis, those skills are sorely needed.

Costco has been sold out. Two, three weeks ago, we stopped by Costco on our way back from church, as we are wont to do every two or three months, intent on picking up some toilet paper. It was our normal "time," maybe a week or so delayed because of the cruise.

It was not to be, because of COVID-19 and what has been described as buyer "panic."

They even had stories on it, in which psychologists say the "panic-buying" is people trying to assert control in an uncertain world.

As such, it's been described as an almost rational response.

But after going two days in a row without finding it, I broke down and started thinking it was time to become a full-bore 21^st century consumer.

I went online. 

For toilet paper.

I went to Costco.com, but they do not deliver their brand. I obviously didn't want to bulk-buy Scott. This crisis won't be that long.

So I thought.

I then checked on Amazon.com.

Again, not being sure what kind of TP I needed, it was an imperfect search.

I thought I had finally found a brand and style that might work.

Then my son, who was hovering over my shoulder as I did this, pointed out something before I hit the buy button.

Delivery expected anytime between April 7 and April 28.

So the delivery window opened in 21 days, and was 21 days wide.

I don't think I could wait two months for a TP delivery. I am pretty sure at least one of us is going to need TP before then.

So, as I said, my innocent son suggested the black market.

He didn't use those exact words.

"Why don't you try eBay?" he said.

EBay?

Why not?

On a lark, I decided to put in the Costco brand itself for my specific search.

And there it was — eBay is the land of Canaan of Kirkland brand toilet paper, a land flowing with two-ply milk and honey.

So excited was I, I almost hit buy, way too early. The prices were marked up, I saw, but one would expect that.

Now $39 seems a trifle much for something that's been like $17 to $21. But it was fresh off the TP tree, second hand maybe, but not USED.

But I read closer.

Costco sells a big bulk-buy pack, which contains, I think, 10 packs with six rolls each.

It wasn't $39 for that. It was $39 for one six-roll pack.

So that would be more than $6 per roll. I scrolled down, and I kept seeing individual six-roll packs by almost every seller. These sellers had bought packs with 10 six-roll packs, cut the individual packs out, and were reselling. If you get $39 for one, you've bought back your "investment." Sell two and you probably have made enough to pay to "free" ship all these to new unwary buyers. So your third through 10^th packs are  pure two-ply profit, if you can sell them all.

There were many sellers, and that's the way most of them were going about it.

But at least one guy took it a step further. My son and I were laughing the whole time at what we were seeing, but it was a shocked laughter when we got to the guy selling — auctioning actually — individual rolls. The shocked laughter was not at the audacity of that seller.

No, shocked laughter because there had been at least 18 bids — for one roll of toilet paper. The bid was up to $20.

For ONE roll of toilet paper.

"It's a black market," I told my son. "A black market for toilet paper."

Yeah. These people buying up all the toilet paper aren't people reacting to assert some kind of phantom control over a scary situation that affords no control.

They are profiteers. Price gougers.

I thought about filing a price gouging complaint. But I live in South Carolina, while I Costco shop in Charlotte, N.C. I would have to be able to tell whichever Attorney General I talked to that eBay seller "JTootles" was operating out of North Carolina to have a prayer.

EBay might stop it if the seller of the item, Costco, would complain. I got that much by gleaning eBay's complaint policy. Hand sanitizer and items like that were being restricted. But TP? No.

I did an online chat trying to get more than a "We'll look into it," from Costco, but no going.

All I know is that it doesn't say much nice about society.

Screenshots from my online search.