If you were to look up Shorewood, IL, on Google Earth or Google Maps or Google Mildly Useful Product #341, you would see that west of Shorewood, all the way to Moline, IL, on the Illinois-Iowa border and on the banks of the Mississippi, there is, essentially, nothing. Oh sure, there are maybe a couple of hundred houses stretched across a couple of hundred miles, but really, there's just nothing.
Driving along Route 52, or Route 80, it's a rather featureless landscape -- lots of flat fields, green in summer, brown any other time, growing corn, wheat, and soybeans, and providing forage and space for hogs and cattle. All of those are important -- but it makes for a boring, even dreary landscape.
Adding to the dreariness, we are here in Shorewood to celebrate and mourn. We are here to celebrate Cherie's dad's birthday, but here to mourn that this is likely the last birthday he will live to celebrate.
He suffers from terminal, metastatic prostate cancer. Seven years ago, while prepping for surgery to repair fractured, weakened bone in his upper right arm (the consequence of another cancer, liposarcoma, that he beat, and the severe doses of radiation he endured to beat it), doctors found the prostate cancer. He suffered every treatment the fine doctors at the University of Chicago could come up with -- chemotherapy, radiation, surgery, more chemotherapy, androgen deprivation (aka chemical castration), various drugs in various phases of clinical trial, and soon more radiation-- but no treatment has been able to fully arrest the growth and spread of the cancer. He has suffered loss of appetite -- for food and sex -- had to shit through a pillow, lost his hair, puked his guts out, pissed blood, filled with fluid, nearly gone comatose, had his testosterone level driven to zero, suffered radiation burns to his skin -- has survived every side effect that has been thrown at him -- but it hasn't stopped the cancer.
Instead, slowly, inexorably, it has spread to distant regions of his body. He has lesions in his shoulders, back, and ribs -- and more growing in other places, not large enough yet to show up on the various scans he endures on frequent visits to the hospital. Doctors long ago stopped talking about remission, first retreating to talking about slowing the disease, and now talking about "palliative" care -- reducing pain in the face of fairly imminent death. The lesions are growing, more are appearing, the cancer markers in his blood are more numerous, and the pain he suffers is greater by the day.
No amount or variety of painkillers eases the pain completely. Sometimes he swallows oxycodone until he passes out. He sleeps off and on all day. But the pain is always there. The lesions eat through bone, causing tremendous pain, and weakening his bones to the point of fracture. The lesion on his spine may eat right to his spinal cord, which he won't know until one day he wakes up paralyzed, or just doesn't wake up at all.
He's not yet 60, but he shuffles like an 80 year-old man. The radiation treatment he will soon begin will target the individual, visible lesions, seeking to shrink them and reduce their impact. Ultimately, the treatment will fail, and it will be time once more for a decision he has faced several times already -- fight on, or give in -- and die?
Fight on, he says. More medicine that makes me puke, he says. More radiation that burns my skin, he says. More chemotherapy that makes everything taste like metal and gives me hemorrhoids and makes my hair fall out, he says. I've fought for seven years, he says. I've seen four grandchildren born, seen the first reach first grade just today, he says. I've seen a son and a daughter become parents, and I've seen another daughter grow into one of Boston's finest surgeons, he says. Fuck you, cancer, he says. I'm not done with you yet. You may have taken my brother, mother, every uncle and aunt I've ever known, others I never got to know, and you may get me, he says, but NOT WITHOUT A FIGHT. Seven years and counting, and I'M NOT FINISHED.
And that's why I love him. For all the agony -- the pain, the suffering, side effects, the bad news, the march of treatment, failure, treatment, failure, treatment, failure -- he blazes on. For his children, grandchildren, wife, brother, friends, and for all those who fought and lost and all of those who fight on still, he blazes on.
Monday, August 24, 2009
West of Joliet...
Dateline!
That's a shout out to Eliza Schlesinger for all of those fans of the Last Comic Standing, from her gig on TheStream.TV. Check it out. Anyway..........
The whole clan is once again in this hamlet of nothingness known as the "Village of Shorewood", in eastern Illinois about 50 miles southwest of Chicago .
Sitting west of Joliet off of Exit 253 on Route 55 South, Shorewood sits on land formerly occupied by corn stalks, soybean plants, and the occasional cricket. Its largest feature (depending on how one defines "large") is either the "Del Webb" retirement community of "Shorewood Glen" in which I sit typing this, or the white water tower I see rising above the flatlands, shaped like a hot air balloon, with "Shorewood" painted on it in black, block letters.
The trailer park is big, too, but not quite as large as Shorewood Glen. It (the trailer park) may be more populated, though.
Cherie's parents bought into this "Active Adult" community two years ago yesterday -- about the time the housing market began to tank. Consequently, the part of the community where you'd find Casa de Raven is surrounded mostly by empty home lots awaiting new owners and new construction.
Pulte Homes is the developer behind "Del Webb" communities. Personally, I think it's time to retire the Del Webb brand name. Webb was a name that meant nothing to me prior to learning about Cherie's parents' home purchase. I have since learned that Webb was born in 1899, died in 1974, and was the real estate developer who (among other things) built the famed retirement community, "Sun City" in Phoenix, Arizona, and also built up Tuscon. All of this occurred between 1948 and 1960. He also built the Flamingo, Sahara, and Mint casinos in Las Vegas, and used his wealth to buy a share of ownership in the Yankees.
He was, by all accounts, quite accomplished.
Unfortunately for Pulte Homes, Webb's -- and Sun City's -- heyday was in the early 1960s. This means that the folks now retiring and searching for "active adult" communities (which like to bring in people around 55 yrs of age) were probably around 10-12 years old when Webb was at his peak. So, they probably barely recognize who he is, if they recognize him at all. His name is at this late date unlikely to retain any strong selling power -- when's the last time any of you thought, "When we retire, let's go to Sun City!"
Certainly, his name doesn't seem to have spared Pulte from the recession. This development is half-unfinished, and in many cases, empty home lots have reverted to nature. The lot behind the house I'm sitting in is now a small pond with reeds, snails, and at least one family of ducks.
More to come in the next post....
That's a shout out to Eliza Schlesinger for all of those fans of the Last Comic Standing, from her gig on TheStream.TV. Check it out. Anyway..........
The whole clan is once again in this hamlet of nothingness known as the "Village of Shorewood", in eastern Illinois about 50 miles southwest of Chicago .
Sitting west of Joliet off of Exit 253 on Route 55 South, Shorewood sits on land formerly occupied by corn stalks, soybean plants, and the occasional cricket. Its largest feature (depending on how one defines "large") is either the "Del Webb" retirement community of "Shorewood Glen" in which I sit typing this, or the white water tower I see rising above the flatlands, shaped like a hot air balloon, with "Shorewood" painted on it in black, block letters.
The trailer park is big, too, but not quite as large as Shorewood Glen. It (the trailer park) may be more populated, though.
Cherie's parents bought into this "Active Adult" community two years ago yesterday -- about the time the housing market began to tank. Consequently, the part of the community where you'd find Casa de Raven is surrounded mostly by empty home lots awaiting new owners and new construction.
Pulte Homes is the developer behind "Del Webb" communities. Personally, I think it's time to retire the Del Webb brand name. Webb was a name that meant nothing to me prior to learning about Cherie's parents' home purchase. I have since learned that Webb was born in 1899, died in 1974, and was the real estate developer who (among other things) built the famed retirement community, "Sun City" in Phoenix, Arizona, and also built up Tuscon. All of this occurred between 1948 and 1960. He also built the Flamingo, Sahara, and Mint casinos in Las Vegas, and used his wealth to buy a share of ownership in the Yankees.
He was, by all accounts, quite accomplished.
Unfortunately for Pulte Homes, Webb's -- and Sun City's -- heyday was in the early 1960s. This means that the folks now retiring and searching for "active adult" communities (which like to bring in people around 55 yrs of age) were probably around 10-12 years old when Webb was at his peak. So, they probably barely recognize who he is, if they recognize him at all. His name is at this late date unlikely to retain any strong selling power -- when's the last time any of you thought, "When we retire, let's go to Sun City!"
Certainly, his name doesn't seem to have spared Pulte from the recession. This development is half-unfinished, and in many cases, empty home lots have reverted to nature. The lot behind the house I'm sitting in is now a small pond with reeds, snails, and at least one family of ducks.
More to come in the next post....
Saturday, August 08, 2009
Right on cue...
...unable to stand the cold of Alaska without the warm embrace of the spotlight, Sarah Palin chimes in on health care and once again exploits her retarded son to make a point. Some terrible victim of the media she is....
Monday, August 03, 2009
Today...
...I biked 8 miles, and Cherie and I took the kids to Camden Yards to see the Red Sox put a whooping on the Orioles -- which they did, 18-10, to sweep the 3-game series. It was Audrey's second Red Sox game, after a game at Fenway last year with my brother. It was Edziu's first game ever. And damn, if both kids didn't act like saints for 3+ hours. My son sat quietly, watching the game, and Audrey cheered for Big Papi and munched on chocolate ice cream with sprinkles to battle the heat :-) And, after torrential rain in the morning, we found Camden under blue skies and sunshine.
I could not have asked for a better way to conclude the weekend. Now, 5 more business days to vacation.
It cannot come soon enough. I am ready to strangle my clients with my bare hands. I need a few days unplugged from my laptop and Blackberry. Paul, you need a Whataburger real estate scout for the mid-atlantic?
Why aren't there any Whataburgers here in the DC area, Paul? There are so many transplants from Texas and the rest of the South here, I bet Whataburger would kill. DC is dying for a non-McDonald's/BK burger joint besides 5 Guys -- its burgers are so greasy you can only eat there twice a year without inducing a heart attack or stroke.
And riddle me this -- why aren't there any Sonics closer to the DC metro area than Fredericksburg and Winchester? I mean honestly, if Sonic can open a franchise in Binghamton, where it's only warm enough for drive-up service 3 months out of the year, Sonic could make a killing in northern Virginia!
I could not have asked for a better way to conclude the weekend. Now, 5 more business days to vacation.
It cannot come soon enough. I am ready to strangle my clients with my bare hands. I need a few days unplugged from my laptop and Blackberry. Paul, you need a Whataburger real estate scout for the mid-atlantic?
Why aren't there any Whataburgers here in the DC area, Paul? There are so many transplants from Texas and the rest of the South here, I bet Whataburger would kill. DC is dying for a non-McDonald's/BK burger joint besides 5 Guys -- its burgers are so greasy you can only eat there twice a year without inducing a heart attack or stroke.
And riddle me this -- why aren't there any Sonics closer to the DC metro area than Fredericksburg and Winchester? I mean honestly, if Sonic can open a franchise in Binghamton, where it's only warm enough for drive-up service 3 months out of the year, Sonic could make a killing in northern Virginia!
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