Skip to main content

The Sun God

Yesterday, I had an enthusiastic patch of skin cancer removed from my cheek.  The procedure involved cutting out what was obvious, then checking the sample in the lab to see if it had all been gotten.  While the lab checked, I caught up with magazines left over from World War II or III.

It is late November, and I had been thinking more of convenient clothing to wear at the clinic than of staying warm, and dermatologists apparently prefer chilled patients.  Finally, I went outside to stand in the sun.

"Odd!", I thought.  "The doctor keeps asking me if I spent a lot of time outdoors when I was a child."  I have the impression that I did, but that was a long life ago.  I know that she was calculating radiation damage from the sun.  "And here I am, in the middle of multiple minor operations for skin cancer, standing in the sun."

"Crop rotation!", I thought.  I am just getting the next crop ready."

It is difficult for someone from Western Washington to recognize that ultraviolet rays are not screened by cloudy skies.  I found it easier to expect that I would someday develop a serious case of green moss.  And truth to tell, I have done that, too.

Of course I spent a lot of time outdoors!  Sunburn?  Why else was there summer?  Sunscreen?  Was that like a screen door?  Does the sun shine in haying time?  Does the sun shine down on a fishing boat?  Do people in the Pacific Northwest duck behind shade trees when the sun does come out?  No, they cultivate eventual skin cancer.

It still seems worth the trade-off.  One has to believe in something.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Friends-- My step-father of 35 years died this morning. His name was Conrad Royksund. He was 86 years old. He was born into poverty on a farm near Puyallup, WA. He was the first member of his family to attend college and earned a PhD from the University of Chicago. He paid his way through all of that by fishing in Alaska. He spent his professional career as a college professor. I met him when I was just 3 years old and don't actually have any memories of my life befor e he was in it. He was intimidatingly smart, funny as hell, and worked his ass off. He taught me to meet people with kindness and decency until I was certain they could not be trusted. He taught me to meet ideas with carving knives until I was certain they could. I will remember him as one of the bravest, most curious, and funniest people I have ever met. He left this world with a satisfied mind. We are so grateful. Dan Hubbard
1 comment
Read more

That's all we want: fairness! Not more guns and more war! Fairness!

The five police officers who were killed in Dallas are certainly not the officers who killed innocent citizens. There is more than enough tragedy to go around. "What is happening to our country?", Mari asked this morning. I had no answer.  We do have an answer.  We do not want to say it. There are lots of answers, all of them pertinent. We are a racist society, like most human societies. We are a society in the midst of enormous changes-- social, political, economic--and we do not know what to do about it. We are divided unsustainably into absurdly rich, and an enormous number of crumbling middle class families, and poor. We have guns everywhere; military guns, guns just for killing people, cheap guns, heroes carrying guns into churches and supermarkets, idiots who think guns ought to be allowed in bars and schools and ball games and beauty parlors and political rallies. Our political process is almost useless. There are good people in Congress, but there...
Post a Comment
Read more

On Watching a Formerly Sane Man Descend into Abject Religion

If you read the previous post, you know the apparatus, pictured here, is a torture machine. There are ten of them in our house, purportedly to circulate air to dry out all the problems caused by a water leak. We live in Tucson:  it has not rained in Tucson since the Gadsden Purchase. A mudslide the size of the one in Washington State could course through our neighborhood and it would be bone-dry and stone-hard before it quit moving. I suspect it is the CIA, and probably the Border Patrol! We are, after all, only about a hundred miles from the border. I fully expect a large suburban assault vehicle to pull up to the house, and for lots of people with UPPER CASE LETTERS on their shirts to interrogate us, and I will have to explain that all the drugs I use come from Walgreens and Total Wine. But it won't work.  Our minds are going. We are getting short with each other and, if they promise to turn off the fans, I will confess to having invented the Arab...
Post a Comment
Read more