In this 2001 Pulitzer winning article from the Oregonian by Julia Sullivan-Springhetti, published December 2000, there is a typo, one occurrence only, yeras instead of years.
There used to be a direct link at the Pulitzer site to this article but they made it impossible to link to it. Down in this page you can search for this title and click on it.
"Congressional acts move the INS, sometimes: Pressure on the agency from elected officials often helps immigrant families through the system, but it doesn't ensure success"
http://www.pulitzer.org/winners/6932
Needless to say. John Pulitzer was Hungarian and Pulitzer prize is worth 10000 dollars and is given to many journalists every year.
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
Lodge Climbing, 1979
Summer 1979. End of High School. During vacation before college (actually before the mandatory nine month military stage before college) i was working at the local furniture factory across the street from where i was living in Câmpulung, Suceava. 7 November St, now they changed it to Calea Transilvaniei, don't know why.
I was spending all my evenings at the Mancaş family, half mile down the street. Mother and three daughters. Mrs.Mancaş (born Gătej) was from Câmpulung and owned that piece of property with a cottage, across the street from where Liviu Strugariu, my ex grade school class mate lived. In fact, he introduced me to them. Daughters, Elena, Tatiana and Gabi. Tatiana, the cutest, "had to give up ballet because of a heart murmur". Tatiana and Elena "just got admitted to college", as myself.
(Years later Gabi told me Tatiana became a physics teacher and married in Piatra Neamţ).
One day my three Tehnoton HS ex class mates, Mareş Mirel of Buhuşi, now Montreal, Canada, Valentin Gheorghiţă of Focşani, Romania, Gabriel Ringhiliescu of Iaşi, Ştefăneşti - Botoşani, France, came with Gabi's brand new car, (Dacia) for a trip to Ardeal. My father didn't want me to leave the job so they went alone. In a couple of weeks they came back and we went on a Saturday on a trip to Rarău, a blessed place on the face of the Earth. (No i don't believe anymore he is the guy on the right).
I went to Mancaş sisters which i visited all summer and they agreed to come with us. We bought some food and a bottle of 1 litre of brandy. Mirel, V.Gheorghiţă and myself went by foot, some 9 miles, and the rest with Gabi in the car.
We raised a tent and rain came. We used the pump from the mat to blow in a fire. Made a trip around the lodge. Weather and angle of view of the lodge from where we had the tent was similar to this one.
Night came. The six of them slept in the tent. There was not enough room in the tent and i was left to sleep in the parked car but couldn't sleep and played with car's radio's dial on the short waves. I think i drank, alone, most of the brandy. I caught some music at Free Europe. I remember they were playing ABBA's song Give me Give me Give Me a Man at the Midnight. (Now i know that song was officially released months later, don't know). And i was singing along replacing the word man with girl. And then something really weird happened. I saw through the windshield a guy coming down the lodge from the roof using a climbing rope. Dressed in a completely black suite, tight on the body, like for divers. He went inside on a window.
I was too drunk to think. I thought maybe he was playing a prank to somebody. I don't know.
The next day i think i told them the story but nobody paid attention. We went back to Câmpulung the same way we came. Sun came up. Beautiful day. I had a hangover. Monday went back to work.
From time to time i remember the episode. Don't know what to think anymore. Could it have been...a ninja?
I was spending all my evenings at the Mancaş family, half mile down the street. Mother and three daughters. Mrs.Mancaş (born Gătej) was from Câmpulung and owned that piece of property with a cottage, across the street from where Liviu Strugariu, my ex grade school class mate lived. In fact, he introduced me to them. Daughters, Elena, Tatiana and Gabi. Tatiana, the cutest, "had to give up ballet because of a heart murmur". Tatiana and Elena "just got admitted to college", as myself.
(Years later Gabi told me Tatiana became a physics teacher and married in Piatra Neamţ).
One day my three Tehnoton HS ex class mates, Mareş Mirel of Buhuşi, now Montreal, Canada, Valentin Gheorghiţă of Focşani, Romania, Gabriel Ringhiliescu of Iaşi, Ştefăneşti - Botoşani, France, came with Gabi's brand new car, (Dacia) for a trip to Ardeal. My father didn't want me to leave the job so they went alone. In a couple of weeks they came back and we went on a Saturday on a trip to Rarău, a blessed place on the face of the Earth. (No i don't believe anymore he is the guy on the right).
 |
| Mareş Mirel, left, Valentin Gheorghiţă, right, Gabi Ringhilescu, next to him. Click to enlarge. |
I went to Mancaş sisters which i visited all summer and they agreed to come with us. We bought some food and a bottle of 1 litre of brandy. Mirel, V.Gheorghiţă and myself went by foot, some 9 miles, and the rest with Gabi in the car.
We raised a tent and rain came. We used the pump from the mat to blow in a fire. Made a trip around the lodge. Weather and angle of view of the lodge from where we had the tent was similar to this one.
 |
| Click to enlarge |
Night came. The six of them slept in the tent. There was not enough room in the tent and i was left to sleep in the parked car but couldn't sleep and played with car's radio's dial on the short waves. I think i drank, alone, most of the brandy. I caught some music at Free Europe. I remember they were playing ABBA's song Give me Give me Give Me a Man at the Midnight. (Now i know that song was officially released months later, don't know). And i was singing along replacing the word man with girl. And then something really weird happened. I saw through the windshield a guy coming down the lodge from the roof using a climbing rope. Dressed in a completely black suite, tight on the body, like for divers. He went inside on a window.
I was too drunk to think. I thought maybe he was playing a prank to somebody. I don't know.
The next day i think i told them the story but nobody paid attention. We went back to Câmpulung the same way we came. Sun came up. Beautiful day. I had a hangover. Monday went back to work.
From time to time i remember the episode. Don't know what to think anymore. Could it have been...a ninja?
dr.Sigurtson
In September 2004 my wife had cancer surgery. I was in the same hospital at Providence St.Vincent in Barnes Rd. in Portland, Oregon, in the psychiatric ward due to a psychosis. In fact, i was at the 4th floor while she had surgery at the fifth. She came to see me the second day after surgery, while i was laying in bed thinking i was on a different planet. Could this be related to my downstairs neighbour, a person to whom we both refereed to as "the witch", a 300+ pounds woman with a black cat, stars and moons door mat, and a bumper sticker on her car saying "my other car is a broom", who sometimes was laughing on a really high tone, alone in the house? At 6810, SW Hall Blvd, Beaverton, OR, 97035. Later she moved to a different apartment in the same complex, i think i have a picture of the "things" she kept in front of the door. Here it is...
At Providence i was in care of dr.Sigurtson. That's all i remember, his last name. In fact he obtained from Washington county some sort of court order to keep me in there because i wanted to get out.
I remember he enumerated some antidepressants and asked me what i wanted. I chose Remeron (Mirtazapin) because it sounded right to me at that time. I've been on Remeron until early 2007. It took me one full year to fight with the withdrawal symptoms. From what i've heard, i am the first person to ever get off of Remeron. But i believe i got the bradycardia because giving it up. (Remeron as a side effect is a cardiotonic and raises your heart rhythm and after a while your body gets used to and your heart rythm gets back to normal. When you get off it, i suppose it goes down. My pulse now is in the low 50s and even in the upper 40s when i lay down.)
But the strangest thing is a few days into my hospital stay (in fact just after signing the document below) dr.Sigurtson dissapeared. He was replaced by a different doctor, dr.Guistwhite. But by that time, i already gave up, i made peace with myself and everybody. Could it have been the phone calls i made from the hospital to different lawyers from yellow pages trying to describe to them my situation and ask for help? The nurses told me he had an accident. Years later i tried and called the hospital asking them about dr.Sigurtson and they told me he moved into a different country.
Nowadays i am reviewing a number of faces i knew and resemble other persons, mostly celebrities. Dr. Sigurtson's face look a lot like ...Sigurjón Sighvatsson, the Iceland born actor. Can anybody tell me what the hell is going on?
I had this document for 8 years. I always hesitated to show it so someone. Why? Because the handwritten parts especially the small letters look exactly like my handwriting, with a few differences though.
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| At Sussex Village Apts, Beaverton, OR, 2007/07/23 18:25:27, click to enlarge |
At Providence i was in care of dr.Sigurtson. That's all i remember, his last name. In fact he obtained from Washington county some sort of court order to keep me in there because i wanted to get out.
I remember he enumerated some antidepressants and asked me what i wanted. I chose Remeron (Mirtazapin) because it sounded right to me at that time. I've been on Remeron until early 2007. It took me one full year to fight with the withdrawal symptoms. From what i've heard, i am the first person to ever get off of Remeron. But i believe i got the bradycardia because giving it up. (Remeron as a side effect is a cardiotonic and raises your heart rhythm and after a while your body gets used to and your heart rythm gets back to normal. When you get off it, i suppose it goes down. My pulse now is in the low 50s and even in the upper 40s when i lay down.)
But the strangest thing is a few days into my hospital stay (in fact just after signing the document below) dr.Sigurtson dissapeared. He was replaced by a different doctor, dr.Guistwhite. But by that time, i already gave up, i made peace with myself and everybody. Could it have been the phone calls i made from the hospital to different lawyers from yellow pages trying to describe to them my situation and ask for help? The nurses told me he had an accident. Years later i tried and called the hospital asking them about dr.Sigurtson and they told me he moved into a different country.
Nowadays i am reviewing a number of faces i knew and resemble other persons, mostly celebrities. Dr. Sigurtson's face look a lot like ...Sigurjón Sighvatsson, the Iceland born actor. Can anybody tell me what the hell is going on?
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| Sigurjón Sighvatsson |
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| Can get most of the resolution with middle click |
Monday, January 21, 2013
Breaking Ice on The Roof
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| My place, 1/11 2013 |
Here in Oregon the weather is under freezing several nights, mabye a couple of weeks in total in a year. Mostly during night time.
Today it was frosty and holiday but they came to clean the leaves from the other gutters in the building. Leaves, of course frozen in the gutters that were full if they were like mine. I don't know how they had the guts to walk on the frosty roof like that. And the energy. Those two Mexicans were all day on the roofs until night and they didn't seem tired to me. It's their business, after all.
But they hammered the gutters for a couple of hours and everything inside was shaking like hell. People who don't live in wooden houses don't understand. Then they climbed with a power blower and blew whatever it was left on the roof. After a couple of hours they moved to the next building. When it though everything was over, a big diesel truck from a towing company came and shook everything for 15 minutes with a different frequency.
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| My place, post date |
How Chest Pain Works
There are more and more numerous and sometimes irreconcilable theories about why chest pain occurs as a symptom of a heart attack. The funniest i heard of so far (actually i heard it in a radio show) is the one that says that they are due to a genetic anomaly. That is some people have some sort of shortcuts in the nervous system, presumbably at the spine level that transmit signals of a heart attack perceived by the brain as chest pain.
That's when i knew that there is yet another crisis in the theory of medicine.
None of these theories, besides this last fantastic one can explain the variations and the asymmetry. Cause some people have silent heart attacks, with no pain. There should be major genetic differences between people to explain it and that's not the case. Then the asymmetry. It's always the left area of the chest or left hand. So that's when i started thinking, since i'm no stranger to temporary chest discomfort and even pain and had an episode of atrial fibrillation with rapid ventricular response (when i drove myself on the middle of the night (ambulance showed after i left) on black ice and a quarter inch of frost on the windshield to the hospital, with the pulse oximeter on the finger showing 200+ then on the freeway when there was no ice i went all the way to 90 mph because my truck has a speed limit sensor, for about 2 minutes that seemed an eternity 'till i reached the hospital.)
I believe it's the posture that triggers it. Your body through numerous chemical and hormonal changes during a heart attack, and i believe some of them are just trying to compensate the acute heart failure; through your brain or through some reflex mechanism, contracting certain muscles in the spine and creating a spine curvature, usually asymmetric (due to asymmetry of the position of the heart in the chest, there's more discussion in the paragraph below about this) that can put pressure on the nerves directly or through the extension of the asymmetrically pressured disks, creating the pain sensation.
(I read a few days ago about the importance of the position during sleeping. On the right side, it's better for the heart because there's less pressure and "more room" for the heart due to the position relative to other organs. Why heart needs more room to work? Because heart, like any muscle, can only contract but not expand. It expands only through relaxation when it regains its shape and only if there's no pressure on it allowing the blood to flow inside due to venous pressure. If you put pressure or lay other organs on it, it's not going to have room to expand. Things are aggravated by obesity, cause the intra and extra abdominal fat adds pressure to the abdominal cavity and inside the chest through diaphragm and hiatal hernias to the point that is making your stomach touch the bottom of your heart. Gas and abdominal bloating is another factor. One good sign that your heart does not have enough room to expand are palpitations triggered by your stomach touching the heart through hiatal hernias.)
That's when i knew that there is yet another crisis in the theory of medicine.
None of these theories, besides this last fantastic one can explain the variations and the asymmetry. Cause some people have silent heart attacks, with no pain. There should be major genetic differences between people to explain it and that's not the case. Then the asymmetry. It's always the left area of the chest or left hand. So that's when i started thinking, since i'm no stranger to temporary chest discomfort and even pain and had an episode of atrial fibrillation with rapid ventricular response (when i drove myself on the middle of the night (ambulance showed after i left) on black ice and a quarter inch of frost on the windshield to the hospital, with the pulse oximeter on the finger showing 200+ then on the freeway when there was no ice i went all the way to 90 mph because my truck has a speed limit sensor, for about 2 minutes that seemed an eternity 'till i reached the hospital.)
I believe it's the posture that triggers it. Your body through numerous chemical and hormonal changes during a heart attack, and i believe some of them are just trying to compensate the acute heart failure; through your brain or through some reflex mechanism, contracting certain muscles in the spine and creating a spine curvature, usually asymmetric (due to asymmetry of the position of the heart in the chest, there's more discussion in the paragraph below about this) that can put pressure on the nerves directly or through the extension of the asymmetrically pressured disks, creating the pain sensation.
(I read a few days ago about the importance of the position during sleeping. On the right side, it's better for the heart because there's less pressure and "more room" for the heart due to the position relative to other organs. Why heart needs more room to work? Because heart, like any muscle, can only contract but not expand. It expands only through relaxation when it regains its shape and only if there's no pressure on it allowing the blood to flow inside due to venous pressure. If you put pressure or lay other organs on it, it's not going to have room to expand. Things are aggravated by obesity, cause the intra and extra abdominal fat adds pressure to the abdominal cavity and inside the chest through diaphragm and hiatal hernias to the point that is making your stomach touch the bottom of your heart. Gas and abdominal bloating is another factor. One good sign that your heart does not have enough room to expand are palpitations triggered by your stomach touching the heart through hiatal hernias.)