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Tuffy 05/01/1996 - 09/15/2010 This past Saturday night, our 14-year old half-beagle Tuffy had a huge seizure. He was panting, twitching, and foaming at the mouth for 15 minutes before he stopped, but after that he spent the next 2 hours walking around in circles, walking into walls, and getting himself wedged into tight little spots where he couldn’t get out and then would just bark or howl. Eventually, I put him in the basement room where we put the dogs when no one is home and the rest of the night was uneventful. On Sunday morning, I took Tuffy for our normal walk to get a beef stick and he seemed fine. I spent the day helping at our church’s fall festival and when I got home, Kathy told me that Tuffy had another seizure. The he had another seizure that night. He was walking even more unsteady than before and his legs would go out from under him occasionally. We put him in the basement earlier than the night before.
I worked from home and took Tuffy to the vet on Monday. The vet said based on some tests we had done earlier this year, Tuffy probably had a disease of the adrenal and pituitary glands called Cushing’s. She could only run more tests after Tuffy fasted and that if he was having 15 minute seizures, there wouldn’t be anything she could do for him if he had it. I asked how long he would have if he did have the disease and the vet said he would have about a month and the seizures would get worse and worse until the end. She gave me a prescription to treat the seizures and I took Tuffy home. He spent the rest of the day walking around in circles, bumping into walls, and spent the night in the basement again. Kathy and I took him for a walk Monday afternoon. He enjoyed the walk, but his legs were giving out a lot and he was swaying from side to side and was trailing behind Kathy. Normally, Tuffy will be in front leading us.
Kathy loved walking Tuffy more that I did
and she was his favorite. I took Tuffy out for a walk Tuesday morning and he was more like his old self for the first 2 blocks, but after that he was stumbling and rolling on his side a lot. He ate his breakfast and had a good appetite, but got stuck behind the toilet and in corners, giving howls of pain, confusion, and embarrassment until somebody would guide him backwards out of his predicament. When I got back from work on Tuesday, Kathy and I took him on another lumbering, stumbling walk. When we got home he was constantly getting stuck in corners and barking and howling. Eventually, he slept for a couple of hours of the floor beside me. When I put him outside to go potty, he got stuck in a tree and started howling. When I got him back inside, he tried to go upstairs, but he couldn’t control his back legs and kept sliding down. I put him in the basement again but he kept on barking and howling. I went down to check on him a lot and sometimes he would be caught in a corner and sometimes he wasn’t. Maybe he had a seizure or 2 down there. Around midnight, I took him for a long walk in the hopes of tiring him out. He was pretty energetic and only stumbled a few times, but when we got back to the house he kept on walking into corners. Kathy finally got him settled down and sleeping, but I prayed about the situation and I just knew that this was no life for a proud and strong dog like Tuffy. Kathy agreed with me and I made my second call in 3 weeks to the vet to have a dog put to sleep. I got home early from work and Kathy and I took Tuffy for one last walk. He was pretty unenthusiastic even when I got him a beef stick at the nearby liquor store. We got him back home for the kids to say goodbye and took Tuffy to the vet. Kathy hung out with Tuffy outside the office by a tree while I waited inside for him to be called. Just like Queenie gravitated towards me, Tuffy gravitated towards Kathy. When it was time, I got Kathy, she brought Tuffy in, we took him to the room and put him on the table and Kathy and I held him and told him how much we loved him while the vet shaved a piece of his leg and gave him the shot. He was panting like he always did, suddenly stopped panting and it was over. We spent a couple of minutes with him and left.
It was very sad saying good bye to such a great dog that loved living so much and maybe he could have held on a couple of more weeks, but for a dog who lived with such enthusiasm to spend his last days as a stumbling shell of what he was, crying for help because he forgot to walk backwards, wouldn’t have been fair to Tuffy and was more than I could bear also. After reading about Cushing’s disease, the tumors that form by the pituitary gland probably pushed up against his brain causing all the disorientation. And the stress of losing his mother 3 weeks ago surely didn’t help. The solution for this disease with younger dogs is surgery to remove the tumors, but an older dog like Tuffy most likely wouldn’t have made it off the operating table. So maybe it is just as well. Or so I’ll tell myself.
I know my dogs Queenie and Tuffy are in a better place. I know this. But it is really hard for me to accept that 6 weeks ago I was taking them on mile and a half walks to the Jiffy to get coffee and beef sticks and now they are both gone and that 2 times in the last 3 weeks I've watched one of my best friends take their last breath. And except for Kathy, they were my two best friends, which is either quite an endorsement of my people skills, or a sign of how much these 2 dogs became a part of my heart. I know it is going to be really rough to get up in the morning and not have an enthusiastic face beckoning me to join in the adventure of a morning walk. When I ate dinner tonight, I instinctively took a piece of food off my plate to give away to a friend, but only a cat was looking for a handout. Queenie and Tuffy are in a better place, but my place is a lot worse. It may be awhile, but I’m looking forward to our next walk together.
To paraphrase a friend, "Here's to Tuffy. Hoping every day
in heaven is like a holiday with your Mom."
Today is the day of the St. Mary Fall Festival. Yes, it is still summer, but some other committee picks the date of the festival. I thought about suggesting changing the name to the Almost Fall Festival, but decided to hold my tongue for a change.
As I’ve written before, I’ve been the chair person of the festival committee the last 3 years by appointment after I was late to the first meeting. I learned from running chess tournaments that the management style that suits me personally is to personally and quickly take responsibility for the hardest tasks or the tasks that the other people don’t want to do, assign other tasks to capable people, let them do their jobs without micro-managing, and have as little to do as possible with people who want to help by telling you what you are doing wrong.
This year’s festival planning was almost effortless. The same group has been together for 3 years and knows what to do and how to stay out of each other’s way. I’ve just been marking the completed tasks off on my little list, passing it out to the committee members, and writing announcements and calling some of the volunteers. Today I'll be handling the money outside for the second year in a row. It was easily the most complained about job 2 years ago, so I told everyone that that would be my job from now on. Then if anyone else complained, I could offer to trade jobs.
The first year the festival raised $9,000, but after the festival, we were told that the church finance committee had budgeted for $11,000 so we were all disappointed. Since I did not make a budget, I shouldered the blame for this failure. The second year I asked what the festival had been budgeted to make and was told $14,000. In our committee meetings, I made sure to ridicule this budget number as much as possible and stress that we should not tether the success or failure of our efforts to some number on a piece of paper. We had a very well run festival and made $11,000 to boot. I considered it a success but not because of the money that was raised, but because we had a well run festival.
This year, I didn’t even ask what the budget number was. One of the committee members mentioned last week that we had to make more money than last year. I’m not sure what number we will raise for this year’s festival. A lot depends on how much money the auction will bring in, but I expect to come very close to last year’s numbers. When I agreed to serve on the committee, I committed to 3 years and this is year 3. In my mind, the festival is already successful, regardless of whatever today’s chaos of ‘game day’ bring. It may even be a favor to the next group of committee members to fall a little short in the money raising department to give them an easier act to follow.
A huge story in the headlines this week is the plan of Florida preacher Terry Jones to burn copies of the Muslim Holy Book Quran this Saturday to commemorate the 9th anniversary of 9/11. People from all across the political and religious spectrums worldwide are condemning the activity and the US commander in Afghanistan says the proposed event would endanger the lives of US troops worldwide.
I’m not a big fan of this Quran-burning, but I have to congratulate Pastor Jones for finding a way to get worldwide publicity for his 50 member Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida. Already there are protests in Muslim countries with the requisite ‘Death to America’ chants. I know that since many of these same countries have been on the news in recent years burning the American flag, they will seize on any excuse to bash America and not focus on the fact that there will not be millions of people burning Qurans this weekend. If these countries would burn Danish embassies and issue death threats against a Dutch cartoonist who drew pictures of the Muslim prophet Mohammed, I hate to see what they’ll threaten against Jones.
Maybe people who see Pastor Jones as extreme will think of the people who hijacked those planes 9 years ago and flew them into the Pentagon and World Trade Center as his spiritual kin. In any event, I think the amount of comments made by our countries representatives is overkill. I don’t see why they can’t just say that this guy is either a publicity seeker or a crackpot, people in this country burn the US flag with less fanfare, it’s part and parcel of living in a free country, and be done with it. The comments from U.S. Ambassador to Iraq James Jeffrey and the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, Gen. Lloyd Austin were especially amusing “As this holy month of Ramadan comes to a close and Iraqis prepare to celebrate Eid al-Fitr, we join with the citizens of Iraq and of every nation to repudiate religious intolerance and to respect and defend the diversity of faiths of our fellow man". In most Muslim countries it is against the law for Christians to worship outside the home, let alone try to convert members of other religions. So much for “repudiating religious intolerance” and “respecting diversity of faith”.
Here is a quote from Mohammad Mukhtar, a cleric and candidate for the Afghan parliament. "When their holy book Quran gets burned in public, then there is nothing left. If this happens, I think the first and most important reaction will be that wherever Americans are seen, they will be killed. No matter where they will be in the world they will be killed." I suppose the moderate Muslims would want to only stone Americans to death while the liberal Muslims would compromise by merely cutting out our tongues.
I looked for articles to see if Bible burning is rampant in other countries and didn’t find very much. I suppose if a book is illegal in a country there won’t be too many to burn. But I also didn’t have to look very far for an example of Bible burning. It seems the US Military was in the bible burning business as recently as last year, with minimal outrage. In the battle of ideas between the West and the Muslim worlds, while the US Military burns Bibles, the Muslims compromise by momentarily suspending the stoning of a woman accused of adultery.
9-1-1 was a traumatic day for many people. I remember being in Iowa on the phone with my brother who was watching the building burn from his apartment window in Newark. I also remember the gas stations in Iowa doubling the price of gas that afternoon for a few hours until the governor threatened to prosecute all price gougers, and the anthrax-laden envelopes that were sent to government buildings the weeks after the attack. Unfortunately, it was 9 years ago and people are in high school now that only know about it from watching the news or reading history books and think about it as just something older people need to get over just like I thought about the JFK assassination when I was a kid. It remains to be seen whether this short attention span will prove a strength or an asset. I think it is a strength. We can see where the Palestinians and Israelis, Serbs and Bosnians, to name a few have gotten by holding grudges.
The Iowa Open was held in Ames, Iowa this past weekend and drew a fairly disappointing crowd of 44 people for the Open, Reserve (Rated under 1600), and Beginner (Under 1200). To give a comparison, last year’s tournament in Cedar Rapids drew 51 players without the beginner section, 82 in 2008 with a beginner section, and 78 in 2007 with a beginner section. The 2006 edition, also in Cedar Rapids drew only 41 players without a beginner section. The tournament is mandated by the Iowa State Chess Association (IASCA) to be held on Labor Day weekend and regularly drew over 100 people in the early part of the last decade when held in Iowa City.
There are a number of reasons why the attendance is trending down. The fee to play in the open section of the tournament is around $45-$50. My son Matt went to play, but I could not see spending that kind of money for me to play in that tournament. Adding to the expense is the need for a hotel room since the open section is over 2 days. The reason the fee is so high is to offer a top prize ($300-$400) large enough to entice strong out of state players to travel to Iowa and compete. That is a good idea, but on Labor Day weekend for the past few years there has been stiff competition from the Illinois Open in Chicago which has an $80 entry fee and an $11,000 prize fund.
The attendance at the beginner section is correlated to the strength of the local scholastic chess community and the relationship of the Iowa Open organizer to this community. The Iowa City tournaments were run at a time when there were 2 school clubs in the Iowa City and so there would be 60 or more players at the beginner tournament. The organizer of the 2007 and 2008 Opens was also the main organizer of the local scholastic chess tournaments in Cedar Rapids so there was reasonable scholastic tournament at his opens. Unfortunately, the recent Iowa Open in Ames was run by an organizer from Des Moines without the permission of the very territorial primary scholastic organizer. Suffice to say, there was minimal participation from the robust Ames chess scholastic community in the 16 player beginner section. To be fair to my friend from Ames it should be noted that the beginner section participants were asked to pay $10 for an IASCA membership in addition to their entry fee, which will also tend to hurt attendance.
Most Iowa adult tournaments have a base of a group of 20 or so hard core players who will play in most every tournament they can and the not so hard core group who might play if the travel time, prize fund, time limit, and entry fee are to their liking. There have been lots of surveys of what the Iowa chess players want and there has never been a consensus on what will get the most players. Some players want quick time limits, others want long games. Some want low entry fees and others want large prize funds. With the exception of the $5 3 round Cychess tournaments in Ames, the adult tournaments in the state this year have all had at least a $20 entry fee and the beginner tournaments start at $10. I am having an open and beginner tournament in Marshalltown on October 9th with a $5 entry fee for everybody. There will be no cash prizes, just trophies and medals. I have a group of my local blitz players that will play and I’m interested in seeing how many of the gang of 20 I’ll attract to this 'anti-tournament'.
Heading into September, the Yankees still have the best record in baseball by a game over the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. I’m not sure how they’ve done it. The pitching has been spotty. Pettite is hurt and Burnett and Chamberlain have been awful. Hughes and Sabathia have held their own but Hughes hasn’t gone past 6 innings in a couple of months. The offense has been riding Mark Teixeira all summer and are scoring bunches of runs despite not having A-Rod and Jeter having his worst year. Last year, the team got through the playoffs by having pitching that was just good enough and an offense that could bludgeon opponents. I don’t think the pitching is as good as last year and was upset to see the Rangers get Cliff Lee and the Phillies get Roy Oswalt, but the Yankees only get Kerry Wood to help the pitching. Wood has been productive so far so it is probably a good thing that I’m not the Yankee general manager instead of Cashman. The rookie Ivan Nova has been excellent and probably would have had to be traded for a big name pitcher, but pitching rookies in the postseason is a risky proposition. If Pettite and A-Rod can come back strong and Hughes picks it up a notch, there probably isn’t a team that can beat the Yankees in a short series, but those are some big unknowns.
Ex-Yankee Roger Clemens was indicted for lying to Congress when he denied (under oath) taking steroids and human growth hormones. Good for him. I remember how disgusted I was when the Yankees picked him up in 1999 and not just because he was an ex Red Sox player.
In 1986 he was the starting pitcher in the famous World Series Game where the Mets made an amazing comeback by getting 5 straight hits with 2 outs to score 3 runs in the 11th inning of Game 6 to tie the World Series. Clemens had a lead in that game and begged out with a blister on his finger. After the team lost, he claimed he wanted to stay in the game, but the manager didn’t agree.
In 1990, Clemens was pitching in the American League Championship Series against the Oakland A’s and a real champion, Dave Stewart. Clemens’ team was behind in the series 3-0 and he managed to get thrown out of the game for arguing balls and strikes in the very first inning. When he got to the Yankees, Clemens was a good pitcher in games you didn't need to win. He'd pitch in the playoffs when the Yankees had a series lead and the pressure was off. He did pitch great in Game 7 if the 2001 World Series and even left with a lead, but that is the only time I can remember him pitching big in a big game.
In 2003, Clemens started Game 7 of the American League Championship Series for the Yankees against the hated Red Sox. He left the game with the Yankees losing and the fans were cheering him in case it was his last game as a Yankee and Clemens waved his cap to the fans in a big farewell gesture even though his team was losing thanks to his efforts. The Yankees managed to win that game in a miracle comeback and in Game 4 of the World Series, Clemens left the game against the Marlins with his team losing and again the fans cheered him and again he stopped and waved his cap to the fans. The only difference was that this game was in Miami, not New York. Clemens didn’t care if his team was winning or losing as long as he got his cheers. Disgusting and he didn’t even retire, but just went to Houston so he could be close to his family. When he wore out his welcome in Houston, he came back to the Yankees in 2007. I guess being close to his family wasn’t that important after all.
Everyone always marveled at how Clemens could keep throwing so hard into his 40’s. He claimed it was because of his workout regimen that was patterned after his idol, Nolan Ryan. But after his retirement his personal trainer, Brian McNamee, claimed he injected Clemens with steroids and HGH. His former teammate, Andy Pettite says that Clemens admitted to him that he used HGH. Clemens even admitted that his wife took HGH while denying his own use. Of course, she probably had a reason to try to hang on to her youth since Roger had been having a long term affair with country singer Mindy McCready that began when Clemens was 28 and a father of 2 and McCready was 15. Yes, she was 15!
I’ve always felt that a man who cheats on his wife will cheat on anyone and Clemens is no different. I see no reason to think that he wouldn’t take steroids and HGH to keep his fastball, while letting everyone think he was a workout warrior. He had a lot of talent, but took the easy way out his whole career. I wish he had never been a Yankee. They won before he showed up, won after he left, and won while he was there but except for 1 game in his Yankee career, when he was needed him, he disappeared. I hope he appears in a jail cell soon.
