By BILL GIRDNER 05/17/2012
For almost two years, I have banged away at the big centralized IT project called the Court Case Management System, a profligate bureaucracy's badly conceived and badly run boondoggle. To see it bite the dust last month left me with an empty feeling, like, what do I do now.
So I hit the road.
It was not until I left the office that I realized how much I needed to get away and cover some country. The timing was perfect. A huge rainstorm had engulfed much of the state for two days.
In its wake, the earth seemed to be in party mode, with green coming into the hills and a gentle sunshine washing over the soaked land. Spring was on its way.
The escape from the office was billed as a business trip. I drove up to Santa Cruz to meet our San Francisco bureau chief and our Santa Cruz reporter, who is also a concert violinist. From there, we worked out way down the coast.
My uncle Bill, who I am named after, used to travel this way, meandering along the coast, stopping here and there, and spending the night in whatever motel happened to look good as the day wore on.
My first meander was to stop at Moss Landing, a tiny little bay south of Santa Cruz that is home to two marine research laboratories. The Shakespeare store was closed temporarily. The proprietor had left a note saying he would be back shortly.
There was nary a tourist in the roughly two square blocks along the sea that make up the landing. I stopped by the Haute Enchilada to get a meal and a beer.
The patio is in a garden that if I had the time would be my garden. Exotic cacti, succulents and flowers. The garden is dotted with art, a Frida Kahlo painting, a long porcelain wall in the shape of a green dragon, and a fountain held aloft by a full and bare-breasted Aztec maiden.
The chowder I ordered reminded me of the way we used to cook it on the beach after clamming, with bacon, potatoes as well as corn, onions and bell pepper, in a broth enriched with milk (and not corn syrup). The carnita tacos were excellent, and the Big Sur ale went down smooth and easy.
The patio was empty and peaceful on a sunny day.
But the clock was a'tickin'. So I headed south along the coast. All the places that were famous in youth swung into view and out, the Nepenthe Restaurant, the campgrounds under the redwoods. The coast was spectacular but familiar, as well as the slow pokes forever slowing down the drive.
What struck me more this time was the precariousness of the road, at times cut out of a rock face, and the frequency of repair sites where pieces of the road had evidently washed away into the sea below.
As a true tourist, I stopped quickly to see the colony of elephant seals at Ano Nuevo, a state park near San Simeon, and then jumped back in the car to, at last, hit some open road on the drive into Paso Robles.
I have never been to Ireland but the hills along highway 46, connecting coastal highway 1 to inland highway 101, reminded me of the descriptions.
In the soft, gray light of gathering dusk, the hills, massive but gently rounded by time, were all the deepest green, stretching away as far as I could see. Groves of oak stood along the ridges and hilltops, surrounded by expanses of new grass.
I sped along the road, trying to make it time for dinner in Paso Robles where the bureau chief was already ensconced with a pint of Guinness. And made it in time for a fine dinner of rabbit cassoulet and a bottle of Everett Ridge pinot, smooth as silk.
All of it was so far, such an enormous distance in experience, from an office and a computer, and so satisfying to a thirst that had built up over the months, a wanting not unlike the land's thirst for the rain that had brought it back to life.
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The poison worked.
Two weeks ago I wrote of an impending operation in which a surgeon was to inject my hand with Clostridium bacteria - instead of cutting me open and scraping away the bad parts - to relieve me of DePuytrens contracture, or claw hand.
The bacteria, the theory goes, would eat away at - dissolve - the hardened, thickened fascia that made my ring finger curl up.
Two days later the doc would "manipulate" the finger - there's an ominous-sounding word - the fascia would tear with an audible "Pop!" and I would be all better.
I would not awake from total anesthesia to find my hand full of stitches - this time the anesthesia would be local, and there would be no stitches.
Nor would I be facing six weeks of rehab that were worse than the surgery - as I did in two previous operations. No, after this "procedure," as they call it, I could go out and play.
Well, it worked.
The Clostridium poison - trade name Xiaflex - has been approved for medical use for just two years. It is extraordinarily expensive.
If you want a doctor to shoot you up with poison, you want it to be really good poison.
My surgeon, the saintly Dr. Liz, thinks it's the biggest advance in treating DePuytrens contracture in her lifetime. She went through the "procedure" herself.
I have to agree with Dr. Liz.
My previous surgeries were no fun at all. I was stitched and swollen for two weeks, then the stitches came out and I went through the tortures of rehab.
This time, after Dr. Liz manipulated me and we heard the fascia pop, I came home and went for a bike ride, then mowed the lawn.
It wasn't so much a pop as a rip or a tear. It didn't hurt - Dr. Liz had shot my hand full of Lidocaine. In fact, the local anesthesia, the shot before the poison injection, and before the manipulation two days later, was the only part of the entire process that hurt.
True, my finger looked like a purple balloon for several days. But as I type this column - using all my fingers - just a week after the poison injection, the swelling has been reduced to the first joint of my ring finger, where the DePuytrens was.
DePuytrens always comes back, Dr. Liz says. There's no permanent cure. It comes back a little or a lot, and you need to go through the whole process again, or not. But if you don't go through it, your finger, or fingers, can curl up so far as to be useless. That's what my little finger did the first time. I could no longer get my hand into a pocket. I could not straighten the finger by force. Pretty soon, Dr. Liz said, the only alternative would have been amputation. She saved my hands twice with surgery, and this time with poison.
The poison was the best.
So that's my report on the human experiment upon me. I call it a success.
The worst part was battling my insurance company, which I consider a criminal organization, or damn near. I will not tell you its name, but it has the word Blue in it. Also, Cross. And something about an Anthem.
The insurer, whose name I will not tell you, approved the procedure, at first. Then it found out how expensive the poison is, and said, "Wait a minute! We don't approve it!"
To battle this enormous, evil amoeba, I punched buttons on the phone, seeking a human. Day after day, I punched buttons 60 times or more before slamming down the phone in frustration.
This, I believe, is what the Evil Unnamed Insurer wanted me to do.
The Xiaflex people have programs to help out with the cost. I believe the Xiaflex people - doesn't that sound like a science fiction movie? - really want to help, but they made me push buttons forever, too.
I gave up. Ecce homo.
Fortunately, I live in Vermont, where even doctors are human. Dr. Liz's assistant, the divine Holly, took up my lance, and after weeks of battle made the procedure affordable.
I don't know how she did it. But I would follow Holly or Dr. Liz into the mouth of Hell if they asked me. Not that I think they would, as Hell is so far from Vermont.
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I'm not getting into the debate of when life begins because I don't know. For all I know, it hasn't begun yet.
A more interesting question may be: When does moral turpitude begin?
That was the question that immediately came to my mind when I heard the news story about Sergio Garcia's quest to join the California bar.
In case you missed it, the California Supreme Court decided to review a decision by the Committee of Bar Examiners to admit Garcia to the bar even though, technically, he's an illegal immigrant.
The court's statement doesn't say anything about moral turpitude - which was really disappointing to me because the story I heard on public radio did and it's so much funnier that way.
After all, Garcia's crime was that he came to the U. S. when he was 17 months old. So can a baby be guilty of moral turpitude?
Before you say no, remember that we see babies on TV trading stocks and dancing. If a toddler crawls past the Border Patrol - they're pretty small so they can get away with it - is he or she doing that crawling with evil intent?
I don't feel strongly about this issue. I've had babies intentionally keep me up all night. They can be evil creatures. But I don't like to paint with a broad brush. The baby could have been trying to feed his family.
There are other issues that I worry about, though. First off, why would someone go through three years of law school and a bar exam if he knows he's an illegal immigrant and might not be able to practice law?
It's not like he can take that American legal education back to Mexico to use there. It's not a safe investment.
And shouldn't one of the law school classes have pointed out the potential problem?
There's also the public policy side to this. It makes sense for the country to welcome educated contributors to society.
If the guy had gone to medical school or rocket science school, it would be a no-brainer. Welcome to America.
But law school?
We don't exactly have a lack of lawyers.
Maybe we could deport some moral turpitude guys to make room for better lawyers.
Journalism. I worry less about the current state of journalism than most people because I think it was just as bad before.
Everything old is new again.
Maybe it seems new because we can read stuff on computer screens without paper.
And, fortunately, we have investigative, muckraking lawyers to let us know how self-congratulatory and lazy news people are.
This is from the introduction to a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles last week against The Wrap, an online entertainment news site:
"This action exposes the continuing demise of journalistic integrity as more and more online publications, purporting to be serious news outlets, race to be the first to post online sensational and inflammatory articles without the requisite research and with total disregard for the truth."
Bet you didn't know this lawsuit over one story had exposed all that. Fortunately, the lawyer writing that was able to congratulate himself.
Be that as it may, I too see problems with investigative reporters. Most of them seem to be unaware of mathematics.
Case in point that I admit to having a personal interest in: after the Kentucky Derby this year, The New York Times ran a piece on winning trainer Doug O'Neill that contained this passage:
"Over 14 years and in four different states, O'Neill received more than a dozen violations for giving his horses improper drugs. O'Neill's horses also have had a tendency to break down. According to an analysis by The New York Times, the horses he trains break down or show signs of injury at more than twice the rate of the national average."
This has been the basis for all manner of outrage.
Let's see now, a dozen over 14 years - I think that's less than once a year.
This may be the laziest criminal ever.
And the "violations" are mostly for medicine, not performance-enhancing drugs. Minor stuff that could easily be a vet or groom mistake in a large operation.
Now factor in a couple of things not mentioned: O'Neill has the largest group of horses among West Coast trainers and has won about 1,600 races. The winners of races get routinely tested.
Those dozen violations look smaller all the time.
And some of his horses either break down or "show signs of injury?"
Do you have any idea what that means? Hangnails maybe?
The story doesn't say.
Yes, but it's twice the national average. Do we know what the national average is?
Hint: it's not gigantic. They're not dropping like flies.
Yes, the guy seems to have made some mistakes - but if you analyze too much, you don't have a news story.
Sigh.
At least we know why these reporters aren't covering the economy.
On to the Triple Crown!
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