Tag End

I suppose it’s something akin to rooting for your own demise, but if my generation is going to insist on segregated proms in the 21st century (It is the 21st century, right?), then I have no choice other than to look forward to the day when geezers like me have gone to our reward (such as it may be) and new generation is put in charge.

In rural Georgia, black kids and white kids are friends; black kids and white kids date; black kids and white kids socialize together.

But their parents don’t like it. So the proms are segregated. Lovely, eh?

I recieved an interesting e-mail from Google today. It seems its robots have decided I’m a spammer. I filled out the form for “review” and then, just for fun, called Google. Of course, I wasn’t able to speak with a human being.

I’ve posted the obvious on Facebook and I’ll post it here again: If I am to be a spammer, it would require a certain level of compuer knowledge that I don’t have. I couldn’t spam if I wanted to. But it’s a little bit irritating knowing there’s a Google robot computer somewher that has identified me as a spammer.

Could it be Google is unhappy because I’ve left blogspot.com and built my own Web page on which to blog? I don’t know. I’m too new to this to know. I just know there’s a message on the old blog announcing to the world that I’m a spammer.

I’m beginning to think cyberspace isn’t such a friendly place after all.

First came email, years ago, ancient now, something akin to the kind of stuff you might find on an archaeological dig. I saw something a few days ago about how social networks had surpassed email as the preferred contact media.

So, as usual, there’s the curve, and there I am, behind it.

Then came Facebook, at the urging of a friend, a science writer who is forever egging me on into new universes. So I joined Facebook. Pretty soon I had “friends” I’d never heard of in my life.

Then, of course, he got me to Twittering. The jury is still out on Twitter, discussing the case in very, very short sentences.

Then came the savvy computer expert who said, “Did you know that www.jimbelshaw.com is available?”

Well, no, of course I didn’t know. Now I do, and here it is, a new home page.

The blog’s name remains the same — Tag End. The home page as shameless self-promotion may be found in the two books available from Amazon (or the University of New Mexico Press). You’ll see them on the right-hand side of the page.

Beyond that, it’s more brave new world, I suppose. But I’m going to try to throw in some old world stuff, as well.

I wrote a column for 28 years for the Albuquerque Journal. There was little in the way of political screeds and much more in the way of conversations and stories about people who weren’t “newsmakers.” (You know, the usual suspects — governors, mayors, councilors and commissioners.) I was always much more interested in the people in Albuquerque’s neighborhoods; and for that matter, people beyond Albuquerque’s neighborhoods.

I hope you’ll find some of them here now. You’ll find links to stories that catch my eye and links to Web pages and bloggers who catch the other eye.

Meanwhile, I need to go about the business of finding out what all these new buttons and keys do.

Peace.

Jim Belshaw

Just something for Monday morning. It comes from Metropolitan Diary in today’s New York Times.

Metropolitan Diary

Dear Diary:

Now that it’s not there anymore I can tell a story of why I don’t use travel agents.

I was planning my first and only trip to Israel, so I went up the stairs to a little travel office on West 73rd Street to consider using them for parts of my trip. I got a pleasant greeting from the receptionist and asked her, “Is anybody in the office an expert on Israel?”

She said: “I wouldn’t say experts, but we’re all very familiar with travel to Israel. What can we help you with?”

And I said, “Well, my first question is, am I going to need to rent a car?”

And she said, quite confidently: “Oh, no. You just take a boat from island to island.”

Edward Belling

Friday morning at Popejoy Hall, his name — Bryan Patterson — was there on the eighth page of the small booklet — “The University of New Mexico School of Medicine Convocation 2009.”

The graduation ceremony took in an array of medical specialties — emergency medical services, medical laboratory sciences, radiologic sciences, dental hygiene, biomedical science, occupational therapy, physical therapy, public health.

His name appeared on the page with those receiving a masters degree in public health. That it was there in the booklet at all sat in my mind like a small wonder, a miracle of some kind. When the graduates began the march from the rear of Popejoy to the seats near the stage, the audience stood and turned to watch them approach.

I had an aisle seat and I could see him when he made the turn into the aisle. When our eyes met, we smiled. By the time he reached me and held out a hand, all we could was laugh. No words came. Only laughter at the disbelieving wonder of it all.

That he could walk was miraculous enough. That he was alive to walk even more so. By rights, by any reasonable medical assessment, Bryan should not have been in the building, should not have been alive, let alone the recipient of a master’s degree in public health.

I first met him in 1996. He lay in a coma in the UNMH intensive care unit, his shattered body host to tubes and IVs and electronic measuring devices sending out a steady stream of information reflecting his terrible condition .

On Halloween night, about a week before, he had walked into a Downtown alley toward his parked car. A gang of 15-20 people described by witnesses as “skinheads” attacked him.

Why? No one knows. Who knows anything about mindless violence?

They beat him with their fists; they kicked his head, repeatedly, until they sheared the brain stem and left him for dead in the alley. At the hospital his family gathered around him — his father, Bob; his mother, Sharon; his brother, David, his then-fiancé, Tyrrell.

The outlook was grim. The doctors didn’t expect him to survive the coma, but after nearly a month, he somehow made his way out of the darkness, made his way back, bursting into semi-consciousness with a loud profanity that sent his father into a delirious joy.

I wrote a column for the Albuquerque Journal back then. His family allowed me into their circle so I might chronicle how a small group of loved ones finds their way through the kind of unspeakable nightmare that began for all of them that Halloween night. He was 29, a scientist, and his life ended that night. Oh, he survived, he lived. But the life he had known came to a sudden end. A new one took its place, and the newness was not bright and shiny.

The brain damage was permanent, despite his miraculous recovery. One of his doctors said he’d never seen anything like it. Nonetheless, the Bryan Patterson who walked down an alley on that Halloween night disappeared forever. The new one would struggle with all the obstacles strewn in the path of the severely brain injured. He had to learn how to speak. He had to learn how to walk. He had to learn how to function in society.

He married, but the marriage didn’t survive the brain injury. The pressures crushed the marriage. Over the years, he secured victories and suffered losses — one step forward, two back, that sort of thing.

Then Friday morning at Popejoy Hall, there he was on the eighth page of a convocation booklet, the holder of a new master’s degree in public health. I sat in the audience watching him climb the stairs to the stage to be hooded by his UNM mentor and I remembered the day he fell down in his kitchen trying to walk no more than six feet.

A string quartet played classical music on the Popejoy stage. Janet Napolitano, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, was the commencement speaker. Like all commencement venues, Popejoy buzzed with the sound of joy, the celebration of achievement, the pomp and circumstance that had dignitaries and scholars in colorful robes on stage; and families whooping and hollering in the audience at the sound of a daughter’s name or the ascendancy of a son to the stage.

I like commencements, regardless of the level of education. I like the happiness in the air. And when I heard Bryan was getting a master’s degree, I had to see it. I wrote columns about him and his family for more than year. They were all there at Popejoy on Friday except for his dad, Bob, a man of wit and intelligence and great spirit. He died last year of a heart ailment. He would have been a deservedly proud man Friday morning.

In school at UNM, Bryan agreed to tests to measure his deficits. It had been many years since he had undergone such tests. The results were not encouraging.

“My short term memory was terrible,” he said. “I had great difficulty multi-tasking. But somehow I dragged myself across the finish line.”

It took him six years. Friday morning, the finish line came into sight.

Just because you know communication doesn’t mean you can communicate.

The New York Times arrives at the West Mesa.