He decided to try Amtrak in order to visit girlfriend at college. She is only twenty years old, and her end of the bargain involved just driving into Chicago (approx 3 hours) to pick him up at the station. His end required an hour and a half excursion to a small town in Nebraska (closest point to catch train) a fourteen-hour ride, and the opportunity to sleep on the train overnight.

The first glitch occurred within 30 minutes of leaving for the station Thursday evening. Leaving Colorado he realized he had lost an hour. Time zone. Uh-oh. Cell phone call to girlfriend anouncing that unless he can drive 135 mph he will miss his train. Girlfriend calls Amtrak. Ever-dependable, they are an hour behind schedule.

He parks, catches train at 2 a.m., buys ticket, snoozes happily. Everything is going according to plan. Until an hour out of Chicago. That's when he decides to call us and alert us to his plan. Hey, why don't you drive into the city and we could catch dinner together? It is about 5 p.m. On a Friday. Considering traffic, that's about two hours for us, and we had just done it the night before to see a play. Girlfriend is enroute but not close to the city yet. I ask if he could get off train anywhere earlier? Might be easier for us to meet him.

LINK: http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1670524,00.html

NOTE: since writing this piece I have read elsewhere that some details of Capecchi's story are somewhat in question because journalisits tried to use existing records to substantiate his story, but are finding holes, & discrepencies between what he recalls and what could possibly have actually happened, like no record of his mother having been sent to the camp he remembers hearing about (I don't think anyone is alleging fabrication on his part, just that his boyhood memories may not be entirely accurate, or his Mom may have misled him)

Mario Capecchi was named a Nobel prize winner last week. For medicine. For research, genetic research. He works with "knockout mice." That means that the miniature mouse genes get manipulated, eliminating any gene which differs from the corresponding human gene. When the genes are done being knocked out, then the mice are about 99% closer to the human genetic code, and genetic research done on them becomes far more applicable to the human condition.

But it's the human condition that makes Mario's own story a knockout all by itself.

He was born in 1937, and his Mom did not find favor with the Nazi Gestapo. She was taken away, and little Mario, aged 4 years, was left behind. Mario fended for himself on the streets of his city, trying only to stay alive and avoid certain starvation. He accompanied a band of children who pulled devilish tricks, stole when they could, and begged on the streets, doing whatever was necessary to eat that day.

On his 9th birthday, an entire year after the war had ended and her concentration camp liberated, his Mom found him. She had survived Dachau.

They first traveled to Rome and then to Philadelphia, living in a Quaker commune near the city. He grew up. Attended Harvard University, studying molecular biology. He has done his groundbreaking research at the University of Utah.

If someone wrote this improbable story, like a Dickens novel, I am sure it would be considered a cautionary tale, an allegory of a sort, but not a true-to-life rendition of an actual man. Why is that?

Why are we so unwilling to consider the vagaries of the way real life goes until we meet someone like Mario Capecchi? That is one question that I have.

But another question is about the other children, the ragtag mob that he ran with as a preschooler. There had to be a protector, someone who gave him food, made sure he slept, gave up things to provide for him. I am picturing someone twelve, or maybe fourteen, a leader of the gang perhaps, or just someone who knew how to roam along its edges and grab something for little Mario.

When Anne Frank was sent to concentration camp she and her sister survived for a few months, growing weaker. By some strange chance a former neighbor from her old town where she had grown up in Germany was in another section of the same camp. She threw her own Red Cross packages over the fence so that Anne and her sister could have them. The first time that she did it the small box was grabbed by someone else, and the girls got nothing. The second time they caught the box but it was already too late. The girls were dying.

But isn't it amazing that someone threw the box at all? And then twice?

www.loveinthetime.com

Go ahead. Just look at it. Promise to come back though.

Now, if you haven't clicked away, and you're determined to just read through this, you're either a guy not intersted in film trailers for chick flicks, or you just don't feel like going through the effort.

Here is what you missed: Love in the Time of Cholera will be released in US theaters in November, a NewLine Cinema production directed by Mike Newell who did Four Weddings and a Funeral (Hugh Grant & Andie McDowell) a few years back. Based on the novel by Columbian Nobel prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez. With Benjamin Bratt, Catalina Sandino Morino, Giovanna Mezzagiorno, Javieer Bardem, John Leguizamo, and others.

Now, if you do watch the trailer? Be sure to read all the credits at the very end.

Picture yourself lieing facedown on an extremely relaxing and comfortable massage table, just about drooling onto the towel under your chin.

Then picture that your session is over, your relaxation days are over and it is time to return to normal life. Somebody is going tohave to pull the needels out before you can go home, right? In my case the process seems to be extremely difficult because they keep leaving needles in accidentally. (Actually, maybe if I was paying my bill each visit instead of waiting to find out how much insurance will cover . . . )

Anyway, last time I decided to feel around before getting dressed. Guess what? Yep, right where you would least want to find one. I reached behind myself to pull it out. The other ones that I have pulled out were in maybe 2 or 3 millimeters. So I gave a tiny tug, and it barely moved. Then a good long pull, a good inch. Then another good long pull, yeah another inch or so. One more pull. And finally one last tug. That thing had been a good four inches into my posterior.

It didn't hurt coming out, but I think the next one might going in. Now that I know where it is really going.

Feels great once they're out though.

http://www.mtv.com/overdrive/?artist=504144&vid=139327

Alejandro Sanz (Spanish vocalist) is hanging out near this bridge playing chess & singing a tune, see, when this limo pulls up, see, and out steps the girl of his dreams, see, and . . . heck, just watch the video.

After you have seen that one, then you might view the next one which happens to be the same couple, different city. No more coffee, just a bit more . . . steam. Click on number 10 for HOT and number 11 for EXTRA HOT (MUY CALIENTE).

The best issue of an American magazine ever published is on the newsstands right now. Look for a cover feature written by Tom Chiarella. And a recipe for Croque Monsieur, a toasty little cheese concoction which I always order whenever it is offered. A very tiny mention of Shakira as the shortest of all Women We Love (a regular feature). And some photos of Charlize Theron as the Sexiest Woman Alive.

Oh. it's the November issue of Esquire. You might not find it with the other magazines on the rack though.

Fire hazard.

(notice the blank space there? indicating it feels like nothing? Good, now we can go on.)

I am now an acupuncture veteran with two sessions under my belt. Fortunately, in a figurative sense only. I have been punctured acutely about 55 times so far in various strategically located positions on both arms, both legs, along my back, and in my head. Literally in the head. Like where my hair is. Ironically, the needles are placed in straight lines.

Why is that ironic, you wonder? Well, I was just reading last week that in China they are now practicing lining up. They are so bad at lining up that the whole city of Beijing has to practice lining up one day each month. The rest of the month they go back to normal, which is a mad scramble to push in first for whatever it is they would have been lining up for. Presumably they even push in first at the local acupuncture clinic.

But when it comes to Chinese needles, they all go in pretty straight. And they don't hurt. One of the high points (no . . . pun intended) of my day yesterday was discovering a stray needle left in my arm that I didn't even know was there. They just didn't notice it, and I walked out with it in my arm and didn't find it until I took my shirt off an hour later. The needle was near the Ell-bo, which is Mandarin for elbow.

No, it isn't! I am just using acupuncture humor! Because one of my prescriptions (besides strange herbs in both tea and pill form) and strange stretches (such as swinging my arms around my body until my hands flap against my opposite pockets, like a bored first grader's) is to use more music and humor.

I am bad at music. I like music, but it just doesn't like me back. So I am concentrating on humor. He didn't say that all the humor had to be bad puns and plays-on-words. Then again? He didn't say it couldn't. He basically just said that I should laugh more. I don't know why, but having a piece of vertebral tissue pressing soundly against the largest nerve in the body has a kind of dampening effect on the humor side of things.

So this evening as the Cubs lost their third straight (see, they get it right) to go marching from the playoffs straight (ahem) into oblivion I was laughing so hard I almost cried.

Why does my back still hurt? The simplest and clearest explanation, steering clear of all medical mumbo-jumbo (I don't think I have ever typed that word before, but it was kind of fun) is that I am jinxed. In fact, multiply jinxed.

First jinx: who hurts their back when they are doing normal push-ups on the floor? I work out pretty regularly, including regular bouts of weight-lifting and resistance machines and so forth, so if I had hurt my back doing some kind of Herculean macho iron-hurling, I could understand it. But no, I hurt mine doing some wimpy floor push-ups.

Second and third jinxes: the other times I hurt my back? I was sneezing, or lifting/lowering a toilet. What does lifting-slash-lowering a toilet mean? (I thought I heard someone ask . . . ) It means that our plumber told us (this was about four years ago) that it would be a lot cheaper and actually easier for him to just prep the location of the new toilet installation (regular readerboat knows that plumbing and I have some history) and have me just pop the new toilet in myself. I popped the toilet down onto the little wax ring, then popped it back up again to adjust position, then popped it down again, then back up one more time, then popped it down again . . . something like that, it turns out, is a good way to injure the little discs that separate the spinal vertebrae and keep you from going insane with "discomfort." And that other time? Yeah, I just sneezed while sitting on the couch in the living room, about two years later.

Fourth jinx, the search for medical treatment. Now you might think that I live in some cultural backwater . . . which I kind of do, but not in a medical sense, only for politics . . . where medical treatment is unavailable. My first stop was the chiropractor. This was my spouse's recommendation. (Come to think of it, so was popping the toilet back up to check its position one more time, but I know she loves me. Really, I am 100% not doubting that. (Except in the middle of the night "if" I snore, and she brings it up in the morning like I am supposed to remember it???)) Three question marks followed by a double parenthetical closure, that's an interesting punctuation, but I think I may be wandering again . . . it must be the discomfort . . .

Fourth jinx: oh yeah, I already mentioned that. Well, the chiropractor tried to help, but the treatment was kind of wimpy. He was using the same little chiropractic weapon (it looks like a spring-loaded hypodermic) that he uses on my spouse. But I am way bigger than her! Especially since she has been limiting her intake of carbs for the past two months. So the adjustments only adjusted my pocketbook, then we left for Europe. I had been worrying about the flight. But it turned out to be a piece of cake. What kind of cake, you ask? (I think I heard someone asking . . .) How about the wedding cake that Charles and Diana sliced at their wedding in 1981, that seemed tasty at the time but ultimately led to her doom? Except we weren't flying to London yet, just Amsterdam. Anyway, the flight resulted in my losing my wallet in the back row of seats when I tried to lie down (in the middle of the night) because I was desperate for some relief from sitting in a cramped position or standing in the aisle. A helpful flight attemdant located the wallet which had slipped out, and it still had all my cash and credit cards! Maybe I should remove one jinx.

Fifth jinx: the attempt to tap the expertise of the medical establishment. When I returned from the European jaunt, I still wasn't really feeling very jaunty, so eventually beautiful spouse (are you beginning to see a pattern here?) called the orthopedic place where we go whenever there are sports injuries in our family. (Reminder: three boys. A small wing has been named after us.) This was a major fee-ask-oh! First appointment took three weeks to schedule. Resulted in a clear diagnosis within the first ten minutes. Which needed to be confirmed with MRI. Second appointment resulted in confirmation of the clear diagnosis: herniated disc at L5 position. Third appointment, I was expecting (hoping for??) some actual treatment, but it only resulted in a referral to the aptly named Pain Center. Across the street. Under different ownership. Which doesn't believe that I have insurance until THEY say I have insurance. I bullied them (over the cell phone on a Friday afternoon in July when I had waited all week for them to call with an appointment) into making me an actual appointment. I thought I was scheduling a cortisone shot. But I then was told it's just a consultation to figure out what, if any, shot might be recommended. I was still planning on going for the consultation at that point, when . . .

Sixth jinx: (the one I am grateful for) middle son called to tell us about surviving rolling his car and totalling it going off a dirt road where he flipped over and came out with two scratches. It is ironic that he can total his vehicle and come out better than me sneezing. But we left town to go help him out, and I had to cancel the Pain appointment. I never made another. I really lost confidence in the whole thing ever being helpful, plus the othopedic Dr. didn't really think that this shot would help in the first place, he is recommending (hoping for?) surgery.

Seventh jinx: After driving for hours two weeks ago (visiting youngest son at college) I have had a relapse of sorts. I had been making decent progress and had been down to just two Tylenol per day, when everything flared up again. So "I" decided (with help) to see an acupuncture guy. I had just read an interesting article (all back-related articles are now interesting) about acupuncture being effective at relieving back pain. Even fake acupuncture (they stick in the needles, but not in the actual acupuncture places . . . think on that one for a minute . . . ) proves as effective as surgery. (Though possibly not as effective as fake surgery. In which they cut you open, but don't do anything inside?? . . . Not sure on this one yet.) I decided to try ACTUAL acupuncture. So I got a recommendation from a fitness-minded colleague who knows someone he really likes and recommends. Named?

Eighth jinx: Dr. Honey

Ninth jinx: Yes, the jinx above consists only of the guy's name. I know, he can't help it. But I don't want my doctor to sound like a stripper. But then when all I had was his name (due to brevity of conversation with colleague) I figured: Hey, I can find him on-line! Here is what I found out about him:

http://www.healertainment.com/

Tenth jinx: Now what do I do????)))