Knee surgery in the past without all that much drama

"What a week I'm having ..."

With apologies to Eugene Levy for stealing his wonderful line from "Splash," after a rough start to the week it hasn't been all that bad.


My oh-so-minor knee surgery was scheduled for Tuesday at 10:15 a.m.,  and I learned late Monday afternoon that my cardiologist had not provided the necessary cardiac clearance.

So I started scrambling and got an appointment to see the cardiologist at 8:15 a.m.

I was up before the sun, and the cardiologist -- one of my doctor's partners -- gave me the clearance with one caveat. She saids my blood pressure was high enough that they might not risk doing the surgery.

Klobuchar coming out of the shadows for Democrats

“There’s an old story of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and when he died, his body was put on a train and went up across America, and there was a guy standing by those tracks along with so many Americans, and he had his hat on his chest and he was sobbing, and a reporter said, ‘Sir, did you know the president?’ And the guy says, ‘No, I didn’t know the president, but he knew me. He knew me.’ I will tell you this, there is a complete lack of empathy in this guy in the White House right now. 

"I will bring that to you. “If you have trouble stretching your paycheck to pay for that rent, I know you and I will fight for you. If you have trouble deciding if you’re going to pay for your childcare or your long-term care, I know you and I will fight for you. If you have trouble figuring out if you’re going to fill your refrigerator or fill your prescription drug, I know you and I will fight for you.”
-- AMY KLOBUCHAR, Feb. 8, 2020

Senator Amy Klobuchar

I think it was last September when I first put the bumper sticker on my car.

I spent a lot of time thinking about who I would support this year. In many ways, I think the 2020 election might be the most important of the last 50 years.

I had thought for a long time I might be supporting a senator from Minnesota for president in 2020. Of course, I once thought it would be Al Franken.

Overwhelming need to win infects us all

If there's one thing about history that is truly ironic, it's that heroes can turn into villains without changing anything about themselves.

In fact, it happens for many of them long after their deaths.

I'm not talking about Founding Fathers who owned slaves. The case I have in mind is far more recent.

Take Vince Lombardi, probably the most legendary of NFL coaches. He had amazing success in the 1960s and was the winning coach in the first two Super Bowls.

His most famous quote was the one in the box to the right, and while Lombardi never suggested cheating to win, he later realized that when you say there is nothing other than winning, stuff happens.

Roger Kahn's books show a true love of baseball

It was April 1983, and the early spring weather was raw.

Baseball season had started, and the Class A Gastonia (NC) Expos had a doubleheader scheduled with the Columbia Mets. I was covering the Expos for the paper now known as the Gaston Gazette, and had in fact been honored as South Atlantic League sportswriter of the year the previous season.

I was the proverbial big fish in a small pond when it came to baseball writing, but on this day I was going meet the biggest fish in the ocean. Roger Kahn, the man who wrote "The Boys of Summer," was coming to town with the Mets.

Roger Kahn

Kahn was a minority owner of the Columbia Mets, and he was planning to spend the summer with the team writing a book about minor league baseball.

It didn't work out that way. The owner of the franchise was a minor-league George Steinbrenner, and he got angry every time people talked about Kahn.

After a month or so of that, Kahn gave up on Columbia and shifted his attention to the Utica Blue Sox of the short-season New York-Penn League for the book that turned out to be "Good Enough to Dream."

Macy's closings one more sign of vanishing social life

Back in the early 1970's, the wonderful humor group Firesign Theatre had a newscast on one of its albums that included the following exchange between two "happy talk" anchors:

"Well, Patty, last year, the world ended."

"As we know it, Hugh."

(both laugh)

You might have to be under the age of 60 to believe this, but the world -- at least the one we grew up with -- is coming to an end.

I know starting out this way makes me sound like a grumpy 70-year-old, which at the moment is what I am. Still, what sparked the idea was news that Macy's will close 125 of its stores between now and 2023, most of them in "lesser-performing malls" around the country.