I am not eager to write, much less publish, this piece. Discussing my gastrointestinal issues before readers is not my idea of a good time. Speaking of which, trigger warning: I’m going to open by discussing my gastrointestinal issues.

I have lived with said issues, the result of a surgical mishap, for 20 years. I have tested diet, meds, probiotics, special undergarments, positive thinking, sacrificing a pumpkin spice latte on an altar, and more, all to no avail. The upshot? Let’s just say that sometimes my innards give me minutes if I’m lucky, seconds if I’m not, to take a seat in a restroom. I shall leave to your imagination the inconvenience and humiliation that I have, on occasion, endured when none was at hand.

Last week I found myself in a large public building, making a beeline in the direction of a mercifully easy-to-spot restroom sign. Alas, it turned out to be the women’s room. No men’s room was in sight, and on this occasion my innards had no intention of affording me time to hunt for one. I later learned that the men’s room was one floor down. I would not have made it.

So it was that, not for the first time, I slipped into a women’s room. Mind you, not even the most casual observer would mistake me for female. I’m six feet tall, 220 pounds, bald, and bearded. I have a baritone voice. No wonder the woman reading a magazine in the lounge area looked up with surprise. “I’m sorry,” I stammered, “I have a condition and I can’t find the men’s—”

“Don’t worry about it,” the woman interrupted, motioning toward the doorway to the stalls, “go ahead.”

By the time I reemerged a few minutes later, a second woman had joined the first in the lounge. Again I began an apology. “No problem,” the newcomer said. I thanked them both, hurried out, and disappeared down the hallway as fast I could.

This little adventure took place in a city where people tend not to be uptight about such things. Had it taken place in Utah, my home for 43 years, there’s no telling what kind of hubbub might have ensued. 

Or maybe not. Even when I lived in Utah, my condition tended to win understanding to my side. Moreover, I think you’ll agree that no harm was done. After all, if you have ever visited a women’s restroom, you know that the stalls tend to provide privacy.

But … suppose I’d been in Utah … and suppose I were a transgender woman. In that case, I might be writing about my adventure from a cell instead of my office. Which, when you think about it, is absurd. Condition or no condition, if a straight male does no harm using a women’s room, neither does a transgender woman using a women’s room, nor a transgender man using a men’s room.

If you think transgender people are de facto predatory, you’re just plain uninformed. If you think a restroom is a sexual predator’s preferred hunting ground, let’s hope you’re uninformed and not projecting. The overwhelming majority of people who enter a restroom are there to go potty. Let them.

As I said, I don’t enjoy sharing personal medical matters. But if it might nudge one or two self-appointed morality police an iota closer to basic humanity, I’m willing.

Today I celebrate 20 bonus years of life.

On December 14, 2004, I was wrapping up an address at a marketing conference when a strangulated hernia made its presence known to me. Its method of announcing itself was to hurt like hell. “If you feel a sharp pain right there,” my doc had forewarned me, pointing, “you’ll have a few hours to get to an ER.” So, knowing I had time, I held my composure, finished my remarks, and took questions. After the crowd dispersed, I asked the fellow in charge of the conference for a ride to the nearest hospital.

I would have gone home five days after that emergency surgery had sepsis not set in. Instead, I was transferred to Salt Lake City’s University Hospital. Soon after, my body thought it would be fun to compound the sepsis with multiple organ failure, pneumonia, infection upon infection, and more. 

I was in hospital for a little over four months. I have no memory of roughly the first two. When I came to, I asked one of my surgeons what he thought when I’d arrived. “I thought you were going to die,” he said, adding, “I thought about letting you.” We became good friends.

I underwent a dozen surgeries before losing count. Aware though I was that I would likely die, I wasn’t scared. Death has never scared me. Mainly, I hoped my kids, then 20 and 25, would be all right. What did scare me was the thought of being interminably stuck in a bed and fed through tubes.

Sometime in April 2005, to the relief of family, friends, and creditors, I recovered and went home. A handful of friends hoped I would re-find religion. Nope. One hoped I would embrace her multi-level marketing company’s flimflam “health products.” Also nope.

I had a couple of reparative surgeries about a year later. But for an inconvenient side effect or two that persist to this day, I was pretty much back to normal. A big shout-out goes to University Hospital. They pulled out all the stops and saved my life. I am told the docs there still discuss my case when the topic of against-all-odds recoveries comes up.

So I see the last two decades as a bonus, a gift. During that time, my grandchildren were born; I discovered the James Randi Educational Foundation, through which I learned, grew, and made great friends; over time, my entire family moved to Portland; I managed an accomplishment or two; and, today, I am the happiest, the most content I have ever been. That’s a good thing. It certainly beats yearning for an earlier day.

It’s impossible to enjoy every day as if it were your last. Life has a habit of getting in the way of appreciating the moment. I remember that takeaway when, at 16, I read Thornton Wilder’s Our Town. But I can certainly look back, as I do now, and appreciate the bonus years.

P.S. The hospital bill? A little over $800,000.00. Mind you, those were 2005 dollars. I am self-employed and had been uninsured for years. By sheerest luck, I had obtained health insurance about a year before these events unfolded. I shudder to think what might have happened otherwise. The U.S.A.’s health system is heartless and insane.

If you don’t read, you’re not an author. Or, to more fair, you’re not the author you could be. 

Some time ago, the Center for Inquiry (CFI), a humanist organization I was taken with and wrote for, merged with the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science.

Alas, if only Dawkins himself stood for reason and science. Quite the opposite. It is astonishing, the words that manage to negotiate their way around Dawkins’s foot and spew from his mouth.

It began with an incident that was eventually dubbed “Elevatorgate.” After a woman quite reasonably suggested that men could do better than to corner a lone woman in an elevator in the wee hours and invite her to his room for coffee, Dawkins wrote:

In the guanostorm of side-taking that followed, what appeared to be lost on many was the irrationality and callousness of Dawkins’s remark. Mind you, the man has an international audience. What he says, profound or stupid, finds its way around the world in record time.

Dawkins would eventually bury something of a not-apology in a later blog post. But in succeeding years, he managed to make things worse. The Atlantic reported that Dawkins actually defended what he called “mild pedophilia”:

More recently, Dawkins and CFI CEO Robyn Blumner have been beating anti-trans and anti-woke drums. This is the antithesis of humanism. The American Humanist Association recognized as much in 2021, officially rescinding the Humanist of the Year award that it had bestowed upon Dawkins in 1996. This is from AHA’s official statement:

Dawkins’s and Blumner’s response has been to double-down on their anti-trans and anti-woke rhetoric.

To be sure, Dawkins is a renowned biologist who has accomplished much good. His books are for the most part brilliant (though at times rambling). The problems arise when he strays out of his area of expertise.

The Center for Inquiry operates a number of worthy humanist programs. Lest those programs suffer further loss of support, CFI’s Board would do well to find the wherewithal to dismiss Dawkins and Blumner, apologize to the world, and correct its course.

On Audible, iTunes, and Amazon. Click on the image for Audible.

​Let’s face it is the default opener for writers who can’t come up with a compelling lead.

I ENJOY joking about Trump’s pets-for-dinner paranoia as much as the next person. Provided, that is, that we’re laughing at Trump and his stupidity—and not at immigrants.

Food taboos are, unfortunately, fodder for dividing Us from Them. Mormons are wary of coffee- and alcohol-drinkers, Jews and Muslims of pig-eaters, Hindus of cow eaters, Americans of frog- and dog-eaters, and on and on. From there it is but a few steps to dehumanization, that is, viewing swaths of people as lesser, as deserving of condescension, exclusion, inequity, even aggression. (“Let’s bomb the hell outta those disgusting [whatever]-eaters.”)

Though Trump’s rumeur du jour accuses people from Haiti, “they’ll eat your pets” has long played into Asian hate. I have often been warned by concerned, misinformed friends not to let an Asian family adopt a puppy or kitten lest the animal  become their next meal. 

Come on! No, your Asian neighbors are NOT butchering and eating your pets.

To be sure, there are countries—not just in Asia—where a minority of people consume canine meat. Even so, the consumers do NOT chase down and butcher roving dogs. They purchase canine meat the same way you and I purchase beef, pork, or chicken: at a market.* 

They don’t chase down and butcher pets here, either. **

I might add that many Asian families, here and abroad, keep dogs and cats as companions, just as you and I do.

As for “they’ll eat your pets” jokes, do not brook the “it’s all in good fun” defense. The most benignly-intended wisecracks about pet-eating inevitably circulate. And escalate. And reinforce harmful stereotypes. And, in turn, generate yet more rumors. The resulting snowball is Asian Hate, and the result of that is vandalized Asian-owned businesses and personal assaults on people of Asian descent for the mere act of walking down the street. Such inhuman events are not rare. They show up frequently in news reports. Many more go unreported.

Let’s have no part in it. Do not entertain and certainly do not repeat racist or ethnic jokes of any sort. As a humor writer (alleged, anyway), I assure you that no shortage of human foibles are ripe for a good lampooning with no risk of dehumanization.
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* Those who supply the markets may or may not obtain animals legitimately. No need to @ me about that. 

** Please don’t @ me if your brother-in-law’s cousin’s best friend’s old army buddy swears that he heard about an immigrant family that ate someone’s pet hamster. It’s probably not true, but I allow for the rarest rule-proving exception.