Cancer Strikes Again - not Me, but my Family

 I hate cancer.

Cancer is a vicious, ugly beast. It is mean. It is cruel. It is heartless.

I posted previously about my own experiences with cancer, and how I got to beat it twice, without going through the hard stuff.

Cancer didn't like that. So it attacked my loved ones instead.

Around December of last year, my daughter-in-law was diagnosed with a particularly aggressive breast cancer. We were worried that we would lose her. She underwent a double mastectomy, and then reconstructive surgery, and will take an estrogen blocker for the rest of her life (the doctor called it "instant menopause") to starve and kill any future tumors. She appears to be recovering and in good health. I cannot put into words how grateful we are for that.

I'm not the kind of father-in-law to call her up and say, "Hi, Jen! How are your boobs doing?" So I've been getting updates from my wife, my son, and what little bits my daughter-in-law passes along in casual conversation. However, I did find a great T-shirt online. I passed the idea to my sweet wife, who laughed about it with my daughter-in-law. It says "Of course they're fake! My real ones tried to kill me."

In August of this year, my youngest daughter was diagnosed with cancer in one lung. After a PET scan, doctors told her it had spread to her spine. That makes it Stage IV. The doctors are talking about starting with immunotherapy and radiation therapy. They don't expect to make it go away, only to stop it for now. That means it will eventually come back and kill her.

The tumors in her chest cause an accumulation of excess fluids in the cavity around her left lung. This causes her shortness of breath, increased heart rate, and severe discomfort -- maybe even pain. The tumors in her spine cause back pain, pain in other places because spine and nerves, you know, and numbness in one arm. It hurts that we will one day lose her, but it hurts even more to see such a gentle soul in such pain.

Neither of these women had any risk factors. My daughter-in-law is only (guessing; I'll correct it later) 44 years old. My daughter is only 37. 

In The Lord of the Rings, Theoden, king of Rohan, loses his son in battle. Theoden says, "No parent should have to bury their child." One day, that will be me.

I have many more thoughts about this, which I want to put down in this blog. However, it will take me a while to put them into words. Check back here for edits and updates.

Before the 1990s, what did you do all day?

 On the Reddit sub AskOldPeopleAdvice, someone asked "What did people do all day before the 90s? Was it more boring than today because of the lack of entertainment and the internet?"

I've seen many responses to questions like this, in memes across the Internet. This time I sat and thought for a bit, and then wrote my own response. Here's what we did before the 1990s:

Not a Word Peeve: Whither and Whence

 After having discussed who and whom, I have some locational (toponymic?) words to discuss briefly.

When's the right time to use here, hither, and hence? In the 21st Century, nobody even says hither and hence anymore. They are practically ancient history. 

Likewise with where, whither, and whence; and there, thither, and thence.

Here's the rule of thumb:

• The -ither ending conveys a sense of to.
• The -ence ending conveys a sense of from.

To beat this dead horse into a bloody pulp:

hither = to here

hence = from here

whither = to where

whence = from where

thither = to there

thence = from there

So when a woman bats her eyes and gives you "a come-hither look" she wants you over there next to her.

And when someone says "We're taking the train to Dorset, and thence to Southampton," they're saying that the second leg of the journey leaves from Dorset.

And this dialogue could have been lifted straight from The Lord of the Rings:

"Whence have you come hither, and whither are you going?"

"We spent the night in Rohan, and we departed thence at dawn's first light. We are in search of the road to Gondor. for we are journeying thither."

One interesting variation is the use of "hence" meaning "therefore". It signals that the you're using the last assertion or statement as the jumping-off point for the next one.

Another interesting variation is "henceforth" meaning "from now on, moving forward."

Not a Word Peeve, Just Fun: "Who" versus "Whom"

This one is just for fun. I am aware that this information is as useful as cursive writing in this century. Still, it's fun to know, and it may be marginally useful.

In modern English, the distinction between "who" and "whom" is disappearing, with "who" replacing "whom" in almost all usages. Want to learn how to use who/whom correctly? Read on.

James Thurber's rule of thumb

It was author and humorist James Thurber who said, in 1929, that the difference between "who" and "whom" is how high-class you want to sound. For example, if you're at a picnic with beer and hotdogs and shorts and Hawaiian shirts, and you meet someone new, you ask them, "Who are you, anyways?" However, if you're at a fancy black-tie reception with cocktails and caviar, and you meet someone new, you ask them "Whom are you, anyways?" 

And yes, he put the "s" on "anyways". Because he was James Thurber, and the year was 1929.

My rule of thumb

Anyway(s), the real distinction between "who" and "whom" is easy to manage. Since "who" and "whom" are usually (but not always) used in questions, the easiest thing to do is rearrange the question into an answer, and try plugging in "he" or "him" in place of "who/whom". If "he" fits, then use "who". If "him" fits, then use "whom."

To repeat: 

• "He" to "who".
• "Him" to "whom".

Two examples

"Who/whom are you going with?" Rearrange it to form the answer "You are going with ..." Obviously, the correct ending for this answer is "him". So use "Whom" in the question.

"Who/whom is going with you?" This one doesn't even need to be rearranged. The answer is obviously "He is going with you." So use "Who" in the question.

Another example, not a question

Since this example uses the plural "those", we will use "they" and "them" instead of "he" and "him". The rule of thumb works the same way.

"Plan on spending the holiday with those whom you love, and who love you." This is the correct usage.

"Whom you love" can be rearranged to "You love them".

"Who love you" can be rearranged to "They love you".

In conclusion, your Honor ...

As I said at the beginning, which one you use really doesn't matter, not in the 21st Century. It's just fun to know.

Welllllll, maybe.

It doesn't matter one whit in spoken English. But I think that in written English, it may move you one step closer to more precise speech.

Today's wild animal story

We love our new home. Our property backs onto open space, and so we always have the potential for visitors of the wildlife variety.

This morning, I woke up at oh-dark-thirty, like I always do, and looked out our bedroom window. In the pre-dawn darkness, I saw an inch of new snow in our backyard, and large footprints crisscrossing the snow.

At first I was concerned about human intruders, but upon closer inspection, still in the dark, I could see that the footprints didn't have the heel strike characteristic of a human footprint, with or without shoes. Old Boy Scout here, you know.

In addition, the footprints were in a straight line. Human footprints are almost always offset from a straight line - you know, left right left right - especially if the human is running around in a strange backyard in the middle of the night.

Cats walk in a straight line. Big cats leave big footprints in a straight line. I was excited for the sun to come up, so that I could verify that we had indeed had mountain lions in our yard last night.

As the sun came up, I saw that each footprint was composed of four tiny paw prints. We had bunny rabbits in our yard last night, giggling with leporine glee as they ran around our yard pretending to be mountain lions.

Bunny lion tracks.

Word peeve: Just really kind of

 I've noticed this in grown adults who should really know better.

I've seen it in print, and I've heard it in speech.

Best to illustrate by example: "When I saw it, I just really kind of shuddered."

That sentence contains three modifiers:

1. Just
2. Really
3. Kind of

Pick one. Leave the other two alone.

A woman for president in 2024

What if we elected a woman to the US Presidency in 2024?

Hillary Rodham Clinton famously ran against Donald Trump in the 2016 "None of the above, please God, please" presidential election. In one of the early rallies in her campaign, she called out to a largely female audience, "Who wants to see a woman president?" 

As I have said before, Clinton didn't lose because she was a woman. She lost because she was ... um ... objectionable. Undesirable. An even worse choice than Trump, if such a thing were possible.

I had also said that I would entertain a matchup between two female statesmen (stateswomen? statespersons? respected leaders, anyway) like Condoleeza Rice and Madeleine Albright.

This year, we have two new possibilities.

On the right, we have Nikki Hailey who, in spite of her support of Donald Trump, has shown herself to be an adequate and able politician and diplomat.

On the left, we have Kamala Harris who has spent the last four years in President Biden's shadow, the spare, as it were. Before becoming Vice President, she was also an accomplished leader and politician. If, for some reason, Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race, Harris would be a good replacement for him.

Here's the two of them, having fun together. (Not a real picture. Credit: OpenArtAI)

It's a pretty even matchup, with an interesting twist.

Nikki Haley

Nikki Haley (from Wikipedia)

Nikki Haley was born in 1972, in South Carolina. Her parents were Sikh Indian immigrants. Her birth name was Nimarata Nikki Randhawa. She goes by her middle name, and "Haley" is her married name.

Kamala Harris

Kamala Harris (from Wikipedia)

Kamala Harris was born in 1964 in California. Her mother was a Tamil Indian immigrant, and her father was a Jamaican immigrant. Her birth name was Kamala Devi Harris.

The Bottom Line

So not only would we have two women running against each other, but we would have two Indian Americans, both of them children of immigrants, running against each other.

Both of them have a net positive track record and no serious scandals to worry about (if we ignore Haley's support of Donald Trump). Both are refreshingly young, compared to the current front-runners, meaning that they won't die or go senile in office. And both have a lot of potential.

Haley vs. Harris for 2024. It has a nice ring to it.

It's a choice I'd like to have to make.