Bruce’s Online Journal

“I write because I don’t know what I think, until I read what I say.” — Flannery O'Connor

Week of March 26, 2001

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March 30

The headlines and newscasts on Wednesday had the whole town abuzz. That was the day they announced that The Genesee Hospital would be closing, and closing within only 90 days. The hospital has been bleeding $2 million a month in red ink for a few years now. ViaHealth, which runs the place along with Rochester General Hospital and other facilities, concluded that to spare the patient, they have to amputate the limb.

Genesee is the hospital where I was born nearly 44 years ago. It’s also the hospital where two of my weekly AA meetings are held. One of them is my Friday night home group. Were it not for that meeting and the Tuesday one being held someplace other than a church, I’d never have gone to any AA meetings.

My prejudice against organized religion was so strong that I wouldn’t set a foot across the threshold of a church even to save myself. My feeling was that if they don’t want gay people upstairs, I wasn’t going to sit in their basement. So in that regard, The Genesee Hospital is also the place of my rebirth.

The room where we meet is just off the main floor cafeteria. By day it’s used as a doctors’ dining room. By night, it’s rented out to self-help groups. Beyond the two meeting I attend there weekly, I know of at least two other groups that meet in that room.

In its daytime capacity as a doctors’ dining room, it’s imperative that the hospital’s paging and public address announcements are heard. So there are four speakers in the room connected to the PA system, each with it’s own volume control. One of the jobs of the meeting set-up person is to turn off the speakers so that pages for Dr. Soandso don’t disturb our discussions.

Even with the PA speakers in the room turned off, we usually hear the 8:00 PM announcement that visiting hours are over. That announcement filters through the doors from the speakers outside in the hall. It’s muffled and easily ignored.

There’s another aural intrusion at our meetings that I couldn’t quite pin down. With no predictable pattern and even with all the speakers shut off in the room, every now and again the first 16 bars of Brahms’ Lullaby seemed to emanate from the very furniture.

It usually stops the discussion dead in its tracks and gets some puzzled looks and a few giggles. Given the time of the evening when we’re there, I always assumed it was a signal to the nurses to start sedating their charges prior to the nightly poking, prodding and piercing rituals that disrupt the sleep of overnight patients everywhere.

One night, after I had personally made certain the PA speakers were off in the meeting room, the lullaby came through, loud as ever, as if borne on the wings of angels. It turns out, that’s not too far off base.

Frustrated that night, I asked one of the older members of the group, “What’s up with that lullaby blaring in here all the time?”

“Oh,” he replied. “They play that whenever a baby is born.”

This conjured up images of a palm-sized red button, which might be mistaken for an emergency alarm button, mounted on the wall of the delivery room. After the cord is cut and the wailing new life given to it’s mother, the doc issues the command, “Nurse, hit the button.”

The order is acknowledged, “Yes doctor,” the nurse slaps the button, engaging the master PA system volume control override, and Brahms’ Lullaby announces that the population has just increased by one.

It’s a comforting thought, that.

I hope that my AA groups can find another convenient place to meet, one without affiliation to any religion. Not for myself, I’ve come to terms with religion and sitting in church basements, but for those like me, who, feeling disaffected and rejected by religion, need a self-help group for their rebirth, to begin to heal the wounds of a lifetime. A hospital dining room was the perfect venue for that.

But what I’ll miss most is Brahms’ Lullaby unpredictably interrupting our meetings to herald that a child is born.

March 31

At the beginning of the month, I was undecided on the mascot issue. Was March coming in like a lion or a lamb? I really couldn’t tell so I deferred the decision to the end of the month on the basis that if I determine which mascot March went out as, then it had come in with the opposite one.

Of course the problem with that logic is that here, on the last day of the month, I’m unable to determine which is the appropriate mascot. It’s been sort of a Goldilocks day. Not too warm, not too cold. Not too breezy, not too still. Even our omnipresent overcast was indeterminate. It wasn’t too bright, but not exactly gloomy either.

So it seems that March was sort of a mixed grill of a month. Maybe that’s not the right metaphor. Although lamb is not uncommon on a menu, I haven’t seen lion on the specials board in any restaurants lately. Common tabby, perhaps. But no lion.


I was delighted to find a note from City Newspaper, the local alternative weekly, in the mail when I got home tonight. The editor wrote, “Thank you for the beautiful letter.” They’re going to run the third draft of yesterday’s “shitty first draft” in the coming week’s issue.

Naturally the topic at the meeting last night became “What do we do now that the hospital’s closing.” After sharing the piece with a couple of members beforehand, I read it last night when my turn in the round-robin came around. It was well received there too.

People laughed at the right places and became wistful where they were supposed to. When 8:00 rolled around and the announcement came, “Visiting hours are now over,” everyone laughed and looked at me. It was too bad that we weren’t graced with Brahms’ Lullaby. Word came out yesterday that the two-year old, nine-million dollar birthing center is closing first, in only two weeks.

After the meeting, a member who is a columnist for a local monthly took me aside and said, “That was a really good piece. You should talk to my editor about doing a column.”

Maybe I will, maybe I won’t. Who am I kidding? I won’t. I don’t think I’m up to turning something like that out on a deadline every month. I’ve had a hard enough time writing for the classes I’ve taken at Writers & Books. And I’d have to go out and get a decent head shot anyway.

I’ve never talked about writing with my columnist friend. I’m too intimidated. But on the other hand, we talked a lot about writers and what we read the other night at a reading and book signing.

Writers & Books brought David Sedaris to town and he all but filled the main performance hall at the Hochstein Music School. Although not a sellout, there had to be over 300 people there at $20 a head. That’s not a bad turnout in a backwater town like Rochester.

Sedaris seemed to genuinely have a good time. He was smiling to himself as he shuffled through papers trying to decide what to read next. There were a couple of times when he laughed along with the rest of us. I was glad to see that behind the books, essays, plays and NPR shows, he’s a real person. There wasn’t a hint of the pretentiousness and boredom you expect to see at these sorts of things. He’s the sort of guy who, even if he wasn’t a big-time author, you’d want to invite over for a small gathering of friends.

He read a couple of new pieces and some older ones and closed with my favorite, “Jesus Shaves” from his most recent book, Me Talk Pretty One Day. Partway through the piece, my glasses fogged up from the tears streaming down my face. I thought for sure I’d be sore in the morning from the abs workout I got with all the laughing.

It was just like when I first read it. It was late at night and I hadn’t been able to put the book down. I got to that piece and I lost it completely. I woke up Mark, the dogs, the birds and, I’m certain, half the neighborhood. It was weeks before even the ordinary usage of the words, Jesus, Easter, rabbit and chocolate didn’t cripple me with laughing fits.

And given the time of year, it was the perfect piece for him to close with. And he left us laughing.


I’m wondering. Is there such a thing as seasonal carpal-tunnel?

This is the third late-winter/early-spring in a row when my wrist has acted up. Or acted out, I suppose. It took me a day or two to remember where I’d packed my wrist splint. This morning I decided it had to be in one of three places. It was in the first place I looked. It was pretty grubby so I laundered it in a bowl of hot water and detergent.

It’s as it was drying that I connected the dots and began to wonder, What is it about March and April that causes problems with my wrists? There’s nothing remotely similar between the past three springs.

Two years ago I was working, and smoking crack. Last year I was out of work and smoking crack. This year I’m out of work but not smoking crack. I even ruled out the weather. The cold, damp spring weather brings out all my accumulated aches and pains. But so does the cold, damp autumn, and my wrists never bother me then.

It’s not a disabling sort of thing yet. The pain, although inconvenient, is manageable. It’s more frightening than anything else. I always go through the whole, “Ohmygod I’ll never be able to use a keyboard again” panic. Then I wear the splint for a couple of months and I’m fine until the following spring.

If anyone has a clue, I’m willing to listen.

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