Midwest Mediocrities

This week's exasperations revolve around the orchestra I play in. It's a major crapfest and a lengthy explanation. Proceed at your own risk.

As you may recall this is a "community" orchestra meaning there's no pay - there's not enough money in Insurance City to support more than one paying orchestra so the surplus musicians band together to thumb their noses at midwest mediocrity by giving free concerts. This year a somewhat misguided decision was made to provide live music for the city ballet corps. Whether a semi-professional ballet company can survive here is problematical, but some new blood has been brought in to try to pump life into the previously hit and miss amateur group. The result of this collaboration has been a series of bumbling mishaps as the current production lumbers like Karloff in Frankenstein toward the performances.

The first near disaster for the orchestra involved obtaining the music. The selected ballet was choreographed to a hodge podge of twentieth century European compositions. In a classic cart before the horse maneuver, the orchestra committed to the performance having no knowledge of what it would take to obtain the music and how much it would cost. (It seems that the previously performances used recorded music and to hell with rights and royalties.) Music that is still in copyright and is used for ballet requires the acquisition of "grand rights", a "gotcha" section of the copyright law that allows music rental companies and copyright holders to deliver a huge kick in the gonads to the bank accounts of the performing organization. The cost of obtaining the music for this performance thus ends up costing five times what our regular concert music rentals cost. Yeah - we'll just ask our wealthy patrons to cough up more cash - you know, the people who attend our concerts because they can't afford tickets to the pro group in town.

Problem two with the music rental is obtaining music from Russia. Combine a fog dwelling rental agent in New York with recalcitrant heirs of the Shostakovich estate in Russia and we wind up getting most of the music for Act III one week before the final rehearsals with the ballet. Can you say "fake it and hope for the best"? I knew that you could.

The music itself is dauntingly difficult. The music is unfamiliar enough that some of it was only known to our conductor from listening to a CD. Estimating the difficulty of music without the score in front of you is risky to say the least. In an organization like ours we have a wildly divergent array of abilities and most of the top quality string players in town have been absorbed into the pro group. While there are moments of adequacy within the slings and arrows of the scores, for much of the time the rendition of the faster string passages is - to be kind - chaotic.

But enough about the music. Here we have a ballet corps trying to make a big impression as a newly vitalized group, they want big crowds, they want four nights of rehearsal with the orchestra and two performances on a Saturday. So when do they schedule the performances? The week of the high school state wrestling tournament with the performances on the day of the finals! Now in a civilized state located more toward the easterly part of the continent this might cause many to say "so what?" but in corn country high school tournaments attract crowds only rivaled by visits of the Pope to Central America. And in this state wrestling is HUGE. So all during rehearsals and particularly during the performances finding a place to park within walking distance of the Civic Center becomes challenging. Ballet vs. wrestling in this town? Ballet is going to take a beating.

So last night we enter the Civic Center for our first round of rehearsal with the dancers. Rehearsal scheduled 5:30 to 9:30. Are you KIDDING me? Volunteer orchestra you egotistical dance twerps. That means everyone has a day job. Sorry, I'm not taking time off from my job that I might use later in some leisure activity of my own choosing to accommodate this insane schedule. Yeah, and feel free to abuse volunteer musicians. If you were dealing with union musicians they would laugh at a four hour rehearsal with visions of dollar signs dancing in their wee little heads.

Conditions in the multi million dollar civic center are eye opening. Getting to the orchestra pit requires negotiating a formidable concrete staircase. For the young and fit no problem. For some of the elderly instrumentalists this is a major obstacle. No, there is no elevator. The pit itself lives up to its name. It looks like the janitor's room in my high school. Pipes and electrical conduit festoon the ceiling and walls. The black paint has not been renewed since the center opened in 1979. The web site for the center says the pit accommodates 50 musicians. The word "accommodate" seems to mean "will hold 50 musicians if arranged as in a Japanese subway car". Playing with someone's elbow in your ribs can offer a unique challenge.

Through the evening surprises abound. The center supplies a CD player for the playing of sound effects. No one in the building, including the crew demanded by the union, can figure out how to make it work. Constant tinkering finally makes it available for the last fifteen minutes of the rehearsal. One entire bank of stand lights in the pit flicker and fail completely from time to time leaving the players concerned either dropping out or improvising with varying degrees of success. Pleas to the house crew have no effect.

Professional ballet company? Sorry gang, but you are several reality checks short. Better luck in the future.

Professional venue? I've played in professional venues and Civic center - you are no professional venue.

Two more nights of rehearsal followed by two "anything can happen" performances. I can hardly wait.

Technology Fear

I work in an IT capacity for a large financial company. Specifically I write and troubleshoot software as well as training new developers using a proprietary programming language specifically designed for document production and maintenance . We've had this application in place for over six years during which time my department has gradually taken on documents for a variety of business units that formerly had their documents produced and maintained by third party vendors. When you produce many thousands of documents a month, having a third party vendor involved gets enormously expensive. One such vendor recently raised their price to one dollar a document. When a single business unit can easily generate in excess of 30,000 documents a month, dealing with dozens of different business units on a company wide scale gets expensive fast. Naturally the motivation to move these services in house is strong and we add several units a year to those serviced by our department.

With this kind of incentive and a six year track record of producing thousands of accurate documents day after day when an incorrect document has very negative legal consequences you would think that once the decision has been made to move another business unit's documents in house this decision would be embraced by those who stand to benefit most by it. Namely those employees who have had to wrestle with the demands and deadlines of the third party vendors. But not so! These employees, which now need to provide my department with specifications and assistance in saving their department piles of money annually, inevitably dig in their heels and give their assistance only grudgingly and half-heartedly. Some of this is expected because long time employees approaching retirement age grouse that "we've always done it this way and it works, we don't see why we have to learn to do it a new way" and people are just naturally resistant to change. However, the largest component in this resistance, in spite of the fact that computers have been involved in business applications since the sixties, and personal computers since the eighties, is technology fear.

Technology fear should not be confused with technology ignorance. Technology ignorance is responsible for calls to the help desk such as "my cup holder is broken" referring to the CD drawer or "My computer won't turn on" when the electricity in the building is off. These people are perfectly willing to work with new technology and just need a little generalized training. Either that or their IQ is not sufficient for their position (a situation that sadly is becoming more and more prevalent as American education continues the ongoing process of dumbing itself down). Also, technology fear should not be confused with compartmentalization. My wife works for a university where her job requires fairly advanced skills using Excel and Access yet she needs help figuring out how to chat on Facebook. She's not afraid of technology, she just sees no reason to explore applications beyond her immediate need. Instead technology fear is a combination of Arthur C. Clarke's pronouncement that "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." and "oh my God what if something goes wrong?" In the first case the fear is that if all things are not in some mystical configuration the technology in question will immediately cease to function. Thus adding a new business unit to a functioning system must be accompanied by great trepidation and perhaps appeasement of some sort. In the second the fear is that should a malfunction occur there will be no one that can fix it. It puzzles me that these same individuals have no qualms in purchasing a new car and expecting it to work reliably when they have no more understanding of how it works than they do the technology that they fear.

It would be easy to dismiss these individuals if they did not present such an enormous cost in time to implement any proposed project. In a large company interested parties in a new project can be widely distributed geographically and a new project demands numerous meetings in the form of conference calls to get all systems involved to coordinate the changes necessary for implementation. This results in conference calls with up to thirty people wasting company time while questions like the following are fielded:

What happens if we can't print our document? (what happens when you can't print an email from Aunt Tillie? You call help desk.)
What happens if there is a power failure? (on your end - you quit working. On our end - the same fail-over plan that the company has used for 10 years applies.)
What happens if the home office is closed?(the servers run 24 hours a day - always have, always will)
Will there be training? (this is particularly annoying when everyone knows that the change will be transparent to the user)
How will we know what icon to click? (same as above. I'm not making these questions up.)
Will the documents fit on our printers? (no, we plan to make them billboard sized)
How do we know the documents are correct? (ever heard of QA testing? We have several hundred people company wide involved in this.)

I am sure you can get the drift by now. What is particularly galling is that the people on these calls asking these questions are invariably middle to upper management who must have an answer before we can proceed. Even more galling is that they ask the same questions on call after call as if expecting the answer to change. The goal of the endless questioning seems to be to postpone putting off any decision making so no one can be held responsible if something goes wrong. On the last call of this nature I was on, the project manager, having waded determinedly through the morass of mindless queries, finally reached a point where he could ask "So who is in favor of moving ahead with what was proposed." Of thirty people on the call, not a sound was heard. The PM then asked "OK so who has objections to moving ahead with the proposal." Again crickets. The entire meeting was paralyzed by fear.

I'm sure glad I have a desk large enough to allow room for head banging.

Eye Surgery Processing - A Poke in the Eye Part 2

Disclaimer: These two posts aren't necessarily meant to be either a rant or humorous (and maybe none of my others are either in spite of intention). Wikipedia states: "In the United States, age-related lenticular changes have been reported in 42% of those between the ages of 52 to 64, 60% of those between the ages 65 and 74, and 91% of those between the ages of 75 and 85." If you manage to live to the age of 52 or better, the chances of your dealing with this problem are better than even. And since age-related cataract is responsible for 48% of world blindness you do definitely want to deal with it. So this topic is by way of alleviating a little stress for anyone facing this in the future.

And now, on with the narrative.

The presurgical physical not having revealed any contraindications I dutifully showed up at the out patient surgical center at the appointed time. Here's where the process could use some improvement. Very like airlines, the outpatient center had me show up two hours early. During that two hours they verified my personal and insurance information (10 minutes) and did a minimal surgical prep (20 minutes). For the other hour and a half I sat around and waited. This is akin to airline practices except there's no stop and grope at the entrance. I don't have a clue why it takes 30 minutes to get you processed and yet you have a 1 1/2 hour wait beyond that. I'm not sure about anyone else, but during this period the thought that someone would soon be shoving a sharp instrument into my eye got my adrenaline going pretty good. After 1/2 hour in the waiting room post sign-in ritual, when I was called back to sit in the little room with the curtain and have my vitals checked, the nurse remarked that my blood pressure was up a bit. You think?! Then I got into a surgical gown (allowed to retain trou but no shirt) an IV started, many eye drops administered and settled in to wait for another hour.

Whenever I'm on the receiving end of an IV I always wonder how people that do this many times a day, day after day for months, maybe years, can still be inept at it. I have great ropy veins that you can see from across the room with one eye closed, yet on this occasion the nurse might as well have been using a 3 penny nail to get the IV going. There was pushing, twisting, withdrawal and skewering before she was finally satisfied. To my credit, although there was tooth grinding and white knuckling of the gurney rails, I managed to refrain from any imprecations or violence. In the aftermath of the entire process the next day the most annoying after effect was a big irritated bruise at the IV site. Yet a week later on the visit for the other eye, I was looking the other way and didn't even notice when a different nurse got the IV on the first try. Different people have differing skills. Let the nurse that has trouble starting IVs specialize in taking histories or something else with no pain potential.

During the hour of waiting I was visited by the surgical nurse, the anesthetist, the anesthetist's assistant and the surgeon. They all looked at my chart and then asked me which eye we were supposed to be doing. Every one of them asked that - and then the surgeon took a marker and scrawled his initials above the right (not left) eye - which was also the right (correct) eye. In my presurgical anxiety state this made me think that they would not take so much time verifying this if at some time someone had in fact performed a procedure on the incorrect eye. A sobering thought. And while we're on the subject of presurgical anxiety, I've got an IV in my arm, how about a few milligrams of valium or something to keep me from pondering everything that could possibly go wrong?

But finally the surgical nurse came for me and I went shuffling down the hall in my paper booties with my IV stand. Once in the operating room the lethargy of the last 2 hours suddenly turned to practiced efficiency. Up on the table, warm blanket applied, arms strapped down (people sometimes involuntarily try to protect their eyes while under anesthesia), EKG monitors leads applied, head taped securely in place and as I feel the onset of warm fuzzies I realize the anesthetic has been administered. Soon I am aware of some activity taking place near my eyes and realize that I am going to be awake for this. Then I realize that I don't care. Next thing I know I can feel some slight pressure in the general area of my eye. Again I don't care. Whatever this anesthetic is, it's very effective in keeping me relaxed and motionless. The combination of the topical anesthetic in the eye drops and whatever is administered by IV combine to keep me perfectly comfortable and relaxed. After reading up on the procedure I realize that a lot is going on up there but subjectively it seems to be over in minutes and soon a perforated metal shield is placed over my eye, I am helped into a wheel chair and rolled out into the recovery area. Half an hour later I am being driven home by my wife who tells me I was in the OR about 30 minutes. I have a minor headache over the eye later but a couple of Ibuprofen knock that right out.

The next day I return to the center for a follow up. The surgeon looks into my eye, pronounces it doing well, I am relieved of the eye shield and given directions for anti-inflammatory and antiseptic eyedrops for the next two weeks and told to wear the eye shield at night for the next week and sent home. The following week, after a check up with my regular opthamologist the procedure is repeated on the other eye with much less anxiety now that I know how simple it is. Three weeks later I get my new glasses that tweak my astigmatism and provide close vision correction and I see better than I have in years. In fact my distance vision without glasses, although not perfect, is now better than it was with glasses prior to the procedures.

As with any surgical procedure, complications are possible but I had no complicating factors like glaucoma, my surgeon has a national reputation and has himself developed several advanced procedures and the staff and facility of the out patient surgical center were top quality. In the future there is the possibility that the rear of the lens capsule could become somewhat opaque but this is correctible by laser.

Every once in a while everything comes together and works out right. This was one of those times. Considering that most of my life is filled with annoyances of one kind or another, I felt this experience was worth retelling.

More Des Moines Shenanigans

I know the second installment of the cataract adventure is due, but I need to vent. Live with it.

rant mode on/

The latest demonstration of complete fail by the Des Moines city administration has to do with snow removal. As I've mentioned elsewhere Des Moines has a long standing tradition of never starting to clear the residential streets until the end of a storm. Considering that snow storms that last for several days are not uncommon this creates ridiculously difficult conditions for residents who simply want to get to work. Complaints to the street department always result in a litany of propaganda insisting that all major streets are cleared every morning of a storm in time for the rush hour. This is completely untrue as the morning rush hour after a storm is always characterized by commuters wallowing through piles of unplowed snow, sometimes actually above their bumpers.

This year, in a new propaganda campaign, the city designated several areas within the city "snow ordinance areas". What this means is that during a storm in these residential areas, residents may not park their cars on the street until snow removal is complete. According to information available on the city government web site snow removal on "snow routes" will be complete within 24 to 36 hours after the storm and residential streets 36 hours later. So home owners and other taxpayers may not park on the streets for a minimum of 72 hours. (Bear in mind that these are the city's figures and the clearing of residential streets within 72 hours after a storm is a wildly optimistic figure rarely achieved.) To add insult to injury there is a city ordinance that residents must clear their sidewalks within 48 hours after a storm - thus requiring the resident to be more efficient than the city street department.

Snow ordinance areas were newly instituted in December and after our first snowfall hundreds of tickets were issued to motorists who dared to park their cars on the street having nowhere else to park them (they could pull them up into their yard if another ordinance with a higher fine did not prohibit that). Des Moines was very diligent in issuing the tickets as police had to drive through snow choked streets to issue them. Naturally a huge outcry from the populace arose following this deluge of penalties and the result was a media blitz intended to sooth irate townspeople by telling them how refraining from parking on the designated streets during a storm would result in faster snow removal. News anchors were actually able to deliver this information with a straight face.

So now we have had our first major snow storm and are into the second 24 hours of continuous snowfall. Of course the residential streets in the snow ordinance areas remain untouched and the only evidence of plowing is on state routes and major highways. As one slides through the piles of snow on the way to work street department trucks are occasionally seen with their blades up and their sand/salt spreaders inactive. Having lived in several other cities in my life, some in areas with much more annual snowfall than Des Moines, I would expect denizens of Des Moines to descend on city hall if not with pitchforks at least with irate demands for some improved return on their inordinately high property taxes. I remember a snowfall some years back where the tardy clearing of streets in Chicago resulted in the ouster of the mayor. Not so in Des Moines. I'm not sure whether the populace of Des Moines believes the BS that the spokespeople for the city are so skilled at disseminating or whether they think that this is the way it is everywhere. Certainly the latter is possible as Iowa is a very insular state with few outsiders immigrating from other states and few inhabitants venturing beyond Iowa's borders to return with tales of far off climes like Colorado where they actually know how to remove snow in a timely manner.

Whatever the case - Des Moines Street Department, you are inefficient, unrepentant, incompetent and hypocritical. Snow ordinance my lily white ass, smoke screen is more like it.

/ end rant

Thanks for reading.

A Poke in the Eye

"I can't help you any longer with refractory corrections." This statement from my opthamologist was my abrupt introduction to the world of cataract surgery. Not a huge surprise in that I'd been warned that cataracts were growing somewhere the depths of wherever the Dr. looked when she turned that blindingly bright light into my eyes. Within minutes while I was still processing the information I had an appointment scheduled with an eye surgeon. There wasn't much concern about cost as my wife and I had embraced the philosophy of getting things repaired while we still had employer related health insurance. Having had several minor surgeries in the past and an introduction to some excellent pain killers - Hello Vicodin!! - I wasn't terribly concerned about discomfort but the prospect of having someone carving around in my eyes gave me some wakeful moments in the middle of the night.

At the surgical office I was shown an informative little film about cataracts and how they were treated. Evidently not created with a desire to allay anticipatory apprehension, this video demonstrated how an instrument is poked into the eye to suck out the natural lens and insert a synthetic replacement. (Does this description make your skin crawl? It does mine even now after the fact.) Then my eyes were filled with a variety of drops and I settled in to wait to see the surgeon. Some time later I was ushered into the little room for more waiting.

Sidebar - Waiting: As with any medical procedure the entire experience is peppered with numerous periods of waiting in a variety of locales descriptions of which, in an effort to convey some actual information, I will henceforth omit. Suffice it to say that between each and every procedure there is always a wait. But of course if you have had an opportunity to visit anyone in the medical profession recently you already know this. Why recipients of some of the most prolonged and expensive university educations available to man cannot figure out how to budget their time is beyond me. The only other profession that comes close to this inability to coordinate appointments with activities are cable TV installers and at least they let you know that they will "be there between 12 and 4" which naturally means 3:59.

But I digress. Next I was examined by the surgeon and actually what did I expect? Here's a guy who makes his living by a variety of invasive procedures on eyeballs and he's not going to say "Hey, there's nothing wrong with your eyes, now get out of here you animal!" No, he confirmed the diagnosis although he admitted that he was unable to confirm the first stages of macular degeneration noted in the chart by the opthamologist. He didn't preface this by saying "I have some bad news and some good news." but it came across that way - a spoonful of sugar as it were. Now I am presented with a bewildering list of choices. Do I want a replacement lens that "kind of" corrects for both near and distance vision at a cost of an additional $750 per lens. No I have worn glasses all my life, I won't have a problem continuing. I opt for lenses that correct most for distance vision as that particular prescription has been the one to burden me with amazingly thick lenses in my glasses. Do I want to try to correct my astigmatism with a procedure done at the same time as cataract removal that consists of making incisions in my cornea to reshape my eyeball - shudder! - no thanks - I have worn glasses all my life, etc. The nurse then tells me they will order two prescriptions for eye drops - one antibiotic and one steroid as she hands me a sheaf of instructions about pre-surgery and post-surgery activities. (Only later do I find that the antibiotic eyedrops; supplied in a bottle that is the approximate size of a hazel nut; has no generic and my copay is seventy five dollars.)

Next stop scheduling. For the last two hours I have been told by way of introductory film, nurses etc. that they will do one eye and then the other "two to four weeks later". So while setting up the dates I'm told that I will have the surgeries one week apart. Errr, how much of the other information you gave me doesn't apply? But it seems that my surgeon will be out of town for month and to avoid two pre-surgical physicals we're going for a one week interval. Oh yeah, and I have to have a pre-surgical physical. Normally I would panic at this news since they want to do the first surgery in a week and it is harder to get in to see my primary care physician than it is to teach a duck to tap dance but since I have an appointment that very week that has been rescheduled three times already, my hopes are up. So what happens when I arrive home? There is a message waiting from my PPs office that they will need to reschedule AGAIN!. I call the office and ask why my health is so much less of a concern to them then whoever they have been rescheduling me for. They have no reasonable answer. I point out my frustration in trying to get in for an annual checkup for over six months and explain that in good faith I told the eye clinic that an appointment for a physical had already been scheduled. I then ask if they can make a referral to someone who CAN see me. And lo! With the prospect of an insured customer absconding to another doctor they suddenly can squeeze me in. Amazingly at the "squeezed in" appointment I am called on time and the Dr. sees me within minutes. I am given a clean bill of health and am deemed fit to face the first surgery the following Monday.

Next blog entry: Eye Surgery Processing

Ancient Cargo Cults

I was watching a TV series "Ancient Aliens" that springboards off the 40 year old series of books by Erich Van Daniken purporting that things like henges in Britain, the Nazca lines, huge earthworks at various locations around the world and other notable seeming inexplicable anachromisms can only be evidence that in prehistoric times extraterrestrial visitors assisted human beings in constructing these anomalies. The reasoning seems to be that without advanced technology which ancient humans did not possess, these constructions would have been impossible. I think this reasoning is a bunch of crap as it has been proven again and again that techniques available to ancient humans were completely adequate for the "seemingly impossible" tasks. Stones can be moved and raised using no more advanced technology than logs and levers. Thor Heyerdahl has proved that monumental stone works (Easter Island statues) can be made with stone tools. Designs so large they can only be observed from the air can be laid out and excuted by simply scaling small designs.

However, the more intriguing question around such sites would seem to be why ancient humans would expend the huge efforts over long periods of time required to build such monuments. Oddly, one possible answer to this question is, in my opinion, even better evidence for the possibility of alien vists in the distant past.

On certain islands in the pacific during World War II the US established air bases to supply troops thoughout the pacific with the necessities of war. When the War ended and the armed forces abandoned these island bases, the native tribes who had become used to the cast off technological and material goods that they were able to appropriate for their own use brought in by the aircraft, developed strange religious practices. These are known as "cargo cults" and one of their distinguishing characteristics is the attempt to duplicate the air fields, aircraft and other trappings of the air bases out of primitive materials such as stone, wood, and bamboo in hopes that the airplanes and strange uniformed beings would return and bring them materials wealth again.

It seems to me that what we see in the primitive "ancient alien" sites around the world are analogous to these cargo cults. Surely if primitive humans had alien help building these sites, they would not be the crude henges and earthworks we see now but technologically advanced sites typified by precision and advanced techniques. Instead these sites fit the cargo cult model much more closely. Once you imagine that these sites are actually attempts by the natives (our ancestors) to imitate the landing fields/structures used by the alien visitors, who have obliterated evidence of their presence and departed, in hopes of their return, it becomes much easier to understand their purpose, the great efforts expended on them and their crudity in spite of their scale.

Just sayin'

Head Cheese

An old tale of mine from days spent on IRC. It falls under the category of nostalgia. Read it or don't.

Amidst the fond remembrances of my youth there lie scattered here and there the occasional memory which might best be consigned to oblivion. But constant urging from friends and acquaintances not to let folklore of this nature perish convinces me to reluctantly preserve for posterity an eye witness account of the arcane ritual by which the substance head cheese is conjured. The author assumes no liability for the results of attempts to duplicate this process but urges you "DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME."

It would be in the crisp fall air of October at that time when thoughts of children turn to the donning of ghost and goblin gear and the winesap apple plucked right off the tree hurt your teeth and squirted you in the eye. During Indian Summer, that brief return of warm temperatures before the plunge into winter, the last summer activities would be put to rest. Yards would be raked, the garden shed would be put in order and closed for the season, and the last potatoes and onions would be dug and consigned to the cellar. And surely on one of those fine fall days, early in the afternoon the clank and clang of the huge cast iron kettle could be heard as it was wrestled atop the woodstove. At this sound little children would run for home, dogs would crawl under crumbling porches and strong men would hurriedly close open windows, for all knew that granny was preparing to make the dreaded head cheese!

No sooner had the stove been fired and stoked and the kettle brought to a boil than Grandpa would make his appearance. Fresh from hog butchering on the farm he would emerge from the decrepit old ford truck carrying a pair of hog's heads..or maybe three. These heads were in exactly the same condition as they were in life, with all their accessories excepting only their detachment from the majority of the hog. Notwithstanding the baleful stares still seen peering out from their rapidly cooling brows, Granny cheerfully seized the heads and hurled them into the kettle.

Now followed a period of time that drew onward into the late evening when the fire snapped and crackled in the stove, the water boiled merrily and was topped up from time to time and the aroma proceeding from the kettle became more and more indescribable. This fragrance was of such potency that it actually had WEIGHT, and would flow out from the kettle down the stove and onto the ground where it would propagate outward in an ever increasing radius until it gradually began to dissipate at a distance of some three blocks from the epicenter of the event, meanwhile crawling up back steps and seeking entrance to unprepared houses where unwary denizens could be heard to exclaim, "Phew...is it headcheese time AGAIN??" Meanwhile Granny, without the protection of a gas mask, nay without so much as a moist dish towel to cover her nostrils would walk right up to the stove and stir the kettle time and again until all the soft parts of the heads (that's ALL the soft parts....yes even THOSE parts) fell off the skulls which she would then cast into the yard to the army of cats which had been gathering by the kitchen door all afternoon.

Hovering over the steaming kettle in the darkening evening like one of the three sisters in Macbeth, Granny would pass a sieve through the water and catch large undisintegrated pieces of hog physiognomy which she would drop onto the chopping block and gleefully reduce to appropriately bite sized bits with a meat cleaver. Once everything in the kettle (it doesn't do to think to long about everything in the kettle) was of the requisite homogeneous size, salt, pepper and vinegar would be added, the fire stoked up to full force and the evil stew would be rapidly reduced to a sludge-like consistency. During this final step the odor of the miasmic fog covering the neighborhood would reach such an intensity that any clothing or household linens inadvertently left on clotheslines would irrecoverably bond by some mysterious chemical reaction with the Eau du Swinehead and become fit for use only as bootwipers. Even indoors with the door closed, within three blocks of ground zero the eyes would itch and run and the sinuses would begin to drain.

The final act of the evening would be to pour the reduced contents of the kettle into large crocks held in readiness since the decimation of last year's batch sometime during the long nights of the previous winter. Granny and Grandpa would tip the huge kettle on its side and hope that most of its contents would find the crock waiting on the floor below. The batch would roll into its containers, steam would rise in prodigious quantities and Grandpa, who was not nearly so immune to the corrosive fumes as his spouse, would swear mighty oaths audible a block away.

The crocks, now brim full of their precious cargo would be wrestled down the stairs and into the fruit cellar to cool and solidify.

During the ensuing 48 hours, the fumes abated. The cats got over considerable intestinal distress. Dogs could be seen daring to cross Granny's back yard and those families living nearest to the scene of the manufacturing process began to think about actually consuming food again.

The end result? The mass left in the crocks would jell while cooling and become a grey amorphous semi-solid which could be sliced and eaten on bread with liberal quantities of mustard and horseradish. I have heard tell that headcheese is more toothsome than its nightmarish origins would lead you to believe but I am not able to confirm it, as it takes a stronger stomach than mine to even contemplate the consumption of this pig-face jello.