Tom

In the past several days, we have heard that Tom is still alive and continuing to live in the Flagstaff area. I am grateful to Anne and Tommy Crawford for passing on the e-mails between Martine Lepany and and the Sheriff's Office and the US Forest Service. Tom will not talk about his family, nor will he talk about his past, according to Jon Nelson of the Forest Service.

I am especially thankful to Martine, Justin and Irene for their persistence in trying to locate and establish contact with Tom. Merci, merci beaucoup. Perhaps some day . . .

Violence - In West Deer Township?

This past Thursday morning, Della and I went to Kress Tire on Route 910 about two miles from the house to have a new set of tires put on her Taurus. I've used Kress for the past seven years to have flats repaired and new tires installed. The person who has often been around to help me is a man named Doug, a tall, fairly mild-mannered middle-aged man.  We usually talk about sports, children and grandchildren and railroads. On the walls of the office and waiting area hang pictures of classic locomotives and the latest Union Pacific calendar. These days the calendar is small and features black and white photos. (I remember when Dad brought the Union Pacific calendar home every year - it had magnificent photos of the American West, usually resort areas that the Union Pacific carried passengers to - the calendar today is a pale shadow of what it once was.)

Thursday morning, Della and I were sitting in the waiting room. It was a fairly pleasant morning - actually partly sunny and relatively dry. Doug was at his usual place in the room when a short man with a pretty dramatic partial goatee and wearing a cap (similar to an imam's head covering) opened the door from the outside and began talking to another man in the waiting room. He then told Doug that he was mad at Kress Tire because they charged his dad $30.00 to fix a flat tire. Doug said he'd never charged anyone $30.00 to fix a flat (I've had at least 10 flats and leaky tires taken care of at Kress and was never charged more that $19.00). The man insisted that Kress had overcharged his father and he was pretty pissed about it. In fact, he was "[f-bomb] mad". Doug again denied he had ever done that and that it was Kress' policy not to charge that much. (While all of this was going on, I was reading the sports page of the Tribune-Review and Della was working on a crossroad puzzle.) The man turned and left but not before he repeated that he was still "[f-bomb] mad". Doug got up and followed the man outside. He said, "Hey, wait a minute. You owe the lady an apology." There was a short pause and suddenly we heard a man screaming "I've been stabbed".

The three of us in the waiting room ran outside. Doug was on his back on the ground, blood was everywhere. He was clutching his arm, but the way he was holding it led me to think he had been stabbed in the abdomen or the groin. Others arrived, one started to make a tourniquet, another called 911, another actually flagged down a police car on 910. Some others tried to stop the stabber, but he was in a small pickup and sped out of the parking lot onto the highway. Five minutes later the ambulance arrived and I got a good glimpse of the wound: the man had cut through the muscle of the lower arm, almost to the bone. As I said, blood was everywhere. It had spattered on Doug's face and his glasses. The EMTs were trying to keep Doug from going into shock. By this time, four more policemen arrived in four separate cars. Once Doug had been taken to the hospital, the police began to take statements from all of us. This happened between 11:30 and 11:45. By 12:15 Della and I were writing a description of what we had witnessed to submit to the police. Then we stood around another 15 minutes talking to the others there. We finally got around to paying for the tires and left.

We have subsequently learned that Doug will most likely not be able to use his right hand. The damage to the tendons and muscle was so severe it apparently cannot be repaired. I heard third-hand that the man had recently been released from prison for murdering another man. Who knows? The man he spoke to in the waiting room knew him, and described him as "crazy". Some of the Kress workers copied down the license number of the man's truck. He stabbed Doug with a "razor knife". The stabber was apprehended later that afternoon.A young policeman (he couldn't have been more than 22 or 23) kept telling us that "this doesn't happen" in West Deer. He either didn't know or didn't want us to know that five years ago a man stabbed his wife to death in West Deer and tried to hide the body. He was arrested and is spending the rest of his life in one of PA's penal institutions.

Needless to say, Della and I were pretty upset about this. Prior to this the most violent thing I ever witnessed was a NYC demolition derby involving a taxi and several other vehicles near St. Patrick's Cathedral in the early 60s.

Della's Return

This afternoon at 3 PM, Fr. Ken Oldenski of St. Richard's Roman Catholic Church in Gibsonia received Della into the Catholic Church. Della had been considering this for several years - a year ago, she became a Camaldolese Benedictine Oblate in a service at St. Vincent's Arch-abbey in Latrobe, PA. Earlier this month, she resigned from the Anglican Order of the Daughters of the King. She will continue to attend St. Thomas with me on Sundays; she will attend Mass at St. Richard's Saturday evenings while I am doing the Saturday evening service at St. Thomas. She has a great admiration for Fr. Ken - in addition to being a wonderful person and a remarkable priest, he is the only person (apart from me) who kissed her hand. John and Busha met him several years ago when I preached the Thanksgiving Day sermon at St. Richard, and they seemed to be impressed. How this will affect a number of decisions over the next few months remains to be seen. Della intends to write a piece for the parish newsletter informing them of her decision; she will also write Archbishop Duncan (another person she respects and admires greatly).

It has been a gloriously sunny day here in the Pittsburgh area. The nights are cooler and the days are warm.

Test Update

Well, the surgeon called me today (directly and on a Saturday!) and told me the biopsy sample at least did not show cancer.

But, of course they recommend surgery to remove the tumor due to its size and its "communication" with the rest of the pancreas and the likelihood that it will sooner or later become malignant.  They will do a laparascopy as much as that is possible, hopefully for the whole operation. I expect to be in the hospital 5 to 8 days and be recuperating for about six weeks.

This all isn't as bad a report as it could have been, so far.

Thanks so much for your continuing prayers for me and the rest of my family and I will let you know the date of the surgery.

Love,
Della

Cabela's Report

Yesterday's trip to Cabela's was enjoyable for Kenny and me. Kenny, of course, wanted everything in the store. We settled on three baseball caps (on sale), some fudge, peanuts, a relatively inexpensive pair of binoculars for Kenny, a stuffed dog for Michelle, and two refrigerator magnets. Cabela's may be the world's "largest outfitter" but we just delighted in looking at the North America and African Dioramas and the fresh water aquarium. I was disappointed in not finding anything useless but purchasable in the bargain cave. I mentioned to Kenny that I was hoping to find a fishing line he couldn't tangle when I heard a guy behind me say, "Lotsa luck! I've been trying to find one of those for thirty years." It rained on and off the whole journey down and back - we left at 9, got to Wheeling around 10:30 and were back home around 3. A lot of folks arrived at Cabela's in school buses and other chartered buses. If you're in this area, and you want the tour of the world's greatest "outfitter", just say the word.

Mucinous cyst

Della and I drove to UPMC Presbyterian this morning for her scheduled endoscopic sonogram. The trip downtown was uneventful and amazingly, we found a parking space on the first level of the parking garage. We checked in around 11:30 AM. Della was called to the lab at noon. An hour later I was permitted to go in. We waited another two hours before Dr. Sanders did the procedure. (Last week, we waited an hour and 15 minutes for a 15 minute visit from Dr. Lee -a consultation that cost $340 - no discount for having to wait. I assume Dr. Col. Sanders is offering no discount for having us wait two hours beyond the time of the scheduled procedure.)

Della was finally permitted to leave the hospital at 5 PM. We got across the Allegheny and into an Eat 'N Park restaurant at 6. The immediate news: the cyst  is a mucinous adenoma, a precancerous cyst that about 30-40 % of the time becomes cancerous. The biopsy will take about a week. In the meantime, we are pondering Dr. Sander's words that the cyst "appears to be communicating with other parts of the pancreas" and that the cyst "had little fluid". Surgery on the pancreas looms.

We really won't know what lies in wait for Della until we get the lab tests. But it does appear that the cyst is more threatening than we had originally hoped. Again, I ask your prayers.

To Cabela's

Ken and I are heading to Cabela's in Wheeling tomorrow. I want him to see the great big fresh water fish aquarium to help both him and me understand that there is more to fishing than blue gills, crappies and small bass. (And rainbow trout after a fresh lake stocking.)  He also needs a special day to commemorate the end of summer before he boards the bus Tuesday morning.

We have had seven glorious days (consecutive!!) of sunshine - the rice paddy is almost dry. Tomorrow may bring us some rain, but what the hey.

Medical and Dental Report

Shortly after our return from New England and Chautauqua Lake, a doctor from our physician's practice called to tell Della that he was setting up an appointment for her to have a CAT scan done on her pancreas. Before we left on vacation, her doctor had told her that a CAT scan on her lungs had revealed a "spot" on her pancreas, so Della expected that she was going to have another test. She was almost immediately referred to a surgeon at Presbyterian Hospital. We saw him last week. Della has a cyst on her pancreas - it could very well be non-malignant. But they will be doing an "endoscopic sonogram" this coming Tuesday. We would very much appreciate your prayers that the growth is "benign" and that it can be treated effectively without severe complications. We should be in and out of the hospital the same day.

On a lighter note, two weeks ago today, I had a very painful toothache which my dentist determined needed a root canal.  I could handle the pain with ibuprofin and acetaminiphen but the four day wait for the root canal seemed endless. I had the root canal done and thought, wow no more pain. Several hours after the root canal, the pain returned, only this time it seemed to be radiating to one side of my face. I saw my dentist again two days ago. He yanked and replaced the filling put in by the root canal guy, put me on some mild steroid, and gave me some penicillin. No pain now for three days. He tells me the root canal guy really did a "superb" job. Uh-huh. I realize now I should have called the root canal guy the minute the pain returned. That tells me that I am still a wimp when it comes to dealing honestly and forthrightly with the MDs and DDSs.

Have You Seen the Hickory Horned Devil?

Tuesday evening around dusk, Kenny started yelling "Hey, ya gotta see this!" He was standing near the fence in the back yard by the sand-pile and a cluster of three trees. I didn't pay too much attention, absorbed as I was by a pile of papers on my desk and the task of trying to enter the bills I paid into my computer money program. Then I heard more excited yells from other kids in the neighborhood, so I decided to investigate. The object of all the excitement was a long (5-6 inches), thick (nearly an inch), pale green caterpillar with the most extraordinary spines on its back, the most terrifying black spots which resembled huge eyes, and antennae which were also fearsome to behold. It wasn't something I had ever seen before, and it was certainly not anything anyone in the neighborhood had seen. Kenny commandeered a jar and wanted help putting it in the jar, so I took a twig and slowly pushed the remarkable caterpillar into the jar. Once it was safely inside we took it to Della's desk downstairs and gently placed it on the desk for a closer examination. While all this was going on, Della was on the computer googling a description. Almost instantaneously a picture of the caterpillar appeared on the monitor. What we had was a Hickory Horned Devil - the caterpillar of the beautiful and big Royal Moth (http://hilarynelson.com/Hobbies/Bugs/HickoryHornedDevilCaterpillar/), 
one of God's strangest-looking yet awesomely beautiful caterpillars. I took some photos (since I have a primitive, pre-digital 35 mm Nikon, I have yet to finish the roll of film and get it developed - this photo is taken from the internet). We watched it a good half-hour - it just moved slowly along - and we tried to get even more information about the caterpillar. We put it back on a tree where it remained until the next morning and the sun got warmer and then it moved higher and higher. Within a day we had lost him. But the remarkable thing about the HHD is that it will drop to an area of soft soil and bury itself for the winter, emerge as a moth in the spring, mate, the female will lay its eggs and live about a week. The Royal Moth is native to this region of the country and is found throughout the south and southwest. 

I was reminded of the spring day in Worland WY when I looked out my window and saw what I thought was a slow-moving hummingbird flitting among the flowers. I discovered it was a moth - a sphinx moth with a long proboscis for sipping the nectar of the flowers. I started paying more attention around town and saw 20-30 of them among the downtown flowers barrels. Amazing. What amazing things do you see in your backyards or on your trips this past year. In the past three months we've had two humming birds among a wide variety of birds at Della's feeders. The hummingbirds went for the petunias on the deck. We are on the lookout for other caterpillars. Kenny's third grade class last year watched an egg and larva of a monarch butterfly go through its changes in the classroom.