Author: Ken Goetz

Italian Holiday

Posted on by Ken Goetz

As I mentioned here earlier, my Air Force assignment in Germany provided plenty of time for me to breeze around Europe. And, like all airmen of any rank, I had a precious perk, a sweet plum that allowed me to fly free on military aircraft throughout Europe. At the time, C-47 cargo planes crisscrossed the continent, transporting equipment between major cities, or at times merely flying from here to there for training purposes. To nab a free ride, I would get permission to travel from my appropriate officer, get orders printed, board the plane, and zip off to wherever.

We weather guys had an inside track to the flight schedules. Our squadron operated in a brick building next to the runways of the airbase, and pilots routinely checked prevailing weather conditions with us before taking off. During those weather briefings, we often learned of later scheduled flights, so we usually were the first to know where flights would be going, and when.

On my first free flight, I soared over the Alps to Rome. Two friends and I had arranged to spend a brief Christmas holiday in Italy. After landing, we found beds in a small pensione, dropped off our duffles, and made a beeline to our first attraction, the Colosseum. It was an adventure that indicated how much my life had changed. For my first nineteen years I had been corralled within the borders of the Dakotas, never getting within a hundred miles of the region’s most popular tourist attraction, Mount Rushmore. And then suddenly poof, here I was at twenty, living in Europe and approaching a Roman structure built not long after the birth of Christ.

The crumbled Colosseum, with less than half of the original amphitheater still standing, was impressive in its faded grandeur, even more so when we walked inside to where the action had been. I gawked around, trying to imagine the place when it had been whole, when it had been packed with Romans cheering lustily as they watched men being battered to death, their fate sealed on the ground where we stood. The area was big enough to absorb a flood of blood. It looked to be about two football fields long and not quite as wide, plenty of space for all the mayhem. I’d read that roughly a thousand humans were killed there each year. So, considering the Colosseum was used for nearly four centuries, it seemed likely that some 400,000 lives had been rubbed out on the ground where I stood. It gave me a creepy feeling.

We flew to the city on December 24th, and, being fully aware of the admonition, when in Rome . . ., we followed a throng late that evening to a midnight mass at the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore. It was the first Catholic mass I ever attended, and the opulent ritual had me scratching my head as it unfolded. Nevertheless, the mysterious goings on intrigued me, and I thought the performance provided a spectacular ending to my Christmas Eve.

My seasonal spirits were sorely tested as we Americans squeezed our way out and descended the crowded stairs. Nearing street level, we were approached by three signorinas who invited us to join them for more earthy celebrations. I’m not sure precisely what it was, perhaps the jarring change in tone, coming as it did so abruptly on the fringe of that holy cathedral, or maybe it was nothing more than a touch of cautious prudery. Whatever the reasons, we spurned their offer.

After a quiet night, we awoke to a warm Christmas morning and took our planned train ride to Naples, going on from there to Pompeii. We arrived shortly before noon and hired a guide to take us through parts of that excavated city. When the guide explained that Vesuvius had erupted and buried Pompeii in 79 A.D., that date meshed with information I’d learned on the previous day, namely that the Roman Colosseum had been completed at almost exactly the same time. Wow! In just two days I had explored a couple of ancient ruins, each illustrating how folks had lived nearly two thousand years earlier. What a great way to absorb history! That may have been when the first smidgen of worldliness seeped through my skin.

After leaving Pompeii, we stopped in Naples for a brief peek at the city before returning to Rome. While in Naples, I purchased a souvenir, my temptation being strong.  “Pssst, hey you wannna buy gun?” My friends weren’t interested, but I was curious and asked to see what the man had to offer. He pulled out a small box and opened it. Inside lay a pistol, a classy little Beretta. I took a close look. I liked its heft, its style. It was brand new, and likely stolen I thought, either from the factory or a gun shop. The price was surprisingly low, really cheap. So I pulled out some cash and gave him the money without dickering. I don’t remember what I paid for it, nor do I remember what currency I used, but it definitely was a bargain, and, I knew, a keeper.

I came across that little jewel recently. It had been hiding in a drawer, and I pulled it out for a closer look. The pistol has had little use. I’ve rarely shot it. No more than twenty bullets have ever been fired through its 3 ½ inch barrel, and it looks as sharp as the day I bought it. I looked closely at its markings. It’s a Beretta Model 950 B, chambered for .22 caliber shorts, serial number 648402.

As I held my little souvenir, it began to demonstrate its wizardry by reminding me of that distant day in Naples when I bought it. The little guy didn’t stop there. It dusted off other happenings from my first trip to Italy, and threw into view the incidents I’ve described here. By doing that, I think, my little Beretta demonstrated that it’s not only a fine pistol, but a fine souvenir as well. It easily accomplished what the best souvenirs do. It brought back memories of the time when it was acquired. I can’t ask for more than that.

 

 

 

 

 

Werner Forssmann, a Personal Tribute

Posted on by Ken Goetz

When I wrote the story of Werner Forssmann catheterizing of his own heart, I ignored my more personal debt to Forssmann’s striking accomplishment. That personal debt was sparked some years ago, on one sunny morning as I tramped up a long hill. The hill was familiar, but what happened that morning was not. As I neared the crest of that hill, a vague sensation eased into my chest. I took note of it, and walked on.

The next morning I challenged that same hill, and again felt an identical sensation as I approached the top. For lack of a better description, it was a feathery touch of fullness beneath the upper part of my breast bone. Nothing else. No pain. No pressure. Just a fleeting sensation before topping the hill. Most individuals, had they noticed it at all, most likely would have ignored it, but I had spent countless hours on hospital cardiac wards. I knew how subtle the heart’s signals can be.

So I made an appointment to see my cardiologist. He listened, nodded, and recommended a thallium scan of my heart. That scan revealed that blood flowing to parts of my ventricles was limited during a stress test, a finding that earned me a trip to a local hospital for a coronary arteriogram.

Much had changed, of course, since Forssmann’s time. Scientific advancements and amazing technical developments have changed the game entirely. For my catheterization, I was wheeled into a laboratory on a Gurney and scooched onto an examination table. The target of the day was not the right side of my heart, the side that had been Forssmann’s goal, but rather the left side, the high pressure side, and its arteries.

I felt a faint pinprick in my groin as local anesthetic was injected in the skin above my right femoral artery, but no other sensation as a catheter was threaded into that artery through a needle and pushed up my aorta to my heart. Like Werner Forssmann, I felt very little during this probing of my heart.

From my supine position, I watched the movable part of the large recording instrument swing above me, and I obediently turned my head to the left as instructed, then to the right, so the huge apparatus would clear my nose as it slid back and forth only centimeters above me. I heard an occasional whirring sound as 35mm film sped through its sockets.

“You’ll feel a little warmth,” the cardiologist said as he injected dye into my coronary arteries, and I did, a not unpleasant stream of warmth spreading through my chest. That was all I felt. Nothing more. Unlike Forssmann, I felt no urge to cough.

The results were as I anticipated. Films of my dye-filled left coronary artery revealed significant narrowing in two of its branches, a discovery that kept me in the hospital that night, in preparation for my treatment on the following day.

My second trip to the cath lab was also painless. I again felt the pinprick in my skin, and then the warmth of injected dye. But I felt nothing during the actual treatment as a catheter was wedged into my left coronary artery. On the tip of that catheter was an inflatable balloon covered with a stent. When the tip was wedged into a narrowed segment of my artery, the balloon was inflated. This expanded the mesh-like metal of the stent, forcing my narrowed segment to open wider, and also preventing it from collapsing. Following this brief procedure, performed on both of my narrowed segments, I was wheeled back to the recovery room and later given dinner.

My cardiologist checked me out the next morning. All was well, and he discharged me from the hospital, mission accomplished. Unlike Forssmann, I had no inflammation at the site puncture, just the anticipated bruise where blood had leaked into my inner thigh during the procedures, the consequence of anticoagulants given to prevent my blood from clotting as it flowed through my newly stented arteries.

A few days after this procedure, I retested the hill that had put me on alert. I kept a steady pace as I tramped up that long slope and happily felt no feathery sensation in my chest as I cruised to the top. It was then, not surprisingly, that my thoughts slipped back to Werner Forssmann, the guy who had blazed this amazing trail. Following his lead, countless clinicians have fine-tuned his technique and made dozens of other critical advances, but it was Forssmann who opened the door.

I’m told one million cardiac catheterizations are performed worldwide each year, an astonishing development that the young German surgeon in 1929 could never have envisioned. At dinner tonight, being merely one of the myriad of men and women benefitting from his bravery, I shall lift a glass in tribute to Werner Forssmann, the man who started it all over ninety years ago.

 

Donald Trump’s Final Grade

Posted on by Ken Goetz

A number of articles I’ve seen, along with opinions from certain syndicated columnists, make the case that the Covid-19 pandemic defeated Donald Trump. I have trouble swallowing that. The virus clearly shifted some votes, but I would argue that Donald Trump knocked himself right out of the Oval Office.

The reason seems obvious. Trump never learned to be presidential. He spent his four years in office squabbling. He flooded his nights with ridiculous tweets, and in daylight threw his abrasive jabs and roundhouse rants at practically everyone. In the end, enough of those blows turned around and smacked him solidly on the jaw, putting him down for the count.

I suppose one might argue that his bluster was caused by the press, the majority of which pummeled him at every turn, putting him on the defensive, but I don’t buy that either. He had shown plenty of nastiness even as a candidate while skirmishing with others for the Republican nomination.

I think he won the first time because he was the outsider itching to drain the Washington swamp and yank some federal tentacles off our backs. That sounded good to me, as it apparently still does to most citizens. As I wrote in my Washington’s Swamp post, in December only 15% of us approved of the work of our Washington legislators.

Not that it matters to anyone else, but I give Trump a D- for his term. In my system, he avoided a flat out failing grade because he accomplished some things I believe have been good for our country. But he sits tightly wedged near the bottom of the presidential barrel because he was often an embarrassment while in office.

URGENT NOTE: If you’re among the 85% of us disappointed with our congressional crowd, and if you know anyone capable of draining gigantic swamps, someone reasonably stable and fortified with stamina galore, give that person a nudge toward greatness.

Cardiac Catheterization, Part 3

Posted on by Ken Goetz

Earlier, when I was teaching and discussing the cardiovascular system with medical students or nurses, I would at times tell them of Werner Forssmann’s epic experiment of self-characterization, but I knew of no other Forssmann until I learned a Dr. Wolf-Georg Forssmann was one of two German professors who had nominated me for a German Humboldt Prize.

After receiving the award, I traveled to Germany and settled in at the Klinikum Innenstadt of the University of Munich, where I worked during my Humboldt tenure. Not long after my arrival, I traveled to Hannover to meet Professor Wolf Forssmann and present a seminar in his department. He then kindly invited me and several members of his staff to dinner at his home.

During a lull in conversation during that pleasant evening, I asked Professor Forssmann, “Are you by chance related to the Werner Forssmann who catheterized his own heart?”

“I am his son,” he said. He went on to tell a bit about his father, much of which I already knew, for I had read his father’s autobiography and other articles he had published. Wolf Forssmann affirmed that his father had faced rough times after he published the account of catheterizing his own heart. His father had written, I was utterly disappointed and bewildered during this time because I felt completely misunderstood and at times rejected. The onslaught so overwhelmed the elder Forssmann that he changed his focus to urology.

But his singular experiment soon began to influence others. His methods were adopted by investigators in Prague and Lisbon, and more importantly they lit a flame in the laboratory of Drs. Andre Cournand and Dickinson Richards in New York City. Within a decade the two men were employing Forssmann’s methodology in patients, pushing their catheters into pulmonary arteries and using other techniques to accurately measure their patients’ cardiac output (the volume of blood pumped by the heart per minute). Their reports spread among clinical circles, and they credited Werner Forssmann for providing the impetus for their work. The world of cardiology was changing rapidly, a change duly noted in Sweden.

In 1956, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded jointly to André Cournand, Werner Forssmann and Dickinson Richards “for their discoveries concerning heart catheterization and pathological changes in the circulatory system.”

It’s generally reported that Forssmann was shocked when he received that special telephone call informing him that he had won the prize. Some accounts claim that he responded by asking, “For what?”

Werner Forssmann’s fame grew quickly as the news spread. He received other honors, and his sudden prestige led to his being named chief of the surgical division of the Evangelical Hospital in Düsseldorf, a far cry, and sudden jump, from his days of private practice. One wonders. Did his honors, and his sudden fame, erase the pain of his earlier treatment? This is what he later wrote:

Even later recognition or fame cannot eliminate the scars which he [the young scientist] acquired during his struggle.  Few have the good fortune after self-denial and personal renunciation, enmities, and humiliations, to achieve recognition and the crown of glory from a grateful younger generation, and even this is no consolation for what the scientist has been through. The young scientist of which he spoke surely was his earlier self.

As he wrote in his autobiography (Experiments on Myself: Memoirs of a Surgeon in Germany [English translation published in 1974] St. Martin’s Press, New York). The Nobel Prize changed our life drastically. Let me say at once this had nothing to do with the money that came with it. In fact the practice Elsbet and I had built up in Bad Kreuznach was so profitable that we had no worries. And one page later, One unpleasant aspect was that we had suddenly become socially desirable.

His autobiography also reveals the thoughts he’d had while listening to the Nobel lectures given by Cournand and Richards. Those lectures revived for me the old doubts of which I’d never been able to dispel. It was true that I had opened the door to modern cardiology. But in the meantime it had outgrown me, and I would never be able to catch up. In my youth I had tried to plant a lovely garden, and now, as an old man I was forced to watch over the hedge while others picked the apples.

I’ll end this story of Werner Forssmann with three sentences that make me smile. They appear near the end of his autobiography.

At the same time I realized I had indeed reached the height of fame. My son, Knut, sent me from Barcelona the wrapper from a new brand of Spanish cigars, on which my picture was printed. You can’t go much further than that.

Cardiac Catheterization, Part 2

Posted on by Ken Goetz

Life changing events, if they occur at all, often are difficult to pinpoint. Not so with Dr. Werner Forssmann. The arc of his life swerved abruptly on that day in 1929, when he stuck a catheter into a handy arm vein and eased the instrument forward until its tip entered his heart. He knew he faced possible physical harm as he manipulated the catheter inward, but he discounted that, as he did other possible fallout from his probe. He had told his chief of surgery what he intended to do, and the older man had ordered him not to do it.

News of his amazing accomplishment whizzed through the little hospital even before Forssmann finished developing his x-ray films. Within the hour he was summoned to his superior’s office. The chief exploded as expected. Forssmann apologized. Things gradually cooled down. Then Forssmann showed the impressive x-ray films documenting the catheter’s location in his heart. That did the trick. The chief beamed.

“Forssmann,” he gushed, “you’ve made a great discovery, and I must congratulate you. You must publish an account of your work immediately.” He went on to say that his small hospital was not the place to continue this momentous work, that Forssmann needed better facilities to carry on his daring research. He promised to find an appropriate appointment for him, and he did, a coveted position at Berlin’s Charité Hospital, the Mecca of German surgery at the time.

With his future appearing bright, Forssmann arrived in Berlin enthusiastically, but also wary. He had heard ominous accounts of the chief of surgery, one Dr. Sauerbruch. Members of the department greeted him with disdain. One of Sauerbruch’s lieutenants taunted him. “So you’re the gentleman from the provinces who’s going to teach us all about science, are you? Well, we’ll see about that. First we’ve got to whip you into shape.”

Had that been the worst of it, Forssmann likely would have remained on course. But a more turbulent storm was gathering, this sparked by the article he had written describing his experiment on himself. When published in a major journal, that article threw a glaring spotlight on him.

He became hot news. The popular press was agog. Clusters of reporters sought interviews and wrote glowing stories about his amazing achievement. One newspaper even offered Forssmann one thousand marks for permission to publish photos of his x-rays.  He refused.

Such popularity brought consequences. He was summoned to Sauerbruch’s office. “This is an absolute disgrace,” the chief bellowed, pointing to an envelope on his desk. An eminent German surgeon had written an angry letter, claiming Forssmann had plagiarized his work and accusing him of failing to acknowledge the surgeon’s earlier work (the man apparently had done something similar on patients but had never properly published a report).

The supposed plagiarism was not the only irritant under the chief’s skin. After spouting about the surgeon’s letter, the chief fumed about the hullabaloo in the press, denouncing Forssmann’s popularity in one sentence and pouting in the next that nowhere had the young man given credit to Charité Hospital, not in his scientific article, or in stories in the press.

“But I did this work at Eberswald,” Forssmann protested. He added that he intended to continue his work and hoped to qualify for a lectureship.

Sauerbruch bristled. “You might lecture in a circus about your little tricks, but never in a respectable German university, he retorted. “Get out! Leave my department immediately.”

Suddenly jobless, Forssmann suffered another broadside attack, this from the medical community. Many doctors were alarmed by his self-catheterization, and they didn’t hesitate to vent their views, their comments often heated and personal.  And they moralized. “One doesn’t do that.” and “A good physician wouldn’t ask that of his patients.”

Despite his troubles, Forssmann did manage to land a number of short-term positions where he was able to continue his experiments, performing more catheterizations of his own heart, and even injecting radio-opaque dye to reveal the outline of his right heart cavities and pulmonary arteries, another major advance.

His work mattered little at the time, and the drumbeat of criticism continued, preventing him from finding a stable position, wearing him down. Believing he was losing the fight, he gradually shifted his focus from the heart to urology. When WWII erupted, he served as a surgeon in the German army. After the war he started a medical practice as a urologist and general physician along with his wife, also a doctor. The pair settled down in West Central Germany, built a profitable practice, raised a family, and eased into what Werner Forssmann likely considered pleasant obscurity.

But elsewhere doctors were actively threading catheters into more and more human hearts. We’ll come to that next time.

The First Cardiac Catheterization

Posted on by Ken Goetz

Some medical discoveries fade as they settle into history. Others glow brightly. Here’s a little quiz for you. The poliomyelitis virus was a nasty crippler and killer that terrorized the world until the mid-1950s. Which of the following won the Nobel Prize for their work on the polio virus?

  1. John Enders
  2. Jonas Salk
  3. Thomas Weller
  4. Frederick Robbins

Most of you probably think that’s way too easy. Well, let’s see how you did. If you answered 1, 3, and 4, you’re an undisputed champion. Congratulations! You nailed it! Enders, Weller, and Robbins won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1954, winning that prestigious award for developing a method to culture the polio virus in human tissues, the vital discovery that enabled production of enough virus to develop a vaccine.

I mention this bit of history not to disparage Salk, who never won a Nobel Prize but later was the first to develop a successful vaccine against polio, and thus became justifiably famous after standing on the shoulders of the above three. Albert Sabin was another vaccine developer. A few years after Salk’s contribution, Sabin came up with an effective oral vaccine.

Now let’s shift our attention to the heart with another quiz, one likely to stump most of you. Which of the following won the Nobel Prize for their work on cardiac catheterization in 1956, the time when such catheterizations were beginning to take off?

  1. André. Cournand
  2. Samuel Pepys
  3. Dickinson Richards
  4. Werner Forssmann

Okay, I rigged this one, making the same three choices correct. Yep, 1, 3, and 4 ring the correct bell. Oh, raise your hand if you smiled when you saw Samuel Pepys.

Until the 20th century, the human heart understandably was an organ doctors stayed away from. So when a man’s beating heart finally was invaded by a catheter, an event documented by x-rays, the news flew around the world.

That first catheterization wasn’t performed, as you might expect, in a major academic institution. It was done nearly a century ago in a small hospital some 30 miles from Berlin by an unsupervised 25-year-old German doctor. His name was Werner Forssmann, and the heart he catheterized was his own.

Forssmann was a surgical resident in 1929, when he calmly anesthetized the inner side of his left elbow, sliced through his skin with a scalpel, and inserted a catheter into the arm vein he had exposed. After pushing most of the catheter’s two-foot length into his body, Forssmann walked the long distance from the surgery suite to the x-ray department and even climbed a stairway with blood dripping as the catheter dangled from his arm. At last he stood in front of a fluoroscopy screen and viewed his insides through a mirror held by an obliging nurse. He could see plainly the end of the catheter twitching within his right atrium. He took x-ray films of his chest and arm to document his achievement.

 

From Forssmann: Die Sondierung des rechten Herzens, 1929

Sorry, this a copy of a copy and it doesn’t show up very well. but perhaps you can at least see the dark thin line (the catheter) going up from the arm to the upper part of the chest before it turns down toward the heart.

His intent, the young German doctor wrote later that year, had been to devise a better way to administer drugs directly into the heart during certain emergencies, the prevailing method at the time being to jam a long needle through the patient’s chest wall and blindly inject substances directly into the heart, a method more likely to kill than cure.

“While sliding the catheter in I had a feeling almost of soft warmth on my vein wall,” he wrote, and when the catheter entered his chest, “an especially intense warmth behind the clavicle [collarbone].” He also noted a dry cough, presumably triggered when the catheter’s movement irritated nerves in his chest.

Other than these sensations during the episode, the young doctor reported, “I felt nothing.” Even afterward he felt nothing detrimental, “aside from a slight inflammation at the site of the venesection, which probably resulted from faulty sterilization during my self-operation.” His method, he added with justifiable youthful pride, “opens up countless vistas of new possibilities.”

Surely the young Forssmann never imagined the extraordinary advances that ultimately followed his brave solo venture with a catheter. Nor did he foresee the troubles soon to strike him, the jabs and insults whipped up by his daring experiment, woes that followed him through much of his life.

The story will continue.

First Book Winner

Posted on by Ken Goetz

Our first book winner has emerged. T.D. lives in the Kansas City area and has chosen to receive the novel. The Colors of Medicine is heading her way.

My next post will describe the early history of cardiac catheterization, focusing on how it all began, a human interest story that surprises many. That should be up in another day or two.

Book Giveaway

Posted on by Ken Goetz

As a new blogger who has posted items for only a few months, I much appreciate the complimentary feedback I’ve received so far. I’m especially gratified by reports that some of you are going back and rereading everything I’ve written on this site. Such interest will keep me writing.

Admittedly, readership here is still modest. From the limited information I have, several hundred of you might log onto this site on any given day, yet far fewer have signed up to receive email notification when I add something new.

Because writers love readers, the more the better, and because I’d like all of you to know immediately when I post a new item, I’ve decided to resort to bribery to spread the word. For the next several months, those readers signed up to receive email notifications will be eligible to win a book autographed by one of my favorite authors.

Here’s how it will work: at the end and middle of each month, starting in a few days at the end of January, I’ll have an independent body draw a lucky winner from the pool of those who have provided their emails. I’ll then notify the winner and offer the choice of either a memoir or a novel. The chosen book will be snuggled into a plain brown envelope and entrusted to the postman for prompt delivery. In an effort to keep the voltage of suspense high, I won’t divulge the author’s name, but I’ll provide one flimsy clue, one so obscure that even members of His Majesty’s Secret Service would scratch their heads in bafflement. The clue? The author’s initials are KG.

INSIDER’S TIP: This is a drawing with a high probability of winning, at least initially, because the number of email registrants is quite low at the moment. Thus the odds of collecting a free book are a zillion times better than winning the lottery. So enter your email address on the right. And good luck!

A new post will be coming soon.   

Washington’s Swamp

Posted on by Ken Goetz

The latest Congressional approval rating I’ve seen, from December, reveals that 15% of our citizens approve of the work of our Washington legislators. Fifteen percent? That high? Was the poll over-weighted with lobbyists, lawmakers’ relatives, and residents in mental institutions?

Who isn’t aware that our proud career politicians, when they’re not squabbling with each other, run amok in other ways? They rarely appear on the House or Senate floors. They prod their staffs to produce thousands and thousands of pages of obfuscating prose that nobody (except trial lawyers) reads. Our politicos kowtow to lobbyists and blow smoke rings at those who elected them. And their obsession? Reelection! The longer they stay in office, the worse they become.

One of Donald Trump’s campaign promises was to drain Washington’s swamp. After he was elected, he faced daily crossfire from our major media, nearly all of whom seemed obsessed with ridding themselves, and us, of him. Trump was an easy target, given his bloated ego, mercurial mood swings, the tendency to contradict himself, and his outrageous tweets. Yet, in his spare time, he somehow managed to make certain changes in our domestic economy and in our foreign policy that I, among others, favored.

And now, with Trump at his lowest, and soon to be gone, the Washington swamp deepens. For proof look no further than the Covid Relief Bill, which sounds pleasant enough and suggests our vigilant lawmakers, their eyes fixed on our sinking economy, their hearts in tune with those squeezed by the pandemic, responded with relief for those in need. Balderdash! Let’s examine what really happened. As always, when money began accumulating in this appropriation bill, our herd of legislators stumbled over each other to slip their pet projects into the pot. But, as our economy continued to deflate, certain Congressional bosses, having no real interest in the carnage, stubbornly delayed passage to allow even more personal pork to be packed into one gargantuan sow.

This monstrosity, recently signed by the defeated Trump, should cause every citizen to retch. Imagine the worst giveaway ever, and discover you’ve pathetically undershot reality. Much of the massive loot will drain out of this country. Some $1.5 BILLION will go to places like Sudan, Ukraine, Nepal, Burma, and Cambodia (those dollars certainly will take a good whack at our Covid crisis!). This new law even awards “not less than $10 million” to be shipped to Pakistan for the study of gender issues? (Go figure!)

It gets worse. Greenbacks spill everywhere from this fat glob (5,593‑pages!). Hundreds of millions of dollars are to be shipped to other countries like Nicaragua, Vietnam, Peru, and Ecuador, to Egypt for its military, to Sri Lanka for boat repair, to Palestinian for economic aid.  The beat goes on. Our politicos casually allocated some $40 million for the Kennedy Center, a venue popular with the Washington elite, and convenient for their attendance. And you, Mr. and Mrs. Citizen? If you’re not too rich, you’ll get your 600 bucks.

Even some of those who ground this political sausage were unable to endure its stink. Have you seen these gripes from opposite ends of the political spectrum?

“Members of Congress have not read this bill. It’s over 5000 pages, arrived at 2pm today, and we are told to expect a vote on it in 2 hours. This isn’t governance. It’s hostage‑taking.” (Tweet of Representative Alexandria Ocasio‑Cortez, Democrat of New York)

“It’s ABSURD to have a $2.5 trillion spending bill negotiated in secret and then—hours later—demand an up‑or‑down vote on a bill nobody has had time to read.” (Tweet of Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas)

The total cost of this hideous statute is pegged at $2.3 trillion dollars, with about 1.4 trillion destined for other government expenses. The digits are small, but they represent trillions. For many individuals, including me, millions, billions, and trillions of dollars are so gigantic that they blur in the mind. To better appreciate their immensities, it helps to look at dollars as if they were units of time. Here’s a comparison I picked up years ago. One million seconds pass in about 11.5 days. One billion seconds last almost 32 years. And one trillion seconds? Well, that interval stretches to over 30,000 years.

 

Must we continue to allow our wastrels in Washington to burn our wealth? Would these pork-barrel Machiavellians modify their behavior if strict term limits were imposed, thus clipping their cushy time in office? I think so. There is at least one organization (U.S. Term Limits) working toward establishing Congressional term limits by amending the U.S. Constitution. I recently skimmed through that organization’s website and signed its petition with enthusiasm. Perhaps you will consider doing the same.

Berlin and the Brandenburg Gate: Conclusion

Posted on by Ken Goetz

Note: If you’re new to this blog, or if you don’t remember details of my first experience at the Brandenburg Gate recounted in an earlier post, you may want to go back and read part one of this story before reading what follows.

 

My last trip to Berlin came nearly four decades after I first entered the city. I was living in Munich in 1993, keeping busy as a visiting professor in the Klinikum Innenstadt of the University of Munich, my support coming from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. One day I received an invitation to attend, along with other Humboldtians, a meeting in Berlin hosted by the Foundation. I accepted immediately.

As I had during my very first trip to the city, I traveled by train, this time with passport. My speedy express flashed out of Munich and clicked along the rails at a fine pace until we had covered roughly half the distance to Berlin. Then, without warning, the train slowed abruptly and slogged along at what I judged to be about thirty miles an hour. “Was ist los?” I asked a conductor. He explained that we had just entered the former East German sector and tracks there had not been properly maintained, so it was unsafe to travel faster, this being some two years after Germany had been reunited.

When we finally rolled into Berlin, I studied the place to see how it looked after the Wall had come down. (That monster had been pounded into clumps, fragments, and souvenirs some three years earlier; and only widely scattered segments remained.) Not surprisingly, I was able to spot places where it had been, obvious lines where Eastern dullness collided with Western vibrancy.

We Humboldtians were provided rooms in a Hilton located in what until recently had been East Berlin. At the welcoming reception on our first evening I reached for a tidbit just as another arm did. That arm pulled back as I retracted mine, and I found myself facing a slightly taller fellow with thick dark hair. We introduced ourselves. He was Russian, a physicist on a temporary Humboldt professorship in Augsburg. We chatted a minute, in English. He spoke quietly, his sentences considerate. I pegged him to be a thoughtful man.

I ran into the same fellow on another evening as our group boarded a bus taking us to browse in a museum. We took adjacent seats and made small talk as the bus moved out. I didn’t know that part of the city and had no idea where we were, being totally lost until the Brandenburg Gate popped up directly ahead of us and set me straight.

The unexpected sighting reminded my of the first time I’d seen the famous gate, and that memory prompted me to tell the Russian what I had experienced. I explained how years earlier I had stood before that massive structure, looking eastward and observing darkness and drabness, wondering about the people who lived there. His face took on an odd look as I talked, but he said nothing. I feared I had offended him. He remained quiet as our bus stopped some minutes later, and even as we entered the museum.

Shortly after we began investigating artifacts displayed, my Russian companion motioned me to a quiet corner and explained his silence. He had been surprised by my story, he told me, and now he would surprise me. He explained that he too had often come to this city. His wife was a ballerina who frequently performed in East Berlin, and he usually accompanied her. What struck him about my story, he said, was that he had done essentially the reverse. He too had stared toward the Brandenburg Gate during late hours, standing outside his hotel in darkness and looking westward, gazing at the brightness beyond, trying to imagine what was happening in that glittering scene.

The weight of his story struck me, and I sensed a bond forming between us, we having observed opposite sides of the same bitter coin. I think he felt much the same. Our conversation was short. We soon split up and went our separate ways through the exhibits. It was nearly an hour later when he approached me again, looking restless. He had seen enough for tonight, he said. Rather than waiting for our bus, he was going to walk back to our hotel. Would I care to join him? I hesitated, knowing I’d get totally lost after venturing beyond the Brandenburg Gate. I didn’t want to chance that. He assured me he knew the way from there on, so we walked into the night, American and Russian, toward the Brandenburg Gate.

 

 

I don’t remember precisely how it happened, or what prompted us to pause as we neared the famed gate. But I shall never forget that electric moment when we looked each other in the eye, straightened our shoulders, and marched arm in arm and in perfect cadence through the Brandenburg Gate, I realizing, as surely he did too, that our experiences had been markedly different, not because of our inclinations or abilities, but because of the governments under which we lived.

After passing through the gate and untangling our arms, we continued our way to the Hilton, guided by the confident Russian. We said goodnight, not goodbye, for we thought we would see each other on the city tour scheduled for the next morning, the final event of our meeting. But that didn’t happen. I bailed out.

After breakfast on the final day I stepped outside into amazingly bright and crisp air and saw our tour bus had already arrived. It stood waiting at the curb. At that instant I realized it was not for me, that I had no interest in seating myself inside that vehicle. What I really wanted to do was to put more miles on my shoes before heading back to Munich on a mid-afternoon train. So, with that decided, I proceeded along the now familiar path to the Brandenburg Gate and walked quickly through it and beyond, convinced I’d made the right choice.

I was well warmed up by the time I spotted the damaged spire of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, a handy marker confirming I was nearing the Kurfürstendamm, the target I was shooting for. I had enjoyed countless walks along that famous street, admiring its spiffy shops and restaurants, always taking time to examine other features of interest. Now I was eager for an encore.

Soon I was breezing along that iconic street, seeing signs of its accelerating rejuvenation, checking out additions I hadn’t seen before. I hadn’t gone very far, only a kilometer or two, when I happened to turn my attention to the traffic and, as chance would have it, spotted the very bus I’d seen outside the Hilton. I paid close attention as it passed by and saw clearly, in a window near the front, the face of my Russian companion, his forehead touching glass as he stared at the famous boulevard. It was, I thought, a fitting final glance of the man who had become a friend, for he seemed to be fully enjoying his view of the glittering scene.