Authors Electric

Now, here's a trick photo for you, a trompe l'oeil to rival the best. Have a look.   Look once and you'll see--no, not a crone who transforms to a girl when you blink--no, you'll see something more surprising:  two stackable steps six inches high a handicapped writer fights daily to climb so he can climb higher to seven. Why seven? Because that, to my changed way of thinking, is now the key to the kingdom. At year's end I'll move from my small ground-floor studio into a spacious one-bedroom apartment--with an office and  I'll be on the second floor, though, with a fifteen-step stairway whose risers measure seven inches. That's a cake walk to most of you; but I'm still recovering from my June total knee replacement and my knee flexion is still less than it should be: 110-120 degrees. At 105-108 degrees flexion, I can climb comfortably up and down the four-inch red base. But the sound effects began when I added a black two-inch second step. My mule-stu...

Write what you know, they all tell us..so that's exactly what I'll do in narrating the supreme adventure of an adventuresome life: my battle with a devil I had to call my friend. With your kind permission--thanks--I propose to jump right into this. Speed forward from the Seattle injury that left me with a wounded knee no surgeon or therapist could help. Onward past the walking sticks, then canes I'd come to rely on as a, gasp, disabled senior. Ah, here we are in Tucson, Arizona, where I moved impulsively in August 2022. Cheaper rent, better weather (except for the blistering summers), a fine forever home in almost every way except--I could not see myself as a stooped geezer hobbling with his walker for a cup of morning tea. Nor could I accept not being able to travel with my unbending knee. Worst of all, however, I loathed my terror of trying one more time and the screaming pains of kneehab.  Jump cut--sorry, one last time--to the office of the one surgeon willing to consid...