Renewal

51

After having assessed all of the materials and advice I had gotten for running the local science fiction club, I came up with my approach by the Spring of Nineteen Eighty-Eight.

Originally designed as an all consent club, explaining why the meetings never went anywhere as they could never get everyone to agree on most things, I decided I would run it more as a business. As they had already settled on me to head the club at the end of the previous year, I defined my role as directing the club and making the choices for it, after asking for advice. I was effectively making myself a Dictator, but as I had spent three months meeting with various core members seeking their thoughts and input, they felt I would continue to ask their advice and were willing to let me do this. Especially as they had originally been planning to junk the club all together just a few months earlier.

Next was my Lieutenant, Daina, who would serve as the co-manger of the club as well as do some of the necessary behind the scenes grunt work such as keep in contact with science fiction authors through the mail and butter them up for appearances at future meetings. Then there was the Editor... While the same person who had been sending out the club newsletters over the previous three years, after looking over his output I had decided to take over the monthly two-sheet and instead offered him the role of being the editor of a new quarterly fiction 'zine that would now be published by the club. It was formatted after The Doctor Who Report I had come up with six months earlier and would contain short stories from members of the writer's group that Daina & I were both associated with, artwork from the artists who had sent in their work to be used, and an introductory welcome page from the editor, himself. I sold it to him as a higher profile step up from doing the monthly meeting notice and he accepted it. And finally we would have the Treasurer, currently an empty slot with me as an acting money manager.

I gathered a group of the core members who were interested and explained this new set-up and focus to them for their 'feedback', but essentially it was just to get their buy-in. One of the original founders perked up and seemed to think it could really work. She noted that if we raised our profile high enough we could contact book publishers and ask for free books. Could we? Yes, as long as we offered to review them and tout them in our newsletter, they'd love the free publicity. I kept this idea in mind and, knowing Daina was the most prolific reader of the group, asked if she might write me up some reviews to include in the initial monthly newsletters as samples. She agreed.

While Daina handled buttering up the authors, my task was to figure out what non-author meetings we could have. Calling around, I got in contact with some speakers' bureaus to see if they had members wishing to present something on a science or science fiction topic. I further found that the Air Force was willing to send out one of their representatives to talk of the space related research and work they were doing. And I visited the local public radio station to see if I could rope in their D.J. of the space music show to come in and talk of the space focused wing of new-age music. I got one better as he brought in a local space music artist himself for the evening!

When it came time to assemble the first Quarterly, I set up a time for the editor to meet with me, look over the artwork and stories that had been submitted for the first issue so he could select what he liked and we could format the issue that would carry his name. While he did come, he really wasn't interested in having to go through all of the material and left all the choices to me. He would write up the editor's page and get that to me when I was ready to print-up the masters. When that night came, I called him and he came over, but had nothing with him. I printed up the master sheets and went to work splicing them together into fourteen & a half by eleven inch sheets while he used the computer's word processor to figure out his one page. I had long been done but didn't want to pressure him and kept myself busy with other things until he had finished his first draft.

Looking it over I noted some sentences that could be clarified and he took a polishing pass on them and we printed it up and I trimmed it & taped it to its corresponding master page. I asked if he was going to join me to the copy store to help print it up. Nope, he had other things he had to do and I was off to print up the Quarterly and assemble it and staple it all alone as I had been with TDWR in recent months. While I took it for granted that I'd be doing The Doctor Who Report alone when I started it, I had imagined having help with the local science fiction club's variation...

When it was time for the following Quarterly to be planned out, he told me on the phone he'd leave that to me and to give him a call when I needed his page. When that day came, he was a no show for his page. I debated doing the Quarterly all by myself from now on, including the editor's page, but I instead called up Daina and told her she was now the editor. She was soon over to compose an editor's page to be included in the issue I had otherwise completed and then helped me print-up and assemble the master sheets. She was a good choice as she actively took over the task of choosing the fiction selections and core artwork for all the subsequent issues, allowing me to only be the facilitator in the publishing process while I otherwise focused on the club's monthly newsletter and my own upcoming TDWR issues.

Mailing in sample copies of the refreshed newsletter to book publishers, which included Daina's reviews of books as well as another club member's reviews, the book companies soon responded by sending us boxes of upcoming paperback, and a few hardback, science fiction & fantasy books. After Daina and I made our picks, we brought them to the meetings to let the club members pick out which ones they'd like to keep in return for providing us reviews once they were done reading them.

Ultimately, the renewed monthly and new quarterly publications were a huge success as well as the meetings and Daina was now able to woo known science fiction authors to come and do a reading for the club and discuss their work. One of Daina's book reviews so impressed a major author and his publisher that he quoted her review on his subsequent books, flyers and web pages for decades to come!

The Phoenix had risen and I used this success to buoy my spirits as I faced the years of heart rending medical experiences that still lay ahead for me...

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Assessment

50

Apparently, as part of my taking over the local science fiction club I was to also serve as a dumping ground for club related material, collected over the years, which the original core members no longer wanted to store. Fortunately it was only a couple boxes worth, at first, and it was fun digging through the material: Old flyers, Organizational paperwork, Records of sold items from events, and Various pieces of graphic artwork. When I asked one of the core members where they got the artwork from, she mentioned that most new artists are desperate to have their work seen and will often send it to you for free if you ask. ''Be sure to send them a copy of the final flyer or newsletter you use them in as a courtesy,'' she added.

Sorting through the box I made a list of all of the artist names I discovered. I could find addresses for a handful in the paperwork and for a few others that I heard lived somewhere in town, I simply cracked open the phone book to get addresses for the found names. For those I had the known address for, I sent off a query letter asking if they'd like to contribute artwork for the renewed club to use. For those out of the phone book, I added the opening that I was looking for an artist by the same name as yours, if you are them or know where they live... These letters sent off at the start of the year, within two months packets of black on white artwork arrived, some photocopies, some the original ink on tissue paper, which we were expected to mail back once done with, and then a sad addition as one artist had died in the past year and his wife was thrilled that someone was still interested in his work and hoped we could find a use for it.

The club had been sending out a two page newsletter each month printed up by the member who had his own photocopier. That was one way to pick your editor, I guessed. As the one mailing-off the flyers it was deemed he could collect any mail the club received at its post office box while he was at it, and thus he quickly became the club's treasurer as well since he was the first one with the membership checks in hand. While he was willing to continue to be the editor, he no longer wanted to be in charge of the money. I went to his house to see his set-up and discuss his ideas for continuing and perhaps enhancing the monthly newsletter. He showed me recent copies that were effectively typewriter written meeting dates, some new jokes he had heard between issues, and the list of the core members of the group helped to fill up the remaining blank space. The same list of names issue after issue each month. He really didn't think the newsletter needed all that much changing except, perhaps, for a different color paper.

I then asked how many copies were sent out each month and the number was around a hundred and fifty. I was surprised by how many members there were given that I'd only ever seen about twenty at most at the meetings. He explained to me that the majority of the copies were complimentary ones sent to all the other science fiction & fantasy organizations in the country to let them know that we were still here and what we were up to. Then to be safe, he'd print an extra twenty or so copies for spares in case people wrote in asking for back issues. Did that happen often? Not much during the three years he'd been editor, but you never knew...

All he was asking for was to be reimbursed for all of the issues and copies he'd printed up in the past two and a half years. What do you mean? He had been printing all of the newsletters out of his own pocket since taking over knowing that he would be reimbursed later. I was impressed by his deep pockets as that was not something I could have afforded to do. Still, he was the treasurer as well, why hadn't he been reimbursing himself from time to time? He hadn't had the chance to get to the club's bank since being signed-up as the treasurer there. If he hadn't been to the bank during the past two and a half years, what had he been doing with the membership checks? He reached over to a high shelf and pulled off an old coffee can and showed me the checks collected within.

He handed the can to me and I stared into depths struggling to keep a straight face while I fought to discover those perfect words that would not be taken as an offense: ''Huh. I – ah – had been under the impression that checks were no longer good if not cashed within a certain time frame. Like – ah – a year or so...?''

He gave me a blank look back, clearly unaware of this and answered nervously, ''Really?''

I offered that I might not know what I was talking about but, as he had to sign me up to the account at the bank anyhow, we could ask once we got there.

When we arrived we got in line for a teller and then upon reaching her with coffee can in hand, she looked through the checks and noted that it was actually six months that a check would have to be cashed, after which it wouldn't be accepted by the bank. When asking her what options we had with the rest, she guessed writing the people who had originally sent the checks and asking for fresh ones. Of the coffee can full, less than twenty percent were within the current six months and could still be cashed. This left the club with a balance less than The Doctor Who Report had in the bank, yet with supposedly more members to serve even if you didn't count the complimentary copies. We quietly made our way to the membership desk where my name was added to the account and his removed. I don't know if the manager had already heard through the staff grapevine or if it was a coincidence, but she offered us a deposit bag that could be conveniently used to drop off checks to be cashed at a drive through slot with no other action needing to be taken. I thanked her and we left.

Back at his home he brought up that he still wanted to be reimbursed for the past two and a half years worth of newsletters he'd been creating and sending out. I simply told him that I couldn't see how as the club didn't have enough money for the current mailing list, and as we found out how much money the club had lost over the years... I let him put two & two together as to how the club had lost that money and who had been the treasurer at the time. I felt his lack of reimbursement was a minimum penalty for his mistake, though I didn't come out and say it. I hoped he would just figure it out for himself.

But he needed to have some pride and told me that, then, we couldn't use his copier anymore. Looking over the pile of streaky, faded copies of the club's newsletter surrounding us, I told him I understood. When it was time for me to leave, he wanted me to take the boxes and boxes full of spare copies of the club newsletter created for those possibly wanting back issues. I told him he could keep them and I'd let him know if anyone wrote the club asking for some. I accepted the post office box key and the copies of the mailing list from him and left.

Thinking things over on my own, I decided to keep the money situation to myself as I didn't see how spreading it around to the club members would help anybody. From the mailing list, I wrote a letter to the members who had been on the list for only the past two years and not sent in a recent check and asked if they'd be willing to mail in replacement checks and to let them know the club was under new management. The vast majority of them never responded and I crossed off their names. One guy actually did respond with a scathing letter about how he had been relieved when his check wasn't cashed given the 'piece of crap' newsletter he'd been receiving in the mail. As he'd taken the time to respond, I kept him on the mailing list for another six months hoping the new club mailings would win him over.

They didn't.

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Doctor 'Smith'

49

Ever searching for a new doctor to take on my health issues, I stumbled upon a new type of doctor: A Clinical Ecologist. Effectively he was a souped-up allergist who tested for more than just the basic set of allergies and I thought, Why not?

He had an office directly across the street from 'the other hospital' in town and I made my initial appointment where we talked about my health issues and decline over the previous years and while he wasn't sure my weight loss was a result of allergies per sé, he was more than willing to test me. A subsequent half day was set aside for testing and I returned. The very first thing they did was test the 'control' substance that they used, glycerin, and I immediately reacted to it. At that moment Dr. Smith knew I was going to be an interesting case, so he told me. I was also found to be allergic to red food coloring #3, corn, rice, household dust, etc. These all became revelations as we later discussed them and I thought about them and my lesser health history.

In the case of glycerin, I had been having problems with toothpaste, mouthwash, and shampoo all my life, ending-up just having to live with the symptoms even if I didn't like them. Now I discovered that all of these had glycerin in them, now explaining my bad reactions to them. Once I found variations without glycerin, all these associated problems went away.

I had been having muscle cramps since my preteen years and gained joint pains by the mid Nineteen Eighties. Once I cut corn out of my diet, these things went away. Avoiding this was more challenging as corn had become one of the biggest occult food additives over the preceding decade under various names like 'modified food starch', 'maize starch', 'maltodextrin', and so on. With this one, I had to start reading all of the fine print on processed food and suddenly much of what I had been eating without thought became things I should avoid. And by avoiding them I felt much better, at least when it came to moving my muscles and bending my limbs.

Since my late childhood years, I would get these itchy patches that I would unthinkingly scratch. Yet doing so only made them worse and they developed into fully fledged rashes that would defy treatment with steroidal based creams. Now reflecting that these might have been times when my exposed skin had come into contact with household dust, mostly made up of dust mite droppings, instead of scratching my skin when these happened I instead rinsed the area off with water or a wet paper towel. Within a minute or two all itching would go away and no rash would form. In reality all the scratching had been doing was break-open the skin and embed the dust even deeper into it, increasing the allergic reaction and thus the itching.

By the early Nineteen Eighties, I had begun to periodically have inner body itching problems, as if the organs themselves were irritated. But how do you scratch an itch inside your body? I couldn't and would just have to wait for the all encompassing sensation to eventually fade away. For the times when I couldn't wait it out, I'd take a cold shower as a last resort, letting the icy water numb my whole body. Yet once I started avoiding red food coloring #3, these issues disappeared as well. On the rare occasion when they'd happened again, I'd check the ingredients and sure enough there was red #3, buried in the list. I was fortunate that it was banned a few years later... Then less fortunate that, as part of the free trade deals of the nineties, it was reintroduced into the country, forcing me to stay on my toes for it ever since.

Though Dr. Smith didn't test me for it, when I talked to him about my bad reaction to the C.T. contrast dye I had recently had, he said, ''You mean iodine?'' It turned out that the common contrast dye was iodine and suddenly something else clicked into place. My entire life, as part of eating, the roof of my mouth would often blister and peel. As this most always happened, I grew up assuming it was just a normal part of eating. It never occurred to me to compare notes with my family members or friends. In the early Nineteen Eighties, after years of public health warnings about too much salt in our diets, I had reduced the amount of salt I added to foods and for some reason the occasions of the blistering and peeling became less frequent. At the time I just assumed I was growing out of that problem but now, in retrospect, I realized it was likely the iodine in the salt that was causing it. Since I've cut iodized salt out of my diet, I've rarely had the problem since. When I still do it is most often at restaurants and I assume they added some iodized salt of their own for flavoring.

When I tell people of that last one they get nervous as they've spent their entire lives hearing that iodine is a necessary nutrient... Actually it was added to salt to reduce the chance of it caking into solid lumps in areas with high humidity. While iodine is needed for some thyroid based functions, we in America get plenty of micro doses from our existing diet and typically don't need the additional dose provided by iodized salt. In the past twenty-eight years being iodized salt free, I've not had any thyroid related problems and I've been virtual free of the inner mouth blisters & peeling that were common place for my first twenty years of life.

For all of these, Dr. Smith offered antigens I could pay for to reduce the adverse affects of each one of these allergens, but that was not to be. After a number of very productive and helpful appointments we discovered that my health insurance wasn't going to cover me seeing him as 'Clinical Ecology' was not yet an accepted field of medicine. Had he just labeled himself 'an allergist', as that was the majority of the work-up he had been doing for me, it would have been covered in full. Instead his appointments weren't covered at all and I was ending up with a huge bill that was beyond any savings I had. All I could do was make little payments each month from my state stipend and in return he told me I could just avoid these various allergens rather than worry about getting the antigens for them.

Given the vast amount of progress we had made, he didn't want to immediately drop me just because my insurance wouldn't pay, there was one more thing to try. Now that we knew of so many allergens to avoid in my diet, he wanted his on site dietician to create a planned diet for me and see if I could now regain my weight while on it and resolve the emaciation that was the major impact to my daily health and routines. I agreed and when I saw her, the diet she recommended was pretty much identical to the canned diet the hospital dietician had recommended six months earlier, without any tailoring for my allergy issues or other diagnosed intolerances. When I noticed this and pointed it out to her, she said it was for me to figure out what things I needed to avoid because of my allergies and intolerances and in her presence I crossed out about half of each daily meal she had provided me.

She couldn't think of alternatives and talked to Dr. Smith about it. He theorized that since I would be avoiding his diagnosed allergens, that my fructose intolerance and fat malabsorption would go away on their own and I no longer needed to avoid those. This put about half of the things I had crossed out back on the menu and the rest was made up for with larger portions of the stuff I didn't have problems with. This new diet now set, there was a new problem. It was more than twice the cost of my monthly food stamp allowance... But Dr. Smith was so sure that the allergen free diet would make a big difference that I would be back to work and off food stamps in no time. So I agreed, spending my full month's worth of food stamps on two weeks worth of food.

Given that this new diet would include more fresh food that needed to be kept cool, I begged my mother not to throw away my food items from the refrigerator for the next two weeks as my new doctor was trying me out on a special diet. She reluctantly agreed. I was on this new allergen free diet for two weeks and could tell within two days that it was doomed as the frequency of massively painful bowel movements, which I sometimes had, now became a daily experience. After the first week, I called his office and told him that I thought we should stop the diet given the side effects. But he felt it was just the brief adjustment of my system to the new diet and these problems would go away by the second week.

When I returned to his office at the end of the second week, I had lost another five pounds. The fastest rate I had lost weight in all these years. He concluded that I shouldn't go with the official diet and instead return to what I had been eating before, but this time avoiding my known allergies as I went along. As a final bit of advice for me before we parted ways, he told me to stay aware of what I ate and came in contact with when I started to have new repetitive bad reactions. If I did, I should check for something new that I was being exposed to and see if eliminating it from my environment or diet made the symptoms go away. This was golden advice that's saved me time and again during all the subsequent years of my life.

As I couldn't afford to keep on seeing him, he asked if there was anything else he could do for me. As my six month stipend of state aid was coming to an end, I asked if he could fill out the medical evaluation part of the forms to renew it for another six months while I waited to hear from Social Security. While he would have normally not done that given that he wasn't a primary care doctor, in my case he agreed to, perhaps feeling guilty that we were ending our doctor patient relationship without him finding the root cause of my weight loss problems. He completed the paperwork and I received notice that the stipend would be extended for another six months.

In just three more months, he would have to leave the state as a number of local physicians, outraged by what they saw as his 'voodoo medical science', went to the state's medical board demanding that his license be revoked. Rather than go through the emotional and financial turmoil of fighting it, he decided to pull up stakes and move to another state where he could practice in peace.

Of all the doctors I have ever gone to, I've felt he was one of the most important ones I met.

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Hermit

48

As Nineteen Eighty-Eight dawned, I had settled into my new life of drifting between joblessness, healthlessness, uselessness, and pointlessness.

One time I went to the big grocery store I had worked at after nine at night when I knew most all of the employees would be gone for the day, leaving behind a few late night cashiers before the shelf stockers got in before midnight. I meandered through the ol' aisles and passed the chilled display cases, willing to pick up anything that interested me as long as it cost less than nothing. I even went into the back room where the diary and freezer rooms were and checked out the little office in between where the schedule was posted. I discovered that a member of the service desk staff had been the one to replace me after I left. Good for her, I thought. On the way back out I walked by the bakery department and realized I could pick-out a bag of their ten cent hard rolls and arrived at the check out with a dollar's worth to help keep me fed for a few days. I made sure to pay with one of my precious dollar bills; in case the cashier recognized me I didn't want to use one of my food stamps and then have the news I was on them spread to my former coworkers...

The food stamps were saved for the unionized competition across the street where I would do the majority of my shopping. It was always a challenge finding food with the highest calorie count and the lowest price. Add to it that I was now avoiding fructose and fat as I had been having problems digesting those and I was down to starch, like pasta and dehydrated potato mixes, and lean hamburger. As I couldn't afford soda anymore, I had returned to a childhood staple of home brewed ice tea where I only had to use the cheapest brand of tea bags I could find and tap water. I had to be very careful of what chilled items I brought home as, if I got too much and cluttered mother's refrigerator, those items would disappear, presumably tossed out with the trash. Ice tea was safe as mother enjoyed it herself, though she had never had it handy during wintertime before.

For exercise I fell into the routine of late night walks. In the past years I would do such walks from time to time under the pretext of getting a late night soda at the near by convenience store but now, as I couldn't afford that, they were just meandering walks on partially moon lit nights through the then undeveloped fields of the south east end of town. These walks were not mindless, though, as I would use them to ponder editorial takes and plot story lines for The Doctor Who Report newsletter. Many times I would then get home and warm up the computer tucked in my bed room along with all my worldly belongings and begin typing away. There was little point in trying to sleep in the wee hours of the night anyhow as my mother would typically pound on my bedroom door at least once during the night as she made a bathroom run.

Then she would officially get up for the day and I would settled down for 'the night' and sleep while she was away at work, the only time I'd be guaranteed peace. By afternoon I'd be up and taking my shower of the day and preparing my main meal before mother would be home. I would warm up the computer and spend an hour or two online, helping to maintain my friend Jeff's site as well as catch-up on my eMail and some forum discussions.

Knowing I was once again available and hungry, Jeff reverted to asking me to join him on occasional evening runs to a location or two of his family's business as he had done back in Nineteen Eighty-Four. Ostensibly I was there to call an ambulance if Jeff somehow injured himself while performing maintenance during the closed evening hours; in reality I was there to keep him company and play the role of D.J. by bringing a selection of my cassette tapes to play on Jeff's boom-box. Once all was done, my reward would be us picking up a late night pizza to share, sometimes at the shop in question, other times on the way home to Jeff's. On the times at Jeff's, he'd show me the latest games or drafting software he'd gotten for his computer and finally get me home by three or four in the morning.

On most evenings when I was staying home, I would put on my headphones and listen to music while I worked on TDWR. The music and headphones helped to muffle the intermittent poundings on my locked bedroom door as my mother would bustle about before going to bed. Other times I would be going through the box of paperwork I had received from the local science fiction club as part of taking it over. Inside was their non-profit paperwork and tax exempt I.D. as well as bylaws and a vast quantity of old flyers and club newsletters to sort through and get inspiration from.

By the time of the second issue of the TDWR it occurred to me that, since I had the local science fiction club on hiatus for a few months, I could use their reserved meeting place in the basement of a local bank for a gathering of my Doctor Who subscribers and made a note of the next meeting time in the Report. I used my rationed gas to get me to the meeting and met with many of my subscribers and invited content submissions from them... No submissions ever came from them. We discussed the reason for the formation of TDWR and hatched the idea of collecting money for a copy of the only Doctor Who radio show so it could be broadcast at our local public radio station. I then invited them all back to watch a video tape of a rare, thought lost, Doctor Who show the next month. That next meeting only about half as many people showed up and by the third month only a couple. As the club that officially had this meeting space would soon restart, there would be no more meetings of TDWR subscribers, and given the fall-off in those coming, it didn't look like it would be a great loss.

But on that last get-together, a new guy showed up and as the meeting broke up he wanted to pull me aside and talk to me. It turned out he was a budding artist and provided me a gorgeous picture of one of the Doctors holding a copy of the then unpublished fourth issue of the report with a rye smile and semi wink. He said I could have it if I felt I could use it in the report. Absolutely!

He then went home to begin his next piece of artwork for the report, soon becoming my partner for all of the subsequent issues.

I had found a new friend.

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