Community Cancer Center Evacuated

COMMUNITY CANCER CENTER EVACUATED
Peanuts' Thought For The Day: "When one has cancer, the prospect of being caught in a burning building doesn't seem as fearful anymore."
Some dork pulled the fire alarm lever/switch/knob/whatever you call it, next to the third floor elevator this afternoon at the Community Cancer Center in Roseburg. While I and the other four chemo patients in the chemo lab were wondering if this was real or was it a drill?, a third floor medical oncologist and first floor radiation oncologist came into the lab and told us it was "real."
When we arrived outside the building, a Roseburg fire engine (presumably from the Garden Valley station) and a Roseburg fire incident command vehicle (presumably from the downtown station) were arriving on the property.
Motorists driving along Stewart Parkway were gawking at the crowd gathered outside, probably wondering why frail, elderly chemo patients (present company excluded) with IV poles were standing outside of the building.
The good news is my IV pump kept running and the IV bag never ran out of fluid during the "real" fire drill, so my chemo treatment wasn't delayed.
It may be a cool prank to pull in school, where students appreciate a diversion, but pulling a fire alarm inside a medical facility, where people's health can be put in jeopardy, is definitely NOT cool.
I think a more severe penalty should be imposed for such perpetrators, and jail/juvenile detention time should definitely be imposed on the guilty party.

Remembering James Garner

     I felt compelled to write something about James Garner, after seeing that our local daily newspaper completely ignored his passing. That is especially ironic, considering that James Garner filmed the movie "Fire In The Sky" in Oakland and other places around Douglas County in the 1990s. But ever since the Roseburg News-Review dropped its Monday afternoon newspaper last month, and added a "summer" Saturday morning edition in its place, I guess it's only natural that news that occurs on Sunday or Monday won't be reported anymore.
     I had the opportunity to briefly talk with James Garner twice while he was in Oakland shooting Fire In The Sky. I first bumped into actor Noble Willingham, Chuck Norris' sidekick on "Walker, Texas Ranger," while he was sitting on a fence partition along Highway 99 in Oakland. Willingham was as talkative and folksy as his character on Walker, Texas Ranger, so it wasn't difficult to strike up a conversation and do an interview with him.
     After I left Willingham, I started walking across the street toward the Thomas Hotel, when my best-possible dream happened. James Garner stepped out of a car that had stopped in the street (Highway 99 was closed to regular traffic) and he began looking around surveying the landscape. Unlike Willingham, Garner appeared somewhat distant and dare I say, stand-offish. He didn't make eye contact with people nearby. I was reluctant to rush him too closely, because I didn't want the public relations people escorting me away for "bothering" the talent.
      I could see KEZI reporter Penny Havlovich was also keeping her distance, so I surmised that my "cautious" approach was warranted. I was closer to Garner than was Havlovich, and because Garner didn't appear in a hurry to go somewhere, I gradually approached him and asked if he would mind answering a few questions. I asked him what was his impression of Douglas County.
     Garner wanted to know where Douglas County was, and I told him that it was the area where all of the filming sites for the movie were located. About that time, a bee began buzzing around Garner's face, and as he took a swat at the flying pest, Garner said in true Maverick/Rockford style, "I like everything but the bees."
     My second encounter with Garner occurred near the end of the filming. A group of Oakland residents wanted to give him a gift, so Garner returned to Oakland where a small crowd had gathered in front of the former Washington Elementary School. The gift was a brick: A local artist had painted the façade of one of the buildings where the filming had taken place in town, and used a brick from the building to display her artwork.
      During a question session after the presentation, I asked Garner if receiving a brick was better than receiving a "key to the city." Garner replied to the effect of, "Well, it is. You know, I have a lot of keys to carry around and I never can keep track of where they're all at. But this is a very nice gift. Thank you (name of artist) very much."
      That night during KOBI-TV's 11:00p.m. news, they used my brick story as their "kicker" story at the end of the newscast. The sound bite about the keys provided fodder for the anchors to talk about before signing off. Fill-in sports anchor Kerry Kirwan said he wanted to know what door "the
keys to the city are supposed to open." News anchor John Mercer said, among other things, that he didn't know how that worked.
     Those kind of anecdotes are the ones that make events memorable and personalize the lives of famous people. It's a shame that our local newspaper didn't search out some local anecdotes and write a story about Garner's passing.

What Would Jesus Do?

WHAT WOULD JESUS DO?

Or more importantly, what would YOU do?

     (Remember The Far Side cartoon where an alligator farm is located next to an airport skydiving school, and the caption reads "Trouble Brewing"? )
     I had an experience today at a Sutherlin grocery store that left me leaving, scratching my head. Had I done the right thing? Had I done the wrong thing? Did I say too much? Did I say too little?
     As I approached the check-out lines, all of the cash registers had apparently crashed. While the managers were running around trying to re-boot the computers and get the cash registers operating again, they decided to have the cashiers write down the amount of the customers' purchases, and refund the money manually from the till.
     I knew that trouble was a'brewing when I saw a young cashier in my check-out line. Today's youth don't receive the same training in personal finances that I had in high school. I still remember Mrs. Cannon teaching the semester-long "General Business" class my freshman year, and her teaching us how to count back change to a customer, and how to count up to the next nearest dollar. This was in our HEADS, not with the assistance of any machine, or even from writing it out in long-hand.
     I had two items totaling $6.72. I don't know if the devil made me do it, but I really wanted to get hack a $10 and a $5 bill in change, so I handed him $22.00 (a $20 and two $1) and said, "I hope this isn't going to be a problem."
     "Oh no, that's all right," came the reply, as the cashier scribbled down the amount of my purchase and deducted it from the $22.00 I had given him.
     "Here you go, $18.28 in change," he said.
     I politely replied that I thought he had given me too much money. Seven from twenty-two would make fifteen dollars, plus the loose change, so that was three dollars too much.
     The casher didn't automatically take my word for it. I didn't expect him to; I was probably still somewhat shifty-eyed from my recent ordeal with chemotherapy treatments. So, the casher once again "did the math" on paper, and tells me, "You're right. Here's $16.28 in change."
     In a split second, I pondered: Do I want to barter him down for the remaining one dollar that he's off? Or, do I go forward and say nothing? I chose to say nothing and graciously accepted the $16.28 for the following three reasons:
1. I didn't want to p*** off the customers behind me in line, by prolonging my transaction any longer than had already gone on. If anyone had overheard me, they knew I was a honest person, because I in good faith had attempted to show the cashier his error.
2. I didn't want to publicly embarrass or frustrate the cashier any more than had already taken place. I was afraid that if he "did the math" again on paper, he might end up giving me even MORE money back in change than he already had.
3. I reasoned that the cashier would not be reprimanded for being one dollar short in his drawer. (Did I just write something obscene?) Considering that all of the cash registers were temporarily down, I figured that the store's management wouldn't expect the amount of money in the drawers to necessarily match the amount of money that was being hurriedly written down on scratch paper.
     I left the store with a somewhat good feeling. I had "saved" one dollar a pound on the pound of meat that I had purchased....meat that was already way overpriced...$1.20 more per pound than what I would pay for it at a Roseburg grocery store!

     What would YOU have done?

Final Blog Entry (For Now)

     For anyone who may be monitoring my blog, you've discovered that it's been on hiatus in recent weeks. This blog entry makes its official:  I'm on hiatus.
     Many of you are aware, from what's been published in newspaper articles and other public outlets, I was diagnosed with cancer August, 2012....defeated/recovered from that cancer January, 2014....and surprisingly discovered in May, 2014 that a stage four cancer tumor had suddenly appeared in my pelvic region. It wasn't in any organ, but the tumor had attached itself around the tubes leading from the kidneys to the bladder...forcing me to have "nephrostomy" drainage tubes installed to relieve the pressure to the kidneys.
      My surgeon at Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland today told me that surgery is not an option to remove the tumor. Chemotherapy and possibly eventually radiation for "palliative care" are the only known treatments for the time being.
      So, I'm sure you'll understand why I may not have the energy to pursue this blog. I am still posting entries on Facebook for my Facebook friends.

Monte Muirhead
P.O. Box 3
Oakland, Oregon 97462
(541) 378-7413 / 459-5388