William Lobb

Author

Sounding off

My Mom’s Doctor is a Scary Muslim

LOS ANGELES, UNITED STATES – FEBRUARY 4: Demonstrators against President Donald Trump’s Muslim Ban come together at Los Angeles International Airport, in Los Angeles, California, United States on February 4, 2017. (Photo by Mintaha Neslihan Eroglu/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

 

My mom has Alzheimer’s, a brutal disease. Her doctor is a Muslim. His name is Islam, actually, Mahbub Islam. I have his cell number, he has mine. He’s answered my call at 1 AM on a Sunday morning.

He calls her “Mama” and hugs her when he sees her. He calls me “Billy,” actually BEELEE. I’ve seen him have tears of frustration in his eyes as we try to work together dealing with congestive heart failure, kidney failure, pain management and a whole slew of elder care challenges. We have had many heart-to-heart talks about palliative care and exactly that means and what we are dealing with here.

“This is not the place for heroics, Beelee, this is about caring and comfort.” [Read more…] about My Mom’s Doctor is a Scary Muslim

Fish Whispers, Opiates and Other Opining

The Fish Whisperer

Saturday I did something completely out of character… I went fishing. I don’t fish. I’d not gone fishing since I stopped drinking and taking any chemical I found laying around (many years ago).

I’m way to busy for fishing and such things. I spend most of my life wondering where all my time goes. You find out on a boat, on a lake, completely disconnected.

My friend and fellow author, Mike Hoard, took me. The dude can fish. I swear to God he’s the fish whisperer. I mean it was spooky. On a nine mile long lake he knows where the fish are. He knows. I never have ever seen anything like it. He doesn’t know the general area, he knows on what side of the log and how deep. Seriously spooky stuff.

The fish must be terrified when they hear Mike Hoard’s pickup driving up to the lake…

I spent a few hours with my phone in his truck glovebox. That was the closest to withdrawal I’ve felt in almost twenty-four years.

It was nice, it was freeing, once I stopped sweating. Other than pondering how the hell Mike could possibly know the location of every fricken fish on a thousand acre lake…

“Bill, we are going to find some crappies here…let’s fish for some Walleye here… some rock bass over there.”

I pondered what life was like before I was married to this device in my hand right now.

I remembered acid and amphetamine laced trips into the backwoods upstate where I’d disappear for a week or more with no outside contact, just a verbal agreement for someone to pick me up at an appointed place, at an appointed time.

Somewhere between those days and now is a better place to live. Thanks Mike, it was an eye opening Saturday. And damn, Sam, them Louisiana boys can fish!

Opiates…

Some days I watch the news and I have to get up and walk away.

Montgomery County in Ohio is on track to have 800 fentanyl deaths this year, 10,000 deaths in that state this year – more that the entire US in 1990…

Drug overdose is the #1 cause of death in Americans under 50.

Attorney General Sessions wants to ramp up the “war on drugs,” while it is generally understood it has been a dismal failure. Meanwhile, Congress has their hands out for more money from the pharmaceutical cartel… Let’s not even go into the CIA’s role in importing drugs into this country.

I love it when they talk about El Chapo or Escobar or Blanco. They never mention George Bush Sr. but, hey, whatever…

We need answers and education, not stupidity, Sessions, and rhetoric.

I talk to people every day who can tell you all about ISIS and terror… I’m terrified of opiates. To hell with ISIS.

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Meeting at the Nursing Home

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m called into meeting at the nursing home this morning. Care plans and insurance problems and the fact I smuggle Ma whiskey… why not? Absolutely seriously why the fuck not? She hasn’t started any fights. Ma was always the happy drunk, the fun drunk. She took a real, pure joy from her drink. Something that always made me a little envious. I was the mean drunk, the one begging for a fight, I’d fight with anyone. If I found no takers I’d storm out and find another bar. I was the one who, when someone looked up and saw me come through the door would say, “not this asshole again…”

Pretty funny scene, me, the ultimate drunk, the drunks drunk, smuggling his 88 years old crazy mother booze. Again, why not? What exactly are we preserving here? That’s the answer no one can give me that one. [Read more…] about Meeting at the Nursing Home

The Black Dirt

Black Dirt Onion Field, Pine Island, NY

 

 

 

 

 

 

Monday I was driving through the Black Dirt, it was ninety-five degrees.

The temperature coming off that dried muck had to be near one hundred, if not more. I’ve never felt hot like that particular and peculiar hot coming off those goddamned fields.

In Orange County, in the 1970’s, to have worked out in the Black Dirt is a rite, a passage, it is something you did so that forty or fifty years later you could tell the stories with authenticity. [Read more…] about The Black Dirt

The Good, The Bad and Junkyards in Jersey

 

 

 

 

Everyone knows they are going to die, I’m not sure we all believe it. I don’t believe it. I don’t live like I believe it.

My friend with cancer, tonight, I realized she knows it and believes it. There is a profound difference between the two. It’s a coming to terms with everyone’s greatest fear. I saw the reality in her eyes. I saw a fear filled peace.

I run from it, refuse to accept it or believe because I’m so fucking scared of it.

I should accept it. I’ve done enough stupid shit, been so close too many times. [Read more…] about The Good, The Bad and Junkyards in Jersey