Dermatologist Response

William,

Surprisingly I got a response from my dermatologist already. His response:

‘Hi Mr. Shields,
Let me say that dermatology is very much a hands on specialty, and diagnosing or treating by email is rather tenuous at best. If all he has is oilier skin than usual, it can be due to excessive stress. We do not treat excessively oily skin by prescription meds, but rather recommend more frequent washing. If it leads to acne, then medications can be used.
Thank you,
Allen G********, M.D.’

Given the mugging, language, country, food, school, not to mention the proposition from the prostitute. I think stress is a viable option. Let me know if this helps.

On a second note, for a hoot! Cathy M***** showed up at Mom’s office this afternoon. She was sitting waiting for Mom when she came back from a meeting. If we only could have seen the expression on Mom’s face. Mom might actually have three glasses of wine tonight.

It seems that T*** is considering AU, hence the college visit. Also along the lines of gossip, T*** has apparently declared that she is gay.

Talk to you soon.

Love, miss you and take care down there.

Dad

I forgot to bid you adieu!

William,

Love you, miss you, and take care down there.

Dad

Oily Skin

Hola William,

First of all your skin, I sent you an internet item on oily skin. I read it, it looks pretty good. I think the first thing is to determine how severe of a problem you are having. I called Kaiser and I can not get you an email address for anyone. I have set you up with a online Kaiser which is how they use the internet to communicate with patients. It works well, I have used it extensively. But as with most things there is a catch, once you set it up you need to wait to receive a passwords that is mailed by regular mail – 3 to 5 days. Once you have that you can communicate with your internist, and possibly a dermatologist directly.

Now back to the problem, a few questions, did this just start? how severe is it? If it has been going on for a while, how long, and is it steady, or is it waxing and waning? Is your skin only oily or have you broken out. Is your skin bumpy? If your skin has broken out, please describe? White heads, black heads? Does it seem to be getting worse?

This is probably related to the change in life style, hormones, who knows? I do not think it is unusual to happen at your age. Of course it can also be something more serious, so you will need to keep an eye on it and follow the instruction on the internet thing. Follow the instruction about washing, also if you are not exercising every day, start. That will help to clean out your pores. I know you have been exercising so that is probably not the problem. You have had a radical change in food that is probably the cause, that and the pollution. I think the main things from that sheet are washing, watch food (not too much you can do about that, but increase your water intake), exercise, and the vitamin B – who know, it could be a vitamin issue.

I will write the internist and dermatologist that I have on my panel at Kaiser and see if they will answer me. That too, will take a few days. They answer but sometimes it takes a few days.

Next issue, you bank account is blocked, for a couple of reasons; I reported your card as stolen, so there is no need to worry about the account. I will speak to them about a new number, it may be a good idea, we will see.

I listened to your songs; I like them, very sophisticated, lyrics driven. I downloaded two of them, but one seems to be lock and will not download, the first one - MacKaye; but I listens and like that one too. I am at work, but I will comment more on them later. You should keep doing this, everyone need a creative outlet; and don’t worry if most do not like them. They will eventually come around, and so what if they don’t. Send me more!!!

Everyone is well, the Homecoming is over, so I am sure that Andrew filled you in yesterday about the problem that Mallory M****** had with drinking, and marijuana. Jeannie is coming on Thursday; she is going to look for an apartment in Baltimore. Her apartment arrange in Montclair is coming to an end. It will be good to see her.

The weather has cooled off noticeable; we turned the heat on for the first time this morning. It was in the forties. But the sun is shining, I rode my bike to work today, unfortunately, Andrew got sick at school (tough weekend – I guess he is run down a bit) so I had to ride the bike home to get the car to go pick up Andrew. It’s a good thing I work is close to home.

If you are interested in seeing my photographs they at:

www.flickr.com/billshields

The art ones are spread all over, if you want to see the some of the art ones and the discussion they have generated go to the Photography Critique discussion group on flickr; do a search on ‘Bill Shields’ The one on ‘Baltimore Abstract’ and ‘Lawn Shadows Saint James Park London’ both have a pretty lively discussion. I have submitted my other to the group for critique – most the art ones, so it is a good place to look. As I said they have been pretty much universally panned, such is life.

Money Transfer

William,

I just got back from transferring the money. I also just received a copy Mom’s email to you. I guess Mom thought I gave you a hard time about money. I did a bit, all you have to use money carefully, but I never meant to imply that you were handling money irresponsible. Don’t worry about money, you are doing fine, and as Mom said no more midnight walks to save money.

But also, don’t run down to nothing or close to it before telling us. Keep us informed on where you stand. Mom said that I was sending you $300, I upped that to $340.00 I want you to put $80 away for an emergency. Put it away and forget it. If you need more before your bank situation gets straighten out, don’t wait until the remaining $260 is almost gone. That will give a little leave way for arranging the transfer.

I canceled your debit card at the bank, I have not been able to arrange to have a new card sent, they told me at the bank that you have to do that. I’ll see if I can do it from here. I will also look into replacing the American Express card.

Violence is a ugly fact in the world today. While you may have made a mistake in what you did on Saturday, things like this happen, whether in the middle of the day on a crowded street or in the dark of the nights. As I think you are, be careful, think ahead, and travel in groups as much as possible. We are proud; you handled the situation and the aftermath responsibly and with much presence of mind.

One other thing to keep in mind, the effects of these types of experiences can affect you sometimes in subtle ways, other times in dramatic ways, and sometimes after time a fair amount of time has passed. I think they are normal but do not ignore them. I think the best prescription is to talk about your experience, and write about it if you are inclined. However you purge the experience is not importance, just don’t keep it bottled up. Keep an eye out for the warming signs, lethargy, anxiety, lack of motivation, uncommon fatigue. Do not simply dismiss the experience as “no big deal.”

Now, as to the transfer, the transfer was sent 11:14 Am EDT

The number is xxxxxxxxxxx

The amount is for 168,395.65 pesos

If necessary the question is xxxxxxxxxxxxx. xxxxxx?

That’s it for now. Send me a short note when you get this, and another when you get the money. It should have arrived about a half an hour ago.

And as always…..

Love you, miss you, miss you, and take care down there.

Dad

Back from the Heights of Machu Picchu

Hello William,

I assume that you are back from Peru, and the wonders of Cuzco and Machu Pichu. I hope that it was an interesting and exciting trip, although I bet you are exhausted. We will be looking for the photos. How did you make out with the altitude? One of Chris's friends were there recently and told him that Cuzco was higher than Machu Picchu and that he had problems with the altitude in Cuzco but not Machu Picchu. Did they give you any of the magic leaves to chew?

Not too much new here, things are pretty routine, not much new. Everybody is well. The only thing new is that it seems that Gracie is going to India for her semester abroad – that is if she ever tells her parents. She told her parents that she was making arrangements to go abroad but she wasn'€™t going to tell them where; at least not for now. They think it is India because they got a check back for the deposit with India written in the memo field. So, if you run across her online do not let on that you know about it, and who know it may not be correct anyways.

I am at work so this is just a short note to welcome you back to Santiago. I better get back to work.

Love you, miss you, and take care down there,

Dad

The Mike Sweeney Story

I didn’t go to Spain alone, although sometimes it seemed that way. I went with Mike Sweeny – a friend from high school. He went to Steubenville College, a Franciscan school in Ohio. We were friends, sort of close, in many ways not; we shared the same politics in a conservative white catholic high school; we were the ones that liked Bergman, Fellini, Godard, the so called new wave film directors from Europe. Actually he didn’t like them; he just liked telling people he liked them; who knows maybe I was the same. I probably wouldn’t sit through many of their films today; but at the time, they were cool, out of the box stuff. Everyone else thought they were simply weird.

About the only place you could see those films was at the Pittsburgh Film Institute, they showed them at the Pittsburgh Playhouse on weekday evening. The weekends were reserved for plays. The Playhouse is on Craft Avenue in Oakland at the end of the Boulevard of the Allies, across from Magee Woman’s Hospital. Mike and I would walk it. I think we spent most of the walk laughing and making fun of everyone we thought were stupid. We were kind of arrogant shits – very elitist, in a hairy freak kind of way. At the time I didn’t want to have anything to do with the word ‘hippie’ – we were freaks – it was edgier. We weren’t big fans of the peace, love, stick a flower in the gun barrel crowd. They were a little too unreal – too ‘the world is a psychedelic daisy’ for my taste. Although I think I still have the conscientious objector letter Mrs. Cafaro, my high school Spanish teacher, wrote for me. Fortunately, I never had to use it.

A philosophy professor at Saint Vincent that epitomized the Tim O’Leary hippie, Joe something or other, anyway, he had the look, the shit eating grin, fuzzed out hair, salt and pepper scraggy beard, tie-dye shirt, vest and string tie pants, hippie haut couture. I remember him in the hall of the philosophy department offices trying to get one of the student’s children to come over to him. The kid was a toddler, somehow his voice terrified the child, and he screamed bloody murder. Of course that could have happened to anybody, but for me it was symbolic. They were so soft spoken and gentle that they left the real world – they seemed fake. Kind of ‘body snatcher’ like. He was one of the few that actually had his PhD at Saint Vincent, but by that time he was over the hill – addicted to peace, love , and hallucinogenic's. He taught metaphysics – you know. ‘Is a rock really a rock?’

I didn’t take him until senior year – too old to be sucked in. He trolled for freshman – they became acolytes for life. A few are friends, Baz, Ed Felinski, Pete Blair, the philosophy of gentleness, raising your voice disturbs the harmony of the universe – I’m much too ethic to live with that philosophy. I still have a fleeting contact with them. Pete’s a poet with a couple of good volumes published. He teaches at the University of North Carolina in Charlotte not far from Neil and Robin’s house. The last time I saw him he was teaching part-time at Georgetown, we had a coffee at the Star Bucks at Dupont Circle. He berated me for not reading Beowulf to you and Andrew in the original English – hell, I didn’t even read it to you in normal English. You guys were stuck with Rolling, Rolling, Rolling… and Flying High. Baz and Ed are both psychiatric nurses, working god know where. Ed lives in one of the river towns on the Allegheny and Baz is working at some prep school in New England.

But back to Sweeney, that’s the story you wanted to hear. Mike and I didn’t hang with the same group in high school, I not sure we hung with anyone, but even after we went to College, I can’t remember going out with him and my College friends. Regardless, I told him that I was going to Spain – it must have been on Christmas vacation, and he invited himself along. I wasn’t thrilled, but what could I say. I don’t think I thought him smart enough to be a good traveling companion – see I told you I was an arrogant shit. He had some trust money, so he was funded, I planned on school. He planned on spending the trust money set-up for education. Mike was a big guy, slim but big boned, red hair, about 6’ 1” or 6’ 2”, pale, freckles, the map of Ireland on his face as they say. His father was a prison guard at the county jail. His mom was the typical Mount Washington catholic housewife. His aunt was the mistress of the head of the Hilton Hotels and also the source of his educational trust.

So in May, we were off, just a week or so after I finished my sophomore year. A flight to New York’s Kennedy and then on Icelandic Air, with a stop in Saint John’s Newfoundland and Reykjavik, Iceland before touching down in Luxembourg. After a few hours and a stroll we boarded a train to Paris. From Paris it was a 24 hour train to Madrid. It’s odd but for some reason I don’t remember traveling with Mike, at least, not until we got to Madrid. I can remember us getting off the train in the morning and being famished. We wandered around until we finally found a restaurant open, deserted but open. We had a good meal, but I almost choked when the bill arrived so much for the next two weeks budget.

Mike did go to language school with me that summer. I’m not sure it helped a lot but we did meet the Swiss girls. I dated Claudia, the sedate one, he dated the redhead. Not to follow stereotype, but Mike and the redhead had a louder relationship than even my ethic sensitivies would tolerate. They were au pairs, in Spain for eight months to take care of the rich Spanish kiddies. Pretty much Mike and the redhead (I can’t remember her name) and Claudia and I went our separate ways, but the Swiss girls are another story.

I’m really not sure what Mike did with his time, he didn’t travel; he wasn’t going to school. I guess he wandered around town. I was busy with school six days a week. He was around the apartment at night; we would meet to go to the American Embassy for burgers and chocolate milkshakes every week. I think he hung out at the American library; I guess he spent his time with the Swiss girl. I met other foreign students at the University, mostly Europeans, some American, a couple of South Africans – Afrikaners, blond, blue eyed; this was all before Nelson Mandela was freed. We went to the student parties, found a couple of room mates for our apartment, drank a lot. I was bound and determined to read Don Quixote is Spanish, that was a laugh, I think I developed tennis elbow going between the book and the dictionary.

Eventually it was time for me to leave, I had been living in Spain for over a year, I had to get back and make some money before school started in the fall. I planned on working in the one of the steel mills; the money was great. Mike had decided that he wasn’t going to return to school; he wasn’t sure what he was going to do; he still had a flow of money from his educational trust and through the university parties a German girlfriend. She was in the same school that I was, La Facudad de Filosofia y Letras, sort of hiding out; she claimed some political problems resulting from some student demonstrations in Munich. She was a full blown communist with a capital ‘C.’ She attended meetings, the whole deal. By that time the Communist Party in the US was pretty much irrelevant. I thought of it as obsolete, something for the old bull unionist. The McCarthy hearings and Khrushchev banging his shoe on the UN podium and threatening to bury us had ended the Communist parties hold on the US intelligencia. Anyway I didn’t take her seriously. I still can’t understand why a German communist would hide out in Franco’s Spain; hell, communism was very much illegal in Spain at the time, but I guess there was still a fairly active underground party, remnants of the Civil War. I can’t say I gave it much thought; she was Mike’s girl friend.

I never found the job in the steel mill that I had hoped for, it was the early seventies in Pittsburgh, the city was depressed, homelessness was becoming a real issue in the mill towns along the rivers. The Japanese competition and anti-pollution laws of Allegheny were too much for the old mills of Pittsburgh. The best I could do was late night job in a greasy grill on Forbes Avenue in Oakland, but it was a job. But it was good to be back.
I hung out with the Oakland contingent of Saint Vincent and drank Zubrowka with Andy Blasko, Linda, Ryan and Mac.

One night in late August, a few weeks before I was scheduled to go back to school I got home late, around two, my Mom was waiting for me. She broke the news, Mike’s body was found at the bottom of a cliff on the Moroccan coast. She asked me if she could do anything. I told her no, and she went back to bed, and I sat in the dark.

So that’s the story of Mike Sweeney. And once again it is time to say goodnight. And remember…

Love you, miss you, and take care down there.

Dad

The Wonderful World of Intercambios

Saludos William,

¿Cómo estás? Or should I say está? I believe in South America they do not use the informal the way they do in Spain.

I wanted to get a letter off to you since it has been a few days. I hope that all is well. Are you leaving for Peru soon, or is it Brazil? I have started to write you the story of Michael Sweeney, but it is not done yet. It will take a few more days to finish, so look forward to an exciting and hair raising story – not really, but boring or not, you’ll get it in a few days.

From your letter I take it the bloom has faded from the rose a bit. I know you still like it and are glad you are there but I also know it is difficult at times, the same group, the small apartment, Spanish, not meeting many Chileans. And I also understand that the Chilean guys are not interested in meeting the American guys, but I sure they are interested in the American girls.

Well, Chile is a Latin country, so it is going to be much more difficult to meet Chilean woman, but as always I have a few suggestions. I know you have heard of them before, but think about giving it a try, I think you will be surprised and glad if you do give it a try. Intercambios are the ticket. I know I’ve been hocking them but hear me out. In a Latin country, it is not acceptable in polite society for girls to meet a guy without an introduction (now, I know this is old-fashioned and you are in a student environment but nevertheless, it still plays a big role, even if it is not acknowledged).

Everyone wants to learn English – it is essential for success in the modern world – without English you can only go so far. So, guys or girls, if they are looking at any type of professional life they want to learn another language, especially English. This is where intercambios play a role. They are neutral, they are not viewed as a date, and no real introduction is required. It is very difficult to practice English is a country such as Chile (most countries really), but Chile has a relative small English speaking population – especially compared to Europe. I believe they are relatively easy to set up. You can leave a note on the bulletin board at school – not in the foreign section if there is such a thing, but rather where the Chilean students are and hang out. Or alternatively you can go to the English department and introduce yourself, explain that you are looking for an intercambio partner, and they may be able to help, especially since you are not charging.

Now, I know you probably don’t want to do this in front of the other students in the program, so just do it on your own – don’t tell them about it. Use your cell phone to set up meeting or better yet email. Sometimes email is better because it can be studied, cell calls can lead to confusion if neither person is not strong in the others language.

Meet in a public place, a convenient café, some place public, but not too noisy. Limit the time the first time to no more than an hour, gives both of you an escape if it is not going well. Split the bill, don’t offer to pay; don’t drink, or if you do, only one. As a general rule get them talking about themselves. People are always interested in themselves, and like people interested in them. Now these can be hit or miss so try setting up a number of them with different people. They work or don’t work for many different reason, schedules, personalities, interests. No need to prepare for them, remember they think their English is a weak as you feel your Spanish is. Think of them as an adventure, they may help you expand your group, especially now that the nice weather is coming.

OK, one more thing before I climb down off this horse, if you would like, I can probably help you set-up intercambios. As I think I told you I do an intercambio through Skype with a woman that teaches English part-time at Diego Portales. I’ll bet she will know some students your age that would like to have an intercambio with an American, and I know that she would like to help. She has offered to help you in any way that she can. She lives in Las Condes near the shopping mall. If you would like I’ll be happy to talk to her about it.

Not much else new, since I wrote to you last. Oh there is one thing, Dr. Rabin is leaving Kaiser. It’s a bit of a mystery, happened very suddenly, Mom had an appointment with him and the night before (late, around 5:30 PM) they called to cancel the appointment. The next morning they told Mom that he was leaving. I’ve written him but as of yet no response. It’s too bad, we all liked him – it is never any fun to change internists.

I guess that’s about it for the day. So in closing, love you, miss you, and take care down there.

Dad