Beginings further on

Today was a good day, I do not wear the eye patch at night and for a brief moment when I opened my eyes I could clearly see my feet. It went away, but that was encouraging.
The pain med that they have been giving me gives me up to 10 hours of relief, sometimes (and it aint advil). The Tylenol has been keeping the fever under control, but I still get really tired very quickly. Swallowing is the harder isssue to understand, I can drink some liquids very, very carefully, and swallowing solid foods is imposible, but I can eat a banana.

I do not remember the month St Luke's opened, but the core of the community of St Lukes was formed long before we tore down one piece of sheetrock on Woodasnd Place. We were commited to helping each other (not simply and there were always struggles) . So survival in Stamford was not an issue, but it did not make Stamord a nice to live.

About this time, I was hat my third job in Stamford, an independant environment lab that sent me around the country, where I realized it was not me, it WAS Stamford!
With Dairy Queen, the Terrace club, movie theaters, the sitting room ( a restaurant where Bull's head diner is now), the and the beachonly places to go out(I am sorry the topless places were here then, but not interesting to me) and there are all the summer church fairs, which are small, but nice and the beaches which are also small and nice, there is NYC, much nicer.

So we went to Wyoming with the job for 3 weeks and everything is isolated there anyway and I did my work and didn't notice any thing with my NE, Stamford, NY coworkers.
The we had 2 three month stints in Huntington, West Virgina, and thats when my eyes were opened!

There were poeple in this town and diners and restaurants and my shift started at midnight
We were downtown Huntington and I would get up and go out, eat, see things and talk to people. Go into work, do my job, go to sleep and start over. On my off day, since I was topsy turvey sleep wise, at midnight I would go to a truck stop to talk to the waitress ( couldn't do more, cause the company cars were at the plant), But I got to see Tom Jones in concert ( a true riot) . My coworkers always stayed in the motel-unless they went en mass out to eat.
I actually did not notice, but one of my coworkers saw how I was with the locals and asked me; "you're not afraid?"
"of what I replied, thry're nice people."
They were afraid! So for 6 months, I got to enjoy the hospitality of another town and its people all on my companies money. I know the first part of the job was in early spring and it was not nice weather wise and I stayed in a lot also, but the spring was beautiful!

So what did I learn? That if a stammi(new) is not running some one down either literally or in some power mad scheme, they are to afraid to reach out to say hello. They are afraid of differences, afraid to be friendly because it might cost them more than they can afford. They afraid of even acknowledging someone is saying hello. I think their own fear of not having is costing their ability to be a warm and friendly people.

That was insight on Stamford from Huntington, West Virgiana.