Miners Hospital

May Day 2025

Last month, Dear Husband was tasked with the unenviable task of finding his birth certificate — of discovering if he even had one, in the HOME FILES.  Alas!  There was no paper trail to document the trail of infant Ronald into this world.

As for Dear Writer, when I lit out from my birth state of New Jersey, bound for the George Washington University in Washington, D.C, I made sure that I packed my official birth certificate, stamped with the Seal of Passaic County on a paper of pale gold.

My personal file also included childhood photos, secretly confiscated from the falling apart family album (the family and the album were both falling apart); 8th-grade valedictorian speech, 8th grade class picture, 8th grade graduation certificate; High School transcripts — and my original Social Security Card.

I must admit that surrendering my original Social Security Card, upon marriage to Dear Hubby, hurt me deeply.  I was wounded to the heart at giving up my most prized possession of my Coming of Age: the official documentation needed to get a work permit.  I applied for that work permit immediately, or even the day after my 16th birthday!

I also hauled my vintage poster of President Theodore Roosevelt with his “Keep Up the Fight For Americanism” speech excerpt; my hardball; and very select and cherished personal and private souvenirs.  I bequeathed my skateboard to a favorite nephew and some books to another favorite nephew.

While Dear Husband didn’t have any record of where he was born, I have a rather complete timeline of St. Joseph’s Hospital in Paterson, New Jersey.  Once, in the mid-1980s, while attempting to drive from one part of Passaic County to another, I had to drive past the aging building that was the scene of my entry into this world.  And I discovered that I-80 was taking me there.

“Who the heck put a highway right past St. Joe’s?”

I happen to have been the first child, of eight, born in a hospital, and not at home.  Midwifery was among the many unremunerated skills of my father.  I like to think he hit the jackpot with me!

Dear Hubby boldly went out in search of his proof-of-coming alive into the world (as opposed to the Proof of Life that was a daily requirement for the Biden Puppet).  He drove from our house up the backroad to Nevada City (which is not located in Nevada).  There, he paid a visit to the County Records Office; and walked through the empty hallways to the Records Window.

His footsteps echoed throughout this bastion of office-dom because he was the ONLY citizen there, requesting — anything!

In fact, he was disturbing the peaceful solitude of the county workers.

Five minutes later, he was in possession of his Proof of Birth.

The hospital in which he entered the world is an historic site, for reasons other than marking the destined birthplace of my Future Dear Husband.  When I saw the photographs of Miner’s Hospital, and read the history of the humble clinic, which was founded in1940, I congratulated my spouse for having gotten out of not only the birth canal, but the rural clinic too!

I also realized I’d struck novelist-gold!  This literary gold mine was filled with real gold!

I researched the spartan origins and the bare-bones life of this medical facility, and soon understood that I’d found a big missing piece of background info for my next Western!

While Dear Webmaster had resolved the tangled web of providing documented proof of his birth, I was just beginning to really get going on the tangled web of a plot line for WIND SONG.

Sometimes, the truth and the facts are wonderful catalysts for fiction.  Sometimes, the truth and the facts get fudged, a lot, for career-building.  Sometime, in 1994, I was in the midst of working on a Federal government contract, but I’d had to submit a resumé to the Corps of Engineers, the agency at which I’d worked for eight long years — to prove myself ethically pure in the govmint-contract-cesspool.

I was a bit miffed at this requirement, but the Clinton 2-fer Presidency was in full fascist swing, so my moral burden was to prove that I, who worked at the Corps years before Dear Hubby, didn’t sleazily get my contract through my connection to him.  The little guy, and gal, always have to pony up proof that they are not Swamp Rats!

Circulating through the engineering office of Dear Husband at that time was a page that had been ripped out of some weekly rag (newspaper).  The source material was probably a Sacramento trade journal attempting to make the Capital City look like a bustling business center (hahahaha).

The sheet of newsprint was entitled Deconstruction of A Resume.  The author is Dan Zevin of Entry Level Life.

Entry Level Life started life as a book. It ended its published life not long thereafter.

When I look back at the degeneration of the publishing world, in America, I realize that the 1990s sealed the fate of publishers, along with so many others of once-thriving businesses.  The Spotted Owl single-wingedly finished off the lumber industry in the American West; and, subsequently, the Paper Scribbler-Section of News.

Fake News was founded upon the ashes of those blazo-ed trees no longer logged in Washington, Oregon, and California.  In fact, during those Clinton Years, the satire we enjoy today, in Babylon Bee, was being reborn, slowly, methodically, laboriously, and inexorably on the ashes of truly well-researched and well-written magazines of rational thought, deductive reasoning, witty humor, stylish satirical cartoons, and just plain good thinking and common sense.

My favorite was The American Spectator, which became the Rotterdam of news-and-opinion periodicals — that Bubba and his lovely wife Bruno nearly exterminated through their Justice Department lawsuits.  Those Janet-Reno instituted political inquisitions and payola shakedowns of corporations, such as Microsoft, subsequently ballooned into taxpayer-funded Lawfare of the 2010s and 2020s.  During the 1990s, however, every day that America was Held Hostage by the Clinton Machine — brought a new outrage against America, Americans, the American flag, the U.S. Constitution, American culture, the American way of life.

Round about 1996, when I was handed a [satirical] print-out of The Americans With No Abilities Act, my very vocal response was: “Now They have gone too far!!!”

Evidently, They had to go even further for Bob Dole’s question “Where’s The Outrage?” to register enough, among those millions and millions of unregistered citizen-voters. across the Fruited Plain — with the rallying cry:

 They’re All in On It, The Whole Lot of Them!

 I’ve waited 20+ years for this Patriotic Revolution that, in many ways, I’ve already lived.

I guess I really am The American Spectator!

Returning to the Phony Resumé, I submit the following most applicable portions of the deconstructed curriculum vitae (CV) — that very much apply to The Real World of Today:

Name:  Senor Juan Carlos Enrico Suarez

RealName:  John Eric Schwartz

Education:  Harvard University, BA/PhD/MA/MC/MSA/BFA/BS/Double Major Brain Surgery, Acting as Liaison for PhiBetaKappa, GPA 5.0

Reality:  Graduated from Middlesex County Junior Vocational Tech Community College Correspondence School with a High School Equivalency; GPA 0.5

Education:  London School of Economics, MBA, CPA, DDS, BM, MS, MSW, OT, RN, LPN, and Rhodes Scholar

Reality;  Newark School of Auto Repair, majored in brake-pad replacement; not really a Rhodes Scholar, but a Road Paver.

Education:  Maximum Ability Daycare Centre for Gifted Children

Reality:  Maximum Security Detention Center for Troubled Youth

The work experience reads like the hokum and flimflam currently plastered all over social media. Being plastered is also a necessary part of Fabricating the Phoney Resume.

We are living through some very weird times, those of us who were actually born to witness it!