The Castle Gargoyle

From The Castle Gargoyle:
Over time at the Castle, JP's condition slowly, but inexorably, grew worse. The tumor gnawed at his creative brilliance, his judgment, business acumen, physical functions, short-term memory and personality. He suffered increasingly from nausea, vertigo, fatigue, blurred vision, broken concentration, severe migraines, blackouts and painful muscle spasms. He was to endure these horrors until October 1975 when a physician possessed of courage and splendid ethics defied the cruel rules and admitted JP to a hospital normally reserved for the fortunate few covered by health insurance. With less than an hour of life left him, the newly-invented brain scanning device allowed JP’s tumor to be seen for the first time and successfully removed.

We have been grateful every day of our lives since to the wonderful admitting physician, who would accept no money, and the generous neurosurgical team whose members cut their bills in half. Owing to the barbaric health insurance system in this country, it took us more than 20 years to pay off these and related massive medical expenses.

Through all the years the tumor was pressing on his brain, JP somehow remained extremely gentle. He was never aggressive or physically violent, but did have tumor-inspired volcanic verbal outbursts that sometimes frightened people. Not so other animals, however. Particularly during the time we lived at the Castle Argyle, they were drawn to him in a most remarkable way.

Just as Ptah had selected our door among many others, pulled herself up to JP’s shoulder and clung to his head, animals of all sorts were attracted to him. Every cat, domestic and feral, in and around the Argyle would follow him, weave in and out his legs and cling to his neck and shoulders. Lost, sick and injured dogs of every size and type would flock to him when he sat outside, the smaller curling up in his arms, the larger leaning against his legs with their heads on his knees.

Wild birds, including starlings, sparrows and robins, would land on his head, dig their feet into his hair and stay there until other people approached. Escaped cage birds, with injured wings or missing a leg, would land on his shoes and nestle down between his feet with no fear of being crushed. In this way we acquired our two gimpy canaries, Pernod, as deep a yellow as the liqueur, and Pompadour, whose topknot resulted from being pecked by healthy birds. They lived happily with us for the rest of their lives, trilling to Bach and adding coloratura to JP's tenor.

From Odd Jobs:
Throughout the 1990s until retirement in 2011, I worked as a biotech patent secretary and trainer/mentor to a fine group of patent lawyers in San Francisco. A principal goal of a patent firm is to somehow get its client’s patent application to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) before another firm can do that with its client’s patent application on an arguably identical invention. If Firm A fails to do this, the dreaded precedence of the Firm B's Invention is established, dashing Firm A's client’s hopes of making money on its invention. The clients are pharmaceutical, computing and industrial giants with research connected to major universities and government entities worldwide. Billions of bucks, not mere millions, are at stake.

An additional deadline responsibility occurs whenever a client advises that one of its employee-inventors is scheduled to speak at a scientific conference on a given day. Any patent application relevant to the invention upon which the inventor is planning to discourse must reach the USPTO by midnight of the day before the inventor gets on the plane. It was understandable that an exuberant inventor whose research has just been funded might excitedly tell convivial colleagues at the hotel bar all about it the evening before the formal presentation. Such three-martini public disclosure of the information renders it public property, no longer private, patentable, profitable intellectual property.

When I started this job, computer wizardry had not yet bestowed upon us the ability to electronically transmit time-sensitive patent applications to the USPTO. East Coast patent firms, with the filing deadline of midnight, had the advantage over West Coast firms by virtue of location. In order to level the playing field, the USPTO considered West Coast patent applications sent by Express Mail to be filed timely if the Express Mail package was time-stamped at the local post office before midnight of a given day.

Nonetheless we propitiated a harsh deity. We had up to one nanosecond before midnight to reach the post office and obtain a receipt, proving we had lain our Express Mail packages on the altar within the time limit. Upon this fragile scrap of paper everything depended. I coined overtime helping prepare the applications and their accompanying government forms, and delivering them to the post office by cab, almost always five nights per week for eight years.