FOR YOUR NEXT VACATION

Feel like traveling?  (I don't -- my life as a dancer was the life of a traveling salesperson and I have been in Japan -- tiny room, lonely, isolated by the language.)

Even so, the newly opened  72 room "Henn na Hotel" (the name means Weird hotel) intrigued me. It's in Sasebo, Japan, near Nagasaki, that is s a bustling city again, completely rebuilt since our country nearly destroyed it with an Atomic bomb, in august 1945.

Weird?  Yes, all the employees are robots. (Specs on this hotel reveal that ten human employees are on duty behind the scenes, night and day, to keep the robots operating efficiently and handle any emergency.)

According to reports, the strangeness hits you the moment you enter.
A receptionist immediately welcomes you. She's amazingly real looking, and good-looking. She carries on a friendly, gracious conversation, responding to what you say (about your trip, the state of your appetite, and where you are from), as she escorts you to the registration desk, and three identical, pretty-faced clerks who look like school girls.

The center schoolgirl, her unblinking eyes connecting with yours, explains that a single is $77, (she quotes the price in yen, then in US dollars), a double is $80 to $100 a night. The other two girls, with unblinking eyes, seem to be speaking with her.


It's weird. At times the school girl seems to be an animatronic dinosaur.  (The growling dinosaur creature seems to know what you told the receptionist, as well as the schoolgirl.) As the dinosaur announces the price that you mentioned, and a room number, a trolley appears with your luggage on it. A computer toneless voice tells you "follow me, please."

You are ushered to your room by this porter-trolley. (Loud in your mind is the feeling you are all alone in this strange hotel -- if there are other guests, you don't see them or any other robots.)

Entering your room, a small robot greets you, introduces itself as "Tuly," and acquaints you with the various electronic conveniences -- an alarm clock you can set, the lighting controls, and the heat sensing unit that will adjust the room heat based on your body temperature.


Announcing "Food service department is open," Tuly escorts you to an elevator. The elevator door opens into a small dining area, A robot presents you with a menu. As the bot serves you, you note another couple seated at one of the other three tables. They are being served by another robot.

There is no sound, no conversation in the dining area. You can't help wondering if the couple at the other table are robots. Were they put there to make you feel more comfortable?

No doubt about it, your vacation is a visit to a strange new world.  This is the video that the hotel sends out to prepare you for a somewhat perturbing, somewhat  amusing adventure into the future. Would I recommend it?

I think you need to take a good look at this video and imagine yourself in this world where there are only robots to relate to --  you can answer that question for yourself. That's what I did. I can only say -- I am glad to be back in my own world with humans.

MY MOM'S BIRTHDAY

Today is the day I celebrate my mother's birthday. There's a green light glowing in her  brass candle holder. It's electrified, and sits on a shelf above my desk. The nurse, who tended Mom, during the last weeks of her life, sent it to me. I keep it lit night and day.

Throughout my life, Mom was always there for me -- it didn't take much conversation -- just "Mom, I've got a problem," or "Mom, I'm not sure what to do," or just "Hi Mom."  (I've blogged about her in "Night Light" -- 4/13, and in " Marching" --  4/17.)

After a head-on collision on the highway near Indianapolis, I was rushed to a hospital -- cut out of my clothes, temporarily repaired -- my small intestine had been severed by the seat belt, my facial injuries were extensive. Because I had a fever, surgeons postponed the major surgery that was needed on my back.

For the next three weeks, I was strapped to a Stryker table. The nurses turned it and me like a flap-jack, every 45 minutes. I couldn't sit up, or raise my head, or move any part of my torso, though I could move  my arms and hands. I lay on my bandaged stomach wounds, facing the floor, then lay face up with my injured back (at the waist), positioned over the padded hole in the center of the table.

My husband, John Cullum, and Mom arrived while I was still unconscious. He was in "1776" on Broadway singing "Molasses to Rum," playing the Senator from South Carolina. While I was being treated with antibiotics for the fever, the producer let him miss performances and fly to Indianapolis twice a week. The shows he missed weren't deducted from his salary. The cast members had a "kitty" -- money they collected to help cover the cost of the airfare.

Mom, who was recovering from a mastectomy she had a few months earlier, was with me every day. She got me large-size knitting needles, white yarn, and cast on thirty stitches, so that upside-down or right-side up, I could knit. With her encouraging me, I managed to make the first four inches of a scarf that JC, even now, occasionally wears.

The Doctors came in routinely, and tested my legs, arms, face as well as my private parts with a feather, asking, "Do you feel that?" Though I didn't feel anything, I always said, "I can march."

It seemed to cheer everyone when I said that. An orderly had told me I was temporarily paralyzed. Someone had murmured "partial paraplegia." I didn't have a dictionary, but if I had one, I wouldn't have looked up paraplegia or fracture. No one said "your back is broken" -- they just said that the lumbar vertebrae at my waist were "fractured."

It took all my energy to concentrate on minutes passing between pills and the hospital routines that had to do with food, toilet, bathing, combing my hair. I didn't ask for a mirror -- I didn't want to see what I looked like. Watching the clock ...  what a torture it was, staring at the second hand, watching the minute hand, waiting for the hour hand to move. Only after three-and-a-half hours had past, could I start asking for the pills that let me disappear for a while.

It was a orderly who noticed a reddish, swollen area on my arm. A sliver of glass, probably from the shattered windshield of the car, was removed and treated. By the next day, the fever was gone.

JC was onstage in New York when the two surgeons examined me head-to-toe with a needle, instead of feather. Frowning, one of them said, "Well, we can operate in the morning. The  other surgeon smiled, and joked -- "I'm the best bone fixer around town -- this is the hospital where we fix the racers from the Indy 500.  My friend here is a neurological specialist -- best in the country, figuring out nerve endings."

I tried to say something about marching. The way they were talking -- one frowning, the other smiling -- frightened me. They said ... maybe a year ... two years ... maybe five ... hope for best ... "Wheelchair" was mentioned twice.

After they left, Mom pulled her chair in. Squeezing my hand, she said, "Recovering from surgery is easier than waiting like you've been waiting. What you need to do is get a good night's sleep, and wake up strong, looking forward to the operation."

"Is that what you did, Mom?" She'd hadn't mentioned her mastectomy. I was thinking ... five years ... wheelchair ...  hope for the best ...  I wanted to say I don't want to live if I'm going to be in a wheelchair.

Mom spoke softly. "Don't think about what you fear. Try to give yourself to the doctors, dear, like you'd give yourself to a lover." She kissed me, and said it again, louder and very clearly. "The doctors need you to trust them, dear.  It will help them, if you give yourself to them like you'd give yourself to a lover."

I had never talked about lovers or my love life with my mother. How did my mother, married to my father -- for so many years the hard-working, faithful, adoring, good wife -- find the knowledge, the words, the wisdom to say what she did? And help me -- give me the command, and then, the power to look forward to tomorrow.

Happy birthday, Mom -- you gave me health, a body, resilience, a healing capacity, a powerful life force that's in my bones, my muscles, my blood, my skin, my pores, and you were always, always, always there when I needed you.''