Second painting of Ireland

At first glance, you might think this painting by my husband has no focal point, but in fact, the bottom 1/3 shows the Ancient Burren of Ireland, some of the most unusual topography you'll ever see and worthy of being a focal point.

"After two days' march we entered into the Barony of Burren, of which it is said, that it is a country where there is not water enough to drown a man, wood enough to hang one, nor earth enough to bury him; which last is so scarce, that the inhabitants steal it from one another, and yet their cattle are very fat; for the grass growing in tufts of earth, of two or three foot square, that lie between the rocks, which are of limestone, is very sweet and nourishing". Edmund Ludlow, 1651

By the way, my husband will be teaching an architectural drawing class in February 2008 in Ouanaminthe, Haiti, on a mission trip. Last year he taught perspective, but supplies were whatever he could bring in his suitcase. This year, he'd like the students to have something on which to draw and is raising funds for 12 drawing boards, t-squares, scales, angles, etc. He has enlisted the help of some local art groups, artists, an art store, and a few friends interested in the mission. If you'd like to help, you can send a contribution to Upper Arlington Lutheran Church, Haiti Mission 08, 2300 Lytham Road, Columbus, OH 43220, and stick a note in the envelope that it is for the drawing class. Here's a sample of what he's got, which will be shipped to Cleveland to then be shipped to Haiti in a container with construction materials used by the mission. All the equipment will be left at the school, Institution Univers. It costs about $50 to outfit one student--but any amount will help.

Boards for Haiti

Teaching Feb. 2007. He was very impressed by the dedication and aptitude of his students

A mother's example

Today at Coffee Spills I hear about Tigger and the rude mama.

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New exhibit at Mill Run

On Saturday, five of us spent six hours hanging a wildlife photography exhibit at the Church at Mill Run, 3500 Mill Run Drive, Hilliard, OH 43026, the newest campus of Upper Arlington Lutheran Church. We drafted our daughter and son-in-law to help us since so many on our committee were busy with other projects. It's really spectacular (219 pieces), and the photographers, Drs. Charles and Sharron Capen, will be discussing their travels and hobby, this Sunday October 28, 2-4 p.m. at MR. I've just finished preparing the show booklet to send to the printer, so here's a sneak preview.

III. Denali National Park, Alaska

Denali Reflections in Wonder Lake
Grey Wolf Hunting
Hoary Marmots on Alert
Arctic Ground Squirrel
Moose Feeding in Pond
Male Caribou in Arctic Tundra
Mountain Goat Kid
Autumn Foliage: Willows and Mushrooms
Autumn Foliage: Bear Berries
Alpenglow

Charles and Sharron Capen are both veterinarians and are members of the faculty at The Ohio State University College of Veterinary Medicine. I worked with both of them when I was the librarian for the college. Charles is a Distinguished University Professor and former Chairperson (1981-2002) of the Departments of Veterinary Pathobiology/Veterinary Biosciences. Sharron is Professor Emeritus of Veterinary Clinical Sciences. Their shared hobby is travel and nature/wildlife photography. They have traveled to all seven continents, nearly fifty countries, and all fifty states.

Blogger's new feature

This morning I noticed I lived in Afghanistan, according to this blog. It seems blogger.com added a new, automatic feature (location), and if you don't select a country, you get the first one on the list. So, if you find out you've moved, just go into "edit profile" and select a country that works for you.

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Peggy Noonan on Mrs. Clinton's White House bid

Meow comes to mind.

She doesn't have to prove she's a man; she has to prove she's a woman

Her problem is not her sex; but to work, she has to seem like a woman

No one doubts her ability to make war; she invented the war room

She doesn't have to prove she's tough; she has to prove she isn't a bull dozer always in high gear

No one has doubts about her toughness; many have qualms

She has gone beyond her comfort zone in seeking to be "authentic"--how not to be herself

The broad, fixed grin is the smile on the jack-o-lantern who knows the harvest is coming

She's the tea bag that brings the boiling water with her

The question is not whether America is ready for a woman president; it's whether it's ready for Hillary

I'm just saying . . .

From the week-end WSJ.

This would be bad because?

The screen writers are threatening to strike? Well, goodie.

The Writers Guild of America wants studios and networks “to take a serious look at the Guild proposals — which seek a doubling of DVD residuals, spelling out terms of new media work and broadening WGA jurisdiction over new media, reality and animation,” wrote Dave McNary of Variety. Reported in NYT

It won't affect movies much because of the long lead time, but could hold up some TV shows. Whoop de do. That would be such a loss.

Mike Huckabee for President

Could Hope do it again? Send this man to the White House. Check out the issues here.

Keep the Clintons from doing more damage in DC. We need a very clear alternative, and I think Mike is the guy who does that.

Mike Huckabee

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Librarian's call

His North Carolina National Guard unit will be called up in January, and he's relieved to finally have something concrete rather than rumors. "Please note that I don't mean that in a "gung-ho" or false bravado sense. I'm fully aware of the risks and have no wish to be killed or maimed. I will be the last one to complain if this turns out to be a thoroughly boring and uneventful tour. However, the cause of defeating both al Qaeda and Iran and its surrogates, while helping the Iraqi people build a country that can become a decent, pluralist model for the rest of the region, is important enough that I'm willing to take the risk. We have to win this fight, and I'm ready to do my part to help us do so."

He also says librarianship is a job; the Guard is a calling. David Durant

Monday Memories--Dad's VCR

My father had no mechanical ability, and he passed it along to me. My mother knew it all, so why should he learn--carpentry, plumbing, wallpapering, gardening, etc. We used to joke that he'd trade cars rather than change the oil. After my Mom died and he moved from the retirement apartment into the Lustron (which had been built by his parents in 1949), someone, probably a grandchild, decided he needed a VCR to keep him company. He probably had a few movies and some homemade videos, like my sister in concert, or a family event. Keeping in mind that he would probably never learn to record anything, he was given a Daewoo play-only VCR [if he bought it himself, I'm sure someone will know]. Somehow, we ended up with it when his home was cleared out after his death in 2002. Two weeks ago I rediscovered it in its hiding place under the TV and decided to take it to Lakeside to see if it would work with our broadcast-only TV up there. I took along the movie "Dirty Dancing" as a test tape.

Keep in mind my technical knowledge and ability. Although I noticed every light on its tiny dashbroad came on when I attached it, and I couldn't find any play or eject buttons, I put the tape in anyway. By the time I found the buttons (lift the little lid, dummy), the tape was stuck. Smacking it didn't work (which was probably dad's method). So I brought it back home.

Last Tuesday evening we were looking at our 3 remotes, the TV and the DVD player, clueless how to play the DVD of Ireland photos we'd been sent, so our daughter came by after work to explain it for the umpteenth time. After rereading the instructions she told us we'd have to use a newer TV. Fine. But then I told her about daddy's Daewoo. It will never work again, but after about 30 minutes, she did get it to give up the tape. She's a genius with a screw driver, having rewired ceiling lights and installed an attic fan for her in-laws; however, there were two screws left over when she finished.

Bobby Jindal--Hope for Louisiana

Thank goodness. He'll be the next Governor of Louisiana, beating out 11 others.

"Jindal, whose given name is Piyush, is the American-born son of Indian immigrants; his parents moved from New Delhi to Baton Rouge so his mother could take graduate classes at Louisiana State University.

But the son charted a new course in the new country.

When he was 4, he decided to call himself Bobby -- after the youngest son on the "Brady Bunch" television show. In high school, he gave up Hinduism and became a Christian; and during his first year at Brown University, he was baptized as a Roman Catholic. His wife, Supriya, is also a Catholic convert." WaPo story here.

Times of India story.

The trees are preparing for a long sleep

From a review of Republic of Shade by Thomas J. Campanella, Yale University Press, 2003 which includes the following:

"In typological terms, trees in Scripture act like giant words, expressing not only the general glory of God but also more specific themes. Both trees and saints come out of the ground. Both grow on riverbanks (Ps. 1) and bring food and medicine to the world; "their fruit will be for food and their leaves for healing" (Ez. 47:12; cf. Rev. 22:2). Jotham preached "the trees once went forth to anoint a king over them," and the blind man healed began to see men as trees walking. Trees are images of humans, and they reflect our own fruitfulness, hubris, and decay.

Lakeside, OH, October 2007
And God manifests himself at trees—"arboreal theophanies," [James] Jordan says—like those in Eden and in front of Moses but also in the careful wood of the Tabernacle and Temple, which create grand images of God's people gathered around him. The entire Davidic line is pictured as a tree, a root, a stump, a branch (Is. 42; 6:13; 11:10) that ultimately develops into Christ, the vine, the tree of life, executed on a tree, having threatened fire to "every tree which does not bear good fruit" (Mt. 3:10). Christ Himself doesn't hesitate to urge us to read trees wisely: "Now learn this parable from the fig tree" (Mt. 24:32).

Our condo yard today
Learn from the tree? Why does that directive not show up regularly in seminary hermeneutics courses? We go to great pains to teach seminary students about exegeting Scripture and secret Foucauldian power structures, but we leave them largely clueless about exegeting nature." Douglas Jones, Reviewer

OSU golf course maple

It may be vegan, but it's delicious

Oddly, it was given to me by a veterinarian. Alternative Baking Company of Sacramento, CA, makes a fabulous cookie with no dairy, no eggs, no honey, no hydrogenated oils, no cholesterol, no preservatives, no artificial ingredients or refined sugars. Wow. If this catches on, some food animal vets will be out of work, to say nothing of farmers. Right now I'm eating the peanut butter chocolate chip cookie. Yummy. I thought there were 2 others--they seem to have disappeared from the kitchen.

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Damages

is a first season thriller series on FX cable with a stunning cast and a heart in your throat story line that is as current and biased as today's headlines. I saw it for the first (and I hope last) time on Oct. 20 when the entire season was on a marathon, with the final episode next Tuesday. The cast includes Glenn Close and Ted Danson, both at their evil best. I've seen both of them in TV series and movies, and they've never been better.

This Saturday, FX is running the entire first season (up to now) of its legal thriller Damages as an all-day marathon, which means theoretically there will be viewers who will get to experience this show the way it might work best: as a rock ’em, sock ’em miniseries, compounding all of the story’s elaborate and sometimes preposterous shocks and twists into a roller-coaster ride that doesn’t require waiting a week between chapters. TV Guide blog

Yes, I tuned in during the episode where one of the main characters (also evil) blows his head off. Messy stuff, both his personal life, and what the make-up guys had to do. So of course, I had to google it and watch the next episode. But it did cause me to do some heavy thinking about how we use our leisure time in our comfortable living rooms or home theaters.

This may be the one area where I agree with the fundamentalist Muslims--our entertainment culture (TV, music, gaming, movies, theater) in the west is the most God-awful, slime pit you can imagine, and it is addictive, sucking in even those who know it is bad and soul-rotting--people like me, little old ladies who grew up in the 50s without a television set and never missed it. The sides of this pit are cascading body fluids, diseases, feces, drugs, money, evil intentions, violence, putrid souls and blood, a thick goo that has been building up well over 50 years on walls sloped to make it impossible to climb out or return to a safer era. Even a terrifically performed ensemble cast like "Ugly Betty" filled with surprise and charm, and a delightfully innocent and pure main character, has at its base wild sexual escapades and power-driven, one-dimensional characters, formed by their own excesses, but with enough redeeming qualities that the viewer soon gets sucked into the story line. All the versions of the decade old "Law and Order" feature not only incredible violence and evil, but the most evil characters are often those most religious or most loving, such as a parent, spouse, or child--a poster for family violence and evil Christians.

So today, in my One Year Bible, October 21, I read in Paul's letter of advice to Timothy, a young pastor:

"But you, man of God, flee from all this, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses. In the sight of God, who gives life to everything, and of Christ Jesus, who while testifying before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, I charge you to keep this command without spot or blame until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ. . ."

All Christians, whether baptized as infants and confirmed before witnesses later, or baptized as a believer before witnesses, have made a confession to follow Jesus' teachings. This trash we call entertainment could not survive without the support of Christians (however they call themselves--liberal, conservative, evangelical, main-line, fundamentalist). We make another confession to the entertainment god when we tacitly and often eagerly agree to worship heaps of stinking garbage on a daily basis.

Damages FX

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Fun with Al

From a commenter at Tim Blair's blog.

Dear Meester Gore,

As chairman of de Nobel Peace Prize Committee, I haff de unpleasant dewty to inform yew dat, because of certain errors and inaccuracies in yur movie, An Inconvenient Truth, ve are havin’ to cancel yur avard. Ve are distressed at de necessity of doin’ dis, but, yumpin’ yimminy, Meester Gore, yew really stepped in de cow pewp dis time, vit all dem mistakes.

Ve hope yew vill take some comfort in de Committee’s decision to gib de avard, instead, tew dat Iranian feller, Ahmadinejad, in token of hiss not yet blowin’ de beyibbers out of de whole goldurn vurld.

However, ve don’t vant yew do go avay mad, so ve are sendin’ yew a consolation prize – a maus pad vit a picture of a reindeer on it.

Ve be seein’ yew sometime, I bet. In de meantime, “Ha det bra!” from yur friends in Norvay.

Sincerely,

Ole Danbolt Mjøs

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Can't blame MRSA on illegal immigrants

That's not a rumor you want to start, but I heard Laura Ingraham mention it right after talking about the TB guy who's made a number of flights legally from Mexico into the U.S. A whole alphabet soup of government agencies have dropped the ball on this one, and it's not an illegal immigrant issue.

Neither is MRSA (what I heard: as an aside she asked where these germs were coming from right after talking about the TB infected Mexican . . . like we can't grow our own!). It's a problem which started in the 1970s with hospitals overusing antibiotics, patients having shorter stays, and the staph bug moving on out to the community. In 1998, the CDC reported on the problem with nosocomial infections (infections that originally preyed on the weakest and sickest in hospitals)

By the late 1980s and early 1990s, several different classes of antimicrobial drugs effective against gram-negative bacilli provided a brief respite. During this time, methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) and vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE) emerged, signaling the return of the "blue bugs." In 1990 to 1996, the three most common gram-positive pathogens—S. aureus, coagulase-negative staphylococci, and enterococci—accounted for 34% of nosocomial infections, and the four most common gram-negative pathogens—Escherichia coli, P. aeruginosa, Enterobacter spp., and Klebsiella pneumoniae—accounted for 32%

The most recently updated MRSA page at CDC was done this week--the earlier one was from 2005, but the recent concern apparently caused them to revise it.

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA) is a type of staph that is resistant to certain antibiotics. These antibiotics include methicillin and other more common antibiotics such as oxacillin, penicillin and amoxicillin. Staph infections, including MRSA, occur most frequently among persons in hospitals and healthcare facilities (such as nursing homes and dialysis centers) who have weakened immune systems (see healthcare-associated MRSA).

MRSA infections that are acquired by persons who have not been recently (within the past year) hospitalized or had a medical procedure (such as dialysis, surgery, catheters) are known as CA-MRSA infections. Staph or MRSA infections in the community are usually manifested as skin infections, such as pimples and boils, and occur in otherwise healthy people.

The most recent guidelines run to 219 pages, but to sum it up, WASH YOUR HANDS, PEOPLE, and don't let a medical staff person touch you until they do. "Improved hand hygiene practices have been associated with a sustained decrease in the incidence of MRSA and VRE infections primarily in the ICU (p. 49)"

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The Democrats' Hissy Fit

Although I'd never thought about it, I didn't know southern girls had hissy fits, too. Kyle-Anne Shiver describes what she saw the Democrats doing about SCHIP in Congress on C-SPAN as a "Southern belle hissy fit," or taking the argument to a level of pure emotion:

deceitful
underhanded
below-the-belt
used when the opponent held a significant power advantage
perfectly acceptable because
it is used when you don't get your way with facts
or with reasoned argument,
totally unencumbered by rational thought
afflicted can accuse the opponent of being “vicious,” “mean,” “unreasonable,” “vile,” “cruel,” “a bully,”
and ride the emotional wave of perfected guile to victory

In other words, you get your own way in the matter.

The female hissy fit--is definitely national, and obviously not limited to women.

Shiver concludes: "When the leaders of Congress wish to propose a socialist encroachment upon another segment of the private economy, it would serve them well to abandon the tactics of emotionalism and deceit. If they are the stalwart proponents of the free-will, free-thought democracy that they incessantly claim to be, then there should never be just cause for the kind of emotional trickery demonstrated by a parade of the victims* of American “injustice.” A straightforward argument based upon sound reason is what a free people should demand from her leaders. In every instance."

*I can't be sure, but this may be a reference to one Graeme Frost, the 12 year old boy the Democrats used to plead their case for expansion to the president. However, he was already on SCHIP, middle class and attending private school--which is the direction the Democrats are going with this. When bloggers and conservatives pointed this how, they were accused of cruelty, harassment, and God knows what else.

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Subprime late payments

A chart in today's WSJ showed the number of people keeping up with mortgage payments on subprime loans is improving. During the last quarter about 7.6% were late and that's dropped to 7.2% (this compares to .8% and .6% in prime). Missed payments were high in mid-1999, then dropping way down to under 2% in mid-2003. Obviously, the reasons for this have yet to be sorted out. But it must not be the economy, or how much was loaned to poor people vs how much to speculators. Subprime loans went to low income people who were poor credit risks and to high income people with high debt in relation to their income. The rest of us went the standard route--10 or 20% down and fixed rates.

But here's what's interesting. After 9/11 there was a drastic drop in late payments for both types of loans. As the economy soared, so did late payments. Seems to be psychological, not financial.

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When will Harry tie up the Senate complaining about Stark?

Congressman Stark (D-CA) says, "Ladies and gentlemen, the axis of evil is not just in the Middle East, it is right down here on Pennsylvania Avenue" and that the President of the United States, the man we elected, wants to blow people up for his own amusement. Harry, I think that's a bit more serious, and tougher on the troops than a private citizen calling a guy who didn't make it past basic training but who poses as a veteran, a 'phony soldier."

"You don't have money to fund the war or children. But you're going to spend it to blow up innocent people if we can get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the president's amusement."

One thing about Democrats, they are hell bent on losing this war. I tried to send Stark an e-mail, but his contact page won't take messages from Ohio. Old Pete's a chicken as well as a traitor. All this because he didn't like the President's veto on the expansion of health care to 25 year old, middle-class children who already have private insurance.

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Jessica Seinfeld on feeding kids

Maybe I should've written a book. Although since some other author (Missy Lapine) whose book is further down the best seller list is crying foul, I think it has a bit to do with being Jerry's wife, and sitting in on the Oprah show. Do you think? Anyway, I never had a problem getting my kids to eat, or to go to bed at a decent hour. Most of my tips for eating don't involve food.


1. Eat as a family--this is the key.

2. Set a nice table, both attractive and easy for children to use.

3. Have regular meals--my husband was usually home by 5:30 or 5:45, so this wasn't hard for us. We still eat early.

4. When children are small, use a booster seat, or put them on their knees on a regular chair, but put them at the table with the adults. Counters and stools are death to good eating habits, in my opinion.

5. Eat out only occasionally and/or for special events. You just can't compete for their taste buds with the high fat, high salt, high crunch of fast food.

6. Don't tolerate misbehavior at the table which spoils everyone's dinner, including the kid's.

7. Let the children help--but not too much. You want them to see that food preparation is an adult task--a big deal!

8. Clean plates are optional, but whining, complaints and dessert aren't.

9. Children in Haiti get beans and rice every day at school (according to my husband who has been there). Don't give very young children so many choices that you confuse them and numb their taste buds, which are much more sensitive than yours.

10. Desserts should be occasional and can be fresh fruit or yogurt to be special (it's a mind game, folks).

11. Don't be coy. We used to have mystery vegetable night, but really, the kids didn't like it. However, it makes for great family stories 30 years later.

12. I never snuck vegetable puree into anything (probably didn't have a blender then), although today I put pumpkin into peanut butter pie and you can't tell the difference. My children learned to appreciate vegetables for what they are, and usually raw. Raw carrot slices or cabbage was a BIG treat, as it was in my home when I was growing up. Raw potato slices were another big favorite.

13. My kids loved casseroles. However, my son-in-law (family of 7) hates them, so I think you need to go lightly here. Lasagne, spaghetti, mac and cheese--all that stuff we like, he will only have 2 helpings. He doesn't want his food "to touch."

14. Good luck keeping the sugary, high fat, high chemical and colored food away from your kids--as soon as they do an over-night or an after school play date at a friend's home, you've lost that battle. I baked whole wheat bread and lasagne with spinach noodles, but you can't fight the whole neighborhood unless you want your kid to have no friends.

Note to purists: No one seems to know where the word "sneak" came from, but its past tense "sneaked" is rarely used in the U.S. Most Americans (unless they majored in English or are over 65) use "snuck," but all forms sound pretty silly.

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Thursday Thirteen To-Do List

Last week I mentioned I'm not a good list maker, which is why TT works for me--sometimes. Here's my TT, and I only cheated a little, but it's finished.

1. Clean my office. It was out of control. In order to do #4, I needed to find the insurance papers which were at the bottom of the pile, but I found them.

2. Finish the laundry. I even did the ironing--what's one or two fewer blog entries?

3. Clean the bathrooms. Sort of--did one. In doing #8 I did wonder what 60,000 people gathered to watch the King did for restrooms in the 18th century. Do you ever think about that?

4. Make an appointment for the dentist. It's been almost 2 years since I fired my dentist, so I'm trying a new one. 8 a.m. Friday--must have had a cancellation--wasn't expecting it would be so soon.

5. Make an appointment at the vet for the cat. 9:45 Monday. She's a "cats only" vet, but kitty still doesn't appreciate it. She becomes 7 lbs of irritability.

6. Mail run for the church. We have several locations and on Thursday it's my turn to deliver the inter-campus mail. Fortunately, there were no heavy boxes this time and the wind wasn't blowing. At Mill Run there are usually gale force winds.

7. Flu shot--at the church next door. I was the only one at my time slot, so there was no wait. Pleasant young lady who caused no pain.

8. Read a few chapters of David McCullough's 1776. I'm leading the discussion for bookclub in November and need to refresh my memory and write up the questions. I only reread 2 pages, though, stopping at the amazing description of the London opening of Parliament and George III in 1775, which sets the symbolic stage for the hopelessness of the battle the Americans were in for. Hint: The Americans win, but it takes many years and a huge loss of life.

9. Write up the Visual Arts Ministry minutes. It would be a lot easier if I'd do this immediately (like last Friday), but a week late is better than the night before the next meeting.

10. Walk a mile. Counting walking to get the flu shot, I probably got 1.5 miles. Beautiful day--should have done 5.

11. Get prescription refilled. Not on that $4 list that all the big stores are offering. Wal-Mart started it, and now Target, Kroger, etc. have followed.

12. Buy my son-in-law's birthday present. He always gets the same thing. A gift card for Best Buy because then he can go wild buying movies he likes. They have a fabulous collection.

13. Buy snacks for Sunday's meeting. Didn't get this done, but did try a new recipe (the one with peaches that I noted in my blog in September), that I might make with apples for Sunday.

Visit or join other Thursday Thirteeners.

Another great line

Good thing an Obama aide said it. Democrats have no sense of humor and would have sought an impeachment. "Every family has a black sheep." Obama and Cheney share a 17th century French ancestor and are 8th cousins.

Here's a great line

Randall Bloomquist of WGST, Atlanta, reviews Graig Havighust's book, "Air Castle of the South," (U. of I. Press) in today's WSJ. It's about the rise and fall of WSM, an AM station in Nashville, which was created by National Life and Accident Insurance Company in 1925 to sell insurance to rural folk and ended up creating and spreading country music and the Nashville sound. I'll probably never read the book, but I loved this line:

"As history it is engaging but less than definitive. . . demanding that WSM [now owned by Gaylord Entertainment] live or die by the media economy's new rules feels a bit like asking your grandmother to work at Burger King to make ends meet."

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Totally Optional Prompts

Alumni of Poetry Thursday have started up Totally Optional Prompts, 1) the prompt will be posted on Saturday evening, 2) you write/post a poem at your own blog, and 3) the following Thursday you submit a link to that poem only (not your blog site URL) at T.O.P., 4) you leave comments (not criticism) after visiting/reading the poems of other T.O.P. participants.

The prompt for Saturday, Oct. 13, was from a Chinese poem, translated into English, "On Hearing a Lute-Player," and I selected one line for my prompt, "Singing old beloved songs." The back story: I'm a member of a Christian congregation with multiple worship styles (4 in 10 services) swinging from liturgical to beat driven rock. I wrote this in a few minutes after reading the prompt. I probably won't polish it--it's a bit cranky. Just needed to unload.

Singing old beloved songs

There was a day, maybe twenty years ago
(and I miss those times)
when we could quibble
about end times
or transubstantiation,
the length of sermons
or gay marriage,
paraphrases of Holy Scripture
or what happens to
the real presence when
the wine isn't consumed.

That was a simple time, light years ago
(I miss the challenge)
when we could argue
with Presbyterians
or Roman Catholics,
Pentecostals, Baptists
or Missouri Synod Lutherans,
children of the Puritans
(what happened to them?)
Now fights are in house . . .
worship form and music.

Totally optional prompts

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Use of the word "elite"

Nonfiction Readers Anonymous (a terrific blog by the way) thought it was amusing that Laura Ingraham, a conservative talk show host who has a law degree, has clerked at the Supreme Court and graduated from Dartmouth, would use the word "elite" when writing about agenda-driven liberals who look down on the little guy in fly-over country (her audience). Perhaps she thinks Laura is a member of "the elite." Not according to the dictionary, or the way conservatives use the word.

Here's the meaning of elite, from Webster's 9th:

the choice part or segment; especially a socially superior group; a powerful minority group, as inside the government;

Today, the elite may be "new money," or "land rich, piss-poor," but they are more likely to be academics who have tenure but not much else, or Congressmen who have been strapped onto the Beltway longer than most voters have been alive, or they may be a spouse of a former President (now making millions), accustomed to a sense of entitlement, or journalists making $40,000 a year and all the turnips they can eat, or former Presidents wandering lost around the world, or fabulously rich entertainers and celebrities who believe their own press, like the Dixie Chicks or Barbra Streisand. Attending Dartmouth and being a lawyer, gets you no points at all, near as I can tell. Nor does writing a few books, even those that get to the best seller list. Nonfictionanon, a librarian, even admits she'd never heard of her.

The word elite has little to do with wealth or where you sat out your 4-6 years of undergrad work. The way conservatives use the word, the elite may have no family pedigree at all, or they may have bunches, like John Kerry a man with a genealogy who married a widow with money. Today's elite are smug, self-appointed divas and web-site owners, some immigrant millionaires or billionaires like Soros and Huffington, or place holders on boards of NGOs who are massaging their guilt because they have so much money, or formerly useful people who have outlived their usefulness.

The elite used to have class; now they are just crass.

Good for you, President Carter!

The former President of the United States, Jimmy Carter (who sometimes forgets he has no authority, moral, symbolic or otherwise), didn't back down and act like a doormat in a recent incident in Sudan. 200,000 have been killed in western Sudan since 2003, African Arab on black African, Muslim on Muslim. Why would he think they'd respect an elderly white Christian they didn't even recognize?

Unfortunately, forgetfulness, fantasy and combativeness are all signs of early dementia.

Tossing the chips

Those of you raised in rural areas who may have had the opportunity in your youth to walk barefoot through a cow pasture, know what a chip is--when thrown it can have the feel of a hockey puck. Keep that in mind has you listen to the howls that Bush hates children because of his veto of increases in the S-CHIP program. Here's a summary from Congressman Jeff Miller about the expansion of services (poor children are already covered--this moves up to the next quintile and above),

Under the SCHIP expansion, an estimated 1 million to 1.2 million children would gain SCHIP coverage, but between 467,000 and 611,000 children would lose private coverage.

The annual cost to taxpayers of covering an uninsured child under the Senate's expansion plan would increase from $1,418 to between $2,508 and $2,859. This is 1.8 to 2 times the cost of SCHIP coverage for a child in a family at this income level or almost 2.5 times the average cost of private insurance.

The bill increases the age of "children" eligible for benefits to 25 years and permits States to continue to enroll childless adults.

The expansion would be financed by increased tobacco taxes, including a 61-cent increase in the cigarette tax, to $1 per pack. The bill assumes that there will be 22 million new smokers a year to ensure budget neutrality.

Expanding SCHIP to cover children in higher income families is not an efficient or cost-effective way to reduce the ranks of uninsured children.

The proposal put forward by Democrats would render the current income eligibility requirement for SCHIP meaningless and create an open-ended government entitlement for families, many of whom already have private insurance coverage.

And let's not forget, that this isn't about insuring poor children (no one 25 is a child and people without children aren't parents), it's about universal health care. If you've been hearing the horror stories about boomers and medicare, imagine that for everyone, but with personal health insurance destroyed.

Copied from an op ed in NewsBlaze.

General Sanchez' view of the press, Congress and the war effort

Ricardo Sanchez' harshest words were for the media, then Congress at his Military Reporters and Editors Address, Washington D.C. I'll excerpt a few items. First the media:

You feel qualified to make character judgments that are communicated to the world. My experience is not unique and we can find other examples such as the treatment of Secretary Brown during Katrina. This is the worst display of journalism imaginable by those of us that are bound by a strict value system of selfless service, honor and integrity.

You seek for self aggrandisement or to advance your individual quest for getting on the front page with your stories.

The speculative and often uninformed initial reporting that characterizes our media appears to be rapidly becoming the standard of the industry. Once reported, your assessments become conventional wisdom and nearly impossible to change.

The death knell of your ethics has been enabled by your parent organizations who have chosen to align themselves with political agendas. What is clear to me is that you are perpetuating the corrosive partisan politics that is destroying our country and killing our servicemembers who are at war.

Holy moly. And for the administration:

This administration has failed to employ and synchronize its political, economic and military power. The latest "revised strategy" is a desperate attempt by an administration that has not accepted the political and economic realities of this war and they have definitely not communicated that reality to the American people.

And for the Congress

Since 2003, the politics of war have been characterized by partisanship as the republican and democratic parties struggled for power in Washington. National efforts to date have been corrupted by partisan politics that have prevented us from devising effective, executable, supportable solutions. At times, these partisan struggles have led to political decisions that endangered the lives of our sons and daughters on the battlefield.

Congress must shoulder a significant responsibility for this failure since there has been no focused oversight of the nations political and economic initiatives in this war. Exhortations, encouragements, investigations, studies and discussions will not produce success.

At no time in America's history has there been a greater need for bipartisan cooperation. The threat of extremism is real and demands unified action at the same levels demonstrated by our forefathers during World War I and World War II. America has failed to date.

These are just excerpts. It's not pretty. But a strong feel of truth.

When Washington Post wrote up the speech, it totally left out his criticism of the media. Oh my gosh, what a surprise!

Canning the spam

At e-Commerce Times, Erika Morphy writes

Two men have been successfully prosecuted for sending out millions of unsolicited e-mail messages promoting pornographic Web sites, and reaping millions of dollars as a result.

Jeffrey A. Kilbride of Venice, Calif., was sentenced to six years, and James R. Schaffer of Paradise Valley, Ariz., was sentenced to and five years and three months, to be served in Arizona. They were prosecuted under the federal CAN-SPAM act.

Between Jan. 20, 2004, and June 9, 2004, the two bombarded AOL members with their spam, prompting more than 600,000 complaints.

They also engaged in conspiracy, money laundering, fraud, and transportation of obscene materials. U.S. District Judge David Campbell sentenced the two after a three-week trial, giving Kilbride a stiffer penalty for attempting to keep a government witness from testifying.

Unfortunately, she says it will be business as usual for the other porn slime spammers. The money's just too big and there's way too many bad guys. So just keep reporting it.

Documents on Jena 6

You can read the documents about the beating of a white teen by a group of black teens, an incident that had nothing to do with a tree or nooses, and more to do with thuggery. Now aging civil rights leaders with nothing to do, are jumping in to support some teen aged hoodlums.

Civil rights activist Al Sharpton says Congress should expand hate crime laws to deal more forcefully with noose-hanging incidents like the one in the Jena Six case in order to squelch what he called a sharp rise in racism.

Isn't this the same guy who got snookered by Twana Brawley? Does he ever come to the rescue of black citizens terrorized by black crooks?

Armenians in my family tree

When the Democrats decided an apology from the Turks for the slaughter of Armenians nearly a century ago was the way to defeat our troops in Iraq, I began to check the family tree. There wasn't much mixing until the 1920s and 1930s when the Scots-Irish Protestants and German-Swiss Anabaptists started finding each other, but we're quite a stew now. Native Americans, Alaskan First Peoples, Mexican Americans, African Americans. And sure enough, with the click of a mouse I see the west coast Kerkorians descended from the Pennsylvania Danner/George group as did I. However, I got bogged down with the Woos and the Lams, the Chinese "cousins" who are also in the Danner/George branch of the family (I have over 3500 names in my Family Tree Maker database).

What the Turks did to the Armenians was awful. Millions died or fled their homeland, leaving behind families, culture, churches and businesses. However, a much higher percentage of Irish died at the hands of the British through famine and immigration, going into exile in North America, Australia and New Zealand. Because Ireland is a tiny island, the Irish lost half its population to bad government and agricultural policies--far more than Africa did to the slave trade a century before the great famine.

So where do you start when demanding reparations and resolutions about old wrongs? The people who perpetrated them or suffered at their hands are gone. Should the American blacks go after the Arabs and African tribal chiefs because they initiated the slave trade needing an outlet for war booty? Can the Irish go after the British who were just going after the descendants of the Celts and Vikings who had earlier invaded and enslaved Ireland? Their descendants, those who survived those difficult times, have a better life in their new lands than the descendants of those who stayed behind.

Also, it is unthinkable that a powerful American ethnic lobby group, whether La Raza or descendants of WWII internment camps or descendants of the plantation slaves would ever stop with an apology, no matter how heartfelt, soothing and useless. The bar would be raised demanding more reparations for loss of culture, personal humiliation of great-grandpa and God only knows what other indignities difficult to quantify.

Today's opinion page in the WSJ pretty well summed it up:

If Nancy Pelosi and Tom Lantos want to take down U.S. policy in Iraq to tag George Bush with failure, they should have the courage to walk through the front door to do it."

For another view, see Silvio Canto Jr's blog

Starting the Christmas wars early

It's sad that Christians, who according to scripture, should be the least materialistic in observing days with religious meaning, have to battle the retailers who can't survive without the Christmas season over use of the word "Christmas" or the Mass of Christ. Of course, it isn't just retailers. One of my favorite stories on this muddle of respecting all religions except Christianity goes back to the 1980s when I got a glossy Christmas card produced by the Medical Library Association with greetings in about 10 languages, but nothing in English that said "Merry Christmas," even though it was in other languages. Then there was last years' "new books for the holidays" list from our Public Library published in a local magazine which managed to leave out all new titles that had anything to do with religion.



To solve this problem of offense to none while ignoring most, The Smithsonian sent out two catalogs, one "holiday" and the other "Christmas." I think holiday came first--and does have one or two Halloween items in it, but in the Christmas section of the holiday issue, the word Christmas is never used. Then in the Christmas catalog, the word Christmas does appear, although there is very little with any religious significance--12 days of Christmas nutcracker, Christmas flora throw, Victorian Christmas figurine. As an aside, there's a yummy Fontanini nativity celebrating the 100th year of the figurines made in Italy--8 pieces, $195, and you can get the 3 Kings for $175 and 3 palm trees for $50. For cat lovers, I think Smithsonian has just about the cutest stuff out there.

Update: Before tossing out the 20 page brochure from the Upper Arlington Parks and Recreation program for fall 2007, I checked: there is a photo of a Christmas tree, and it says, "Celebrate the Season in UA! UA Winter Festival/Tree lighting ceremony." There will be visits with Santa, holiday lights, and a brunch with Santa at a local restaurant. No Christmas in our town. Just a season.

4221

He says, she did

Dick Morris isn't my favorite source of information--he goes to whatever political wing will pay his bills, but he was with the Clintons a lot of years, and these quotes are well documented. It won't hurt Hillary a bit with liberals, they are just street creds, but for independents or moderates, it might make a difference. These are the statements in Bill's ad for Hillary, and Dick Morris' response.

Bill says: "In law school Hillary worked on legal services for the poor."

The facts are: Hillary's main extra-curricular activity in law school was helping the Black Panthers, on trial in Connecticut for torturing and killing a federal agent. She went to court every day as part of a law student monitoring committee trying to spot civil rights violations and develop grounds for appeal.

Bill says: "Hillary spent a year after graduation working on a children's rights project for poor kids."

The facts are: Hillary interned with Bob Truehaft, the head of the California Communist Party. She met Bob when he represented the Panthers and traveled all the way to San Francisco to take an internship with him.

4220

How social theory has hurt minorities and women

Forget Anita Hill for the moment. What Clarence Thomas has done with his memoir (My Grandfather's Son) is remind Americans that many of the laws and regulations put in place to help minorities, especially blacks, most with good intentions but poorly thought out and burdened by useless guilt, have actually held them back. Now we're in a huge mess because careers, reputations, and entire organizations are built on government regulations, affirmative action and keeping the civil rights pot stirred (like the Jena 6 story, or crack cocaine sentencing).

Even Eugene Robinson, an associate editor of the Washington Post (Oct. 10), updates what Thomas said about liberals putting blacks in a box (although Robinson seems not to have read the book and calls Thomas pugnacious for recording in terrifying detail what was common to many blacks in the 1950s through the 1980s, even if it isn't today) -- "editors, reporters, columnists and tv producers keep only 2 phone numbers on speed-dial for use whenever any news breaks concerning a black person."

He noted, for instance, that it made no sense to bus poor black children to the schools of poor white children where they would get an equally poor education. Another social experiment: Thomas believes that racial preferences actually hurt black kids and place their achievements in doubt even when they excell. That claim really brought out the accusations of "pulling up the ladder" after he got in.

Now there is some research by Richard Sander of UCLA that says the same thing, but you can be sure it will be quashed or it will be called racist. There are people fighting for their livelihoods to say nothing of their legacy.

"The schools involved are dozens of law schools in California and elsewhere, and the program is the system of affirmative action that enables hundreds of minority law students to attend more elite institutions than their credentials alone would allow. Data from across the country suggest to some researchers that when law students attend schools where their credentials (including LSAT scores and college grades) are much lower than the median at the school, they actually learn less, are less likely to graduate and are nearly twice as likely to fail the bar exam than they would have been had they gone to less elite schools. This is known as the "mismatch effect." Not to shock you senseless, but I was an A student at the University of Illinois--at Harvard I probably wouldn't have made it. That definitely would have been a "mismatch."

The problem as Sander sees it, isn't that black students can't make it in law school, but that because of preferences, they aren't attending the right school.

"In general, research shows that 50% of black law students end up in the bottom 10th of their class, and that they are more than twice as likely to drop out as white students. Only one in three black students who start law school graduate and pass the bar on their first attempt; most never become lawyers. How much of this might be attributable to the mismatch effect of affirmative action is still a matter of debate, but the problem cries out for attention."

Good luck getting funding to research that! I heard an interview with Don Dutton on Mike McConnell (700 am radio) this morning--haven't researched it myself--saying domestic violence tougher laws are actually hurting women, especially black women, because if men are hauled off to jail on a first complaint, women are less likely to summon police and after the required anger management (for just the man) instead of couples counseling, the man is more likely to just kill her the next time. I haven't looked into this, but a brief google search brings up only feminist hyped websites and hysteria about how many women are killed every so many seconds, so the unintended consequences of stiffer penalties at the first cry for help wouldn't surprise me.

Another example of failed social theory mention on McConnell's show is the crack vs. powder cocaine sentencing story. Supposedly, it's racist to treat the two drug criminals differently. When it became obvious that crack cocaine was a serious problem in the black community in the mid-1980s, the Congressional Black Caucus lobbied for harsher penalties and got it. It was primarily black on black violence. So now there is a huge discrepancy, some say by race, but studies show it is amount sold, prior history, and weapons used that cause the stiffer penalties, not the type of drug. City Journal

Oh, and it's now called IPV, Intimate Partner Violence, at least in Canada, I suppose so gays and lesbians can be included. Sounds like a feminine hygiene product.

4219

e.e. cummings on richard dawkins

e.e. cummings wrote to his sister Elizabeth in 1954: "if you take Someone Worth Worshipping (alias 'God') away from human beings, they'll (without realizing what they're doing) worship someone-unworthy-of-worship); e.g.; a Roosevelt or Stalin or Hitler--alias themselves." Probably also applies to environment-fundamentalists, but cummings died in 1962 before the current pantheist panic.

The above information appears on p. 371 of "A poem a day," edited by Karen McCosker and Nicholar Albery.

Monday Memories--The Stalkers

Usually when I write a Monday Memory, it is something personal--a family or employment snippet. This memory surfaced while I was reading Clarence Thomas' My Grandfather's Son. Anita Hill's charges were so bizarre and unfounded, according to everyone who knew Justice Thomas, that you are left to wonder why would any woman do this, and how could she pass a polygraph test?

Unfortunately, there are people in every walk of life whose fantasies and longings are so strong you can't shake their beliefs with logic, recall or the facts. They may not fit any definition of mentally ill, but somewhere a false memory has taken root. I knew two such women about 30 years ago, and they were both "in love" with the same man, and firmly believed their love was being returned, if they could only get to him to consummate it. A glance, a kind word, a chance meeting at a grocery store--they were the building blocks of their burning desire.

One woman was divorced with 2 or 3 young children about the same age as mine; she was employed, homely, helpless and more than a bit strange. All of us at church felt sorry for her--until we had to spend more than 10 minutes with her. She was deeply in love with a staff member of the church and thought he returned her interest. He finally had to get police protection and a restraining order. I ran into her several years later on a job interview, but have no idea how that problem was resolved.

The other woman was also in love with this same staff member (he was extremely good looking and very charming with a great personality). They had had a bit more contact because her husband worked with him so they saw each other socially. She had almost become glue--I'm sure he had trouble shaking her once he became aware of it. You often saw them together--in a group of course, because it was a large staff, but she tried to be as close as possible. The adoration on her face was embarrassing. Eventually she divorced her husband--I don't know which one kept the children, but both left the church.

The much beloved staff member eventually "married" his gay partner.

4217

What kind of a blogger am I

Mother would be so proud. I'm off the charts with "no greed."

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I saw this at Gekko's site.

The itty-bitty buckeye

My daughter's Chihuahua doesn't think her buckeye sweater is the least bit cute. She couldn't wait to get out of it. A buckeye, for you non-Ohio readers, is an Ohio State fan, and my daughter and son-in-law are definitely that.

Abby hoping to escape from her buckeye sweater
Free at last
We are doing a few trial runs before November when they go to Las Vegas, and we puppy-sit. Our cat is not pleased, no not one bit. Our cat is 7 lbs., the dog about half that, but oh, she so wants to be friends with the big pussy cat. Not going to happen.

Friends of the Creche--Heartland Cradlesong 2007

This morning after church we bought our tickets for the November 9 performance of the Upper Arlington Lutheran Church adult choir premiering Michael Martin's choral and orchestral composition, Scenes from His Nativity, commissioned by the Friends of the Creche, a society dedicated to studying the creche tradition and collecting nativities. Our pastor, Paul Ulring, an expert on hymnody, is the keynote speaker and will discuss sacred Christmas carols used in contemplating the miracle of the Savior's birth. The $20 ticket also covers a Koldtbord, a traditional Norwegian Christmas Eve feast.

Donna selling tickets
The event takes place at The Church at Mill Run, 3500 Mill Run Dr., Hilliard, OH 43026, with the Koldtbord beginning at 6:15 p.m. and the concert at 7:30 p.m. Dave and Donna Hahm are the co-chairs for this event and tickets are available both at Mill Run and Lytham Road campuses of UALC. Beat the Christmas rush--invite a friend for a wonderful evening celebrating the diverse American cultures that include German, Norwegian, Irish, African American and Greek Orthodox Christmas traditions.

The main activities of the convention will be at the Embassy Suites Hotel in Dublin, OH and will include

Frs. Nathanael Smyth and Nicholas Hughes, monks from the Monastic Brotherhood of St. Theodore, Galion, Ohio, will present the art and hymnody of the Nativity in the Greek Orthodox tradition. Nannette Maciejunes, Director of the Columbus Museum of Art, will introduce the mid-20th Century African American Columbus barber and wood carver, Elijah Pierce, whose vision of the Incarnation shaped his life-long ministry of “sermons in wood” and made him one of the nation’s outstanding African American folk artists. In addition, the traditions of Norway, Ireland, Germany, and Slovakia will be featured.

An exhibit of nativities from the Marian Library of the University of Dayton will be introduced by Fr. Johann Roten, director of the library and curator of the collec-tion. Program highlights include two Midwestern artists: Jerry Krider of Columbia City, Indiana, and Gary Wilson of Monroe, Michigan. They will talk about the inspiration behind their unique respective expressions of the Nativity in wood and clay. They are among the artists who will be exhibiting in the Manger Mart for the first time. Also planned are programs on the herbal lore associated with the nativity, Advent calendars, building a collection on a budget, and more." From the website schedule

Is your profession a calling?

Several years ago I read an op-ed type column in the WSJ (it's hard to tell in a liberal newspaper if you're reading news or an editorial) that I've never forgotten. A journalist wrote about a friend from college who chose a career in business. The writer chose journalism because "he wanted to make a difference in people's lives," or something like that. By age 50, the writer had had several reverses in his career and was struggling to even make ends meet. His friend by then had retired from a successful business career--don't remember if he invented something, or sold something, but he'd made a bundle. Now he was living his dream--he'd created a foundation and was using his money to help people.

I think juniors or seniors in high school should be told the realities of life, handed a fistful of play/monopoly money, the classifieds from any major city with ads for grocery stores, restaurants, plays, housing, cars, etc. and a book of charts, graphs and stats on salaries. After they've figured out how they would live in Chicago, LA or Peoria, let them look through the college catalog. They may still want to be a librarian, a social worker, an architect or a journalist, but it might cut down on the whining 10 years later about college loans, cost of living, and how this generation won't live as well as its parents or grand parents.

Annoyed Librarian writes: "I always assumed that librarians working the really crappy jobs were doing it because they were lazy or stupid, or had no marketable skills, or had previously worked in an even more annoying profession, or were uncompetitive in some way they couldn't help (unable to move from the area, for example), or just not very good at their jobs. But now I know that it's possibly because they view librarianship as a calling, like being a priest or a rock musician. Those librarians are just living the dream, serving the public faithfully, saving the world one library card at a time."

Yesterday the WSJ featured the gift to NY School of Social Work of $50 million from Constance and Martin Silver. Mrs. Silver got a bachelor and Master's in Social Work there in the late 70s, but reading through the bio, she must have gotten it after she married Martin, because it says they met right after she finished high school and came to NY to get a job. He was already a graduate of NYU when they met (it's also possible she isn't wife #1 and younger). They became wealthy because of his blood-plasma business, Life Resources, Inc. which was sold to the British government for $110 Million in 2002 when they were still in their 60s. She says the gifts (this one and others to NYU) are to fight poverty because "they had struggled to overcome poverty." [Reading the story I don't think they were any poorer than the rest of us growing up in the 1950s--we all had a lower standard of living than today.]

I think the gift from the Silvers might better serve needy college students by offering scholarships to the business school or even trade schools for youngsters who don't have a "calling" but want a better life for themselves and their families. Only a growing government needs more social workers, and that's not how they met their dream.

4213

Bad news, good news about education

As I turned off the vacuum cleaner and was wrapping the cord, I heard Edward Crane of Cato Institute say (on Book TV, 50th anniversary of Atlas Shrugged) that his 16 year old daughter's Spanish teacher had required the language class to watch Al Gore's "award winning" documentary. The audience twittered, because this movie and the education system's propaganda has become a big joke before the speaker can even get to the punch line. Then he opined (paraphrased, since I didn't have a pencil with me), "The bad news is they're teaching this; the good news is the kids aren't learning anything."

Earlier John Fund (WSJ) told about his role as a pinata at the Aspen Institute Ideas Festival . You almost knew before he described some of the speakers what was going to come--he said something about walking through the deepest thought at the festival and not getting his ankles wet (again, a paraphrase). Apparently while they consumed water from 7,000+ plastic bottles they were hearing that even if we could roll back emissions to the Robert Fulton era (steamboat), it wouldn't be enough. However, I looked through the list of speakers, and some of the program looked pretty interesting. The kids programming looked like 1970s reruns. If it didn't work for their parents, maybe it will work for them. Check out the link. Your experience in Aspen may be different.

I think I read Atlas Shrugged in 1963--all 1100+ pages. It was very interesting and challenging, better than most books by atheists.

4212

Students smearing students

Should they be punished? At least to the degree the college president had promised when he thought they were conservatives? Or is this just an innocent college prank that should be overlooked? Read the letter to President Knapp here.

4211

First painting from the last trip

There will be a few touch ups (to make the distance a bit more hazy), but this is my husband's first painting from our Ireland trip in September. And yes, he works from his own photographs, not from memory. I believe this is a scene where we had lunch on Monday near Woodstock House Demesne, a national park near Inistioge.



There is no way to make Ireland more beautiful than it was; the advantage of a painting is to capture the emotional impact, and for us, recapture the memories.

What will HillaryCare do about this?

The big killers of Americans these days are our personal habits, choices and tastes. Smoking, drinking, over eating, over sitting. Will Hillary insist we mend our ways in order to reduce government health care costs after she extends it to all?

"Asian-American women have a life expectancy of almost 87 years; African-American men, 69 years. We have these facts on the authority of Eight Americas, a 2006 study by number crunchers at Harvard’s School of Public Health. Women in Stearns County, Minnesota, live about 22 years longer than men in southwest South Dakota, and 33 years longer than Native American men in six of that state’s counties. The gap between the highest and lowest life expectancies for U.S. race-county combinations is over 35 years. Some race-sex-county groups typically die in their nineties, others in their fifties. Some are healthier than the norm in Iceland, Europe, and Japan, others sicker than Nicaragua and Uzbekistan.

Factoring out wealth, race, and access to health insurance doesn’t eliminate most of these disparities. Low-income whites die four years sooner in Appalachia and the Mississippi Valley than they do farther north. The healthiest whites are low-income residents of the rural Northern Plains states. In the West, American Indians who remain on the reservation die much sooner than whites.

What accounts for these cavernous differences? Harvard dares to name six leading “risk factors” for the population as a whole—alcohol, tobacco, obesity, high blood pressure, cholesterol, and glucose—and reports that these factors correlate strongly with the spread in life expectancy across its Eight Americas. One of the study’s authors ventured to suggest, albeit only in an interview, that where you live may point, in turn, to ancestry, diet, exercise, and occupation." Article in City Journal

4209

Al Gore and the piece prize

The Canadian Press reports:

“Former U.S. vice-president Al Gore and the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change jointly won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for their efforts to spread awareness of man-made climate change and to lay the foundations for fighting it.

Gore, who won an Academy Award earlier this year for his film on global warming, "An Inconvenient Truth," had been widely tipped to win the prize.

He said that global warming was not a political issue but a worldwide crisis.”

Al Gore is a big fan of Rachel Carson, who whipped up another crisis 40 years ago--the long term effects of DDT on the environment. The woman has probably killed more Africans than the 17th and 18th century slave trade. Today malaria infects between 300 million and 500 million people annually, killing as many 2.7 million of them." Before Silent Spring, malaria was on the run. The debilitating effects of this disease help keep Africa in poverty.

"Without this book, the environmental movement might have been long delayed or never have developed at all," declared then-Vice President Albert Gore in his introduction to the 1994 edition of Silent Spring. The foreword to the 25th anniversary edition accurately declared, "It led to environmental legislation at every level of government." Now Gore can guarantee that the poor of the third world will never be competitive or catch up by keeping them barefoot but green. American businesses jumped on the green bus, they're rolling and are already making huge profits--how will Africa and Asia ever compete?

That Rachel Carson didn’t tell the truth about cancer in children (rate has not changed over many decades, but other deaths (polio, pneumonia, birth defects) went down skewing comparisons with other illnesses like cancer) is probably not her fault. She wasn’t a trained scientist. And neither is Al. Environmentalists don’t want to see that the EPA banning DDT killed or disabled millions of Africans--for what? So church groups can donate insecticide treated nets (would you sleep under one?) and wear orange t-shirts with slogans.



And now we have Growbal Warming.

See Silent Spring turns 40

4208

The Bush Tax Cuts

I disagree with Mr. Bush on a lot, but every time I go to a nice store or do some traveling, I whisper quietly, "Thanks, big guy. You might not be able to string two sentences together, but you know how to help retirees."

Most retirees if they planned well and listened to all the scare stories 30 years ago about how there wouldn't be Social Security by the time we retired, have a nest egg (private investments) a 403-b, or 401-k, or IRAs, annuities, or some other vehicle other than a passbook savings account. Our economy would probably have taken much longer to recover after the bubble burst in early 2000, and then sunk after 9/11 if not for the Bush tax cuts.

But the GAP ("getting all pissed") people are unhappy. GAPists don't care how good I have it or if I worked hard, led a quiet life and saved my pennies; if it's better than someone else, if there is an identifiable gap between my pension and that of a homeless guy who drank away his income, then life isn't fair.

This morning there was a news story (not an editorial) in the Wall St. Journal about the income inequality gap by Greg Ip. This gap is very distressing for liberals (as are health gaps, education gaps, leisure gaps, everything except the marriage gap, which alone can account for a lot of poverty). The 1% wealthiest of all tax filers earned 21.2% of all income [notice the word "earned" because I don't think Ip did]. Now that is a whopping .4% more than in 2000. Yes, it took that long for this "rising inequality" to show up on the graphs, but this causes much hand wringing.

Never mind that much of this gain resulted from technological changes that benefits the smart and well educated more than the less skilled, or that a lot of it is by gains of entertainers, celebs and sports figures, the darlings of the left. And what's really ugly (Ip doesn't use this word)? More than twice as many Wall Street professionals are in the top .5% of all earners than there are executives from non-financial companies. The writer claims that this gap is fueling anxiety among American workers. Are retirees anxious that Wall Street is doing well? Not likely. Our pensions and investments are the silent guest living in our homes--who doesn't eat, make noise, tease the cat, or change the channel--just hands over his paycheck to help with expenses.

Remember the hated Bush tax cuts? The poor got bigger tax cuts than the rich (although for some, something from nothing still results in zero--millions pay no taxes at all). At the bottom, the tax rate fell to 3% from 4.6% under Clinton. At the top the 1% richest folks' tax rate (what they paid) went from 37% under Clinton to 39% under Bush, according to author Greg Ip.

Why are the liberals so unhappy? Seems as though taxes actually fell for the rich despite the tax rate increase. (He includes no information on whether taxes actually fell for the poor--again, it's hard to subtract from zero). So now, the actual gap is widening. With the boomers coming up to the retirement trough, you'd better hope those rich folks keep paying their big taxes because they are covering for the folks at the bottom to say nothing of paying the salaries of armies of government workers.

4207

The Hush Rush Senators and the Fairness Doctrine

You'll find an interesting history of the Fairness Doctrine over at The Volokh Conspiracy. It's fascinating that Democrats in the 1960s were so fearful of free speech (I was a passionate Democrat then, but didn't know about this), even the snippets of outrageous speech that few bothered to listen to (like some fundamentalist radio preachers squawking in the middle of the night--there was no talk radio or news analysis at the time). Silencing Rush Limbaugh by threatening Clear Channel or censoring him on the floor of the Senate for calling a phony soldier a phony soldier is just a tiny part in the plan to reinstate the "Fairness Doctrine." I think I would call it "kill the media doctrine" because high tech communication has made the doctrine obsolete. Now we have so many other ways to get news. Many of these talk shows are wealthy enough to just use other methods and by-pass radio or TV altogether.

Who are the smug beltway buffoons who say there are only two sides (Republicans and/or Democrats, liberals and/or conservatives)? What about the Libertarians, the Socialists, the Communists, the anarchists, the academics, the ethnics, the retirees, the labor unions, the Muslims, the Jews, the Dispensationalists, the polygamists, the reparationists, the radical environmentalists, the man-boy love association and vegans for chicken rights? What if the news story had to present EVERY viewpoint of what to do with unwanted or disabled horses--even the Japanese who eat them and the children who hug them?

I get e-mail news stories daily from groups that hate both Bush and Rush, but some are right wing. . . way right of both men. They doubt Bush's religious faith, they think he's giving the country to the Mexican government, buying up land to make another hi-way to Canada to sell us out, and that his family is in one big business cabal with the Clintons. They think Rush is a traitor because he used the ACLU in fighting charges of prescription drug abuse and leaking his medical records and are horrified by his marriage track record.

I also get e-mail from that bald, skinny elfish-looking guy married to Mary Matalin, whose name escapes me at the moment explaining how the DNC is going to take advantage of every misstep the RNC makes. And during a run-up to an election, any election, will our local school board candidates be able to discuss issues without including the views of every homeschooling parent who pulled her children out of public school 5 years ago, and will the Obama people have to side-step Clinton's ties with Hsu because she would be required to come back with his time spent in a Muslim village? Does a Chinese money source trump an Indonesian terrorist connection in the Fairness Doctrine, or are they equal, fair and balanced?

I really think the broadcast media--ABC, NBC, CBS--better stomp on George Soros and Hilliary Clinton before this goes any further, or they might find themselves having to parse every syllable and minute and go back to having Katie interview Britney for safe news. Oops. Maybe not. She'd have to give K-Fed equal time, and then the babies. . . and on and on. Meanwhile, advertisers will look elsewhere, and the entire media industry would collapse. Which would make George Soros the only winner in this contest.

Pay attention to the man behind the curtain pulling the strings

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Thursday 13--what I do now I didn't do then

Carol at her blog had written a letter to herself of 10 years ago--the Carol of 1997; I couldn't think of anything for 1997, or 1987, so I dropped back to 1977. The children were 9 and 10, I was working a few hours a day in the main library at Ohio State, we'd joined a new and thriving church the year before. My parents and grandparents were alive, as were all my siblings. If it weren't for the fashions, it was a nice, pleasant decade. So what do I do now, I didn't do then?

1. I make lists. I resisted this for years--and still rarely do it, but if there is a time crunch, I do make a list. I didn't even make a list for groceries, most of the time in the 70s. I just kept a typed list in my purse (same list every week) and could remember what we did and didn't have. Whatever automatic list maker I had in my head, got all filled up.

2. I belong to a book club now--joined in 2000, and the group is in its 26th year. However, I think I read less, but I do have more variety because on my own I rarely read fiction or mysteries.

3. I'm more proactive about my health, but still hate to exercise.

4. I occasionally have a glass of red wine--didn't drink at all until after my heart ablation in 2002, and still have never tasted beer (I think it smells like something has been left in the laundry basket).

5. I wear glasses now--prescription. I think I purchased reading glasses at a drugstore in the late 70s or early 80s, but didn't get into daily wear until 1993.

6. I travel outside the country now, but for years travel meant driving with 2 kids in the back seat (Mahhhhhaaaam, she's looking at me!) to visit relatives in Indiana and Illinos. Actually, in 1978 we did drive to Florida. Boy, is that a treat with squirmy, quarreling kids.

River cruise Germany and Austria, 2005
7. I spend more money on myself now than I did in the 70s.

8. Now my kids can cook for me, instead of the other way around. That's really great, and they both seem to enjoy entertaining.

Christmas at our son's home, 2006
9. I control more electronic gadgets in a day than what I would do in a year in 1977--digital camera, scanner, printer, 2 computers, email, blogging, cd player, DVD and VCR, several remotes, microwave, etc. Not into I-podding, blackberry, cell phones or MP3-ing. We have 6 TVs--we had one in 1977. The little photograph printer I bought this summer is still in the box, however, and I haven't connected my new mouse.

10. I pay more attention to political, national and international news, and read several newspapers, business and medical journals, but pay less attention to what's happening locally with the schools and city, and only read the local paper a few times a week.

11. I write more--I always wrote a lot (letters, essays, work related things)--a few hours a week, but now it is several hours a day.

12. I drive an older car now--in 1977 I had a 1976 Buick; now I drive a 6 year old van. Of course, I kept that Buick until 1985--tip for you parents: old sedans are great for teenagers.

13. I eat out more--it's a social thing, and there are many more restaurants to tempt us than 30 years ago. I go out earlier now for coffee--used to wait until the kids were in school, now I'm often the first customer.

Thursday Thirteen

The name meme

I saw this over at Jane's and thought it looked like fun.

When I'm famous, my name will be......

1. ROCK STAR NAME: (first pet & current car) Lassie Caravan

2. GANGSTA NAME: (fave ice cream flavor, favorite cookie) Moosetrack Thumbprint

3. “FLY Girl” NAME:(first initial of first name, first three letters of last name) N-Bru

4. DETECTIVE NAME: (favorite color, favorite animal) Coral Pinto

5. SOAP OPERA NAME: (middle name, city where you were born) Joyce Rockford

6. STAR WARS NAME: (first 3 letters of last name, first 2 letters of first) Bruno

7. SUPERHERO NAME: (”The” + 2nd favorite color, favorite drink) The Blue Coffee

8. NASCAR NAME: (first names of grandfathers) Charlie Joe

9. STRIPPER NAME: (favorite perfume. favorite candy) Summer Shower Peanut Butter Cup, or just "B Cup" for short

10.WITNESS PROTECTION NAME: (mother’s & father’s middle names) Inez William

11. TV WEATHER ANCHOR NAME:(5th grade teacher’s last name, a major city that starts with the same letter) Michael Madison

12. SPY NAME/BOND GIRL: (favorite season/holiday, flower) Autumn Rose

13. CARTOON NAME:(favorite fruit, article of clothing you’re wearing right now + “ie” or “y”) Apple Shoozie

14. HIPPY NAME: (What you ate for breakfast, your favorite tree) Honey Crisp Sycamore

15. YOUR ROCKSTAR TOUR NAME: (”The” + Your fave hobby/craft, fave weather element + “Tour”) The Writing Cloud Tour

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Food allergies

No one in my family has them--can't even think of anyone at the cousin level. Nor do I remember this when I was a child. But your heart has to ache for Janeen and her kids, and what she deals with keeping them safe. It's a very educational blog and I'm sure she helps many by sharing her experiences.