How deep is shallow?

Sometimes I'm embarrassed for my sex. A "journalist" for the WSJ, Laura Meckler, and her "source" for her completely anecdotal analysis of the McCain campaign in Ohio, Marilyn Cameron, causes me to think it was a mistake to encourage women to leave the home for the workforce in the 1970s. I've come to expect the WSJ news articles (not the editorial page) to be more liberal than the NYT, but this was so shallow you could actually see the bottom. "In Ohio the economy rules," Feb. 27, 2008

Here's how the story goes--completely hung on the recent (since 2001) experiences of Marilyn Cameron, Ohioan, 65 years old, retired nurse.

1. She's thinking of voting Democratic for the first time since JFK. The article identifies her as 65. Maybe they talked about it in her high school civics class (she would have been 17 when JFK was elected in 1960), but the law wasn't changed until 1971, in response to the VietNam war protests. Neither Meckler or Cameron seemed to realize this--and Meckler was rushing for a deadline and apparently WSJ didn't give her a password and had no way to log on and check the details.

2. Cameron's husband worked for 34 years for the same company and took a buy out in 2001 at age 56. She worked as a nurse and had the benefits. What a sweet deal! Job security for 34 years. And a buy out!! How tough can life get? Did he invest his buy out in stocks or mutual funds and try out something he'd always wanted to do? Or did he buy a new model car or boat? Don't know; doesn't say. Did he sit around and complain with his buddies at the bar, or did he go out and get another job? Don't know; doesn't say. My husband took a buy out (by choice) in 1994 and started his own company, and was never happier, and also never made as much money as he did when he was a partner in a larger firm. We cut all expenses to the bone, didn't go out to eat for a year, and drove his old Nissan until it fell apart. We used my employee benefits.

3. Cameron's daughter is "one pay check away from mortgage foreclosure." So? For the 18 years before our children left home and I went back to work full time, we used every paycheck down to the last penny. We did have a small savings account--not the three months salary that all experts recommend, but we could have covered one mortgage payment. It's called, "planning for emergencies," Ms. Meckler--look it up.

4. Ms. Cameron wanted to retire when she was 64, and "had to withdraw $15,000 from her 401K to pay off bills including $580 a month for health insurance until she qualified for Medicare." This whine hurts my ears! She retires early, and instead of being thankful she could COBRA until eligible for government health insurance, she's a cry baby that she had to use her own money to pay her own bills! I'm guessing she also got Social Security, since she apparently wasn't a state employee in Ohio like me (I'm just waiting for some illegal to try to get SS on my number!)

5. Eleven of her twelve grandchildren have health insurance, but ONE doesn't!! Hello! Young people can accept or reject their employer's health plan. When our kids first left home we were either badgering them to get on a plan or we were taking out short term policies on them. Even 40 year olds turn down health insurance--some people think nothing can happen to them and life style is more important than health plans. Ms. Cameron may have one of those in her family--and I'd say she's darn lucky only ONE isn't insured.

6. Buried at the bottom of the article, where the common sense always appears in the WSJ, is a quote from Ms. Cameron's son, who has a different last name. He is a financial analyst living in Norwalk (so apparently her kids went to college--I'm surprised she didn't complain about paying for college in the 80s). He's the only one who makes sense. "When the government gets its fiscal house in order" things will improve, he says. "Spending is out of control." He also thinks good old mom will NOT vote Democratic.

Remember to cite your sources

or you might get an e-mail from me. Here's a note I sent to a Christian web site.

[the information on your website matches] the text of David Fuller's biography of John Huss in the book, "Valiant for the truth; a treasury of evangelical writings," compiled and edited by David Otis Fuller, McGraw-Hill, 1961, pp.79-81. I think you have incorrectly cited your sources. You have used, word for word, approximately 9 paragraphs, from these pages, and thus, the material should be in quotes, and the book cited, not just the author. Or you need to rewrite the information using your own words, and still site him as a source. Because of U.S. copyright law, which means McGraw Hill owns the way this particular history was put together by Dr. Fuller, you are in violation of the law. That is not a good Christian witness. It's called stealing in the vernacular. I'm sure God forgives, because He probably knows you didn't learn how to properly cite your sources or use research appropriately when you were in school, but a sharp eyed lawyer for a large publishing firm with deep pockets might not be so forgiving. If I found it in 2 seconds using google, so will someone else. The magazine article is also not correctly cited, but I don't have that in front of me. The Book of Martyrs is available in many editions and is probably public domain, and I'm not up on how to cite that, but you'd be safe citing the edition you used.

Don't worry about the polar bears

Do worry about the Jolly Green Giants Marxists taking us hostage by this bogus registering them as endangered. The globe, at least this year, is not getting warmer, it's getting colder. Ask anyone in Wisconsin or northern Illinois where they've had record snowfalls. And that record may only last one year, and it may mean nothing, but it does mean that panels of UN flunkies and Al Gore don't control it.

"Over the past year, anecdotal evidence for a cooling planet has exploded. China has its coldest winter in 100 years. Baghdad sees its first snow in all recorded history. North America has the most snowcover in 50 years, with places like Wisconsin the highest since record-keeping began. Record levels of Antarctic sea ice, record cold in Minnesota, Texas, Florida, Mexico, Australia, Iran, Greece, South Africa, Greenland, Argentina, Chile -- the list goes on and on." DailyTech Blog

4670

At the food pantry

The weather is nasty today, so I'm hitching a ride down town to work at the Lutheran Social Services food pantry. Catch you later.

4669

Automobile reviews for dog lovers

There's no end to helpful information on the internet. Here's DogCars.com which reviews cars and their dog-friendly features. My favorite, a Dodge Caravan. It got a 5 paw review (best). And I don't even have a dog!

"One of the problems I’ve seen with many of the vehicles I’ve driven is that the manufacturers have traded cargo space for passenger space. Third-row seats that are hard to get rid of and second rows that don’t fold flat seem more common than ever. Swell for the folks hauling little Susie and all her Brownie troop friends, but hell for those of use who are trying to ditch the seats (cup holders, DVD players, etc.) and make room for Rover.

Nothing I’ve yet seen handles this challenge as well as the Stow ‘N Go seats in the Dodge and Chrysler minivans. You can go from having a seven-passenger van to having a wide-open cargo van in less than five minutes. You can have some seats but not others. The seats disappear into the floorboards in so many different ways and so easily that even I, with my minivan ennui, was impressed beyond all measure. The seats you don’t stow? Pull up the floorboards in front of them and … more there’s cargo room underneath!"

My brother has one of these--really a neat car. Maybe my next van. . .

Kids are swearing more

Now, where do you suppose they learned it? Timothy Jay says teenagers use 80-90 swear words a day. I saw Melanie Glover's Sacramento Bee article in the Columbus Dispatch. I didn't swear as a child; still don't. My parents didn't; my friends didn't. My own kids learn to swear and cuss on the playground in grade school.

From the blogs I read by women, I'm guessing that today children are learning to cuss and swear from their mommies, if she gets off her cell phone long enough to yell at them in the back seat of the SUV. Even Christian moms seem to think that "being real" is a better witness than being modest or well-spoken.

The inequality myth

Wall Street Journal's Carol Hymowitz again trots out the old saw that women with the same level of education earn 20-25% less than a man and the glass ceiling is turning to steel. Here. I know from our stock annual reports that there are darn few women on the boards of major corporations. But ask yourself, is it diversity if they are just smaller or darker versions of the good old boys who are already on the board? When they get to that point in power, prestige and income, just what would they be bringing to the table that would benefit women and minorities on their way up--people who went to college with a GED or after military service or who attended a junior college and lived at home before transferring? Now that would be true diversity. If they aren't representing me, the investor, then why would they be on the board? What did an expensive Ivy League education get Mama Obama? She's raising her kids and supporting her husband's career! What woman in her right mind would give up that to sell plastics or mine coal from the office board room?

But Hymowitz's statistics (supplied I think by Catalyst) lie anyway, the value of diversity aside. They are not adjusting for the right variables. Thirty five years ago claiming "same education" might have made sense; today it doesn't. They need to be looking at women who

first and foremost are married, because most top male executives are--today marriage is the big divider between getting by and doing well

have a spouse who manages the home, the nanny and the housekeeper

have a spouse willing to chauffer the children to sports and activities, take the pets to the vet, serve on the school committees, meet with the teachers, make all the appointments for doctor, dentist and hair cuts, hire and supervise the lawn service, oversee the nutritional needs of the household, and help out mom and dad at the retirement home

who are willing to work 60-80 hours a week

who spend hundreds of hours a year on the Bluetooth while sitting in airports, sleeping in first class on airplanes

who are willing to have no personal relationships with other women, or maybe occasional casual sex with lower ranked male colleagues

who are willing to endure the long commute from the fashionable suburban McMansion

who can, and this is critical, show that they have never bumped anyone better qualified out of line because of affirmative action or need for diversity in the company (which brings huge resentment with networking colleagues whether or not they admit it)

I'm at risk

of sounding like Mama Obama, but I'm not proud of my country when I experience our entertainment industry, which seems to define us around the world--TV and film and popular music. I walked through the living room in time to hear Jon Stewart making Hitler jokes at the Academy Awards last night, and left in disgust. My husband and I disagree on how to waste time. I went back to reading blogs. Molly Willow of the Columbus Dispatch didn't mention it--just said he was better than last year. That must have been excrutiating or her decency meter is screwed up.

Three of the best ensemble casts you'll ever see are found on the sets and story-lines of Ugly Betty, House, and Boston Legal. However, they are so anti-Christian and left leaning, I've stopped watching them. The assaults on sexual morality in Ugly Betty became very predictable even while clever and "fresh," gay jokes having been pushed aside for transexual. On Boston Legal, only the partner with dementia is allowed to make a conservative or sensible, practical comment. And B.L. isn't even subtle about bimbo women lawyers. I've lost track (haven't watched in about 2 years) of the female actors, each with fabulous looks and ever more plunging blouses and unbuttoned shirts--they were furniture designed to enhance the male leads.

Dr. House? He thinks people who talk to God are religious, but those who hear God's voice are crazy. As though Hugh Laurie would know God if he stepped out from behind a burning bush. Yes, Michelle, there are times we aren't proud of our country either.

Why is she always late? Monday Memories

It's Monday--the schedule shows lots of meetings. You're tapping your fingers watching the second hand of the clock, wishing the chair would get this show on the road. But they're waiting for the late comers. Why is that? I answered this puzzling question here.

Monday Memories

The lawyers are lining up as you read

Newt warned of this in a WSJ column a while back, and here's another from Feb. 11. Not that the Dems would listen, but Newt urged them to let Michigan and Florida have their say (they were smacked down and thrown out of the selection process for flexing too much independence) to avoid this possible fight. The nightmare of "super-delegates," one of whom is Bill Clinton, and other powerful rich Dems wiping out the little guy, is not a pretty picture. I hope that security patrol around Obama is pretty secure--messing with the Clinton machine has been dangerous for life, limb, career and reputation since their Arkansas days.

"For over seven years the Democratic Party has fulminated against the Electoral College system that gave George W. Bush the presidency over popular-vote winner Al Gore in 2000. But they have designed a Rube Goldberg nominating process that could easily produce a result much like the Electoral College result in 2000: a winner of the delegate count, and thus the nominee, over the candidate favored by a majority of the party's primary voters. . .

Would the U.S. Supreme Court even take the case after having been excoriated for years by liberals for daring to restore order in the Florida vote-counting in 2000? And, would Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, the dissenters in Bush v. Gore, feel as strongly about not intervening if Sen. Obama was fighting against an effort to change a presidential election by changing the rules after the fact? Will there be a brief filed by Floridians who didn't vote in their state's primary because the party had decided, and the candidates had agreed, that the results wouldn't count?" -- Theodore B. (Ted) Olson

(HT Doyle)

Also, the two drawings of the candidates in the WSJ article are the ones used most frequently, however, don't you think Hillary looks much younger--maybe by 20 years--and Barack looks much darker and older, maybe by 10 years and one additional black grandparent? Is this Wall Street Journal's way to influence the selection/election, and just who will be influenced by this subtle tweaking of features? Women? Blacks? Republicans? Artistic readers?

Obama

One other reason to vote for McCain

That makes two. National security is number one. Anyone come up with three?

Ed Morrissey at Captain's Quarters says: "At least two Supreme Court justices will likely leave in the next four years, both of them from the Left, John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The election will determine whether the court continues to turn in a more constructionist direction, forcing policy back to Congress where it belongs, or whether activists can outlast the constructionists. Jurists nominated by Obama or Hillary will have a much different idea of the Supreme Court's role than those nominated by McCain."

I'm still of the opinion that the Supreme Court shouldn't be making law. That's how the left sneaks around the will of the people, but we elect Representatives and Senators to make law, not just so they have a playground to go out and run for President.

Campaign rhetoric and the Bible

In office, politicians have their hands in your pocket; but during the campaign, those hands are in the Bible, picking and choosing verses for just the right moment. Once in office, politicians all pretty much do the same--ask for more money. Methods differ--JFK, Reagan, and Bush all brought more money into the government coffers by cutting taxes of the wealthiest; our current crop of campaigners, want to raise taxes of the wealthiest, because it isn't income, but gaps that concern them.

Standing on scripture, they all have a good foundation--wealth and money is one of the most common topics in the Bible, ranging from not worshiping it, giving the government what it asks for, and sharing it with the less fortunate. It is fertile ground for the seeds of political campaigns, particularly with an electorate that claims a high percentage of belief in God--at least when polled. (Nearly 70% in 2007 according to Barna Research).

The conservatives preach a hope found in the individual. This message of hope tells us we can do anything we want, achieve any goal by our own effort and builds our pride in a nation that allows this because it is rooted in Biblical principles.

The liberals preach a hope found in a compassionate bureaucracy and code of laws, ever changing to meet the needs of the moment. This message of hope tells us we aren't there yet, but in our collective weakness there will eventually be strength to defeat all the forces of hunger, disease and personal unhappiness, even that brought on by our own behavior.

Both conservatives and liberals use either Moses leading people to the promise land (Old Testament) or the city on the hill (New Testament) to rally the crowds, to promote a bill, or filabuster a colleague's plan.

The conservatives during political campaigns urge us to remove the scaffolding that has been built up around our Constitution, a maze of court decisions, layers of codes, and reams of bills and laws, choking off access to the original structure.

The liberals during political campaigns urge us to see the structure as still crumbling and unfinished, in need of more scaffolding, not less, more carpenters, brick layers, hod carriers, right down to the tiniest nail and brad.

Over time, it has been easier to believe that a government is kind, benign and well-intentioned than to trust and believe in the goodness and decency of our neighbor, or even ourselves. After all, we don't even live up to our own standards, we'd better slap on another layer of government to make sure we do and say the right things.

Although I'm a Christian, I'm not a Dispensationalist--I don't pour over biblical texts to piece together a theory of end times and use that as a reason to believe. But no matter who is preaching that theme, my high school classmate Dave who sends out via e-mail teachings exhorting us to believe, or the TV/radio preacher, or the pastor in your church, I've noticed that the United States doesn't seem to be remotely included in any of those texts.

And that does worry me. Do you suppose we should stop standing on the Bible and start believing it?

Orphans of the Revolution

Carlos Eire, a Yale professor and author of "Waiting for Snow in Havana," talks about his life as one of Castro’s orphans, a Cuban tragedy from the 1960s. He was sent by his parents to the U.S. when he was 11 to protect him from Castro and communism. Even as a young child within a year after the revolution he noticed in school the group think and the fear of speaking out. His father died in 1976--he never saw him again. Here's a story that wouldn't sell in Hollywood. Those folks love Castro.

From the Wall Street Journal Online

Party on for the party

According to the NYT which was sniffing out how campaigns were spending their money, for Hillary

"Nearly $100,000 went for party platters and groceries before the Iowa caucuses, even though the partying mood evaporated quickly. Rooms at the Bellagio luxury hotel in Las Vegas consumed more than $25,000; the Four Seasons, another $5,000. And top consultants collected about $5 million in January, a month of crucial expenses and tough fund-raising."

That's got to make the little party faithfuls who've been sending in their checks from Social Security of $25 or $30 feel a bit sick. $11,000 for pizza in just January?

And then I read. . .what made the big donors angry. I know they've got money to burn, but they want results.

The firm that includes Mark Penn, Mrs. Clinton's chief strategist and pollster, and his team collected $3.8 million for fees and expenses in January; in total, including what the campaign still owes, the firm has billed more than $10 million for consulting, direct mail and other services, an amount other Democratic strategists who are not affiliated with either campaign called stunning.

Rich pols in both parties just have no concept of how the rest of us live, do they? Think of that next time she gets teary over the plight of the working family.

Story link.

County seats of Ohio

When you don't grow up in a state, these things don't come naturally. So here is a map of the counties with their county seats. I've been here 40 years now, it's time for me to know that Port Clinton is the county seat of Ottawa County where we have a second home, and that Sandusky isn't in Sandusky County, nor is Upper Sandusky, Ottawa isn't in Ottawa County, and Urbana is the county seat of Champaign County (I wonder if homesick Ohioans settled in central Illinois?). Now that I've joined the State of Ohio Blogger Alliance, I'd better know some of these county issues.

TB--Technology Burnout

I think I have it. Last night I reloaded the software on my HP laptop for the 4th or 5th time in a year--I've learned not to keep valuable files on it. But the cd burner works, which doesn't on my old PC. My new PC is in the guest room still boxed up--I bought it before Christmas. Not only will I have to learn Vista, but some of my favorite programs will not work, because they are generations old as software counts its age. My A-fib kicks in just contemplating moving from my old Family Tree Maker to the new version. What if I lose a great great grandparent in the transition? That cute little photo printer I wrote about last July? Still in the box.

My husband wants to show his photos of Haiti to the children at Highland school where he helps in the math/science class. This preciptated the great CD hunt for the photos from last year; then looking at the disc someone else made because that's all we could find; which meant a hunt for our old DVD player (got a new one at Christmas from our daughter), thinking our disc might be in it; and sorting through various untitled discs in my office; and finding the new mouse that doesn't work with anything. Once I got the laptop up and running, we inserted various discs and I taught him how to look at those files and tediously move 167 photos into a new folder I'd created on the laptop--truly you don't want to subject 4th graders to 700 photos, some (many) badly composed. Whoever had made the disc we were viewing had folders within folders within folders, plus had misspelled Ouanaminthe on everything (used a Q in stead of an O, and it doesn't really matter, it's just annoying--and I often misspell it too--think "Juana").

All this leads up to Walt's 100th edition of Cites & Insights. Although he is writing for the library crowd, both the IT people and librarians (he's IT), he covers a lot of territory that I think is useful for people like me--teetering on the edge of insanity over technology changes and frustrations. His style of writing is so much like mine I often resolve to change after I read an issue--adverbosity, side bars, parentheticals, interesting asides, philosophical insights, etc., but he is left of center and I am right of center. He pretty much stays out of politics in his professional writing, so that part doesn't matter much. Being a reformed liberal, I notice it, however. Even after reading his assessment on the paper/print costs of various printers, I printed the whole issue and plan to enjoy it this morning at the coffee shop. If I can get there. We had an ice storm last night. Thanks, Walt, and congratulations on your 100th issue. I need you more every day!

Change: coins of a low denomination

Democratic Debate. Austin, Feb. 21, 2008

unified to bring about changes in this country.

we now have an opportunity to potentially change the relationship between the United States and Cuba after over half a century.

solid agenda for moving change forward in the next presidency.

And it is my strong belief that the changes are only going to come about if we're able to form a working coalition for change

And that's a policy that I'm going to change when I'm president of the United States. [outreach to Mexico]

I do think there is a fundamental difference between us [Clinton and Obama] in terms of how change comes about

I've been talking about making sure that we change our tax code so that working families actually get relief.

and so my plan was pretty good. It's not as good now, but my plan hasn't changed. The politics have changed a little bit.

the American people have to be involved and educated about how this change is going to be brought about.

but if we don't change how the politics is working in Washington,

and that's what I intend to change when I am president of the United States of America.

Channeling FDR

The U.S. could have been out of the Great Depression by 1933, saving our parents and grandparents much grief. When you look at our recovery compared to Canada’s or some of the European nations, you see how FDR’s diddling and fiddling, setting up an alphabet soup of agencies to bring business under the heavy hand of the federal government, practically destroyed the country. The war didn't save us economically--we were pulling out of the FDR quagmire by 1941--but it took his eye off the ball, and he had to put his energies elsewhere. The rhetoric I hear today from Hillabama sounds like they’ve been channeling his speeches and ideas from the 1930s.

“Roosevelt’s death on April 12, 1945, removed from the presidency an enormously shrewd and resourceful leader who had for the past decade expressed a hostility bordering on hatred for investors as a class. Many business people, among others, had feared that FDR harbored dictatorial ambition; some believed that he ultimately did exercise arbitrary power in some if not all areas—for instance, his unconstitutional “destroyer deal” of 1940 in which, without congressional approval, he gave away fifty warships of the U.S. Navy to a foreign power. His demise must have enhanced the confidence many investors felt in the future security of their remaining private property rights.”

"Regime uncertainty: Why the Great Depression lasted so long and why prosperity resumed after the War,” by Robert Higgs, Independent Review, vol. 1, no. 4, Spring 1997, pp. 561-590. Here.

Obama

A warehouse full of abandoned hope

If you don't like Bush's NCLB, maybe you'll prefer what the Democrats have done in Detroit? This story about education in Detroit at Sweet Juniper (HT Blake at LIS.com) turned my stomach. Somebody's taxes paid for this. Yours and mine.

"This is a building where our deeply-troubled public school system once stored its supplies, and then one day apparently walked away from it all, allowing everything to go to waste. The interior has been ravaged by fires and the supplies that haven't burned have been subjected to 20 years of Michigan weather. To walk around this building transcends the sort of typical ruin-fetishism and "sadness" some get from a beautiful abandoned building. This city's school district is so impoverished that students are not allowed to take their textbooks home to do homework, and many of its administrators are so corrupt that every few months the newspapers have a field day with their scandals, sweetheart-deals, and expensive trips made at the expense of a population of children who can no longer rely on a public education to help lift them from the cycle of violence and poverty that has made Detroit the most dangerous city in America. To walk through this ruin, more than any other, I think, is to obliquely experience the real tragedy of this city; not some sentimental tragedy of brick and plaster, but one of people.

Pallet after pallet of mid-1980s Houghton-Mifflin textbooks, still unwrapped in their original packaging, seem more telling of our failures than any vacant edifice. The floor is littered with flash cards, workbooks, art paper, pencils, scissors, maps, deflated footballs and frozen tennis balls, reel-to-reel tapes. Almost anything you can think of used in the education of a child during the 1980s is there, much of it charred or rotted beyond recognition. Mushrooms thrive in the damp ashes of workbooks. Ailanthus altissima, the "ghetto palm" grows in a soil made by thousands of books that have burned, and in the pulp of rotted English Textbooks. Everything of any real value has been looted. All that's left is an overwhelming sense of knowledge unlearned and untapped potential. It is almost impossible not to see all this and make some connection between the needless waste of all these educational supplies and the needless loss of so many lives in this city to poverty and violence, though the reality of why these supplies were never used is unclear. In some breathtakingly-beautiful expression of hope, an anonymous graffiti artist has painted a phoenix-like book rising from the ashes of the third floor."

The writer claims not to know why these supplies were never used. Isn't that odd? Pork is pork, whether it's New Orleans levees or Detroit's schools or a bridge to nowhere in Alaska, and somewhere on a dusty shelf there is a book with a list of the guilty who promised the children of Detroit they'd bring home the bacon. The writer seems to have made it out alive with excellent communications skills, so let's hope there were others. You just won't believe the photographs.

If there's a huge, crumbling American city with corrupt government and do-nothing state reps in DC that is controlled by the Republican machine, I have forgotten the name. But maybe in Detroit they "have hope" for "a change" sometime in "the future." Maybe they're swooning over Obama if they've forgotten their history.

Someone thinks an MLS matters

While browsing through the University of Illinois Library School (not called that anymore--maybe never was) announcements I noticed that on Feb. 27 there would be a talk by Rya Ben-Shir, MLS, Senior Manager, Intelligencenter, Takeda Pharmaceuticals North America, Inc. Deerfield, Illinois on why she and Takeda Pharmaceuticals insist on MLS/MLIS prepared librarians for all of their librarian positions. How novel. Illinois didn't choose an MLS trained librarian as their Dean, John Unsworth,--they went for high tech--and Ohio State's Library Director, Joe Branin, is moving that direction by proposing the MLS be removed as a requirement for professional positions. I think we could see the writing on the wall when a number of years ago, they added “be willing to obtain an MLS within two years” so they could attract some skills or ethnic groups to round out the technical and affirmative action requirements. Often that was stop gap, with the new hires moving on quickly, because then they had both the MLS and the desired status that other institutions were wanting. ALA is no help. It pokes its leftist nose into every little cranny of political and navel gazing movement, leaving librarians to struggle on their own with low salaries, failing bond issues, and a professional leadership always chasing the talent brass ring of other professions. It wouldn't surprise me if ALA takes pride in the fact that beginning librarians, with advanced degrees, probably qualify for government earned income relief, government health insurance for their children and school lunch programs.

When two college kids invented a better way a mere decade ago to find and serve up information (Google), and librarians oo'd and ah'd, dithered and quivered over digital rights, and then went on with business as usual to save the world through socialist politics and local lyceums, our fate was sealed. And they, idealist entrepreneurs, became millionaires many times over. We should have stuck with our knitting.

Meet our newest pastor

Eric Waters. Here's his first sermon at the X-Alt service at Lytham Rd., UALC (Upper Arlington Lutheran Church which has 3 campuses) and it's on God's wrath. http://tech.ualc.org/mp3/audio/080217EWLRX.mp3 Listen carefully as he reads God's word to the Romans. He's not reading. He speaks the scripture from memory, and it makes a huge difference as you watch him, because he's also performing it with facial expression and hand movements. But before you get the good news, you need the bad news. So it's a good introduction not only to him, but to the gospel. His speech pattern, you'll notice, is not midwestern--he's come to us from Fargo, ND but grew up in New York state. However, he was a Russian major in college, worked for awhile in Siberia, and I think I detect that in the up and down, the flow, the staccato. See what you think.

Isn't this backwards?

According to a story at The Kept Up Librarian

The University of Oklahoma is hoping to keep more high-achieving upperclassmen living on campus by giving them cash rebates for good grades. President David Boren said OU would be the first in the Big 12 to reward on-campus students for high grade-point averages. The initiative, called the OU Academic Success Rebate Program, will reward upper-class and graduate students living in OU Traditions Square or the residence halls beginning this fall. Read more at:
http://newsok.com/article/3204456/1202968564

I thought you got the best results by rewarding the low achievers, taking the money from the high achievers by raising their fees and driving them off campus, or better yet, out of state. That's how the Hillabama Democrats would do it.

The Democrats and taxing the rich

The campaign ads display Hillabama pulling out all the old, old class rhetoric from the 60s--I guess they don't realize all those spoiled, struggling boomers the lefties romanced back then are now well-heeled 60 year olds. They were in control of Congress for so many years, I wonder why all of society's problems weren't fixed? Yes, they will stop those tax breaks for the rich. Drum roll. Women faint. Men swoon. Businesses and corporations leave for friendlier climes.

The Democrats created the Alternative Minimum Tax in 1969, but due to bipartisan neglect neither party has fixed it. It's a mess of unintended consequences--known as the "stealth tax." It was originally set up to punish 19,000 very successful, wealthy Americans who weren't paying taxes (millions at the bottom don't pay taxes because people at the top pay for them, but that's OK--that's fair). The AMT was not set up to account for inflation, so now it scams many who are not even close to wealthy by today's standards, and if you're subject to it, you can't deduct your state and local taxes. The AMT wasn't even set up to get revenue--it was some bureaucrat's idea of "fair," and it never even achieved that! It's a boon for the tax preparers, though; that's one industry our government constantly helps out--compliance costs the US taxpayer millions and millions and many hours that could be used productively in something else. Now with the bipartisan ennui, they are raking in so much money, they're afraid to drop it, so they make temporary fixes and patches. Twenty six million Americans will be snagged by the AMT for 2008 according to today's paper*, up from 4 million for 2007 and 2006.

And how about that wonderful, bipartisan stimulus package? Those who contribute the most to the economy and pay the most taxes will get nothing back. The $112 billion in "stimulus" is phased out for individuals paying taxes on incomes over $75,000, or jointly on $150,000. How's that for fair?

Nor will there be "debt relief" for those who were sensible and played by the sound rules of 20% down, fixed rate mortgages, and a budgeted percentage of their income for housing. They'll be bailing out the neighbors who went for no money down, false documents and the adjusted rates, which if they had read the contract, always go up. They have no choice but to send more money to Washington, because if they don't, the neighborhood will go. What Suckers! But Hillabama to the rescue. They'll fix it--by making the honest guy pay.

*Although I don't have a link to the article I read on the AMT, here is one very similar.

obama

Three Word Wednesday

Bone has posted for 3WW

Punch
T-shirt
Unravel

for us to play with this week. Before I checked the clues, I was sorting laundry, and again thinking about how I could turn the old t-shirts from VBS, traveling, library conferences and organizations into a quilt. My mom used to cut t-shirts into strips and crochet the fabric into rugs, but quilting them saves the event or organization, and thus your memories. I've got San Antonio, Seattle and Shedd's Museum. I've got a "I heart my library," and Walk with Majors. I've got a Lakeside Ohio tour of my husband's projects. I've got dogs, horses and kitties. So here's my little poem. The photo is from Goose tracks and she will quilt t-shirts supplied by you for a fee, if you're not crafty or don't have the time.

Punch up the memories,
unravel the past,
cut up those t-shirts,
the first and the last

Arrange the design
and a contrasting thread,
make a new coverlet
to place on the bed.

Men's fashion

At the coffee shop this morning I consulted with one of the regulars, a man who formerly managed a men's store, about this photo. I'm not up on floral ties--at least not since I used to make neckties for my husband back in the early 1970s. And I think he took a few resembling this with him on the Haiti mission and left them there.

This photo is in the March 2008 Architectural Digest in a double page layout featuring a yellow sports car in front of a stone mansion (or it could be that stone house in Attica, Ohio). This photo nips off the top of the model's head a little. My consultant shook his head and said, "No, blue with a small print would work." I went all through the Lauren web page looking for this photo, finding instead the same model in the same suit with a blue tie. Finally, I located it in a style guide. The model has a nose like a hockey player, and that makes his face interesting and less effeminate. The slickered hair and large lapels give him a sense of history--1930s or 40s. He's the most featured model at that web site. And I don't think the point of the right lapel sticking up above the shoulder line is an oversight. . . it seems to be purposeful to draw your eye there to linger for awhile. And yet, the leaf of the flower is perfectly centered in the knot of the tie. The model's eyes repeat the color scheme and the horizontal white chair back peeking over his left shoulder is repeated in the white hanky.

A man dressed like this . . .well, anyway, it is a very purposeful, artistic composition.

House cleaning tips

I'm now officially an S.O.B. Yes, I've joined the State of Ohio Blogger Alliance. I looked through a few of the sites, read some good ones and decided to join. I had a little trouble with the code, but you can find it down the left side, somewhere below medical and before the 50+ folks.

Today I ran clear water through my little 3 cup coffee maker. I always go out for coffee--in fact, I'm known for my bad coffee. But I made coffee for my dinner party Friday night and this morning for my husband (I usually bring it home, but forgot). Everyone commented on how good the coffee was. Now that I've cleaned the pot, I've probably removed whatever was causing that.

The clothes my husband brought home from the Haiti mission trip were really dirty. He unpacked in the laundry room and put everything in sorted piles, and then cleaned the suitcases. Haiti is very dusty and dirty because over the years the people have cut down all the trees for fuel and cooking. When I went down to load the laundry this morning, I discovered the cat had thrown up a hair ball and last night's supper in the shirt pile. Oh well, saved the carpet.

I heard a laundry tip on the radio a few months ago that really seems to work. Wash your whites with bleach in COLD water instead of hot. The bleach works more effectively. I was skeptical, but I think I'm a believer.

Omama. I have change, hope and a future.

The future of hope

In the Baker's Dictionary of Christian Ethics, (1973) Hope is defined as

"the conviction that God will judge the evil of the world and create a new heaven and a new earth with righteousness. The Old Testament prophets tell us that the whole of history is divinely ordered, and interpreted even the most hopeless hours in the light of the coming victory of God. A new age will replace the present one and end all woe and sin."

I suspect that isn't the direction Barry and Mama Obama are taking us.

"The New Testament takes up the theme of the Old Testament idea, but elucidates, sharpens, and specifies it at the same time."

Is this where Obama comes in?

"Jesus through his life, suffering, death, and resurrection laid the basis for that final intervention of God in history and human experience. Christian hope is concerned with the future of every human being, but it does not end there. The overarching concern encompasses the new humanity or Christ's church."

So the hope is the Kingdom of God? Seems to be some disagreement even among Christians about "what is our hope?"

"The theologians of hope want to rewrite theology in terms of categories of change--a total restructuring takes place where God is seen as part of the changing process."

Hmm. Did this guy write Obama's theme speeches? Hope, future, change? This might be the most religious guy we've ever had running for the White House! Oh, wait.

"As promised in the Scriptures, [hope is] demonstrated in the resurrection of God's Son, and experienced by Christians in the past and present."

My hope is built on nothing less
Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.
I dare not trust the sweetest frame,
But wholly trust in Jesus’ Name.

On Christ the solid Rock I stand,
All other ground is sinking sand;
All other ground is sinking sand.

When darkness seems to hide His face,
I rest on His unchanging grace.
In every high and stormy gale,
My anchor holds within the veil.

On Christ the solid Rock I stand,
All other ground is sinking sand;
All other ground is sinking sand.

His oath, His covenant, His blood,
Support me in the whelming flood.
When all around my soul gives way,
He then is all my Hope and Stay.

On Christ the solid Rock I stand,
All other ground is sinking sand;
All other ground is sinking sand.

When He shall come with trumpet sound,
Oh may I then in Him be found.
Dressed in His righteousness alone,
Faultless to stand before the throne.

On Christ the solid Rock I stand,
All other ground is sinking sand;
All other ground is sinking sand.

Obama

4645

Cite your sources!

There's a full page ad in the paper today from the State of New York Commissioner of Health addressed to Disney, GE, News Corp., Sony, Time Warner and Viacom.

"The science is clear: exposure to smoking in movies is the single most powerful pro-tobacco influence on children today, accounting for the recruitment of half of all new adolescent smokers."

No one is more anti-tobacco than I am, but for statements like that, I'd like to see some sources. It sounds like big government trying to push aside the influence of parenting, church, school, social network, and the non-Hollywood arts industry. I went on-line and looked at various studies (CDC, BMJ) read through the summaries, then the corrections, then the citations where authors were often citing themselves (bad form), and I even came across one that said that although incidence of smoking in movies was going down, smoking was going up! And yet the letter claims,

"Tobacco imagery delivers nearly 200,000 U.S. adolescents into tobacco addition each year."

I think, if I read correctly, that for a certain percentage of young teens who try smoking, many have seen a movie in the past year where actors were smoking. I don't know how many who try smoking after seeing an R movie (and where are their parents?) have also been taken to concerts, art museums, plays, library story hours, school lyceums, sporting events and school parties. Do they want to buy a hockey stick or a box of watercolors? I hope they've adjusted for other influences. I suspect that the first cigarette needs to be reinforced by some other type of influence--either genetic predisposition, family members who smoke, or peer acceptance or all three. My son, who is trying to stop his 20+ year addiction, says he was hooked after the first cigarette because he liked how it made him feel. Then smoking behavior was reinforced at school, which at that time allowed it on campus. I tried smoking in junior high, and again in college. It didn't do a thing for me, tasted awful and made my clothes and hair stink, plus I had disapproval from friends, so what would be the point? Smoking was probably in every movie I'd ever seen in the 1950s and 60s and when I was in high school, I saw several movies a week. And they really made it look glamorous and fun in those days. Obesity is passing tobacco as a health problem. Especially in childhood. Next: no movies showing restaurants, eating or snacking. No previews announcing food in the lobby. No popcorn allowed.

So guys, if the science is clear, make your citations clear also.

Michelle Obama helps John McCain

Michelle Obama who probably is wealthier and has more education than 90% of the the US population is so distraught about how awful it is to be an American lawyer, educated at Ivy League prestigious universities, married to a Senator, that her speech has really invigorated the right to come out for McCain.

“For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country,” she told a Milwaukee crowd, “because it feels like hope is making a comeback.”

If this is the "hope" and the "future" and the "change" that her husband represents, we'd better start looking for the good old days, because this woman is totally self-absorbed, spoiled and stuck-on-stupid. Yes, Michelle, you have convinced me. I'll hold my nose and vote for McCain rather than someone whose knowledge of politics and history extends to the tip of her pretty nose and sound of her mellifluous voice.

I'm beginning to think that both Hillary and Obama need to deep six their spouses until after the election. With supporters like this, they won't need enemies.

Home from Haiti

My husband has returned from a mission trip to Haiti. He loves the people, even though it is a bit of a culture shock going in and coming home. This year he was more prepared, mentally and physically. He worked on some construction projects building covers for medical equipment for the clinic and taught a class in architectural drawing to 12th graders. They loved it, and so did he. These kids are so bright and motivated, he says it is a real pleasure to work with them.

This is a photo of the Ouanaminthe Airport, and he did NOT fly in here (thank goodness!) The team flew into the Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic, and were picked up by our pastor, Dave Mann, in a school bus for a 4.5 ride to the border city of Dajabon. Because the border is closed by the time they get there, they spend the night in a hotel, and continue on in the morning, but it's only about 10 more minutes. They get there in time for church. You can fly from the capital, Port-au-Prince, to the Ouanaminthe airport in about 30 minutes, but it would be about 11 hours (bad roads) by bus, so that's why they fly into Santo Domingo. Both countries are on the same island. The standard of living, the infrastructure, the industry, and the greenery of the countryside are night and day, and they are divided by a river named Massacre.

Please don't squeeze. . .

Meredith Whipple of Columbus, Ohio, had a letter in the paper (USA Today):

"When I see a political leader relying on the Word of God to solve the nation's problems, I begin to question whether he or she has a real strategy in place."

When I see a political leader relying on the Word of God I will be in a state of shock, because I've never seen it. Black or white, Democrat or Republican, male or female, Jew or Gentile, gay or straight, Red or Blue state, fat or thin, Berkeley or Boise, I just have never seen a leader of this nation from zoning board to the White House, rely on the Word of God. Sprinkling a few god words in a speech during campaign season to warm the hearts of the voters doesn't qualify, Ms. Whipple.

Lose 5 lbs. by Easter

10 lbs. by Memorial Day. That was the story in USAToday this morning. So that's 5 weeks, or a pound a week. There were some interesting suggestions--in addition to more veggies and fruit, portion control, etc., which I hope we all know by now.

Put magazines with covers of fit people on your coffee table.

Hang a summer outfit where you can see it.

Decrease or eliminate fruit juice and sugary drinks, as well as alcohol and coffee dessert drinks.

Sit down at the table to eat.

One pound of fat contains about 3,500 calories, so to lose one pound a week, you should eat 500 fewer calories each day. That probably means my husband will need to finish the chocolate peanut butter pie that's in the frig.

Colorful food tend to be more nutrient dense--blueberries, broccoli, peppers, etc. Remember, mother always said to eat all the colors. That's probably not dark chocolate candy, or golden corn chips.

If you drink a glass of water before a meal, you'll feel more full.

Before you go for seconds, wait 10 minutes; your body will probably tell you that you're already full. Of course, in some homes, everyone will have left the kitchen or cleared the table if you wait ten minutes. Everyone is in such a hurry!

Wear a pedometer. 1000 steps is 1/2 mile. 10 flights of stairs is one mile.

Eat real food. Take the word "snack" right out of your vocabulary. Think about it. A snack usually increases your hunger, not decreases it. It's a set up--don't go down that aisle, don't try that recipe. It's a trick. And a billion dollar business.

See www.smallstep.gov for more tips.

Can you define a "living wage?"

Or, how about an "American working family?" These terms are pandering policy pablum. It's like trying to figure out the word, "uninsured." It's nailing Jello to the wall.

Let's begin with two classic cases--both single moms with 2 children. Melanie had a significant other she met in college, but they never married, and he's wandered off the reservation looking for more significance. Her first pregnancy stopped her education, and besides, she liked staying home with cute babies. She doesn't know where the SO is, so there's no child support. She's working at Wendy's for $7.00 an hour--$14,800/year. She's not unhappy; she likes the work--has flexible hours, regular customers she knows by face and order, and can walk to work, although she has a "beater" car. She's a whiz at e-Bay and picks up a little cash by hitting the garage sales on her day off. She's worked at a dry-cleaners but the fumes bothered her, and at Tim Horton's, but the scheduling didn't suit, and has waitressed at family restaurants like Applebee's and Bag of Nails earning more, but she likes the management here. She occasionally dates the men she meets on the other side of the counter.

Then there's Tanika. She's divorced and her husband has decided to find himself in the entertainment world, but borrows more money than he sends. He drinks or smokes what is left after he's paid under the table at various clubs when his group performs. Each time she talks to him, he's just about to land the big break. Tanika's no dummy. She's always been told that education is the key to a better life. With help from her parents and various scholarships, and some state aid, she has finally completed the Kent State program in Library Science. Although she's relieved to have landed a job in the public library of a nice suburb of Columbus for $16.40 an hour in a tight job market, she does have to work some evenings and occasional week-ends, and has no flexibility to trade hours. Also, she's got some whopping school debts to repay, and she's maxed out several credit cards. Her dad keeps her car repaired and running. Her mom invites her and the kids over for dinner often, and babysits when Tanika works evenings and week-ends. The library is so busy, she knows none of the people who pass through. Social life is zilch, nada, nyet and she's too pooped to even take the kids to the pool. Her day off is a school day, so she volunteers at the Lutheran Food Pantry.

As you might have surmised, Melanie is better off than Tanika, plus she could have the satisfaction of knowing she is keeping a small army of government workers busy!

She is eligible for a piece of the Earned Income Tax Credit ($40+ billion), which is a cash supplement to wages of the "working poor," and at her income that's an additional $4,536 a year.

At various times she has received help from Temporary Assistance to Needy Families because of the dead-beat dad thing until her eligibility ran out. Between jobs, she stayed on unemployment benefits as long as she could--one time almost 3 years. Although she much prefers working, she never felt a sitter did as good a job with the kids as she could do herself.

She receives a housing voucher ($16 billion), which is much more pleasant than having to live in "the projects," and although there are others in her complex--actually many--no one seems to notice. In fact, she and Tanika's family don't live far from each other and the kids play together at the pool.

In addition to food stamps, which add about $100 a week to her grocery budget* ($35 billion through USDA), her children are eligible for the National Student Lunch Program, the Breakfast Program, the after school snack program, and the summer lunch program--plus she gets her own meals at Wendy's. In fact, they're all packing on a few extra pounds--no one is going hungry, that's for sure. The NSL and SBP (from the Ohio Department of Education via the USDA) also provide these services to runaways, homeless and migrant children, but Melanie is a pretty stable gal with good values, she's "always paid her own way," so there's not much danger of that. If she runs out towards the end of the month because the cable bill was due, she can get 3 days of food at the Lutheran Food Pantry.

Melanie would have to pay a pretty high co-pay for company health benefits, so she keeps passing on that during sign up periods, but she's eligible for SCHIP (as is Tanika who is making under $40,000 but has never applied**), and it provides some coverage like dental, prescription and special lab work she couldn't get through an employers' health program.

A few months ago Melanie's boyfriend got religion and called her, wanting to do right by her and the children and make it all legal--white dress, church, flowers, etc. But she turned him down. Even if he got a job at another Wendy's their combined income would throw off her eligibility, and financially, her kids would much much worse off. She's happy where she is--who needs to marry?

Melanie and Tanika are fictitious; the programs are not.

*In Ohio a family of three would be eligible for about $100 a week in food stamps, the gross eligibility being $21,600 of family income.

**An October 2007 study found that 68.7 percent of newly uninsured children were in families whose incomes were 200 percent of the federal poverty level or higher.

His money outlived him

I've heard or read the name "John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation" tacked on to many stories, particularly on public radio, but never knew who they were. . . or what an unpleasant, mean old snot John D. was. Here's an interesting story about a "reluctant philanthropist" who set up a foundation, now with assets over $6 billion, who probably didn't have a friend in the world and was disliked even by family members.

He was such a penny pincher, he hired dwarves to work in the low ceiling basement of one of his income properties so as to make use of all the space. And there's more.

Leadership and girls

Last night at dinner we talked about how we would advise a young woman going into our career field. One woman was a lawyer; one an elementary suburban school teacher; and one a high school teacher of special needs students in an urban system. My own advice would be to participate more in committee and leadership opportunities even if you hate it (like me), because for now, that's how you establish a network and climb the ladder (at least in library science).

I noticed that at career journal.com Sue Shellenbarger notes

There's evidence children and teens aren't getting as much practice at leadership as in the past. Only 1.5% of today's young college graduates have ever worked on a political campaign, based on a study of 40,000 recent grads by Robert Zemsky, a University of Pennsylvania professor, and Peterson's, a learning-resource unit of Thomson Corp., Toronto.

With today's huge high schools, the opportunities for young people to practice leadership roles in a small, familiar setting have dwindled. "There can only be one president of the senior class," and with 3,500 kids in a high school, that leaves out a lot of kids, says Barbara Schneider, a University of Chicago professor and author of "The Ambitious Generation."

That surprised me a bit, so I looked back--and the opportunities were there for me, particularly in high school, I just didn't like it. I was in 4-H and performed "demonstrations" even as young as 11 or 12; I was my church youth group (CBYF) president; I attended leadership workshops and seminars offered by my church's district; I was on the student council in high school; I think (but can't actually remember) that other organization I belonged to like band, Pepsters, and yearbook staff, probably had assigned offices. I was a camp counselor, and after high school got on a bus, travelled to California, and worked for a summer in a settlement house situation. I can't imagine that those opportunities aren't still out there, even at large high schools. However, when I got to college, I participated very little in extra curricular activities. For one thing, the competition had ratcheted up! To be an officer, or even a committee member meant long hours, and much more competition, and I just hated anything competitive. I suspect that like grades, there is today much more competition for positions of leadership. No, I have no one but myself to blame for not becoming a leader--I didn't like it. I much preferred the one-on-one with the students, the small group teaching, getting into research and publication, and supervising a staff of one or two people.

Every place of employment has opportunities for networking, and for lack of a better word, empire building. Yes, everything is political. Get over it! That usually means paying your dues with committee work or putting in time on task forces. Breathe deep. Exhale. Pray for direction. Sign up. Feel the power.

Kiss a librarian, hug a book?

Adoptees begin with Chapter 2

This was Rapper DMC's testimony in January about the need for changes in the the New Jersey law that prevents adult adoptees from access to their original birth certificate. Two days ago the USAToday featured a story about a Maine Senator who was instrumental in getting her state's laws changed, and then discovered that two of her nephews were serving in the state legislature--and each had been on opposite sides of the issue. After she learned the names and town of her birth parents she discovered that she was born when they were near 50 and she had been placed for adoption--they were the grandparents of men she was serving with.

Ohio's records are still closed, but that will eventually fall, as more and more states bring these archaic and counter productive laws in line with modern thinking about civil rights. No one can deny a Native American his right to know his parental and tribal heritage, but for people of African American or European or Hispanic background, it is considered just fine to slam the door on their access to medical and personal history. Who knows if it was just the current thinking of social workers, or the workings of legislators representing men who didn't want to be found. I tend to follow the money.

No one can force a birth parent or adult offspring to meet, socialize and establish a relationship regardless of a law or adoption registry. My grandmother's great grand daughter lives on the east side of Columbus. Although we share a common heritage, exchange Christmas cards, were born in the same state, and know many people in common, we do not get together.

Open records IS NOT open adoption--these are two entirely different issues. Open records is about adults. Open adoption is about children. I think the jury is still out on the long term affects of open adoptions, but for open records, there can be no question in my mind that adults should have full rights to accurate and complete records, if they exist.

For the Records: Restoring a legal right for adult adoptees (November 2007)

My Valentine Dinner Party

Last night I hosted a dinner for three friends and I just finished the wonderful Godiva chocolates one brought as a hostess gift. Yum! I served broccoli soup, a boneless pork roast with a BBQ sauce, potato salad, baked butternut squash, fresh fruit bowl (blue berries, cantaloupe, grapes, pineapple and strawberries), wheat rolls, and peanut butter chocolate pie. To go with my color theme I made a drink of 1/3 pineapple juice mixed with red raspberry sugar-free soda. This was my first time to use the bowls I bought in July to go with my good china. My china is Syracuse, Countess pattern, purchased in the 1960s and now discontinued, with bowls going for about $50-60 on e-bay. I found an almost-match at the Discovery Shop of King's Court, Wedding Band pattern, for $4 each. At night, under the dining room light, I couldn't see any difference, but in the daylight, you can see a very slight color difference. Anyway, I was very pleased with my find, and finally being able to serve a soup with dinner!

My guests stayed until after 10 p.m., and we talked of many things--our faith, our careers, laws and regulations (usually pertaining to our specialties), and "past lives." One topic was, "what advice would you give a young woman, post-college, just beginning in your career field." It was a great evening. Every woman should have a "ladies only" dinner at least once--we even dressed up.

Great one-liners

Elizabeth Wurtzel, a democrat who says she hasn't decided yet, got off some great one-liners in today's WSJ article, "Hillary Agonistes."

In less time than it takes to get through a single session of psychotherapy, Mr. Obama can cure me--an open mind, a free spirit, a loving heart--even thin thighs.

No one with a job takes advice from someone with a chef."

". . . first flush of Obamarama. . ."

"If candidates were reading material, Obama would be pornography--he's got everyone aroused."

"Once upon a life time ago, Hillary clinton could have been Barack Obama."

"She's been called the anti-Christ, but right now she's the anti-Obama."

"Mr. Obama is what the future looks like--a biracial child of divorce, abandoned by his father, a party hardy Harvard Law School graduate."

"One of these years Hillary is going to the White House--if she has to take hostages she'll do it--she may even cry."

Now that's writing.

Friday Family Photo--Big Hair

Remember the big hair of the 80s? This photo was probably taken on Easter, 1988, when we all had hair--lots of it. To balance the load on our head, we women had to wear huge floral prints with even bigger shoulder pads!



Thirty years ago

Thursday Thirteen--13 principles of life

1. A clear conscience should never be confused with a bad memory.

2. Sweeping the room with a glance doesn't qualify as house cleaning.

3. Don't let it all hang out or you might not be able to tuck it back in.

4. Age is a very high price to pay for maturity.

5. Worry is like a rocking chair--it gives you something to do but gets you nowhere.

6. Whine doesn't improve with age.

7. Experience is what enables you to recognize a mistake when you do it again.

8. I don't know the secret to success, but the key to failure is to try to please everyone.

9. Just when you start to win the rat race, someone develops a bigger, faster rat.

10. Jumping to conclusions, running your mouth, and ducking responsibility don't count as exercise.

11. It is better to light one little candle than to be seen with no makeup under fluorescent lighting.

12. You can't see the big picture if your nose is pressed against it.

13. Talent is like an arm or a leg--use it or lose it.

I've heard them all somewhere, but most recently read them in various selections from God's Little Devotional Journal for Teens, Honor Books, 2001.

Another special Valentine

Vic Grace has a wonderful "love the second time around" story over at her blog. Bring a hankie.

A special valentine for you

I don't think I could say it any better than Emerald Eyes has--a list of favorite love songs, mature thoughts about love, and memories of grandparents. Go for it.

And then from me, a scan of one of my mother's valentines, from Billy Smith, a school mate at Pine View School, I assume. This is probably from the early 1920s and was embossed paper with cut edges, "Whitney Made Worcester, Mass." The inside message with a line drawing of a little boy swinging on a fence reads:

I love you little
Valentine,
But I am very shy,
And if you think
you could be kind,
Please smile as you
pass by.

Pineview School, Lee County, Illinois, Mother is 2nd from the left, front row
The little girl third from the right in the back row is Arlene Beachley David, one of my mother's closest friends. I just looked her up and saw on the Manchester College website that she died January 2, 2006. She married later in life and never had children (I attended her wedding), but I talked to her on the phone maybe in 2003, and she was living with her deceased husband's niece.

Three word Wednesday, 73

The 3 words today are

girlfriend
imagined
slight.

This should almost write itself. I always think of Suze Orman's TV financial show, when I hear, "Girlfriend. . . " and you just know the news won't be good and the advice will be tough.

Girlfriend, Suze said,
while you imagined love
there's a slight chance
you missed the bounced checks,
school loans, credit cards,
child support and gambling debts,
a mortgage about to reset,
a house that hasn't flipped,
and his mother who has.

Bone has added a blogroll if you'd like to join. Three words appear on Wednesday with which you write a poem, essay, or story.

Limbaugh on Obama

Rush said, "Obama says nothing better than anyone in my life time." The next caller claimed to be a 33 year old Republican who said that he'd rather vote for Obama than McCain because Obama, although he says nothing and is a socialist, is inspiring. Rush walked him through it, statement by statement--but the caller stood his ground. So yes, the left wing media critics are right; mush brains do listen to Limbaugh. Rush went on to say that Obama "owns" this method, so McCain and Clinton better not try it--they also aren't as good looking, he admitted.

Some of us need to move

The U.S. is divided into 3,100 counties. Of the top 30 counties that have received billions in disaster aid, 22 of them are either in Florida (13) or Oklahoma (9). Caddo County, Oklahoma has been declared a disaster area 13 times in the last decade, according to a story in USAToday yesterday. And it isn't just tornadoes, like you might think--that county has had a little of everything. If the rest of us are going to pay, either in taxes or insurance, for rebuilding after the hurricanes, brush fires, and flash flooding, then rich folk shouldn't be building their McMansions on hillsides in California or summer homes with coastal ocean and bay views, or on stilts with decks over river vistas in Ohio. Federal aid is a disincentive for insurance companies to insure, or for home owners to build in safer areas. I don't have a solution, and obviously our Congress doesn't either. They only talk about it when they aren't worrying about athletes on steroids, what Rush Limbaugh said, or alar on apples. But here's a thought.

Heath Ledger, Accidental poisoning?

Unless it's your pet Lab that will enthusiastically eat the wall board with a pillow for dessert, no one accidentally takes oxycodone, hydrocodone, diazepam, tempazepam, alprazolam, and doxylamine, all found in the system of Heath Ledger. Heath made choices along the way to anesthetize his brain and emotions.

I had a comment yesterday from someone who read an entry of mine about marijuana. He/she insisted that after using 20 years, it simply had no impact on his mind, and wasn't a gateway drug. Of course, he mentioned that the Iraq War had been running for 8 years, so it had impaired his math ability a bit, because that would mean President Clinton lead us into it--which he did sort of with all the hype about WMD, but that's another blog. He also had forgotten how to use capital letters. How hard can it be to use the shift key?

Most of these deaths aren't happening to star struck actors, they are happening to young white women. Poisoning mortality rates in the U.S. rose 62.5% during the 5-year period 1999 to 2004. 20,950 deaths in 2004 alone, up from 12,186 in 1999. The largest increases were among females (103.%), whites (75.8%), persons living in the southern U.S. (113.6%), and persons aged 15-24 years (113.3%). Among all sex and racial/ethnic groups, the largest increase (136.5%) was among non-Hispanic white females. So what's that include? Overdoses of illegal drugs and legal drugs taken for nonmedical reasons, legal drugs taken in error or at the wrong dose, and poisoning from other substances (alcohol, pesticides or carbon monoxide).

You can't slowly poison your brain cells with alcohol, marijuana or pain meds, and expect it to then indefinitely make the correct decisions on other drugs that become available, maybe because you lied to the doctor or the pharmacist to get a bigger high or low.

Gay black men have disproportionate rates of HIV

A recent article in JAMA (Jan 23, 2008) tries to sort through the puzzling statistics of HIV among gay black men. Try as she might, Ms. Voelker can't link poverty or lack of health care, although she tries. Like most of the other health problems among Americans, it's behavior.

"Studies Illuminate HIV’s Inequalities," Rebecca Voelker, JAMA. 2008;299(3):269-275.

Here's my take away from reading the article:

1) They have unprotected sex with men, as do many gay men, and report less than other groups since 1990--before that it was much higher.
2) They are more likely to have sex with other black men who are also likely to be infected. This could result in co-infections.
3) They have numerous sex partners, although this is common for gay men in general, so is not an unusual trait for their race, and they report fewer than other groups.
4) They "don't disclose their sexual orientation [to researchers]", i.e. they lie about being gay (called down low), or don't consider themselves gay even if having sex with men. I would think this could affect the results of #1 and #3.
5) Because they don't think they are gay, they don't seek antiretroviral treatment, which means they have high levels of the virus in their blood, and if having sex with other black men, are more likely to transmit it.
6) More likely to have other current STDs which lowers their immunity--gonorrhea incidence among HIV-positive men is soaring and there is an ongoing syphilis epidemic among gay men.

The presenter of the statistics, Greg Millett, MPH, a CDC behavioral scientist, will probably get into trouble for pointing out these racial differences. Or, maybe he'll just get more grant money to study the behavior more closely. But for every dollar spent focusing on social problems like race and income, that's one less dollar focusing on the virus.

The only reason to even report on HIV/AIDS is because of the attention it gets from the media, the President (see the outrage over the 2009 budget that he didn't fund it at higher levels), the ex-President and Bill Gates. Only about 5% to 7% of male adults and adolescents in the United States identify themselves as men who have sex with men, but they have 71% of the AIDS/HIV. One of the unintended consequences of improved treatment has been a growing carelessness about protection and casual sex.

Auto accidents are still far and away the big killer of young people and we could save thousands and thousands of lives of our children just by raising the legal driving age to 18. No one has been able to figure out a poverty, gender or race angle for this common sense move, so we'd rather shower research dollars on a behavior we can't control.

Monday Memories--Berkeley, whose side are you on?

I'm a California ex-pat, according to the Bear Flag League bloggers (see my links). Sometimes they invite me for blogging lunch, but I have to say no, living in central Ohio. My dad was stationed in California during WWII before being shipped out. He was a Marine. Mom and my aunt Muriel packed us all into the car and away we went, driving from northern Illinois to Alameda, California in 1944. Things didn't look good for the war effort towards the end. The war easily could have gone the other way; our losses were huge. We probably lost more men in training accidents than we've lost since 2003 in Iraq. But Baby boomlets don't read history--probably isn't required in public schools of California. Now the city of Berkeley wants to chase out the Marines. A librarian (surprise!) has called it a knee jerk reaction. No, lady, it isn't. Your state is huge and your economy larger than that of many countries. Your entertainment industry has virtually ruined our culture, and now you want to sabotage more of it. We are the UNITED STATES, and you're undercutting our government and military. Shame, shame, shame. How did California accumulate so many kooks? We've got a lot of family living in Southern Cal, and not a one of them or their friends are weird. But then, none lived or went to school in Berkeley. I've written to the mayor, mayor@ci.berkeley.ca.us. They need some guidance and help out there.

Some women

understand glamor. Thank you Beyonce. 2008 Grammy awards
And congratulations to one of my favorite groups, The Band, for their life time achievement award. Four Canadians and an American, they're the best (some deceased). Story here, in a Canadian newspaper.

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Dead tree or cyber winged budgets?

Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post is not so thrilled that the 2009 budget is digital instead of paper--even if 480 trees were saved. Considering that I can't even access some of my own publications that were on the "disk" version of 1999, I wish the American public and future researchers good luck in accessing important documents that trendy lawmakers have decided need to get on the digital bandwagon. Let's hope there are always a few paper copies kept in secure libraries and archives.

"Honestly, I am still using the paper books, as is most of my staff," Tom Kahn, the staff director of the House Budget Committee, told me by e-mail. "Online is much harder to use. It makes the information less accessible and harder to ferret out. Frankly, it is no fun staring for hours at a computer screen to find obscure spend-out rates. You can't underline, can't make a note on a page, and who wants to read a computer in bed?"

I love being able to get snippets, or even whole chapters, on-line--like Ruth's article. But I don't want to give up the 3 newspapers I read everyday--in paper with my coffee. I particularly enjoy being able to get archived older articles--and I sure hope the digitizers can keep up with ways for us to read them. But when I have to read closely, I print it off. I hate trying to scroll across the page to figure out columns for years and amounts and quantities.

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Temporary and contract workers--their health

Is it the regulations or the personal behavior that cause "contingent" workers to be less healthy and have more accidents? It's a government funded report in the January 30, 2008 issue of JAMA (NIOSH and CDC), so without even reading the article, "Contingent workers and contingent health; risks of a modern economy," you just know it's going to be the fault of the federal government for not covering certain workers--usually part-timers who work for smaller firms or private contractor/self-employed. Otherwise, how would these ladies fund their positions?

I have a little experience with "involuntary" worker status. (In bureaucratic jargon that doesn't mean I was a slave or indentured, it means I would have preferred a permanent position some of those years, therefore my status of "involuntary.") One of my earliest part-time academic positions for which I received no benefits except a tuition waiver was translating medical newspapers from Russian into English. Later when I was a library grad student I had a hazardous 20 hour a week position keeping a PL480 shelving area clean and tidy and lifting heavy boxes of books upon which being cataloged no one would open, yea these 42 years. It was really dirty and I'm sure my lungs suffered from dirt, dust mites and chemical fumes from cheap Soviet paper. Also I experienced dangerous paper cuts from the ubiquitous LC cards we carried from room to room while cataloging, all the while risking ankle and arch damage wearing high heels on polished floors. "Real" workers (degreed librarians) didn't do those jobs--just we lowly peons. From 1978 to 1986 I had a series of temporary, contract positions ranging from 3 months to 3 years, and I thank God for them. I loved the start up, the risks, the poking my nose into places it didn't belong, meeting interesting people, being home with my kids after 3 p.m. and during summers, and not being required to attend faculty meetings or be on committees like my colleagues. And although I didn't know it then, I was being prepared in the school of experience and hard knocks for the best job of my life, Head of the Veterinary Medicine Library at the Ohio State University. My most memorable work-related injuries were all during full-time, faculty employment: rotator cuff problems from lifting heavy journals, and a fall outside a lab when water leaked into the hall. But I digress.

The authors of the article admit to two problems--most studies on the health of contingent workers have been done in Europe, and those studies and the few in the U.S. show that temporary workers tend to have a set of behavior and personal deficiencies that most regular workers don't. And it's most likely those deficiencies that impact their health. They are

• more alcohol-related deaths
  
• more smoking related cancers
  
• more psychological problems
  
• more musculoskeletal disorders
  
• more likely to be in high risk jobs
  
• less experience
  
• fewer hours of safety training
  
• more likely to be using equipment for which they hadn't trained
  
• more likely to have language deficiencies (illegals)
  
• self-employed, independent contractor not covered by current laws on health and safety

But not to worry, the authors plow ahead with plans to answer "the many questions that remain," and to "collect information on contingent status" which might now not be fully captured to explain workers' illnesses and injuries. No doubt they will recommend changing the current laws (last 40 years) which mostly exempt employers with <15 or <20 workers (age discrimination 1967, occupational safety 1970, health and retirement standards 1974; disabilities 1990; family leave 1993). This will be more of the ongoing destruction of the small businessman with more federal regulations, and the self-employed/ private contractor, creating a demand for more government services, a larger bureaucracy and universal, low quality health care for everyone except the politicians.

"Contingent Workers and Contingent Health Risks of a Modern Economy," Kristin J. Cummings, MD, MPH; Kathleen Kreiss, MD, JAMA. 2008;299(4):448-450.

Cats can learn new behavior

My cat ignores the cat and dog commercials on TV. They apparently don't sound real to her. But the other day I came across a blog that had a kitty widget (movable cartoon-like character embedded in the page). With the cursor passing over the kitty's head, she would meow, and over her chest she would purr. My cat was sitting in my lap at the time, and immediately tried to investigate when she heard the meow and purring. Not wanting her to mess up what I was doing, I changed pages. But she is still much more interested in the screen than she was before, and it's been several days. She seems to be looking for that kitty that is hiding somewhere in my office.

Saturday she was preparing to leap up to my lap and I wasn't paying attention. My left hand was there, and as she jumped she dug in her back claws. Ooo, that hurt. She must have felt the difference too as I slipped my hand away. I didn't yell or scold, because it isn't her fault that someone ripped out her front claws before we got her (Cat Welfare), and for balance she has to dig as firmly as she can with her back paws when she jumps two or three times her height. But I did start rubbing my hand and when I saw the blood, I set her on the floor, and immediately went to the restroom to scrub and put on an alcohol rub. Perhaps it's my imagination, but she's been waiting longer to get my attention and gurgles a half-meow before she jumps up now. You can bet she's trained me to pay more attention!