202 Myths we want to believe

In a women’s group Saturday at a suburban church we were discussing materialism. "The world" is a favorite topic of Christians, and consumerism truly is our golden calf. So not much has changed since Moses’ day. I mentioned the ABC 20/20 Friday night news program hosted by John Stossel, "Lies, Myths and Downright Stupidity; Stossel’s List of Popularly Reported Misconceptions." I believe he has written a book by this title.

One of the myths, # 7, was that "Money can buy happiness." It fit with our discussion. Everyone agreed it is a myth. Sure, we’ve all heard the proverbs and the songs, but still virtually everyone thinks, more is better. He cited a study that showed money does buy happiness if your family income is below $30,000, but by $50,000 it doesn’t affect your sense of well being at all.

A number of the myths in Stossel’s book have to do with wealth, the good life, or even all the issues politicians fight over.

10) Cold temperatures give you colds. Not so--it’s viruses.
9) We have less free time than we used to. Not so. People were asked to track their time, and were watching 3 times more TV than they estimated. 36 million golf; 65 million camp; millions go to the beach; millions flock to sporting events (more than go to church I think)
8) Families need 2 incomes just to survive. Not so, in most cases. It’s a choice. One of the women in the interview group who insisted she had to have a part time job was using the money for a third car (2 drivers in the family).
7) See above--money and happiness.
6) Republicans are for small government. Not so. No Republican administration in 75 years has reduced government. The Bush Administration has grown government by 25% and has increased domestic spending in education, labor, the environment, etc. beyond anything in the Clinton Administration.
5) The rich don’t pay taxes. For this a Democratic Presidential candidate was interviewed and he really dropped the ball--and evaded the question, because he wants taxes on the rich to go up. The richest 1% ($300,000 and up) of Americans pay 34% and the top 5% (over $125,000) pay more than 50% of all federal taxes.
4) Chemicals are killing us. No. We obsess over it, however. A group of children were interviewed and their fear of chemicals was striking. In Uganda two to three million people die annually because the USA won’t make and sell DDT. “It’s fine to be a rich, white environmentalist,” says Amir Attaran on the show. “It’s not so fine if you’re a poor black kid about to die of malaria.”
3) Gun control is making a difference. Not even close. For this they interviewed convicted felons who said they’d never purchased a gun legally, so the laws made no difference to them. They feared armed citizens more than the police or jail they said.
2) We’re drowning in garbage. No. This myth got started with that floating barge of garbage back in 1987. There are plenty of landfills, and many become useful space after compacting and resurfacing.
1) New York harbor is filthy and polluted. For this myth, Stossel jumped into the water. I’m not sure I would do that to prove a point. He isn’t looking quite as healthy and vibrant as he used to.

Myths are hard to give up, especially if they give your life meaning and definition, and especially causes to work for. There’s plenty out there to do for others--just open the Bible to find your “to do” list. It will also take care of the free time problem.

201 The Proposed Lifetime Savings Account

Sometimes I have to work a bit to remember what it was like to be 35. Although we had a savings account, it was really a “put and take” account. If we deposited our tax refund check in May, it was a guarantee we’d need four tires in July, or the summer storms would rip limbs out of the oak tree in the front yard requiring $400 of tree surgery. Vacations? A week at my mother’s farm. So I try to relax about the way my kids save and spend their money. They are no worse or better than I was at their age.

The Bush Administration has proposed a change to the Roth IRA plan and a new Lifetime Savings Account. Both accounts would offer tax-free withdrawals with contribution limits of $7,500 each with contributions to both allowed for a total of $15,000 per person. However, Lifetime Savings Accounts would have fewer restrictions both for contributions and withdrawals. For detailed information on the Lifetime Savings Account, see link. As I understand it, the dividends will not be taxed and there will be no withdrawal penalty.

Americans have one of the lowest savings rates in the world. I don’t know that 35 year olds will suddenly start doing a better job than I did, but maybe it is worth a try?

200 Four years ago

Today is the fourth anniversary of my mother’s death. I’m sitting here with a package of her letters mailed to me this week from my cousin Marianne in Iowa. In genealogy, one uses the word “cousin” a bit loosely but warmly. Marianne is the grand daughter of Mary Ann, the sister of my great grandfather, David. She is my second cousin once removed. She is a serious genealogist who authored “The Jacob George Family of Adams County, Pennsylvania” (1998). She and my mother had corresponded for years about this genealogy, but I recognize that some of the material in the book is what I pulled together for her from Mom’s records.

I didn’t wait until Mother’s death to canonize her as some have done with their parents. I’ve always known I had an exceptional mother (well, not counting those awful teenage years when I knew everything and she knew nothing!). And I’ve never known anyone who thought otherwise. She was, however, a rather private person, kept her own counsel, I think is the phrase. Didn’t dabble in controversy. Didn’t gossip. Didn’t argue. So her letters from 1975 to 1998 are less than forthcoming. Weather report. Crop report. Grandchildren report. Health report (as they aged).

Each year Mother wrote promises or near-promises to travel to Iowa so they could see each other in person, but as far as I can tell from the letters, this only happened for Thanksgiving in 1988, although the Iowans did visit in Illinois in the late 70s.

Since Marianne was her cousin and also Brethren, she did share some thoughts on their common heritage on Christmas: “[at a 1978 retreat] no one of Brethren background could recall Christmas trees except at our country school programs. Most of us hung up stockings as children. Christmas dinners with relatives and programs at church and school seemed bigger than our present celebrations. Gifts were mostly homemade. We had lots of fun and excitement as we remembered.”

She fretted a little on Memorial Day 1975 that she and her sister were the only ones left to place flowers at the grave sites of parents and brother, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins, something their mother had always done. In 1987 she recalls visiting in Iowa her great Aunt Annie as a young child--“the comb honey served at meals and the fat feather mattress we slept on reached with a little foot stool. I wish I might have known them at a later age when memories wouldn’t be so dim and one could appreciate more.”

Finally, in 1998, Mother writes Marianne that “I try to tell Amy (granddaughter, early 30s) stories about the family [learned from Marianne’s mother] so someone remembers how the George family spread out and came west.

199 The answer to my question

In response to my question about why I'm advertising for you know who for you know what, the friendly robot at Google has replied:

Hello Norma,

Thank you for taking the time to contact Google AdSense.

Since the ability for us to serve ads on a site depends on a number of factors, such as our ability to crawl the site, the content of each of the web pages, and the availability of related AdWords ads, Google does not guarantee that we'll always have relevant ads to display.

We appreciate you taking the time to offer us this feedback, and we
encourage you to continue to let us know how we can improve Google
AdSense.

198 I don't choose my ads for Blogspot

I'm using Blogger el-cheapo. So I have a small discreet ad in blue at the top of my web log. Nothing flashy. For free, I can live with it. But in 197 or so blogs, I've probably mentioned Howard Dean once. So whose name is flashing at the top of my Collecting My Thoughts, why Mr. Dean, of course (at least as I'm typing this).

How is that paid for--does a crawler go out and grab anyone who has ever mentioned him? And what if someone talks about Dean Howard, or Dean Martin, or Dean's Milk? Would that flag an ad? Or is it anything political?

Google has asked for feedback, so here's what I've written:

Dear Friendly People at Google:

You seem to be doing an OK job on ads for my http://uglyacronym.blogspot.com, and have included Lutheran and hymnal ads which is about right since I am a Lutheran and blogging about religious topics.

But on my other one, http://collectingmythoughts.blogspot.com, which is about anything and everything, recipes, genealogy, memories, etc., I've probably mentioned Howard Dean once in 196 posts, politics in 10 or 15, but his name appears in the blogspot ad. What's up with that?

197 Mother and the library

This week is the fourth anniversary of my mother’s death in 2000. To honor her memory, we set up a memorial with the library foundation for the public library in my home town which was raising money for an expansion and remodeling of its tiny building. I haven’t lived in Mt. Morris since the late 1950s, but I know 6 of the 10 people on the library foundation board.

Like many small town libraries, the Mt. Morris Public Library was established by a community club, a current events club, that loaned books in the 19th century. Around 1931 a public library was organized and my mother had library card #13 obtained that year and used until she died. In the early 20th century, Mt. Morris wasn’t your average little town--it had both a Christian college and a printing industry--a town of the Book and books.

By the late 1990s, the little library building was busting out at the seams, so a foundation was set up to raise the funds and an architect was hired. It was dedicated in November 2002, and last July there was a special ceremony to honor all the librarians who had served there with a tree planted for each one.

The library’s web page is utilitarian and informational, but doesn’t really show the amazing transformation and lovely interiors. For that, you’ll need to check out the web page of the architect.

196 When doctors made house calls

I drove my husband to the doctor's office this morning and instead of the usual array of magazines to read while I waited, I found a nice book, "Medicine's Great Journey; one hundred years of healing" (1992). I had recently seen the cover photo someplace on the web--it's by W. E. Smith for Life Magazine in 1948 of a doctor in coat, tie and hat walking through the weeds to a rural home.

One of the last house calls I remember was in 1949, when a doctor who drove from Mt. Morris to our house in Forreston to see my ill sister, gave my parents the bad news that she might have polio. I have few tender memories of Dad, but I still see him carrying her, a good sized adolescent, wrapped in a blanket, out to the family car to be taken to the Freeport IL hospital. She survived the disease and therapy, and we were all quarantined. Dad couldn't return to our home after the sign was put on our house. Our library books had to be destroyed rather than returned. My school classmates wrote me letters which were brought to the house and left on the porch. Odd what children put away to remember.

She survived, but post polio syndrome returned to haunt her later years and contributed to her death from a diabetic stroke. I will blog about that in February, the anniversary.

A few weeks before her hospitalization in 1949, my cousin Jimmy had died of the same bulbar polio. We had all been at a Sunday afternoon family dinner together the day before he became ill. In my mind's eye Jimmy was the golden child--handsome, athletic, black curly hair, charming.

Two years ago I went back for a high school reunion and one of the guys, an all-sports athlete, and still an active golfer and little league coach, gave us a walk down memory lane of all the athletes that had come out of our little school. The two in our class who actually made careers out of it were women, and we had no organized, competitive sports for women in the 1950s.

In the course of that presentation he talked about Jimmy. How even at age 12, playing basketball and football, he was spectacular--everyone knew he had the potential to be a state champ. I was so shocked to hear his name--in my years at that school (I transferred there 2 years after his death) I'd never heard him mentioned. I suppose I thought only family remembered him. Odd what children put away to remember.

195 I hate Loyalty cards rant

I've already blogged about how much I dislike playing games with these stupid loyalty cards and rewards programs. Here's a story about how the desire to save a few pennies (well, OK, so it was $15) can really cost you.

I don't have loyalty cards, but I do use my friend Adrienne's. Today I was doing my usual shopping at Meijers, paid for my groceries, and waved to a check out clerk down the line who used to work at the library (a story for another day). She said, "Did you get your 15% off with your Big Bear Wildcard?" I looked a little puzzled. But Big Bear has gone belly up here in Columbus, so in an attempt to win over its customers, Meijer's is offering 15% off the total this week only. Of course, my check out clerk hadn't mentioned it.

I took the groceries to the car, across the ice, snow blowing in my face, debating what to do. I really hate these cards, but have used A's cards occasionally because it's a bit of a hike to Meijer's. After unloading the groceries, I couldn't find my slip, so I got into the car and went through my pockets and purse until I found it. I went back into the store to customer service, and got back about $15 in cash, but they made me turn in the card (sorry, Adrienne, I didn't know they would do this).

I reached into my purse for the car keys and couldn't find them. I hustled to the car hoping it hadn't been stolen because I was pretty sure I would've put the keys in the ignition by rote while looking for the grocery slip. No, not stolen, but the keys were in the ignition and the doors were locked.

My husband, of course, has the other key, but because of his rotator cuff surgery he can't drive. Adrienne actually lives rather close, but I'd had coffee with her at 6:30 a.m. and she told me she was taking the grandchildren out for breakfast. So after a phonecall home, and a neighbor's help, my husband found me at the store just hanging up the phone from my fourth call. So instead of $15, my refund was more like $13, because pay phones are now $.50.

194 Bush's Space Iniative

Remember the movie "October Sky?" Homer Hickman, who wrote the autobiographical book on which the movie was based, had an editorial in the WSJ Jan 13, 2004 (A14) which is really worth reading. He says it is the only government program that returns billions to our economy in new products that put Americans to work.

"I don't agree with President Bush about everything, but he's starting to remind me of Harry S. Truman. He gets with the program. You can argue with him about what he does and you might even be right, but you can't fault the man for getting out front and leading. That is, after all, what we hire our presidents to do."

193 Al Gore: Give the guy a break

Some people are making light of Al Gore's global warming warning speech yesterday during NY's terrible cold weather. But I think we all know that isn't how global warming is judged. Here a day, there a day. Here a century, there a century.

But we also know, or should, no one knows the reason, or whether the weather is just a continuation of the melting of the glaciers that used to cover Ohio. So I was a bit unnerved to see an item in the University of Illinois LAS News Fall 2003 (arrived yesterday--global slowing I suppose) that said on p. 18,

"Despite the dramatic climate changes in store, most people still don't know what causes them, according to a recent international public-opinion study by LAS sociologist Steven Brechin. Only 15% of Americans surveyed correctly identified the burning of fossil fuels as the primary culprit in global warming--fewer than in Cuba (17%), Mexico (26%) and most developing nations.”

Possibly we have more educated people than those countries? Who or what are we blaming for all those other periods in history when temperatures were rising and falling? And why is a sociologist doing a study on global warming? There is no consensus among scientists about fossil fuels, so I'm surprised that social scientists are so sure. Well, no, I'm not surprised.

192 Shoeless Joe and Clueless Pete

Here in Ohio, the sports buzz is about Pete Rose, known as "Charlie Hustle" when he was an up and coming baseball player. Little kids idolized him back in the 1970s. Probably the only book my son ever read in grade school was about Rose.

Finally, now that he has a book to sell, My Prison Without Bars, he admits he has been lying all along about not betting on games. He wants in the Hall of Fame, and actually admits that he doesn't feel that lying is any big deal.

So a sports columnist in the Columbus Dispatch said, why not the other 18 players who have been excluded from the Hall of Fame? Mike Nola, a baseball historian, maintains a web site for Shoeless Joe Jackson, an illiterate, famous baseball player who supposedly signed a confession that he fixed a game, but was later acquitted by a Chicago court in 1921. Nola is working to get Joe into the real Hall of Fame, rather than the Virtual Hall of Fame.

So, who is more deserving Pete or Joe, or both? Or should I be posting this on my religious blog, Ugly Acronym?

191 Predictions for 2004

I don’t often pay attention to full page ads in the Wall Street Journal, but “10 surprises of the New Year 2004” in yesterday’s paper did catch my eye. It’s Morgan Stanley’s predictions, but with somewhat more credibility than a crystal ball. The full list can be found at the about Morgan Stanley Web site, which for some reason has the odd date, January 5, 2003, even though it contains all the summaries for 2003 and predictions for 2004. Some webmaster didn’t update correctly, I guess. I’ve sent them an e-mail about this boo-boo. so it might be fixed by now.

1. Osama will be found.
2. Productivity continues to improve.
3. Stock market remains strong.
4. Mutual fund questionable practices will drop from the news.
5. Euro weakens.
6. Pharmaceuticals outperform.
7. Conditions in Saudi Arabia deteriorate--energy stocks outperform.
8. Silver becomes precious metal of choice, $8/oz, gold ascends to $500.
9. Japan’s economy picks up.
10. And here’s the big surprise prediction, in my opinion: Bill Frist will replace Dick Cheney on the ticket. Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz resign, saying their work is done.

Bill Frist was my top choice with Condi Rice for the Republican ticket in 2008, but I never thought about him for VP in 2004. This would be a good leg up on the campaign against Hillary in 2008, wouldn't it?

190 ASAP at the dentist's office

Time is a funny thing. My dentist is 50 years old. Some of my fillings are older than he is. A visit to the dentist 50 years ago seems like yesterday, and reading about the tech boom of the 90s seems like 50 years ago.

I pulled a magazine from a stack to read at the dentist’s office where I was having a filing replaced. ASAP October 4, 1999. I was stunned to realize that I hadn’t even thought about what used to be one of my favorite sources of dreams about the future of technology since, well, about mid-2000. It's now so . . . yesterday! I used to read ASAP cover to cover--and until I saw the date, I hadn’t even realized it was gone. Who could forget the Happiness Issue? (Actually, I’ve forgotten all the content, but not the concept.)

By the mid-nineties when I started reading it, it was an excellent tech magazine, very readable even for the non-geek like me. And I loved George Gilder--although, truthfully now that I look back, he really did write strange English. The ads were absolutely lush--encrusted with good taste and dripping with money. Kurt Vonnegut, Tom Wolfe, Muhammad Ali, Tom Peters and George Gilder are in the issue I look at while my face goes numb from chin to eyebrow.

Our accounts started to do that (go numb) in summer 2000, my TIAA-CREF account held its ground only because my 15% contributions covered up the fact it was losing money. So don’t tell me Bush did it. The over heated tech stocks burned up. Three years after the date on this 1999 issue, October 4, 2002, Forbes announced ASAP was shutting down.

“During a period when blind optimism got the better of so many, no one was more blithely optimistic about our wired future than Gilder. Beginning in the mid-'90s, he advanced the argument that the businesses which most aggressively embrace fiber optics, wireless communication, and other telecommunications breakthroughs would soar in the meteoric fashion of an Intel. It was Gilder, as much as anyone, who helped trigger the hundreds of billions of dollars invested to create competing fiber networks. Then everything imploded, and company after company went under. The telecom sector proved to be an even greater financial debacle than the dotcoms. Yet he's still convinced he was dead-on right in most of his prognostications.” Wired, July 2002.

George Gilder got side swiped by his own enthusiasm and lost a lot of money in a new publishing venture. However, his predictions, made in the mid-nineties about the future of high speed internet seem to be coming true, just a little later than he thought. Particularly that one about overthrowing the tyranny of the mass media, which bloggers seem to be doing, 5 or 6 million strong. Of course, he was wrong about world peace. . .

189 Piso Mojado

Last fall I watched as a man spilled a full cup of coffee at the bakery where I read the paper in the morning. It went all over the white tablecloth, the floor, his shoes and pants. He just stood there and looked at the mess. Another man standing behind him, looked too; both seemed paralyzed. Then the second guy went over to the counter and picked up a stack of napkins and brought them back to help clean it up. It was like emptying the ocean with a teaspoon. The customer who spilled it was still staring at the huge brown puddle on the floor and eating the free samples.

So I got up and took matters into my own hands since men aren’t accustomed to cleaning up after themselves, and suggested they call for staff to come and clean it up. Which they did, and soon the table with the free samples was tidy again with a clean linen cloth.

Monday morning I too spilled a full cup sitting at my table. But I didn’t waste any time, and told the staff immediately. It was mopped up before I could get back to my table with a fresh cup. Always call the expert. So I drank my coffee with a bright yellow caution sign in two languages at my feet.

188 Signed up for Spanish

I am planning to take another Spanish class this winter, but not so I can converse with illegal immigrants who supposedly take jobs that Americans don’t want. I am gobsmacked, as the Brits say, by this policy. Bush is sounding more like a Democrat every day. And spending money on domestic programs like one.

“Bush will try to make the plan more palatable to conservatives by including stricter entry controls, including increased use of technology at the border and steps toward better enforcement of current visa restrictions and reporting requirements, sources said,“ Washington Post 12-24-03. If such controls and technology are available, why aren’t we using them now? We’ve got the laws on the books.

I doubt that it will help him much with the Latino vote. They think it is a plot to get them registered for deportation. And, actually, that would make more sense. How many conservatives will just throw up their hands and abandon him like they did his father when he didn’t keep his word. It’s important to remember that unlike Democrats, Republicans do not sing along that country and western song, “Stand by your man.”

Poor people who work really don’t pay Federal Income Taxes, so there is no benefit there. But they do pay Payroll taxes, or Social Security. That makes them recipients of the benefits, too. I’m not eligible for social security benefits because I have a teacher’s pension. These workers, non-citizens and here illegally, will be.

187 Free at last

In 13 states, including Ohio, grandparents are required to care for their grandchildren of minor children. Some do it just for love.

Saturday’s paper told of the death of a great-grandmother who was raising 5 of her great-grandchildren--3 orphaned and 2 abandoned by their mother. Elizabeth Mitchell Dulaney shot and wounded a drug dealer as an armed gang broke into her home and threatened her little family in 2002. She had tipped off the police to an illegal pill operation apparently angering the gang. For her service to her family and neighborhood, she got a 3 1/2 year prison sentence, which was later commuted by the Governor after the Columbus Dispatch's readers lobbied on her behalf.

But she wanted a pardon, which didn't come before her death at age 68. An advocate is trying to get one for her posthumously so she can be buried with it, "Free at last."

186 Sex and the City

I’ve never seen an episode of “Sex and the City,” starring Sarah Jessica Parker. Reading about the angst and grief as the last episodes air on HBO makes me think I haven’t missed much. The USA Today article was up-beat and flattering, intended to hype the frenzy. Fantasies about shoes, potty mouth women, loser boyfriends, sleeping around, STDs, abortion, zingers. It really sounds special, doesn’t it? And friendships. Oh yes, that’s supposed to be a big part of the hoopla. Gilda Carle described the show as four empty women who use sex as a tool.

Even cleaned up for reruns on TBS in syndication, it doesn’t look like a bargain to me, that is if Time really is money.

185 I am Maid Wright

For Christmas I received a Frank Lloyd Wright letter opener, a Frank Lloyd Wright necklace, a Frank Lloyd Wright broach, and Frank Lloyd Wright stationery in a box decorated with a Frank Lloyd Wright design.

From other Christmases, I have a Frank Lloyd Wright mouse pad, a Frank Lloyd Wright door mat, a Frank Lloyd Wright China snack set for four (Imperial Hotel), a Frank Lloyd Wright coffee cup, three Frank Lloyd Wright necklaces, two Frank Lloyd Wright throw pillows (theatre curtain and May basket), two Frank Lloyd Wright cotton coverlets (water lilies and Heurtley House), two boxes of Frank Lloyd Wright blank note cards, seven Frank Lloyd Wright lapel pins (studio, windows, Guggenheim, April showers), six Frank Lloyd Wright scarves, a Frank Lloyd Wright umbrella and tote bag, a Frank Lloyd Wright mantle clock, a Frank Lloyd Wright China keepsake box, a Frank Lloyd Wright engagement calendar.

My husband is an architect.

184 Oddities of our times

While waiting for the doctor, I noticed an advertisement for smoking shelters in the magazine "Hospitals and Health Networks."

My toothpast tube says "squeeze from the middle."

Bacon is a diet food.

A teen-ager, home schooled on the ranch, has the #4 best seller in the country for fiction, and a Christian title, The Purpose Driven Life is #2 in non-fiction.

The word "ubiquity" has become ubiquitous.

I can fly to Frankfurt Germany cheaper than to Bradenton, Florida.

Businesses are trying to lure young mothers back to work.

DVDs packaged in fold-outs look like books, stand up like books, open like books, and have covers like books.

The Endangered Species Act in 30 years has only removed 30 species from its endangered list. Where else but in America would this be considered a success?

5,000 Americans die each year of food borne illnesses, but none have ever died of, or even had, Mad Cow Disease.

Wired Magazine increasingly carries articles about wireless.

Ticket prices are up, but revenues are down at the movie box office.

183 Take no responsibility

In today's paper, I noticed the following story lines:

"Police searching for a car they think is responsible for the death of a 16 year old girl."

"Man killed by gunshot."

"Soft drinks lead to obesity."

"Buns to reopen [restaurant in Delaware, OH]