302 Who's to blame?

You've got to laugh--or weep. The Car Talk by Tom and Ray column in Saturday's paper carried a question by a mother of a teenager who'd had a small disaster with the car. The teen was driving the 1995 Dodge Neon to school and a sudden thunder shower flooded the parking lot. But the girl drove into the parking lot in deep water and cracked the block. The mother's question: Who is responsible for the damage? Dodge or the school? I think you can figure out who Tom and Ray thought was responsible.

Although I can't find the actual column at their website, it has a lot of useful information--safety, financing, shopping, insurance, etc.--so bookmark it.

301 Church of the Holy Amyloid

Sharon Begley seems to be fighting a one woman science journalist battle--two articles in the Wall Street Journal about the amyloid hypothesis and Alzheimer’s. She points out in her first article on April 9 that after 20 years of following the theory that the disease is caused by the accumulation of sticky plaques made of beta-amyloid, maybe it’s time to look at alternative theories. Brain autopsies of many elderly that have amyloid plaques do not have any symptoms of Alzheimer’s--some normal brains have more amyloid than Alzheimer brains. She writes quoting a researcher: “Powerful people in this field think that amyloid causes Alzheimer’s and won’t consider research that questions the amyloid hypothesis.” Results of alternative research was published in the journal Neuron.

Her second article on April 16 concerns the difficulty of funding research and then publishing anything that goes against “Church of the Holy Amyloid.” In the Journal of Neural Transmission Glenda Bishop published her research that showed rat brains injected with beta-amyloid suffered no more cell death than brains injected with salt water. Researchers looking at other possibilities have seen their grants evaporate. The challenges rest on solid science, claims Begley, but because amyloid research has dominated Alzheimer’s research for so long, almost all the experimental drugs and vaccines in the pipeline are predicated on that.

300 Bloomed where he was planted

Over at Boogie Jack’s Amost a Newsletter there is a story about his brother, who has been named Volunteer of the Year in Iowa. Dennis’ brother began beautifying his home town of Marshalltown, Iowa with hanging baskets of flowers, grown by him in his own green house and maintained by him--all without government funding. Boogie Jack’s newsletter is about designing web pages, and I started reading it when I had a web page at the university. Now I read it because Dennis is always positive and upbeat about life and technology, and even has an advice column about personal problems since his readers ask him everything. Take a look--you’ll become a fan, too. Many of his offers are free and he has great suggestions for making the web a more readable, interesting place to hang out.

299 Room with a View

One of my favorite cable TV channels is HGTV--Home and Garden, especially the make-over and real estate search programs. I was surprised this week to see what is considered "a view" in California real estate.

An artist who owned a 1 bedroom home with a small studio for her painting was looking for a 3 bedroom with a studio, but with a view and good light, something she could afford as she became increasingly successful in selling her paintings.

We saw her and the realtor trudging up many hillside steps and investigating several homes, the first two too small. The third seemed to be perfect, because she thought she could add a studio either over or behind the garage (this would never fly in our zoning here because of coverage rules). However, what surprised me was "the view" for all those homes. The houses for sale were on a hillside, therefore overlooked a valley--the view was roof tops. In all cases, they admired the view as the camera panned. Maybe you had to be there. Maybe there were mountains when the smog lifted. I like trees and open spaces and creeks in my view.

I noticed an ad in USAToday for a home in Bozeman, MT, which I believe is one of the prettiest states in the nation. For $519,000, which was probably the price range of the tiny hillside California suburban home with a view of roof tops, this artist could have purchased 2.54 acres, overlooking a stream, a contemporary log home with 3,700 sf, 5 bedrooms, and 3 baths--and a spectacular view. You can paint anywhere--why not in Montana?

298 Keep your mind sharp

Having just spent a few days with friends and family, some of whom I've known for over 60 years, I heard a lot of regrets about misremembered or forgotten names, faces, and facts. Today the local paper had a syndicated article on how to keep your older brain sharp. The author only listed nine things, but I think there are more, so I’ve added numbers ten through twenty. I think there must be thirty, so e-mail me if you think of any more and I'll add them to the list. Actually, I would put my number ten at the top of the list to start the week out right.

1. Socializing--listening as well as speaking.
2. Music--listening as well as performing.
3. Puzzles--crossword is good; jigsaw too.
4. Games--even the old standards like checkers and chess
5. Activities like Toastmasters--helps to organize your thoughts
6. Visit museums and art galleries
7. Reading--try a genre you don’t like (mysteries, science fiction)
8. TV (this some seems a little weak to me)
9. Volunteerism--mentor, nursing home, animal rescue, environment, food pantry

10. Corporate worship, listen, sing, kneel, shake hands
11. Physical activity like dancing, hiking, aerobics, walking
12. Attend City Council and school board meetings
13. Attend support group meetings--Al-Anon, Tough love, Over-eaters, Visually impaired, COPD, etc.
14. Become a fan and supporter of a lesser known sport--women’s lacrosse, volleyball, crew
15. Write your memoirs in a group where you listen and share the discussion
16. Learn some introductory phrases in a foreign language
17. Become a conversation partner or reading volunteer
18. Try one new recipe a month and invite a guest for dinner
19. Learn the names of all the bushes and trees in your yard, then your street, then your neighborhood
20. Choose a long standing problem and solve it in 30 or 90 days

297 The Silk Road Redevelopment and Highway 64

The Wall Street Journal April 14 carried a story about the pain of redevelopment along the Silk Road in China. The Nighurs are seeing their markets and towns disrupted and the rents are soaring. The Han workers and retailers are taking over their bazaars.

It made me think of the reconstruction going on along Routes 2 and 64 in northern Illinois, through the little towns of Oregon and Mt. Morris. In Oregon the townspeople have tied ribbons around the huge trees they want to save. In Mt. Morris, it is too late--it looks like Hitt Street has taken a hit indeed--like a tornado or bomb practice has wreaked havoc on a town already suffering losses in business and closed schools from fire and consolidation. At the IDOT website the map shows a tiny smear of orange right through Mt. Morris--no other "improvements" on that main artery. The Oregon project, which is still being developed, doesn't show at all.

It makes one wonder who in IDOT (Illinois Department of Transportation) never lived in a small town graced with 150 year old trees, where the homes may be the only asset many people have, where the townspeople stay because of their neighbors and values even when the employers and retrailers leave them. I'm guessing these IDOT bureaucrats live in protected cul-du-sacs in tree lined suburbs of Chicago and Springfield. It makes one want to follow the money to find out just who dreamed up this scheme which must be benefiting someone who obviously doesn't live in either town.

296 New URL for Church of the Acronym

I have four blogs. I have made changes in templates and URLs and names over time as I learn this system. I haven't been able to figure out how to take down the old URL without eliminating the whole file, so this is a reminder to change your bookmarks to http://churchacronym.blogspot.com. While that site was closed for repairs, I noticed an ad for new floors (I have not control over the ads).

295 The Widows of 9-11

The Wall Street Journal has an editorial by Dorothy Rabinowitz about "widow fatigue."

"Out of their loss and tragedy the widows had forged new lives as investigators of 9/11, analysts of what might have been had every agency of government done as it should. No one would begrudge them this solace.

Nor can anyone miss, by now, the darker side of this spectacle of the widows, awash in their sense of victims' entitlement, as they press ahead with ever more strident claims about the way the government failed them. Or how profoundly different all this is from the way in which citizens in other times and places reacted to national tragedy. . . " And she goes on to describe the horror of the bombings in Britain in 1940 and 1941.

As I've watched and listened to the hearings, and read the criticism of both the Clinton and Bush Administrations I'm wondering if in the long run they won't benefit President Bush.

Afterall, the most hateful critics of Bush seem to be crying, in hindsight, that he should have been aware of how to stop 9/11 even on vague, poorly worded intelligence summaries. These same people wanted him to take preemptive action, like racial profiling of Arabs in the country legally, taking legal flight classes. On the other hand, they didn't want him to take preemptive action when he had very specific intelligence on WMD, which haven't been found yet. They wanted him to take action against terrorists in the summer of 2001 without any support from allies, but didn't want him to take action in 2003 when allies who were in cahoots with Sadaam wouldn't support him.

The 9-11 hearings are so political they are starting to smell really bad. And the widows are diminishing the memories of their loved ones, behaving as though the lives of the rest of the nation have no meaning at all as they play into the hands of the terrorists and set us up for more tragedy.

294 The Older Moms

When I watched the mothers come in with children today at Panera's (after 11 a.m.), I sometimes was unsure if I was seeing young grandmothers or older mothers. They appeared to be in the 40-50 age group but had toddlers.

There are many safety precautions in place today. When I asked at the grade school about the traffic tie ups, I was told no one lets her children walk to school nowadays--it's not safe. When I asked about the draconian child safety procedures at our church, I was told child safety is a top priority. My children never wore bicycle helmets or were strapped into child safety seats as infants--they sat on my lap. Today I would be severly reprimanded and ticketed for such a lapse.

So have all these safety regulations that don't require exercising common sense addled the brains of today's mothers? Here's what I saw today. I like to sit next to the open fire. One middle-age-mother-of-toddler was letting her little girl dance on the 18" concrete raised hearth of the open fire place, next to the white hot glass doors. Another older Mom let her 3 year old lay her coat down on the floor so she could put it on "like a big girl" without help, as people stepped around and over her with their hot soup and coffee. Another Mom set her infant seat down on the floor so she could put her trash in the bin where people were walking up to the counter to place orders.

After watching this, I decided there were no grandmothers, only older mothers in this crowd. Women who had grown up saying, "someone should do something about this."

293 The deer dilemma

On our trip to Illinois last week we saw 12 dead deer in the median strip between the east and west lanes of Interstate 70 within the first hour (about 60 miles). The 13th we actually saw run across the east bound lanes missing the traffic and leap on to our west bound lanes where it was hit by a semi truck in front of our van, tossed about 20 ft. into the air like a rag doll, to land in the grassy median. It was a terrible thing to see, ruining the rest of the trip. But we knew what would have happened had a sedan or van hit it--a serious accident involving many cars.

So I looked on Google for “whitetail deer automobiles” to see how serious a problem this is. An article in a 2003 Cincinnati paper reported that the deer population in Ohio is soaring and that in 2001, the state recorded 31,586 deer-car collisions, about 17 percent more than in 2000. Insurance officials said the crashes caused about $63.2 million in damage. I learned as I continued browsing Google that it has its own acronym, DVC, deer-vehicle collision.

Reading other sites, I learned that does live twice as long as bucks, because bucks waste their body fat and become weak and kill each other in fights with other bucks. Another area of behavior we humans share with the animals. I learned that there is a disease spreading among deer called chronic wasting disease. CWD is one type of a broad group of neurological diseases called transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSE), the most famous of which is bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or "mad cow" disease. TSEs are always fatal.

One web site figured half a million deer are hit by autos (and obviously by trucks), but that more are killed in fences. Dogs, feral and loose running, may kill as many as 10% of the legal harvest according to that author. I saw the half a million figure at several websites, but no one sited a source.

I thought the animals I saw were does, however, the websites I read mentioned that bucks lose their antlers in December and January and have nothing until April when the base starts to swell and grow. Every web site I read said they vary in color from reddish brown to very dark, almost black. But all the animals I saw were a pale blonde.

The heavy truck traffic, and large deer population in central Ohio combined with growing suburban developments between Columbus and Dayton on Rt. 70 obviously are a lethal combination. I didn’t see dead deer anywhere else on the trip.

292 The gift and flower shop

The weather was balmy so we walked to Merlin's. There were lovely displays of antiques, framed prints, seasonal silk flowers, scented creams and lotions, and air fresheners. I stopped. Could hardly believe my eyes. Artificial dandelions. How perfect! A garden shop filled with articificalness had an artificial weed!

My Daddy hated dandelions
They seemed to like our lawn
Soon their little yellow faces
Were destined to be gone.

My Daddy was a brave Marine
at eighty nine he died.
I know Dad guards the gates of Heav'n;
Those dandelions can't hide.

291 Along the Way

We saw a wind farm near Paw Paw, Illinois with about 100 wind mills. They look like huge chicken legs sticking up out of the ground.

We think we saw a drug bust as we entered Ogle County--police had stopped a car. There was a huddle of people, at least one a woman, shivering in the wind whipping across the fields. We noticed the dog, anxious to start doing his work of sniffing out illegal stuff.

At an intersection on Rt. 64 we noticed a half grown brindle pup, dragging his broken chain, tail down and frightened. I don't think he'll last long in that traffic.

290 Dark rooms can be so depressing

We had our neighbor over for dinner last night--she hadn't been in this unit since the decorators lived here in the early 90s. As I've mentioned before, the living room was about 5 layers of faux glaze that resulted in dark brown, the dining room was faux orange, the guest room was a deep faux forest green and black, and the family room and halls were faux red/coral. These colors included the ceilings. This unit is fortunate to have a window or two in every room--some do not. But the windows were pretty much covered up with very heavy, fringed and tassled drapes. Yards and yards.

As she walked around admiring the lighter look she commented that the decorators told her they were selling because the unit was so dark and they were getting depressed!

289 Resetting the clocks

It is probably an urban legend--the one about Martha Stewart deciding it was easier to buy new clocks and a new car rather than try to reset the digital clocks for the time changes. My 2003 van is easy. H means hour and M means minutes and you push. But my previous van--which also lost a few seconds every month or two--was very difficult to reset. So for about 6 months of the year it was one hour and 5 or 6 minutes off. Keeps the brain cells active.

287 My basketball injury

My right shoulder really hurts. It is a basketball injury. During the NCAA Tournament, I've been watching a little TV in bed propped up on pillows because the tournament is on in the living room. I fall asleep in that position in about 2 minutes even if it is a good movie and fund raising time on PBS. Yesterday around noon I was chatting with a friend on the portable phone, and felt something go zing snap pop behind my right shoulder. I know what caused it--the basketball tournament.

286 Preparing for book club

The sun is shining and it is a nippy 40 degrees in Columbus, but there was a man sitting on the outside patio at Caribou this morning reading a textbook, Corrosion Basics. I was on the inside reading Monday night's bookclub selection, The God of Small Things, by Arundhati Roy. I wondered if he'd be willing to trade.

There are some very interesting, well-written sentences in this book--unfortunately none of them seem to be in the same paragraph. I use my Dostoevsky method--write down every name with a brief description so you can tell the dog from the grandmother from the town.

I've tried starting at the beginning. I've tried starting in the middle. The story lies beyond my grasp. Has life so passed me by, comfortable in my condo and retirement, that I can no longer read a "national bestseller," one that received glowing remarks in the New York Times Book Review and the Washington Post Book World?

Every page I turn to seems to include defecation or the male's lower body parts in their purest Anglo-Saxon simplicity. I find myself longing for the participle driven, acronym laden sentences of a library task force report, or something of comparable clarity.

285 Visiting

Today we visited Highland Elementary to meet James Ransome, illustrator of children's books. He was speaking throughout the day in the library, so we sat through his presentation to kindergarten age. He did a wonderful exercise with the children and they all learned new words and how a book is put together. All the children in the school had been primed for this visit and to the smallest, they were so excited and well-prepared.

The building is very old--probably over 100 years--and the student body comes from many ethnic, religious and income groups, Somali, African-American, Hispanic, Asian, and white. There are many "real" windows in the building--not walls of glass--even in the halls, the doors to the classrooms have half lights and transomes, the ceilings soar. So different than the squashed, absent-minded look of the late-20th century with flat roofs, endless dark corridors, and regimented lockers. Wonderful murals were everywhere, some based on the faces and bodies of the actual students, paintings of quiet and well behaved children waiting in line, for instance. We saw them changing rooms everywhere--no pushing, shoving, shouting. We peeked in at the physical ed class in the gym. Teachers didn't raise their voices, but talked to the students very quietly. Respect for others builds a wonderful learning environment.

Every child in the building got a book autographed by Mr. Ransome--for some, it may be a first--paid for by donors. For large families, they will have many.

When I was in elementary school, we had no library. This library was in the basement (but had windows), but was very well organized and stocked, both fiction and non-fiction, and I believe there were 4 computers, but with all those wonderful books, I really didn't pay that much attention.

Parents and volunteers were everywhere. Children at Highland Elementary have the most basic foundation for an education--people who love and respect them.

284 Ironing Update--Three have to go!

I ironed again to day. This time they were all pre-Bush administration, and two may have been pre-Reagan! Sri Lanka, Philippines, India, Hong Kong, Singapore, China, and 2 USA. However, the gray plaid, the pale flesh tone, and the gold are going into the missionary barrel. My husband is very pale, even when he has a sun tan, so at the end of winter--those colors don't look too great on him. They make him look either dead, dying or diseased. His birthday is Monday, so I told him today he would be getting some new shirts. (He loves surprises, but I don't.) I'll look for USA made, but am not hopeful. I will definitely look for blue, green or brown, however, in the deeper tones.

Update: April 4--He sneaked those three shirts back in the closet--even the one of folded up and put in the furnace room with his work clothes! The selection at Kohl's was a little limiting, but I bought 4 new ones. Most shirts seem to be made for wrestlers and basketball players, so it took a little time.

283 Our bodies, our destiny

I remember learning back in the 70s that women who live together and/or work together cycle through menstral periods together. Yes, have PMS together. Now Nature Magazine says a woman is at her prettiest during the time of the month she is fertile.

Both men and women consider a woman's face to be at its most attractive when she is at the peak of her fertility, according to new research. . . article here.

In another study, women were found to judge other women more harshly during the peak of fertility

The research shows that when women are at the most fertile point in their monthly cycle they tend to have a lower opinion of other women's looks. And that's not just because of mood swings. Menstrual phase had no effect on how the same women rated the looks of men. article here.