846 Praying about head lice

We all started feeling itchy as she was telling us about the head lice infestation in her classroom and measures they were taking to prevent the spread. Head lice are (is?) a serious problem for elementary school children. The scientific name for head louse is Pediculus humanus capitis. Sort of rhymes with ridiculous. Another name for infestation with head lice is pediculosis. Description here.

The measures were common sense--the children kept their coats on the back of their chairs, rather than in the coat room sharing space, and were told to keep their hair up off their shoulders. Wouldn't you know, the parent of the child who was the source of most of the infections, objected to the teacher telling his child how to wear her hair, so the word came down from the office, "No rules on hair styles." Schools are very fearful of law suits, so even practical measures that apply to all children and don't single any one out may not be workable.

There is one school in Columbus that has no head lice. It has a special group of prayer warriors who pray about that, and for over a year, no child in the school has had head lice. So we decided we'd be an ad hoc prayer group for that school, and specifically that class room. I suppose we could have included the whole school system, but we're going after this one louse at a time.

I don't know to whom you would send this card genre, but there are e-cards for the occasion that calls for mail to nit wits.

844 Enough of the big issues for awhile

There is a growing list if irritants in my notebook, so I'll just throw them out here, like emptying the trash. You are welcome to any of them if you need a minor crusade.

1) People who drop off grocery carts a few feet from the corral, or in the middle of a parking spot that is close to the door.
2) People who drop off their passenger at the door of the coffee shop, and then don't move their giant SUV or Hummvee so I can't get my car in or out.
3) Clerks who wear protective gloves to handle food, but then leave them in place to make change at the cash register.
4) Long artificial fingernails on anyone, but especially food workers (the bacteria count under them is incredible!).
5) Messy public restrooms with permanent tattoos of feces and urine with posted signs about cleanliness and hygiene for their staff.
6) Darters and dodgers racing to the next stop light where we idle together.
7) Restaurants that drive away regulars with menu changes while trying to attract new customers (churches too, with music that does this).
8) Friends and college roommates who don't write or e-mail.
9) Magazine agencies that send renewal notices 10 months early.
10) People who look and sound and act like someone I used to know, but aren't.

843 She wants to be fed and watered

Florida Cracker always has a good take on the issues, plus she is consistent. She saves injured animals and cares about people too. About the food and water issue (and last I looked we all need some help with that):

"This witholding of food and water is actually getting pretty common. I was reading about a man named Hugh Finn whose wife had him starved to death even though his family wanted him. His family had to pay her court costs for the legal fight too.
Rather than eye Mr. Cracker with suspicion, I did a living will saying I want my food and water any way I can get them. It's not too much to ask that you be fed and watered twice a day.

The things you have to do these days to protect yourself from hearsay."

She has some further observations. Comments by one of her readers who prepares Living Wills is also worth reading.

842 Final photos

A washed up digital camera reveals the last moments of a Canadian couple, victims of the tsunami. Photos. The camera of John and Jackie Krill was found by Christian Pilet, a Baptist relief worker, who used the Internet to track down their family.

841 Tell us how you really feel, Joel

"Who the !!@*@*!! let this happen??? Apparently, the movie of C.S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is in the hands of...Disney!!! That's right, Disney!

Just who is responsible for this? Is a Buddhist-Agnostico-New-Age-Schlockfestico redaction of the world's greatest work of Christian children's fiction really what the world needs right now?

I mean, please! Heads need to roll on this one."

The Rev is revved on this one.

840 Conflict of Interest?

Should George Felos, Michael Schiavo's attorney, be on the board of directors of the Hospice where she resides and gets no treatment? Seems odd to me, if Becki is telling this story correctly:

"Terri was even starting to speak again - words like "yes" "no" and "stop that" - but that was before Michael Schiavo hired George Felos to help his wife "die with dignity". Now, Terri's parents have been safely removed so as to avoid "false hope". All media and medical access is tightly controlled by Micheal Schiavo and Felos; in response, Terri has at last physically and mentally degenerated to the level where she may be exterminated by polite society.

Terri's slow death will grind down to a brutal, final starvation, executed at Felos' request. Upon Terri's death, several hundred thousand dollars that were earmarked for Terri's long-term care and therapy will finally be released to her husband Michael Schiavo, his new lover and their two children, to his attorney George Felos, and quite possibly in turn to the Hospice itself. It is unknown if Felos would advocate quick death for hospice patients who do not have large sums of money lubricating their exit from life; evidently the Hospice has not been forthcoming with clients in regard to George Felos' true role at the Hospice."

Comments on Felos here.

839 Hotel Rwanda and Million dollar baby

I won't be seeing either movie, but if it were up to me, based only on the reviews, I'd vote for Hotel Rwanda to walk off with more awards.

At least, it attempts to tell the truth about when a million or so Tutsis and moderate Hutus were massacred in Rwanda and the rest of the world looked away. It is about a hotel manager who saved about 1200 of his countrymen while waiting, saying--"they will come."

"Baby" is a love story of sorts (according to Jim at the coffee shop). But it is getting picketed by disabled advocacy groups who say the writers didn't do their homework and depict an inaccurate view of the disabled and their care. Others say it is just a political paean to active euthanasia. I don't think the disability advocates care that the boxer wanted to die rather than live without fame; they just wanted some respect for the disabled.

838 Information theory

I just used Answers.com to look up the term "information theory." It reported:

"The theory of the probability of transmission of messages with specified accuracy when the bits of information constituting the messages are subject, with certain probabilities, to transmission failure, distortion, and accidental additions."

Paul's blog (he's a PhD candidate for saving Terri's life) is about information theory. But I'm still confused. If you use "theory" and "probability" in the same sentence, I just black out.

But my oh my, I do love Answers.com.

837 Tag, you're it

When reading this story, I wondered if I would have ever made it to high school with the sort of hysteria that's reported about schools these days.

First off, I would've been in the headlines and my teacher jailed for child abuse, because one day in first grade she yanked my braids so hard she snapped my neck and then tied a towel around my face because I talked too much (imagine that!). The other children were not even reprimanded for laughing at me and damaging my self esteem.

Then there was that sex scandal. When I was in third grade and Tommy in fourth, we used to sneak across the street to the church with dense bushes (EUB?) and kiss.

Gender issues, yes we had them. In fourth grade I was the fastest runner in the class at recess, even if I had sore arches and a pain in my side from the glory. I looked around one day and saw that I was leaving the little boys in the dust, and figured out very quickly I needed to not show up the boys at their own game.


Grade school on a very cold day in Forreston

836 Let's be humble--you go first

This morning I heard an interview on radio 610 with Maurice Clarett in which he actually said, "It's a very humbling thing being humble." Athletes need to arrive on campus or at camp with a large supply of duct tape to seal their mouths. No entertainers, politicos or defendants in a criminal act ever make the ridiculous remarks that athletes do. I think journalists interview them just so they can poke fun because they didn't get a letter in high school. It's their big chance to get back at the guys who kicked sand in their faces as teen-agers.

""It's a humbling thing being humble," Clarett said. "I got a second chance to make a first impression." " some reporter's version.

835 The Green Correction

This morning I saw Vol. 2, no. 1 of The Green Magazine , a golf magazine for minorities, at Barnes and Noble. When I reviewed it last week I thought it had folded.

834 Presidential Dog and Pony Show

Joe Blundo says he loves seeing former Presidents Bush and Clinton together. He wants them to bring their new sense of cooperation to the U.S. after touring tsunami stricken countries for a "Shut up and do something Initiative" for Americans.

I thought the commercials were nice too, but President Clinton looks a bit pale and wan, don't you think. So I thought maybe I wouldn't lose that weight after all.

833 Anniversary of Lincoln's first assassination attempt

Today is the 144th anniversary of the first assassination attempt on President Lincoln. Most people don't know that it was an Ohio librarian who saved his life.

Colonel William T. Coggeshall, State Librarian of Ohio for 6 years, 1856-1862, was only 42 when he died in 1867. He wrote Poets and Poetry of the West, (Columbus, OH: Follett, Foster And Company, 1860). At the time, Ohio was considered “the West.” He died in Ecuador where he had gone as Ambassador after the Civil War ended. Coggeshall had been hired as a bodyguard and secret agent for President Lincoln, and saved his life shortly before his inauguration by intercepting a grenade thrown on the train. This was not revealed until 1908, long after the deaths of both Lincoln and Coggeshall. The incident is reported in Colonel Coggeshall, the man who saved Lincoln, by Freda Postle Koch.

One other example of his devotion to Lincoln, is that the Coggeshalls had a daughter born on September 20, 1862, the day Coggeshall received a telegram from Washington that Lincoln had a final draft of the emancipation proclamation. He decided to name the baby girl, "Emancipation Proclamation Coggeshall," but not until Richmond fell. Richmond didn't fall until April 3, 1865, so she was called "Girlie" for two and a half years, and then named Emancipation Proclamation. When she got to school, a teacher nicknamed her Prockie, which she was called the rest of her life (she died at 51). Her grave marker says E. Prockie, but her family continued to call her "Girlie."

The State Library of Ohio now has a room named for Coggeshall.

832 Are Florida statutes being violated?

To look at these statutes in Florida about the rights of the disabled, you'd think they'd be protected. But even without a careful reading, it would appear Michael Schiavo has violated most of them, and Florida authorities have just looked the other way. He hasn't filed a guardianship plan for years, he's provided her no therapy since 1992, he has mismanaged her money (rehab money has been spent on lawyers fighting her parents), he moved her to hospice without court authority, and he is living in adultery, a misdemeanor in Florida (which ought to make him a poor guardian of her interests as well as a bad husband). He's also given orders to her caretakers not to treat simple maladies which could be fatal for a bedridden person. Now these are charges--not court findings. But shouldn't someone be at least be looking at the guardian courts that are supposed to review the guardian's plan for therapy?

831 Lust

Usually I don't take my car to the dealership for service, but this was a warranty recall, so after the coffee shop I drove north to hunt for the dealer (winding streets through the shopping centers). I prefer the local Pro-Care or Marathon guys, because going to the dealer is the equivalent of being asked to wait in the bar for an hour while your table number comes up in a restaurant. It gave me just enough time to wander around the show room and see a car I'd never noticed before, the Dodge Magnum. It is a station wagon with attitude, muscle, and good gas mileage.

I just love my Dodge minivan--it is my third since 1989. It is the only automobile I can ride in for hours and not be crippled, and it is tall enough to at least allow me to see around a few of the SUVs that hog the road in these parts and short enough to fit nicely in the garage and not throw me into the trash cans when I exit. But taking someone to the airport, the doctor's office, or a restaurant, and trying to shove or lift them into that back seat is a chore. We took our 84 year old neighbor to a concert last Spring and it was a bit of a challenge. Even running boards (or whatever we call them today) don't help much. Riding in Jean's Lincoln last week reminded me how nice it was not to rip a skirt or hike it up my thigh trying to climb into a van.

830 The voice of experience

One of Terri's bloggers writes from personal experience with rehabilitation. How well I remember facing the "experts." After my daughter's cancer surgery I sat in a room with a table of specialists--each recommending their own specialty, each contradicting the other.

"I am biologically tenacious, aren't you? Knowing what I know now, I am extremely grateful that I have never lived under Judge George Greer's jurisdiction. I have chronic progressive multiple sclerosis, have an electric wheelchair, and have been through acute rehabilitation at the University of Utah Medical Center four times. In two of those extended stays in the hospital I was given the beautiful opportunity to learn how to swallow, speak, eat, and to continue with my life. I was treated by experts, a multidisciplinary medical team that had the experience to evaluate and rehabilitate me. All of these opportunities have been denied Terri Schiavo.

In previous orders by Judge Greer to remove Terri's feeding tube he based the orders on the testimonies of doctors who say Terri is in a persistent vegetative state(none of which were qualified medical rehabilitation experts). But doctors employed by the Schindlers to assess her condition conclude that with therapy, she could learn to eat and drink on her own and perhaps learn to talk. However, those assessments were not allowed in court by Judge Greer." Richard has more to say.

Although I personally believe the rehabilitation will come too late, I also don't believe that is the only issue--whether she can speak (or do math or paint a masterpiece). We do not place value on people because of their speech or swallowing. The media reports slip off the horse on one side or the other--either the side that she has no brain activity at all, or swerving over to maybe there is hope for her like the woman who awoke from a coma after 20 years. When in doubt, choose life.

829 About as far off as a test can be

You Are 29 Years Old

29 Under 12: You are a kid at heart. You still have an optimistic life view - and you look at the world with awe. 13-19: You are a teenager at heart. You question authority and are still trying to find your place in this world. 20-29: You are a twentysomething at heart. You feel excited about what's to come... love, work, and new experiences. 30-39: You are a thirtysomething at heart. You've had a taste of success and true love, but you want more! 40+: You are a mature adult. You've been through most of the ups and downs of life already. Now you get to sit back and relax.

What Age Do You Act?

It must have been the question on lying. None of them fit (can't remember the last lie I told), so I checked Lied about my age, because that sounded like something someone my age would do. But perhaps you're more likely to do it in your 20s than 60s? I don't feel 29; would not want to be 29 and have to go through all that nonsense again!

828 Childhood memories--learning to draw

Both Karin and Paula are blogging about childhood memories, getting ideas from different sources, and both are writers having recently participated in the write a novel in a month (NaNoWriMo) contest. I've just about tapped that source out (childhood), or the memory cells are shriveling (Quick--if you've got one, write it down. Don't expect it to stick around forever).

This was written two years ago, and no, I didn't stick with my plan.

When I was in the early elementary grades, for some reason I fell in love with horses. I was probably about seven, because I don’t remember having any interest in horses in first grade. In pretend outdoor games, I was always riding a horse--galloping. Also, indoors--as I would trot on my hands and knees through the living room with my younger brother on my back until Daddy would complain we were making too much noise. My blue bicycle was my horse, Rusty (even though it wasn’t) and my friend JoElla’s bicycle was “Red,” also a horse and also blue. We would ride Rusty and Red around Forreston developing the storyline as we went.

My interest in horses soon moved to books and drawing. I read all the Black Stallion series by Walter Farley and all the Marguerite Henry books. I still have my “Born to Trot” and “The Blood-bay Colt.” I would draw horse stories, it seems now, by the hour at the dining room table. Mother brought home discontinued wall paper rolls for me to use as drawing paper if we ran out of our own scraps. (This was before the pre-pasted came on the market.) My uncle worked at a printing plant and she would also get bundles of unused white newsprint from him for me to draw on.

Mother never interfered or gave advice--she did however, buy me a few “how-to” drawing books and took me along with her to Freeport to the adult night school where I took a brief drawing class (the only child in the class) while she took a typing class. I really didn’t care much for this class because horses were the only thing I knew how to draw or cared about, and the instructor would set up a still life with draping and small figurines--really boring for a kid. But one day Mother stopped at the dining room table--I can see and hear her as though it happened today--and observed that horses had “hocks” and if I would just make a few curves in the hind legs, my horses might look more realistic. She had grown up on a farm and ridden behind “Beauty,” in a carriage when the roads were bad in the Spring and also had a pony one summer when her family was in Nebraska. So, although she wasn’t much of an artist, she knew the shape of a horse from direct experience, something I didn’t have. What a transformation. Instead of straight legs, my horses now had a bit more grace, and I drew even more furiously and made up even more exciting stories.

To this day, a horse is the only animal I can draw. Every time I look at my stick-like figures of dogs, cows and bunnies, it puzzles me that I can draw horses while blindfolded or standing on my head or in the dirt with my big toe. Obviously, my skill with horses is a result of practice and devotion and not talent. So last week, I decided I would go on a crash course to learn to draw animals. I never set goals because I’m a problem solver. So, to solve this problem of stick figured dogs and cats, I decided I would practice drawing one and a half animals a week--for seven days I would work and concentrate on one animal and around day five I’d start the next animal. I have a very smart cat. She rolls up in a ball and closes her eyes when she sees me pick up a pencil and open a sketchbook.

Update:
day 3

827 There is no stay

This blog for Terri says there is no stay; the media have reported even that incorrectly.

826 Gender styles in blogging

Finding female bloggers for my links took a long time. But now I've got a good group. Today I found a "Gender Genie" that thinks most of my own blogs are written by a male! You copy and paste one of your own writing examples (fiction, non-fiction or blog) into a window for analysis. The results color code the key words for determining gender. Interestingly, frequent use of the word "the" throws this writer into the male column. I tested several of my blog entries. The one I wrote about my husband being locked out of the house rated me as a female; the one I wrote about bread pudding had me overwhelmingly in the male column. Go figure. The blog I wrote in April 2004 about the Festival of Writing also put me in the male column, as did the one about deer-car collisions on the trip to Illinois.

The designer of the test has about 60% accuracy, but if I keep submitting, I'll mess them up. If you try this, you need to be careful not to use as an example one in which you do a lot of quoting. Otherwise, it isn't checking on you--but that other guy.