2101 A fine speech

He's no Reagan, but he isn't as long winded as Clinton, a lot prettier to watch than Carter, and much more inspiring than his dad. It was a fine speech. "Hindsight alone is not wisdom," Bush said. "And second-guessing is not a strategy."

"President Bush's 2006 State of the Union address was a familiar stew: a dash of Reaganesque optimism, a pinch of Clintonian small-bore initiatives, a heaping teaspoon of Truman-like tough talk, and a generous portion of warmed-up leftovers from previous policy speeches. But as familiar as the ingredients of the President's Jan. 31 oration were to viewers, they formed a tasty recipe for American business." Business Week

"Hampered by huge budget deficits and an unpopular war, President Bush will seek to take charge of the election-year agenda Tuesday by declaring America must break its dependence on Mideast oil and calling for training 70,000 math and science teachers to improve the nation's competitiveness." Forbes

Since nothing was done to fix Social Secuity, last year's poster child, I won't hold my breath on the energy theme.

2100 No matter what else Bush does

this will be his longest lasting legacy. Roberts and Alito.

"WASHINGTON (AP) - Samuel Anthony Alito Jr. was sworn in as the nation's 110th Supreme Court justice on Tuesday after being confirmed by the Senate in one of the most partisan victories in modern history.

Alito was sworn in by Chief Justice John Roberts in a private ceremony at the Supreme Court building across from the Capitol at about 12:40 p.m. EST, court officials said."

2099 Case 2-2006 is dumb as a rock and supporting an entire industry with our tax money

Sipping my Starbucks today, I opened the NEJM, Jan. 19 issue to p. 284, "A 31-year-old, HIV-positive man with rectal pain" is the title of the case. Reading a bit further. He smokes a pack of cigarettes a day, regularly uses marijuana and meth. He is unemployed. (What a surprise!)

He has AIDS, rectal discharge, pain when defecating and blood in his stool, pelvic pain, nausea, and weakness. It's the pain, not the AIDS that has sent him to the doctor this time. He has regular anal intercourse without condoms with his "usual partner" who also is HIV positive, and he has other partners.

He was diagnosed 12 years ago (as a teen-ager) and has had sporadic care over 10 years including zidovudine, lamivudine, nelfinavir, and ritonavir-lopinavir, but has been inconsistent. A year ago he was sick and hospitalized with some things too long to spell or pronounce, but I know they are bad, and received cephalexin, clarithromycin and ethambutol.

After discharge from the hospital he received didanosine, stavudine, and efavirenz, after which he developed Kaposi's sarcoma, oral thrush, rectal herpes simplex and anal condylomas. Then he was treated with acyclovir, fluconazole, and dapsone.

For the current problem, he got ceftriaxone and azithromycin. Now he is diagnosed with proctitis--a first for him. The list is narrowed to gonorrhea, herpes simplex, chlamydia and syphilis--all common among men who have sex with men--but lab tests showed he didn't have those (small miracles).

So there are more tests, as his symptoms ease and then return--probably because he keeps reinfecting himself with more anal sex. The diagnosis section of the article says "he should be screened for sexually transmitted diseases, . . . and a thorough contact investigation should be initiated."

He is referred for a sigmoidoscopy and rectal biopsy, and it is determined he has lymphogranuloma venereum proctitis. (Never heard of if, but so far I know it is very expensive and self induced.) I won't even describe what the author says will happen if this condition goes untreated, but apparently the patient shares many of the clinical and epidemiologic features of other men in an outbreak that appears to be centered in the Netherlands and has spread to Western Europe, United Kingdom and the U.S. Now he's treated with doxycycline, which resolved his symptoms.

Now his "partner" is feeling poorly with the same symptoms.

My mind is going cha-ching, cha-ching for Medicaid and the drug companies. A marriage between the pharmaceuticals and gay men with the state governments the attendants. There are about 100 pages of text in this journal, and 55 pages of advertising by pharmaceutical companies.

The internet is listed as one of the means to spread these diseases that case 2-2006 has, as men find sexual partners across great geographic distance. Sort of gives a new meaning to computer virus, doesn't it?

2098 Another tip for right brained offices, dens and studios

It's OK to pile rather than file! Oh, thank the Lord! That's chapter 6 of Organizing from the right side of the brain, by Lee Silber. Reading further. Oh, oh. There's a codicil. "As long as you can find what you need when you need it." Hmmm.

What about when it's clean and you can't find it? Remember that extensive housecleaning and studio reorganizing I wrote about in December? Forgotten it already? Here and here. The other day my husband said, "I'm out of burnt umber. Have you got any?" I was pretty sure I didn't have any because it's not on my palette, but never mind, I couldn't find my watercolor tubes anyway. Everything is clean and tidy, but something better turn up quick, or I'll have to make a run to Dick Blick's soon.

2097 Maybe liberal is the key word here

Jane Galt is debating someone in cyberspace about the statistics used to show the success of education, contraception availability and cost in reducing abortions. Their data sources are different. She says:

"The places with the best contraception access, the most liberal sexual mores, and the most liberal sex ed, are also the places with the most abortions. These are the states with more than 23 abortions per 1,000 women of childbearing age, which is the national mean.

California
Connecticut
District of Columbia
Florida
Hawaii
Illinois
Maryland
Massachussetts
Nevada
New Jersey
New York
Rhode Island

All have outstanding liberal governments, dense populations, and high levels of spending on public health, as well as lots of Planned Parenthood clinics."

So we pretty much know what doesn't reduce abortion, don't we? More sex. Whether you want to accept it, more education, more access to contraception and more clinics seem to encourage more promiscuity resulting in more pregnancies followed by more abortions. How about looking at what does work? Neither debater seems to do a good job at that. Reading through it, I must say it sounds a bit cold and detached.

New cookbooks

One of my Thursday Thirteens is going to be about my favorite cookbooks, whether or not I use them. It will really be a memory blog. For instance, my mother-in-law died in 1998 and no one seemed interested in her cookbook, Betty Crocker (1950), so I got it. She had certain meals that were just terrific, but about the time I entered the family her alcoholism was slowly taking her out of the kitchen except for a wonderful tossed salad and garlic rolls to go with the steaks her husband fixed on the grill. But since my own mother had NEVER made anything like that meal, I thought it was a banquet. While collecting my thoughts for the TT, I took it off the shelf and remembered why I wanted it. It wasn't the recipes (most of which would now be called comfort food), it was her handwritten notes. She had the loveliest handwriting. I also found an index card with a recipe from my husband's grandmother, who had Parkinson's Disease, and you can see it in her tenacious handwriting.

Saturday I received a huge box of cookbooks, not exactly a gift, but more as a keeper of the flame from someone else's collection--a tiny part of her collection. She is now in a nursing home and will never return to her home. About 2/3 of these are Martha Stewart titles--hard cover and heavy duty, serious kitchen labor. This might be just what I need to try some new recipes I thought, anticipating that I might just start with one new one a week. It wouldn't be like that Julie blogger who turned her blogs into a marketable book as she cooked her way through Julia Child (Julie and Julia : 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen).

So I open what looks like the easiest one: "Martha Stewart's Healthy Quick Cook" (1997). It's January so I turn to Winter. Pot-au-Feu? Rutabaga? Monkfish? Fennel Carpaccio? Enlightened Creme Fraiche? Pappardelle?

Back to my mother-in-law's torn and stained pages, quickly.

2095 Chinook hymnody

A few posts back I mentioned the "fun" of browsing the Yale Beinecke Library uncataloged database and trying to discover the keywords that might bring up some entries. I used "horse," "letters," "manuscript," "woman" (didn't get much, which may mean those were rushed right to cataloging), and today I tried "hymns." I thought perhaps that genre would languish in a Yale backlog. I found a first reading book for Chinook that included hymns. Interesting. So I Googled Chinook because the only chinooks I knew about were strong winds and helicopters. There apparently are still a few Chinook Indians in the Pacific Northwest, they helped Lewis and Clark, and their language became the lingua franca jargon of the area. So I peeked around and found some interesting bibliographies, and eventually came to "Early Canadiana Online" and found some wonderful Chinookiana full text, online.

Now to the point of this blog, which isn't about Indians in the Pacific Northwest. I'm a Lutheran and although I love singing camp songs at informal gatherings in the woods and after potlucks, and I can swing and sway and raise my hands, I'm less than thrilled to stare at an overhead screen on Sunday morning and sing ditties that repeat and repeat. Here's what they were writing in the 19th century about teaching the Chinook Indians Christian hymns:

"These hymns have grown out of Christian work among the Indians. They repeat often, because they are intended chiefly for Indians who cannot read, and hence must memorize them."

Bingo!

2094 Are dentists as sensitive as doctors?

Because today he's going to "get a piece of my mind," and I don't have a lot to spare. I had a terrible pain in a tooth about 2 weeks before Christmas. X-ray, a one minute check up, big tab. Nothing was found, and I was sent home, with a "no problem that we can see." But all was not well. On Christmas Eve during dinner the tooth broke. I wasn't munching a crisp veggie or ice, I was eating dressing. The next week (3 day holiday) I go in and the filling, which was still doing its job and had been there over 50 years, was removed and replaced, but half the tooth was gone. It was covered with something.

Of course, then we're in to a new year, another 3 day holiday and a new deductible for 2006. Then it is back for the temporary crown, only the novacaine didn't seem to do the job, so I got two shots. This past week the gum has festered where I got the shots, I can't chew on either side, so I've bitten my cheek, and it looks like the gum line has really pulled away from the tooth root. I have to warm water before I can drink it. I can't even sleep on that side of my face. Today I'm supposed to get a permanent crown, and before I let him near me, I think we'll need to have a little talk.

Doctors don't like to be told they've messed up, or that you aren't getting any better under their care. Let's hope dentists don't have the same god complex.

Update: The answer is YES. And he is to blame for none of my problems, and he doesn't like "to be lectured." In fact, he started in on "dialog," and I told him I didn't want a dialog, I just wanted him to listen to me. He refused and kept right on talking so I'm in the market for a new dentist. I don't like to drive too far, so if you have suggestions for Upper Arlington or Dublin, Ohio, I'm open.

2093 Making fun of liberal education ideas

is like swatting at pesky flies too groggy to move away. Surely this can't be true, I thought, when I first read it at Sister Toldjah's site who referred to Bill Quick. So I looked it up in the Daily Telegraph, and I'm still not convinced that it isn't a put on.

"Pupils have been stopped from putting their hands up to answer questions because their school believes it leads to feelings of victimisation."

Huh?

Apparently, teachers have been conditioned to call on the students who don't raise their hands, so that's where the victimization comes into play.

"'No hands up' notices have been posted in every room at the Jo Richardson comprehensive in Dagenham, east London, as a reminder that the teachers will decide who should answer.

The head, Andrew Buck, says it is always the same children who wave their arms in the air, while the rest of the class sits back. When teachers try to involve less adventurous pupils by choosing."

How come if the kids are feeling so badly and so poorly prepared, they don't crack open a book and study to save themselves a little embarrassment? How will they survive in the work world? Now the teacher asks them anyway. One more way to punish achievers, I suppose.

2092 Katrina moved gangs to Houston

The gang members that moved to Houston after Hurricane Katrina so far haven't tangled with the locals but are taking out each other.

"Twenty-three slayings in the Houston area since the hurricane are believed to be related to Katrina evacuees, police said. The gang members in custody in 11 of the killings also were charged with aggravated robbery, kidnapping or weapons possession. Their alleged victims were all from Louisiana.

Three additional gang members wanted in the slayings remain at large." LA Times via Conservator

A similar thing is happening in Chicago now that the city is gentrifying some of the projects. The Jan. 26 WSJ reported on the distruption of community and communication now that the poor have been scattered here and there with housing vouchers as "mixed income" housing is going up where the projects came down. Not only are the poor having problems getting the services they once had in one location, but gangs have started establishing control on new turf. Crime is not a result of poverty (that's an insult to all law abiding, decent, poor people), but a result of bad behaving people (i.e., sin). So providing new bricks and mortar doesn't make the crime rate go down--it just moves it to a fancier area.

2091 The Lessons of Alito and Roberts--smart, experienced and cool under pressure

In the Feb. 6 Weekly Standard, Terry Eastland reviews the lessons of Alito (and Roberts), going back over the Harriet Miers* nomination, the rebellion of the conservatives, and the hoopla and hype of the liberals.

"In the end, a big lesson from the search for O'Connor's successor--a lesson of both the Roberts and Alito nominations--is that quality matters. Democrats were unable to convince anyone but themselves that the nation must maintain the Court's "balance" by having someone like O'Connor succeed O'Connor (assuming, that is, such a person could ever be found, her method of judging being entirely unpredictable). In Roberts and then in Alito, the country saw smart, experienced lawyers who could handle anything thrown at them--without losing their cool. . . Another lesson is that quality nominees can make a winning case for judicial conservatism.. . . There is another lesson from the two nominations, which is that Democrats have succeeded in making Supreme Court nominations a matter of partisan politics."

*I still believe this was a ploy on Bush's part to get who he wanted, but I'm no pundit getting paid for what I write.

2090 Now that's a fan!

This morning I caught a short human interest story on Spanish language television about a woman who is the #1 fan of Los Tigres del Norte, a Mexican-immigrant band based in San Jose, California. The walls, halls, and surfaces of her home were covered with framed photos of the family band consisting of four brothers, a cousin and a friend who came to San Jose as teens and released their first record in 1972. She has posed with the group for many of the pictures. Her couch had pillows with photo transfers. Her clothing was trimmed in a tiger stripe, and her bedroom was decorated with tiger bedspread, blankets and sheets, with tiger drapes. She certainly loves her Tigres.


The group started with songs about narcotic smuggling and crime, and later moved to social issues and the problems of living in the USA with your heart in Mexico. Currently immigration is a big focus in their music. After achieving wealth and success in the US, the group, which has made 30 records and 14 movies, didn't return to Mexico to live. So I suppose that supplies a lot of photos for their number one fan (whose name I didn't catch).

Los Tigres del Norte
Mexican Bands

2089 Does the ACLU know about this?

In the United States Capitol, there is the Rotunda canopy, a 4664-square-foot fresco painting entitled The Apotheosis of Washington, which depicts the first President of the United States rising into the clouds in glory.


"[Constantino] Brumidi depicted George Washington rising to the heavens in glory, flanked by female figures representing Liberty and Victory/Fame. A rainbow arches at his feet, and thirteen maidens symbolizing the original states flank the three central figures. The word "apotheosis" in the title means literally the raising of a person to the rank of a god, or the glorification of a person as an ideal; George Washington was honored as a national icon in the nineteenth century." Overview

2088 Keeping Faith

When I got to page 104 of Keeping Faith by Jodi Picoult, the February selection for our book club, I had a huge flash back to my working days. There was a security tape glued to the page. I thought of all the security strips I'd inserted in books and journals when my staff got behind and I had to pitch in on the clerical work. It even looked like someone had tried to remove it, but discovered it disintegrated when tugged.

You know what? We don't trust people like you who use public and university and private libraries in this country. Actually, it isn't you, it's that tiny minority who abuse the system. They steal books, cut out illustrations, rip out graphs and plates, deface, underline, hi-light and spill coke and leave greasy finger prints on property paid for by all of us and intended for the betterment of community. You may not even know anyone that rude or mean; you might even think everyone is as honest as you.

So, we purchase security systems, but still people get around them. They'll drop books out of windows, mishelve them so only they know where the book is, lift them over sensors, sweet talk or bribe staff, and cut the material into pieces to fit into backpacks. And these are future ministers, bankers, farmers, teachers, nurses, veterinarians, and the ordinary housewife and plumber.

So what do you think the Islamo-fascist will do to accomplish his end? Might really be worth it to know where that phone call is coming from, and why he is calling your neighbor, or banker, or teacher, or plumber, the person you trust. If we're watching you this carefully with our library books, it's a good idea to watch the bad guys too.

2087 Art towns in America

the 100 best? When I returned my magazines and books to the public library this week I noticed The 100 best art towns in America, 4th ed. was sitting on the book truck awaiting reshelving. It will go back next trip. It seems to be a relocation guide for artists rather than those who want to view art. Would you believe there's nothing in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota or Missouri? Come on! Apparently, towns over 100,000 didn't make the list, but there is nothing in the title, or subtitle that says that, although I suppose the word "town" would be a clue. Having grown up in a town of 3,000, I called 20,000 a "city." According to the introduction, the big cities are filled with artists just longing to escape to a place with cheaper real estate but a supportive arts community. Well, maybe so. I've yet to see very many areas of the country that doesn't have more going on in the arts than you can possibly take in without it becoming a full time job.

2086 Afternoon walk in the park

It was nearing 60 degrees today--pretty unusual for January in central Ohio, so we headed to the park for a walk. The golf course seemed to have almost as many golfers as a warm fall day, and we saw people playing tennis in the park in shirt sleeves and shorts. There was also a game of football, lots of dog walkers, joggers, bikers, and families walking with children and playing with them on the playground. The sky was a bright blue (also unusual around here in the winter). I talked to someone in Illinois this afternoon who was getting rain, so we'll probably get that tomorrow. But this hint of spring was nice. As I get older, time goes by so quickly I hardly even notice winter anymore. We had seven adult deer in our back yard this week--not sure that is a sign of spring, or if they are just getting bold about finding something to eat. One came right up to the patio.

2085 Catching some highlights of history

I was visiting Florida Cracker's blog and discovered that she is a librarian (been reading and linking to her for probably 2 years and don’t recall coming across that item). Now I'll have to move her link. In one of her entries, she mentioned the Romanov photo albums at Yale Beinecke Rare Book Library, so I had to hop on over there and take a look. I was a Russian major, you know. Absolutely charming family photos of the whole family in leisure activities--Nicholas, Alexandra, and their children, their friends, servants, etc. It’s now been about 90 years since they were murdered. A hauntingly beautiful example of the marriage of libraries, donors and the internet. There is also a finding guide

Then I clicked around on the Beinecke site until I came to a data base of Uncatalogued Acquisitions. In my day, we called that "the backlog," and I have many not unpleasant memories of wandering through spooky shelving areas pulling off interesting items. In veterinary medicine an 18th century book was extremely rare, but we did have a few.

The problem when faced with a search window for a database of material unknown to you, is what keyword do you enter? If you know what's in there, it's no problem. But I had no idea what Yale might be leaving uncatalogued. So I returned to my veterinary roots and used “horse,” coming up with some interesting items including the court-martial papers of George Sackville in 1760. Not knowing who that was, I Googled him, and discovered he was Secretary of State for America in Lord North's cabinet during the American Revolution. His ministry received much of the blame for Britain's loss of her American colonies. And there sits his court martial in Yale’s uncatalogued collection. What an ignominious ending for a politician. I can think of a few at the Alito hearings I would wish to have locked up in a library gathering dust.

Call Number
TSIP
Author
Sackville, George Germain, Viscount, 1716-1795
Title
Proceedings of a general court-martial held at the Horse-Guards on Friday the 7th ... to Monday the 24th of March 1760 ... on Tuesday the 25th of March ... to Saturday the 5th of April 1760. Upon the trial of Lord George Sackville
Place
Edinburgh
London
Publisher
Printed for A. Kincaid, J. Bell, R. Fleming, and for A. Millar in the Strand
Date
1760
Physical Description
1 v.

Another interesting keyword to use in this uncatalogued database is "letters." I think it got about 700 matches.

Romanov family
Czar Nicholas II
Beinecke Rare Book Library

2084 Thinking in thirteen

This week I completed my fourth Thursday Thirteen, a meme to challenge the blogger with new ideas and to bring new people (and returnees) to your site. Here's the results. You can see that Thursday is a big day.

Obviously, everyone's a slacker on Saturday and are off finding things to blog about the rest of the week. My first TT was Jan. 5, then 12th, 19th and 26th.

Here's mid-October-November, 2005


So some are just stop and peek, but a few keep coming back.

This entry is about Thursday Thirteen, but it is also about my stats. I have a little freebie stat counter--you can see it over on the left, and I also have another one that doesn't show, and it looks at a different range of things. If I were willing to pay for an ungrade, God only knows what else I'd know about you besides your ISP, your city, how many times you've returned, how you got here, what keywords you used, etc. And I know you're out there looking at me and dropping little cookies along the way so the big bad wolf called "No Privacy" can find me.

The news media and blogs have been full of the outrage over the government requesting, not names, but statistics from Google for porn searches. Google has said "No." Lots of unhappy libertarian and Democrats over this one. Brought the Bush-bashing to new levels.

Well folks, that horse got out of the barn and fled years ago. Any passworded staff member of any library, credit card company, hospital, mortgage lender, retail store, membership organization, etc. can look at your private information, and that capability has been out there for years.

The Bureau of Motor Vehicles has been selling your personal information since long before we had personal computers or anyone heard of porn on the internet. So have the utility companies. Insurance companies have been sharing your personal medical information at least since the 70s when I first read an article about the huge databases that were maintained, and maybe before that.

When my husband first became a sole proprietor in 1993, we got all kinds of offers for "lists;" by ZIP, by phone number, by hobby, by house size, by automobile make--I'm sure if we'd inquired, we could have bought a pornography list, a gay list, a leather list, etc. [that string ought to bring 'em here] You and your life's details are out there for a price, for sale to absolutely anyone.

All these loyalty cards you've signed up for at CVS or Krogers or one of the airlines for "free" miles? All that information is sold--but usually with your name. Had a speeding ticket, DUI, brought a law suit or been in a brawl that brought out the police? It's all in your county court system's databases that are out there for anyone to see.

Want to know where the doors and windows are in your victim's house and what streets and alleys are near by for escape? Just check your county auditor's website that provides a photo and floor plan of all the homes along with the valuations. So unless you are visiting child porn sites, I don't know what the fuss is about, because you and I certainly lost the privacy battle going on 20-30 years now.

"The federal government's requests [of Google]--which amount to a list of 1 million random Web addresses and a week's worth of search queries--is supposed to help the government build a case that Internet porn is readily accessible to minors, thus creating a need for its once-denied Child Online Protection Act (COPA)." Forbes

A quarter of all internet searches are for porn. Don't you believe it that Google (which I love) guys stay up at night thinking of ways to protect your privacy. Porn is a huge part of the search engine business, and probably the stat businesses you and I are using "for free."

This is about money. Not privacy. Not civil liberties.

Thursday Thirteen
Privacy
pornography
COPA

2083 Great vacation ideas

are over at Courtney's Thursday Thirteen, where she lists 13 national parks she has visited an enjoyed. She's a young mom with 2 children, but I don't know if these were trips with the kids. But the links she gives will provide the details.

I'm working on a series (well, I've written one called, Part 1) of essays for my writing class about our family vacations that weren't at my mother's farm or Lakeside. You'd be surprised how you'll forget what you never thought you'd forget, or what you'll remember that didn't happen. So, mommies, blog about those vacations and then print it out. Digital isn't forever, it doesn't even have a 5 year plan, and paper will last at least for your grandchildren.

Speaking of which, did you see on last night's news (every channel) that James Frey has finally admitted that Million little Pieces was a thousand big lies? At this point, I'm wondering if it was all a big bag of marketing (parent company of CNN, Court TV and Smoking Gun is apparently the same--maybe they own the publishing house?) between the author, Oprah, the publisher and the American Library Association to get more people reading!

2082 A new installment

over at Neo-Neocon. Can a former liberal find happiness as a conservative? Will this therapist ever be accepted by her colleagues (I'm betting they aren't as liberal as the library profession). In Part 6B of "A Mind is a Difficult Thing to Change" she continues with the unfolding of her escape:

"The access was provided by the internet. The worldwide media was newly at my fingertips. Without it, I would never have encountered the varied sources that led me down the path of change, but would instead have stuck with the old tried and true--the Times, the Globe, the New Yorker, Nightline, and NPR--and I am certain I would not be sitting here today, writing this blog."

And she's pretty open about how she'd been misled by her trusted sources, but also how she didn't question anything:

"It may seem hard to believe, but in years past I had never paid particular attention to who had written a story as long as it appeared in a major media source that I trusted. The Times, the Globe, the New Yorker--I trusted that their editors would only publish reliable writers, and that all articles would be scrupulously fact-checked. Yes, I knew that all newspapers and magazines had a political slant (be they liberal or conservative), but that was only in the editorials, right? Even though I knew there might be some underlying agenda, the news pages--the facts--were sacred. . . How can I explain my previous naivete? How had it escaped me that bias was not confined to the editorial pages?"

Read this installment, and check out her earlier posts.