3468 Dress for Success

Remember that old saw? Wonder what happened? When I retired in October 2000, I vowed not to appear in public in the retiree's uniform--sweat pants and athletic shoes. Unless I'm going out to pick up trash along the road side, I've pretty much kept that resolution. However, today I outdid myself. I went to the coffee shop decked out in a suit. Yesterday I bought a black pinstripe pantsuit, cuffed leg, short jacket, 100% wool and fully lined, Jones New York brand, size 8. If the Jones* page displays correctly, my suit (or something like it) appears in the "collection" category. I actually wouldn't have worn this when I worked, because libraries are too dirty; my staff were assigned dusting or table washing if we were slow. Also, I never wore slacks to work.

I don't know what these suits cost new (ca. $120 I think), but I got it for $18 at the Cancer Society Shop which sells only donated clothing (passing along $200,000 a year for cancer research), a lot of it by someone who has my short legs and small waist.

If you first started wearing slacks to work 20 years ago, dress-down or casual Fridays put you in jeans. Today at the coffee shop I saw a young woman in flannel pajama bottoms--and I see this almost every Friday. In 2000, I just didn't know how bad it was going to get.

-----

*The Company's nationally recognized brands include Jones New York, Evan-Picone, Norton McNaughton, Gloria Vanderbilt, Erika, l.e.i., Energie, Nine West, Easy Spirit, Enzo Angiolini, Bandolino, Joan & David, Mootsies Tootsies, Sam & Libby, Napier, Judith Jack, Kasper, Anne Klein, Albert Nipon, Le Suit and Barneys New York. The Company also markets costume jewelry under the Givenchy brand licensed from Givenchy Corporation and footwear under the Dockers Women brand licensed from Levi Strauss & Co. Jones Apparel Group

Friday Family Photo

My parents wedding photo.



This is when the Scots-Irish side and the German-Swiss-English side of my family got together after about eight or nine generations of pretty much sticking with their own kind. For many years I had thought myself an 8th generation American, but when more information on genealogy became so accessible via the internet, and I joined the Church of the Brethren listserv finding distant relatives, I added a few more generations. Many of them started out in Pennsylvania--I suppose if the roads had been better or if they had spoken the same languages, they might have bumped into each other. However, in the early 1700s, these ethnic groups had little or no social interaction and rarely married outside their own fellowships or neighborhoods. Moving west and south in the 1800s changed that somewhat, and by the 20th century many couldn't have even told you who their grandparents were.

My parents met on a "blind date" the summer before they started college in 1930 because a guy my dad knew was dating a girl in Franklin Grove (a girl friend of my mother) and didn't have a car. So dad drove, and both young men found a wife.

3466 Billy Graham's New Orleans Crusade

I must be the last person on the planet to open an e-mail to receive a forwarded, forwarded, forwarded, forwarded x100 story about Billy Graham leading a crusade in NOLA to Bourbon Street and having sinners rejoicing and singing along with the thousands who attended. I don't know why someone would make this up, and often the press is hostile to Christians, but folks, this didn't happen. When you see something--maybe it's medical, or political, or artistic, or spiritual--that sounds just a tad fishy ("the press will never cover this" is a good clue), do a little checking. I always use the Snopes site when I'm suspicious, but common sense wouldn't hurt either. Here's what a NOLA Baptist pastor said about the story.

One clue should be Graham's organization. It is a huge marketing machine--the Graham organization was a pioneer in using the media to spread the Gospel. His camera crews would have been right on top of this--if it happened. I'm on their mailing list, and if you've ever been in the cross hairs of a Christian group raising money, whether Mennonite or Samaritan's Purse, you know this opportunity, if true, would have arrived via snail-mail, not e-mail, with a return envelop.

Also, this is not a story the press would be afraid of. The press loves Billy; my public library which has little of value or interest for Christians, probably has every title the man ever published.

Now, go tell someone the Good News of Jesus Christ.

And a reminder from Paul: "See to it no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy." Col. 1:8

3465 What you never knew about bad breath

John Corby (WTVN 610 am Columbus, OH) was interviewing Dr. Katz about bad breath today. He even has a product for your cat and dog. Tonsils seem to be the culprit for some, sinus for others. He said don't brush your tongue with toothpaste because it has detergent in it and will cause dry mouth, making bad breath worse. One little item: apparently super models have really gross breath because they don't eat enough to make their digestion work properly.

Speaking of WTVN, you might remember that about 6 weeks ago I was really peeved with them for taking off Glenn Beck and messin' with me. Well, they eventually reinstated him to an FM station in Westerville on a one hour delay. But before I found him again (about 2 weeks) I started listening to WLW's morning guy, Mike McConnell, and I liked his style and the people he interviews. He's really pounding the global warming fear mongers. So now I don't listen to WTVN or Glenn.

Technorati: Glenn Beck,
talk radio, WTVN Columbus, WLW Cincinnati

Poetry Thursday #6

CHANGE is this week's theme in honor of PT's new website. What changes more than women's fashion? Truthfully, my style doesn't change that much, especially with no job to go to. So when I say good-bye to a favorite style or fabric, it is a sad day. Some go to my "vintage closet"--not to wear, but to look at, like a formal my mother made when I was in high school, or my mother-of-the-bride dress from 1993.

This poem is about the last pair of shoulder pads in my closet. Shoulder pads (for women) returned to fashion in the early 1980s after a hiatus of about 30 years. They started small and then became enormous, and gradually disappeared. Now we all have narrow, dainty, child-like shoulders again instead of looking like we suited up for the middle school football team or the soap opera Dynasty.


On removing shoulder pads from a favorite blouse
by Norma Bruce
Feb. 7, 2007

Others told me
(helpful friends)
someday on my own
strength
would I go
to meet the world
tall, strong, confident.

I’d waver; you were silent.

Mirrors told me
(how they lied)
only with your
help
could I climb
the ladder of
greed, success, power.

I’d arrange; you were silent.

Today told me
(glaring lights)
it was now past
time
should I cling
another minute to
padded, shaped, contoured?

Snip and toss; you were silent.


Technorati: Poetry Thursday

3463 Update on illegals

While my power steering fluid was dripping out yesterday (I didn't know it), I was driving along and listening to someone report that the border guard who was sentenced to a minimum security prison but sent to a medium security instead and placed in the general population where he was badly beaten by other prisoners. And now it has come out the government lied at their trial. If Bush doesn't shape up on border protection for us, he's going to lose his support from conservatives for his plan to help Iraqis protect their borders.

"In the high-profile case of two U.S. Border Patrol officers imprisoned after shooting and wounding a Mexican drug smuggler, two Department of Homeland Security documents apparently contradict the version of events put forth by the U.S. attorney who successfully prosecuted the case.

The internal Department of Homeland Security memoranda – which have been denied Congress despite repeated requests by two House members – show that within one month of the shooting incident involving Border Patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean, government investigators had identified the smuggler as Osbaldo Aldrete-Davila.

But this seems to contradict U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton's claim that Aldrete-Davila came forward through a Mexican lawyer who offered to identify his client in exchange for immunity."

Update here.

Cross posted and expanded at Illegals Today.

Technorati: Illegal immigration, border security

3462 Ladies, hang on to your ovaries!

Tara Parker-Pope (just love that name*) writes the science/health column for WSJ, and on Feb. 6 she covered the unfounded belief by some doctors and surgeons that women don't need their ovaries after a hysterectomy. Although a prophylactic oophorectomy will eliminate the threat of ovarian cancer (not a huge risk, but awfully hard to detect) and might slightly reduce breast cancer and stroke, it prematurely ages a woman putting her at high risk for heart attack and hip fractures unless she takes hormone supplements. Two different studies were reported (obliquely) by Ms. Parker-Pope. So I have taken my valuable blogging time to find the journals; Lancet Oncology 2006; 7:821-828, Oct. 1, 2006 (Mayo Clinic study, free registration to read the article) and Obstetics and Gynecology, 2005;106:219-226
(a good abstract and summary).

It's awfully irritating to be at the library reference desk when a patron brings in an article torn from the newspaper and the journalist hasn't cited anything except "in today's Journal," or "last week's Lancet." They have to read the research (I hope) to describe it; would it be so hard to cite it correctly?

*

Tara Parker Pope--
such a lovely name;
sing it, play it,
hang it on a rope.

Tara Parker Pope--
she of Wall Street fame;
read her, write her,
She will help you cope.

The naked article

Or author. Do you know how to strip a Word Document of personal data? I don't. Henry says this at Crooked Timber, where I seem to be the only person listed under Library Science, and I'm not even employed.

"Fun story in the Chronicle this week, about the perennial academic pastime of trying to figure out the identity of the anonymous referee who dinged your article. Word documents preserve a lot of metadata, including, very often, the author’s name – so that if you submit your review via a Word email attachment (as many journals ask you to these days), and the journal forwards the review unchanged to the article’s author, he or she can figure out who you are without having to play the usual guessing game. I’ve been aware of this for a couple of years (I carefully strip all data before sending reviews out, just in case) – but I suspect that many academics aren’t (some of them may not even realize that Word collates this data automatically)."

See the comments at the permalink for more. They end up debating different text editors and word processing. I didn't know anyone still used WordPerfect. Guess there's been a switch back.

Losing power

Yesterday on my drive back from Shear Impressions (about 5 miles) I turned off the always busy Rt. 33 onto a neighborhood main street, and noticed at a slight curve that the steering wheel was stiff. I knew immediately that my power steering had failed--it had happened to me once before when my children were both small and in the car. It's a feeling of helplessness not forgotten. I struggled home (fortunately I work out at least 2 minutes a day and am very strong), rousted my husband out of his chair and we took off for the local Pro-Care that had the least dangerous route using both cars. Once there, we discovered that Pro-Care had gone bankrupt and we were facing an unfamiliar company name. (Lobby and phone number are the same, however.) The car, and our arms, could go no further (our son manages a quick serve much further northeast), so we had to go with them or be towed. The diagnosis is a small hole in one of the hoses, and the power steering fluid drained out. It will be close to $300, but that's minor compared to the accident I could have caused.

Power. Even when we think we have it and we are zipping along, we don't.

3459 What are they so afraid of?

Over at Bloomberg.com Susan (Boom Boom) Antilla writes about the new Answers in Genesis Creation Museum in Kentucky. The sarcasm, the smears, the snarls and sneers--what are these guys so afraid of? Don't they know they are winning the battle for men's minds, and everyday in every way we are getting better and better? Gracious, the Departments of Biology at colleges and universities across this country have renamed themselves so the word "Evolution" is prominent--letting anyone who even entertains a thought outside that box will know not to enroll. Yes, we are all evolving to be sooooo open minded and newyorkerd that we aren't even threatened by a new or different thought. But I digress.

"Forget Disney World and Epcot Center," writes Antilla. "You haven't seen anything until you've seen the Creation Museum set to open in Petersburg, Kentucky, this year." I don't think she's actually been there or seen it (opens in June), but relies on second hand information with the fair and balanced title, "American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America" by Chris Hedges, a former reporter for the New York Times, obviously an unbiased source.

I don't care if Ms. Antilla and Mr. Hedges want to believe they've evolved from something slimy and not human--if that's what gets them up every day and helps them live a better life, fine. Be my guest. But don't drag me down to your level.

3458 Catching up on education

There was an item in USAToday Feb. 7 reporting that 15% of high school students passed Advanced Placement in 2006 compared to 10% in 2000. It's been going up steadily every year. Hispanics are behind both blacks and whites even though they outnumber blacks. I'm wondering if bi-lingual education (mandatory) isn't slowing them down. Most immigrants in our past knew instinctively that in order to get ahead they needed to speak and write standard English. Many Hispanic parents know that but school boards and gate keepers are denying them this dose of common sense. The article certainly didn't credit NCLB for these figures, nor would I because I'm not sure how that would affect the kids at the top of the class, unless NCLB is floating some boats we weren't expecting when the level rose. Could it be more home schooling? Surely they get to take Advanced Placement.

I chatted with a chemistry teacher in a vo-tech school the other day. She was real excited about their school library--the new librarian has dumped the carrels (that was high tech in the 50s and 60s), and now the students can check out laptops to use in the library. Also the school (which serves 10 high schools in the Columbus area) is planning an expansion, and the librarian is getting 4 times her present space. And they will throw in an assistant. Some librarians know that marketing is an important skill these days.

If you turned up your nose at a teaching career because you heard the pay was bad, you need to get a neck adjustment. Bureau of Labor Statistics clocks teachers at $34.06 and hour, or 11% more than the average professional specialty like architecture. Frankly, I'm not sure you could get me in front of a class for $50/hour, but I sure do admire the committed saints who do it. The article by Marcus Winters and Jay Greene which appeared in the WSJ also pointed out that some of the highest paid teachers in the urban districts have the worst results--Detroit, NYC, DC.

The English speaking peoples account for 7.5% of the world's population, but their economies produce more than a third of the global GDP. . . the English language is an intellectual global currency. "A history of the English speaking people since 1900" (Harper Collins, 2007)

Schools in the Columbus, OH metropolitan area (both city and suburban) have been closed for three days now due to the extreme cold. The wind chill factor is a problem for students waiting outside for busses. At least, I think that was the reason. Back in the days of global cooling, I don't remember that schools closed for cold weather in northern Illinois.

3457 Featured on another site

American Daughter picked up my blog on what's behind the words (global warming vs. climate change; animal rights vs. animal welfare, etc) and posted it at her site. American Daughter features many guest columnists, bloggers and regular contributors in a variety of formats including audio, video, live webcasts and pictorial essays. Stop by and take a look. It's a very dynamic site, so click on the "front page" button to see what's on today. Make her site a regular visit.

Things I wonder about--the tomato

Every morning I drink 6 oz. of tomato juice with a Tbsp. of vinegar. Very tastey. It's much lower in calories than orange juice and has 90% of the daily requirement for Vit. C, plus a bunch of other good stuff you won't even notice. Cold tomato juice gives me a stomach ache so I buy the little unbrand 6 packs and don't refrigerate them. What puzzles me is why a 1/2 cup of spaghetti sauce or a 1/2 cup of stewed tomatoes is so much lower in percentage of vitamin C. I've read labels of tomato products that have virtually zero vit. C listed.

Does anything smell worse

or give the eye more pleasure than a Ginko tree?
Here's a wonderful site to browse Ginko Dreams. Both the agricultural library where I worked for 3.5 years and visited many more, and the veterinary medicine library where I worked for 17 years had lovely tall Ginkos right outside the entrances. The smell when they drop their fruit is like vomit, and the students would track the rotting residue into the library (along with "stuff" from the animal stalls). Ah, the memories make me smile.

3453 Leaving race behind

Amitai Etzioni doesn't like it when people ask his race, even when the U.S. government asks. He discovered that if he marked a box labeled "other" that he was simply assigned to a racial category. He writes in "Leaving race behind" American Scholar, Spring 2006:

"Treating people differently according to their race is as un-American as a hereditary aristocracy, and as American as slavery. . . The national ideal says that all Americans should be able to compete as equals, whatever their background. . . Since the onset of the civil rights movement we have ensconced in law many claims based on race: requirements that a given proportion of public subsidies, loans, job training, educational assistance, and admission slots at choice colleges be set aside for people of color. . . There must be a better way to deal with past and current injustice. And the rapid changes in American demographics call for a reexamination of the place of race in America."

Etzioni notes that Hispanics are now the largest minority group in the U.S. and their population growth, both legal and illegal continues at an explosive pace. In 2003-2005, one of every two people added to America's population was Hispanic, but they may be members of many ethnic and racial groups. Race is biology, but ethnicity is geographic and cultural. By the third generation, 30% of Hispanics and 40% of Asians in the U.S. have married outside their racial or ethnic group. Will the government continue to offer their children special benefits?

Who needs help from the government? In my extended family we have on the one hand well-off, well-educated African American and Hispanic relatives who are married and living a stable, comfortable life style, and on the other, dirt poor, living-on-the-edge, poorly educated white relatives, "shacking up" as we used to say even before we knew poverty and marriage were related. Do you give reparations to the black family (whose ancestors were never part of U.S. slavery)? Do the Hispanics (who don't speak a word of Spanish) get a special deal for a job? Do you just give more money in welfare to the poor family, but no special incentive or slot for college because a middle-class black child got it?

One thing Etzioni doesn't touch on is the race careers--politicians, journalists, social workers and academics whose livihood depends on keeping us a divided nation. A black professor is suing because he didn't get tenure and he's claiming racial bias. But he's also doing stem cell research--adult stem cell, and doesn't believe in embryonic stem cell. Could be something else at work that has nothing to do with race. Did you see the article in the NYT about the woes of the highly educated, wealthy black people who can't find good nannies? Like most of the race-based articles, it was terribly anecdotal, but apparently some east European nannies have actually made a choice of whom they want to work for, and so have some black Americans and Caribbean women. I personally think the only color that matters here is green, and to get a good nanny in NYC you probably have to at least pay $40,000 a year with benefits.

Technorati: affirmative action, Racial Issues

First Italian American Woman in Space Disgrace

They may want to take back this award. She's now been charged with attempted murder, after an earlier kidnapping charge in which she pepper sprayed another woman in the space flight program who was involved with the guy that Nowak wanted for herself (she's married; no one told her you don't get two?) Navy Cmdr. William Oefelein, an unmarried fellow astronaut. When arrested Nowak had a BB gun, a steel mallet, a 4-inch folding knife, rubber tubing, $600 and garbage bags. She had worn diapers so she wouldn't have to stop while racing to get to the airport to confront the other woman. She was wearing a wig--and must have smelled a little funny.

OK. So the jokes about PMS are all over the airwaves. But you can't tell me someone in the chain of command didn't know there was a problem, but because she was a woman, they back peddled. I'll bet Oefelein knew she was dangerous, but thought his career was at stake if he said anything. It may have even been consensual--or could have all been in her head. It happens. But who was going to believe the man?

3451 Why aid for economic development fails

and often hurts the very people it tries to help. In the late 1970s I had a wonderful 3.5 year contract as a bibliographer/reference librarian in agricultural economics. More specifically, I was paid by the U.S. Department of State, Agency for International Development, through a grant won by Ohio State University's College of Agriculture, Department of Economics who wanted a librarian to help develop a collection of research about how local, home-grown small grants for credit, not gifts, to people with little or nothing lifted families and villages out of poverty and hunger. To correct a problem created by an earlier group of well-intentioned social scientists in the 1950s-60s post-colonial era, these grants also went to women and to small collectives in rural areas. Perhaps it was credit to buy several sewing machines, or looms, small tools, or a working well for a village which could then sell the water. Savings and investments are concepts totally foreign to many cultures and I don't know the success rate of these programs over the long run. Really, compared to the amounts you think of as "aid," these grants were very small, but they were not Utopian or from the top-down. The aid went to the entrepreneurial and those with a network of family or friends who would use their services. And don't forget those of us along the way who were paying our mortgages, tuition and Lazarus' bills with these grants--we benefited too. It paved my career path for two more contracts, and then a 17 year faculty position in the Veterinary Medicine Library.

Western interference in the economies, politics and cultures of third world developing countries has not turned out well. The American left loves to point fingers at Christian missionaries who started hospitals, schools, churches and developed a written language for Africans, Asians, and Islanders, but their footprints are tiny compared to the disaster of foreign aid from Europe and the U.S. The missionaries at least were accountable to God and their denomination; the governments and the U.N. agencies who soaked the guilt-swamped for more money funded various interventions in their societies which were accountable to no one, not even us taxpayers, elevating a class of dictators, bureaucrats and home grown thieves.

For all the statistics and scholarly stuff, check The White Man's Burden; why the West's efforts to aid the rest have done so much ill and so little good, by William Easterly (Penguin Press, 2006) and The Trouble with Africa; why foreign aid isn't working, by Robert Calderisi (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). Both authors were officials with the World Bank (one for 16 years, the other for 30) and have seen this problem from the inside out. And just to balance out your public library's collection, you might recommend either or both titles, after you've done your own research. [UAPL owns 2 copies of the Easterly title.]

Some reviewers found Easterly's writing style "cynical and breezy" choosing to criticize how he said it--even his chapter headings--rather than what he said. This is a tried and true method to keep people from reading or buying a book. One review of the Calderisi book starts out by comparing the number of people who died in the WTC with the number of Africans who die of AIDS, and how much the EU spends helping its own farmers. This is also a diversionary tactic to not deal with the book in hand. Build a straw book and burn it. Easterly and Calderisi clearly show that aid has not produced the desired results; Africans are now being victimized by their own rather than Europeans. The naysayers will want to kill the messenger and want to do business as usual either from guilt or because they are in the money pipeline.

Monday Memories--Did I ever tell you about Alice?

When my children were pre-schoolers, I met Alice through an open housing human relations group. We were the same age and each had two children about the same ages. We began doing a few things together, like taking the children to lunch, the library, or the park. Our kids even shared chicken pox because I noticed spots on her daughter's face when we were all on a picnic. We browsed craft shops and garage sales, the kids in tow. We both read a lot and kept up a steady stream of conversation. I sketched and painted and she enjoyed crafts. She kept busy and involved, but decided she would pursue an advanced degree. This was in the early years of the women's movement and there was a lot of buzz about the value of being a mother vs making a contribution in the work place. Even I attended some "consciousness raising" groups at the university and felt the pull. It was heady stuff for young mothers whose highlight of the day might be a consult with the pre-school teacher or the dentist. We then began a rather complicated schedule of shared babysitting. She needed my help much more than I needed hers, because I didn't need as much time away from children. There was no time to just do the fun things in our little group of six. I was looking forward to summer when her classes would be over. One day in June she drove up with the children and announced she was leaving her husband. The three of them drove away, the three of us stood in the drive-way and waved good bye. I never saw or heard from her again. It was Father's Day.

------
There aren't too many left in the Monday Memories group who post regularly, but it's a convenient way to recall some things of the past, even the less than pleasant ones like this.

There's an age gap in house cleaning!

The over 60 ladies are definitely keeping cleaner homes! But we're even on who has a cleaning service. See the Good Housekeeping Survey. I never leave the house with the bed unmade, although sometimes my husband is still in it when I leave. We learned years ago that it was much for efficient for the last one up to make the bed.

HT The Laundress

3448 I'm putting myself first

There's a phrase that makes me gag. I was watching Oprah today while fixing supper (potatoes, onions and carrots with a little olive oil in the oven, and then I'll grill some salmon). She's doing a show on women who don't look their age. It's really amazing what getting them out of jeans and sweats and putting on a little hair color and mascara can do. But one woman came out and they had the photo of her 10 years ago and today on the screen. "What did you do?" asked Oprah. "I decided to put myself first," she said oozing confidence. "How did you do that?" Oprah repeated. "I'm putting myself first," she repeated. I guess if you eat junk food and never exercise, that's putting others first? When I did that I just called it getting careless and eating anything that wasn't nailed down.