3708

Prom wasn't this tough when I was in school

This is a photo of a permission slip for . . . well, read it here. I didn't know things were this bad in schools. Are the children totally out of control or do administrators just not have enough to do? Maybe the folks who want to reinstate Bible reading and Creationism are right. Story at Travelin' Librarian.

Don't blame Obama for Nappy Roots

Sure, they appeared together at a Democratic fund raiser, and Obama took no offense then at their lyrics or their name then. They are quite successful and have had this name for over a decade. It's just considered a bit edgy--or was back in the 90s. Now it's just old news. It's sort of like gays using the word queers or women using the word chicks or babes. Or it was old news until the Imus double standard. This is different. . .

"He [Imus] didn't just cross the line," Mr. Obama said in an interview with ABC News. "He fed into some of the worst stereotypes that my two young daughters are having to deal with today in America." [NYT via Taranto in OpinionJournal.]

In the first case, he was just another Democrat raising funds trying to appeal to the with-it and young. In the second, he's an African American running catch-up in the me-too race with Jesse who was chasing Al.

3706 The Justice Department and Sandy Bergler

The AG should have the right to fire anyone he hired into a political appointment. I'm not the least bit worried about "politics" in a political appointee position. And I don't give a tooten e-mail about their system (except that pols aren't catching on to the problem that e-mails and IMs don't just go away whether you're setting up a date or a sting). I am very concerned that the Justice department covered for the Clinton administration official in not breathing a word about the Sandy Berger burglarly and crimes at the National Archives in front of the 911 commission. That whole investigation was done not knowing he was a criminal. Who knows what was compromised or why Gonzalez let this happen. He was supposed to take a lie detector test, but Justice hasn't followed up on that either. I'm also concerned that certain National Archives employees attempted to "catch him" on their own, without reporting him, and possibly bungled the burglary. They should be fired. They way overstepped their responsibility by trying to second guess his motives and behavior and should have called their supervisor or security.

3705

Double your coupons and your calories

Shopping at a major super market is like a scavenger hunt--can I buy real food, just food? Can I buy without playing with my food?

There's a full page Giant Eagle ad for loss leaders today that combines the words FREE and FOR (that's not new--but many don't see the subliminal message). Thirty years ago when I wrote an anti-coupon newsletter I wrote that it is difficult to convince American shoppers that stores don't stay in business to give away their products, but it has only gotten worse. Boneless chicken and 1 lb of strawberries are both "buy one get one free" (with a loyalty card which means the base price is much higher than a non-participating store and the frequent shopper knows how to play the game with multiple cards). These are not processed foods and are sort of teasers to get you in the store--makes you feel good--buying something real and wholesome. The other "buy one get one free" is for 13 oz. of Lay's potato chips. This means that for $3.48 you get 26 oz of chips. Then you can buy four 12 oz twelve packs of some Coke products for $12.00, and three 56 oz cartons of Breyers ice cream for $10.00. Remember back maybe 3 years ago when the standard package for pop was a six pack? You can't find them anymore.

No one's going to buy just those loss leaders, but let's just play along. So you grill the chicken, put out the chips, pour the pop into giant glasses and triple scoop some ice cream on the strawberries. Maybe a 5,000 calorie meal. And we're blaming McDonald's and Wendy's for obesity? You can almost peg the weight gain in the world to the introduction of corn fructose in soft drinks instead of sugar. Now we're going to put it in our cars to make Al Gore happy (I won't comment on his weight gain because that makes liberals unhappy).

Even moderately processed and packaged food is swamped by the aisles of highly processed, overpackaged, high fat (or reduced fat--just add water), or fructose added or salt added foods. I like to shop at Meijer's because it doesn't require a loyalty card (add 10-20% to your food bill to play those games and contests). It also has a very large, well stocked produce section with a nice variety of leafy green and root crops, probably because of the high number of Hispanic, Asian and Muslim residents living in that area. First generation immigrants are almost always thinner than their children because of their traditional cooking habits. Now that a natural food store has gone in near by, it has also improved its natural and organic sections.

After I bag the apples, bananas, fresh pineapple, strawberries and the greens (sometimes cut and in bags), tomatoes, potatoes, carrots, peppers, onions, etc., I move on to fresh meat and dairy, and then swing back through for the semi-processed. With only two people in our household, frozen vegetables are a better deal than fresh because I don't have to worry about them going bad before I can get to them. But even finding a simple bag (not an icy chunk in a box) of frozen vegetables or berries out of season is a challenge. I have to find the sections, hidden away, swamped by the ones with sauces and gimmicks, sweepstakes and coupon offers.

Our abundance and craving for choices, the latest flavor or gimmick is killing us. Don't play the victim and whine. Slow down, go on a hunt for real food. Although the walk through the aisles of high calorie, over processed food will add steps to your exercise routine.

When I'm 64

John Lennon and Paul McCartney's love song When I'm 64 was sung last night at a birthday dinner for Carol, who is now 64. When people in their 20s write or sing about age, they probably don't expect to ever actually be there because it is so far off (some having a better grasp of this than others, obviously). Sharon and Eric hosted the party and we played Apples to Apples after dinner which was lots of fun, especially for me and the birthday girl who really don't enjoy games much. Certain readers of this blog wouldn't like the game because the players use words and make comparisons, but we all had a lot of laughs.

3703

The broken string

I read a very moving story about Itzhak Perlman at someone's blog today--it's apparently been making the rounds in e-mail since 2001, she received it and put it on her blog. But it is an Urban legend. However, she found it so comforting, I didn't leave a comment. There's another one going around e-mail about how George Bush's modest Texas White House is so much more energy efficient and well designed to complement the environment than Al Gore's mansion. I checked that out too, and it is true. I can't remember if I blogged about that--don't think so. I have some liberal readers who become a bit upset if GWB does something right, so I try to respect their tender feelings.

I've been waiting all afternoon for the cold rain to stop. I think it is about 38 degrees. I wanted to walk outside because I'm in a 50 Days of Easter walking group. We keep track of our minutes and miles and encourage each other. But this is better than the snow that was predicted. Flowers and fruit trees in central Ohio are certainly longing for a bit of global warming.

3702

The VPL--flaunt it

The other day I wrote that Katie Couric had pretty much taken the pleasure out of watching TV, but I'll admit to turning it on if I want to take a nap. I clicked through a pre-Don Imus comedy show because of the bad language and racism (ca. 1999 I think), past the food channel where the hostess was GRILLING her waffles in butter and cheese, and was then treated to a bevy of gay fashionistas and some skinny-babe magazine editors who collectively could have fit into a size 00 reacting in mock real horror to the VPL. Truly, you would have thought they were discussing the shortage of bird flu vaccine, the war in Darfur or the fact that carbon footprints are a complete hoax. Their little faces all screwed up, pinched and pale. What some people do to earn a living!

The mid-20th century brief was a huge improvement over the early 19th century drawers for women. Fashionistas and clothing designers have returned us to that era 200 years ago of torture and strings with no coverage.

Eeeeeek! A VPL!
Before I decided to write about VPL, I googled it to be sure it was something less frightening than an attack by Islamofacists. There were about 73 acronym matches. Vancouver Public Library; Veterinary Products Laboratory; Visual Programming Language; and so forth. Butt we all know, that's not the VPL they were so afraid of.

Hello! The country is getting older. There is now a cable channel for retirement age viewers. Can a resurgence of Granny Pants be far behind? Ladies! Let's make a case for comfort and flexibility. Flaunt your VPL. Compliment your friends on their VPLs. Put those VPL photos in the family scrap book. Teach your daughters they don't have to be a slave to a string stitched to a postage stamp. Don't let the fashion dictators decide where your elastic will go. Stick it to 'em!

3701

The FTO gene

"A nondescript gene that no scientist has studied before determines why some people gain more weight than others. A new study of nearly 40,000 Europeans found that people with mutations in both of their copies of the gene known as FTO are 70 percent more likely to be obese than those with regular copies of the gene. Researchers says that identifying a genetic basis for obesity could lead to novel treatments for the increasingly prevalent condition blamed for life-threatening heart disease and type 2 diabetes, among other disorders. . . Obesity is on the rise worldwide, correlated with gains in affluence. According to a recent study in JAMA The Journal of the American Medical Association, nearly 100 million men, women and children in the U.S. alone are considered obese." Reported in Scientific American.

It is called FTO, not for fat-to-obese, but because it was originally studied in a mouse that had a fused toe.

Nowhere does it say this gene makes people fat, only that if you have this gene, you may need to be more careful about your calorie intake because you'll take on weight more easily than others. I don't think I have this gene--but I have gained 100 pounds since I graduated from high school 50 years ago. Usually I gain about 20 pounds over a period of years and then work hard to lose it, and it slowly comes back. I don't remember exactly all the details, just the big efforts--1960 I lost 20 lbs by turning down desserts and second helpings; 1982-83 I lost 20 lbs in an aerobics class; 1993 I lost maybe 15 through intensive walking and cutting calories; 2006-2007 I lost 20 lbs by reducing calories.

Diets are not difficult; keeping weight off is just awfully hard. We are constantly faced with groaning tables and restaurants on every corner. None of our ancestors had that problem--affluence, abundance and desk jobs. When I jumped about 15 pounds in two years between 2002 and 2004, I could see exactly where the scale was going, so I've "lost" it yet again. However, I know it isn't truly lost, that it is hiding behind every bag of potato chips and box of take-out pizza. And I can't blame grandma. It's just me.

Also, the research says don't wait for a pill, that ELMM is the only real solution if you have this gene--Eat Less, Move More.

3700

How God uses the Internet

Here's a neat story about how God uses the internet to meet the needs of his children. I got an e-mail today at my medscape.com account which I use on this blog from a Chaplain in Australia. A 97 year old woman in the nursing home where he serves sang in a weak voice a line of a table grace for him and asked him if they could sing it at lunch some day. He'd never heard it before but checked the internet. He got 3 matches for the first line, one was mine, and I had the entire grace.

I was really baffled and had no memory of ever writing about this grace which we used when my children were small. I knew it was from an InterVarsity hymnbook, so I spent about 15 minutes tracking the book down. I thought the cover was black, so that threw me off a bit (it is light beige). Anyway, I found it in Hymns II (1976), a paperback hymnbook, and sent him the information. I gave him the author, tune name, number of sharps and time, and hope he can find it. If not, I'll try to copy and fax it to him, hoping that this is the hymn she remembers. Often the elderly can recite liturgy or sing a hymn even when they say nothing else for days or weeks.

I couldn't find it on my own blog using the search window, but finally tracked it down in a Thursday Thirteen I'd written in February 2006 about my Prayer Job Jar. I had mentioned rote prayers like table graces and listed that one. The search didn't work because of the slash at the end of the phrase (my theory). I like this grace because it includes the gospel and our response to it, and is easy for children to learn. Although I think we used "you" instead of "thee."

We thank Thee, Lord,
for Jesus Christ,
And for the blood He shed;
We thank thee for
His risen life,
And for our daily bread.

3699

The unintended consequences of protecting women

Don Imus and Mike Nifong aren't the only guys with funny names apologizing in stories about women. Now Paul Wolfowitz is doing it for having a girlfriend at the World Bank. And she's Arab. Frankly, what DA Nifong did makes all the others pale by comparison, and is a horrible abuse of power, but since the MSM helped create that lynch mentality (Ladies of the View included), it is being soft pedaled and Imus is getting the play by play. He's expendable.

"Paul Wolfowitz's position as president of the World Bank appears shaky, as the bank's Board of Directors met overnight to discuss what to do about a favoritism scandal he is involved in. . . The World Bank's board released a statement early Friday detailing its review involving Wolfowitz's girlfriend, Shaha Riza. She was given a job at the U.S. State Department when Wolfowitz took charge of the bank in 2005. World Bank rules ban romantic involvement between workers and supervisors." Story here.

As I understand it, you can't supervise a "friend," and if you help her get a job somewhere else on the advice of your ethics committee, you are then violating another rule. Should he have just put her out on the street, or should he keep her as a paid mistress off the payroll of the bank?

This happens all the time in academe, but because salaries aren't the greatest and they don't have much power (and no ties to the present administration), no one objects. Presidents and deans are recruited. But a deal has to be struck to bring along the wife, the girl friend, boy friend or significant other. I remember one time getting a science librarian with no science background but who had a husband recruited for another department in the university. If the wife didn't get the job, he didn't come. If there is no position open at the university that fits her/his qualifications a position miraculously opens up on the art faculty. When he finds a better position at Yale or Brown or in industry marketing pet food, there will be only one position open when he/she leaves.

Bankers and former Bush appointees (there wouldn't have been a problem if he'd been a Democrat from Clinton's reign) need to learn that "me two" excuse that deans and college presidents use.

3698

Why librarians won't protect your children.

It's your responsibility. It's that simple. Movies, internet, e-books, music or books. Our UAPL head librarian says so. Our local news channel had an interesting interview last night with a reasonable, educated Upper Arlington parent who discovered her child was checking out X (or maybe it was R) movies from the public library when the overdue notice came. She requested a block on her child's library card so that he couldn't check out this material, but was told it isn't the library's responsibility (interview with a very stone faced, reasonable, educated library director). Apparently, parents need to go to the library with all children under the age of 18 to protect them from porn on the computer screens and disgusting movies. Because kids will be kids. In my day we had the National Geographic Magazine.

The other extreme is the parents who use the library as a drop off day care center. I've been at the terminals when they come in from the nearby school. For some reason, library staff put up with this role for the really careless parents, but won't cooperate with the really caring parents. I've read articles in professional journals about what a service this is.

I was a librarian. I have a master's degree plus. And 23 years of working the desk, budget, committees, publications circuit, continuing education requirements and stacks duty. True, I've never been employed by a public library--I'm just a client, a tax payer and a critic. This much I know. Librarians are very smart people--some aren't the most charming folk you'll ever meet--but they have a lot of education and high IQs. Can find information for you on all kinds of things and amazing excuses not to buy what you suggest if it doesn't line up with their political and religious views.

There must be a way for librarians to figure out they are responsible to and paid by their community--especially when when the main building sits in the city park next to the largest elementary school. At least get a clue in time for the next bond issue.

UAPL has recently created a $47,000 a year public relations position to work on its image. There's a cheaper way to do this: be responsive to the concerns of the community.

3697

This month's word

Worthington is a city north of Columbus. We're not supposed to call it a suburb because I think it was there first. Columbus just sort of oozed out to meet its southern boundaries. On my way through Worthinton on Rt. 161 the other day I noticed a small sign in its city park: "Character trait of the month: Commitment."

I've spent more time than I should on this month's word, let me tell you. Do you suppose people will be more committed to their spouse, children, church, job, parents, values, party, country or book club schedule because of a sign in a park? I've been married 47 years. That's commitment. I attend church even when I don't feel like it. That's commitment. I had three months of sick leave accumulated (although I didn't get to keep it) when I retired. That's commitment. I blog every day. That's commitment. I don't believe Al Gore, but I've done my part to cherish the earth because the Bible tells me so. That's commitment. Never in my life would I adopt a value because I saw a sign in a city park. I wouldn't even apply for a grant to do this warm fuzzy. That's commitment.

3696

Them bones, them dry bones

If Tyrannosaurus Rex is 66 million years old and related to the chicken, then it's easier to understand what happened to the British Navy. (story in USA Today).

3695

Our infectious lifestyle

Peter Huber wrote an essay for the Wall Street Journal called "The coming plague." I think it is from a work not yet published. The principles of privacy and personal autonomy combined with the resurgence of germs was a very interesting and . . .almost poetic motif. Here's my poem based on his essay. Please note: he didn't say anything about libraries--I took that from concerns I've read in the library literature and my own use of library terminals.


Ode to our infectious lifestyle
of freedom and privacy

I’m nimble on needles
enjoying the bathhouse
prisons and lockers,
on board for the fast louse.

I choose from the choicest
of pustule and sputum
then scan the horizon for
addict and meth bum.

I'll resist your meds while
with staph I’m cavorting,
on TB and syphilis
I’m munching and spawning.

I’ll take guts, skin or marrow
Although I prefer brain--
lungs and liver will do
while you look for my strain.

Faster than lawyers
Smarter than scientists,
I’m brighter than interns,
ahead of hospitalists.

At your library keyboard
I arrive safe and hardy
on the street person who
just wants me to party.

Update: Here's Huber's article on germs that appeared in Spring 2007 City Journal. He has incredible phrases--if you love words, or hate germs, be sure to catch this one. "It was the demise of a germ-hating culture that had helped clear the way for new epidemics of venereal disease". . . "A legal system that affirms the individual’s right to do almost everything at the germ-catching end now struggles to decide when, if ever, we can force the Typhoid Marys of our day to stop pitching what they catch." . . . "In the pantheon of disease and death, lifestyle and genes have completely eclipsed germs." . . . "nature designed an “immunodeficiency” virus—an all-purpose anti-vaccine, so tiny, quiet, slow, methodical, and gentle that it spread unnoticed for decades, and so innocuous that it never quite gets around to killing you at all. It leaves that to the old guard—the bacteria, protozoa, and viruses that invade when your immune system shuts down,. . ."

The title tells all

I just noticed this, and the title certainly reflects my views--Crazies to the left; Wimps to the right.

Poetry Thursday

Today I am poemless, rhymless, and without meter. I'm seeing nothing in syllables, no images in words, no sound in the rain and wind--except rain and wind. No canto or calligramme. I've locked my muse in the hall closet and she can't get out even by being coy. Not even by slipping Shakespeare or Shelley under the door.

The prompt for this week is, "we want Poetry Thursday participants to be inspired be one another’s work. The idea is that you leave a line from one of your poems in the comments, knowing that other participants might use that line as a jumping-off point for a new poem of their own." This is not that. I participated the last time. For today, I've looked through a thoroughly disappointing February issue of Poetry, a journal I usually devour. None of the poems made much sense--well, Billy Collins' was OK, but you'd expect that from a poet that famous. Therefore, I'm submitting the first line of each poem--thinking this accumulation makes about as much sense as anything else in that issue.

February rolls out its first lines
lifted, fitted, mixed and matched by Norma

If Parmigianino had done it. . .
Having failed for a third time to witness
Starlings’ racket; the straining redbud,
a red-feathered bird on a fence post
cooked by crooked
flames from the burn barrel
in the lost city of gold that was Oroville
I see you in your backyard’s lavender.

If they’re right, the whizkid physicist-theorist think tank guys,
She could be any woman at all.
In this sentimental painting of rustic life
A guitar has moved in across the street
Of course nostalgia Of course brooding
The world is wasted on you. Show us one clear time
You can tell by how he lists
That greasy letter into which my legs entered.

3692

Peace Democrats

We've been chasing around this Bush before, haven't we? In a review of Jennifer Weber's Copperheads, the rise and fall of Lincoln's opponents in the north, American Thinker finds some similarities and differences to today's Democrats.

"There is a long history of comfort provided to the enemy by the "peace" advocates in their very public undermining of the war effort. Copperheads consistently worked against what they saw as Lincoln's war. "Confederate confidence soared while Northern partisans bickered." (p. 45), Ms. Weber tells us. Robert E. Lee regarded the Copperheads as allies. He told Jefferson Davis that the best way to weaken the enemy is to give all support "to the rising peace party of the North." (p. 99). One can easily imagine similar encouragement today that is given to the Islamists by our Neo-Copperheads by calls for deadlines, the "peace" rallies, the constantly negative press, and the fatuous recommendations of the Iraq Study Group.

Because history does not repeat itself in the way that Santayana suggests, there are interesting differences as well. For instance no where does this book mention any Copperheads who tried explicitly to redefine "patriotism" as citizens undermining their own elected government's foreign policy. None in the North seemed to have had the nerve to call advocacy of Southern victory "patriotism." It would take the twentieth century triumph of the Orwellian manipulation of language, and the victory of postmodernists in today's trendy colleges and universities to bring about this sort of degradation of language and meaning."

3690

Terrorism, war, pestilence and immorality

OK. That's out of the way. How about global warming? When BP starts running full page ads in the Wall Street Journal about energy by the bushel, it's time to stockpile some food. We have perfectly wonderful stores of decayed vegetation called petroleum, coal and shale which will do fine while entrepreneurs are encouraged and given a chance to wean us off the gas tank and fuel oil. But no, through the hysteria of ALarmist Gore, a political has-been looking for another run at the White House, in combination with global energy companies who see a cheaper way to stick it to us, we're going to plant oceans of corn and burn that. Maybe this is a good case for evolution--we're on our way to the amazing shrinking human brain with the help of liberals, greenies, fanatics and global capitalists.

Did the media front the Don Imus story?

Did you see any of the major papers today? The Imus "nappy headed Ho" story is getting more ink than the finding that the Duke University lacrosse players' rape story was a complete hoax from start to finish. That works well for the MSM because they bought right into the outrageous railroading of those kids. Even good old (and I do mean old) Lionel Tiger got into the fray in WSJ today, scolding Imus, pointing out how this is street language regularly applied to black women by black men, but then excusing them because (shock and horror), during slavery times, black men weren't allowed to protect and marry their women. Well, what about the late 19th century and early 20th century Professor Tiger? Black men had no problem doing the right thing then, and black women were probably even stronger then. That is such an old, limp, tired academic excuse. Plus, white guys are following right along, shacking up, dissing women, and buying the music that makes rappers worth only 50 cents rich. What's their excuse?

Don Imus can't steal anyone's joy, not for a minute or a lifetime, and those young ladies better get a bit tougher. Their coach did them a terrible disservice--she could have been strong, but she was a sucker for the media. She could have been bigger than Imus. ("Don Who? Don Ho?") But an out of control prosecuter can certainly steal the life and reputation of anyone falsely accused with the help of bench warmers like the Duke faculty, and "leaders" like Jesse Jackson who offered the accuser a college scholarship. I hope the Duke trustees and alumni shake up those faculty cowards and administrators, and parents boycott the school so that no decent young adult enrolls there.

A new conspiracy machine is at work, of course. 1) Seems Imus has been extremely unkind to Hillary Clinton (particularly in his ridiculing of her body and plumbing, as well as her politics), so the Clinton machine is said to be at work bringing him down. He's small potatoes compared to some of the pols who appeared on his show--now they've been given notice. This can happen to you.

Another conspiracy theory: 2) this is really the back door for liberals to get conservative talk radio closed down. Not that Imus was conservative, by any stretch of the imagination, but we'll be hearing chatter that it needs to be regulated (even though he's been a shock jock for years). Silence the right, even if you've got to kill off one of your own. I've never heard Rush Limbaugh make a racist slur, unless he was repeating one made by the MSM and commenting on it, or ridiculing Kennedy for messing up Obama's name, but a liberal was whining that he leads the way in this degrading language. He'd better be prepared to listen to some tapes.

My vote goes for #2. How about you?

Update: Another conspiracy theory: 3) This Don Imus thing is all about Al Sharpton grabbing the spotlight from Jesse Jackson and trying to be the big negotiator and go-to guy for getting more blacks on TV (will he want them to have proportional representation on athletic teams or continue to dominate the boards and fields because they are better than the other players?). Hip Hop and Rap. Should blacks be proportional in popular culture? Tell us, Big Al, what exactly do you want?

3689

Katie Couric

The other day I realized I'd almost completely stopped watching TV. I used to catch Book-TV on week-ends, Fox News occasionally in the evenings, HGTV once in awhile. Boston Legal if I was up late. Maybe 10 minutes of Dancing with the Stars. WOSU Antiques Roadshow.

Gone. The thrill is gone. I think it is Katie. I really do. Tonight I walked into the living room as she was interviewing the parents of one of the young men from Duke who've just been through the worst nightmare a parent could imagine. I almost gagged. I whined. Complained. She and the other talking heads contributed to this mess. Stalked out of the room. Then it hit me. She's the reason. Katie has permanently turned me against TV.

She always looks like she's sincerely speaking at a wake; she asks asinine questions; her voice is like fingernails on a blackboard; her wardrobe looks like they dressed her from my own closet. Please. Send her home.

3688

I felt the same way about the Master's

""Who are all these people?"

"All very bad Jews," he told me.

It was, afterall, the first night of Passover. But for about 300 of New York's fanciest (plus a few book types), yesterday evening was also time to gather. . ." rest of the story here.

As the men in my family gathered around the TV on Easter Sunday to watch the Master's, I said, "Why are they playing on Easter?" My husband said something about the dates are set way ahead, to which I replied, "So are the dates for Easter."