4037

New legislation on adoption and foster care

You probably didn't know that certain Americans have special protective laws for adoption applying only to them--Native Americans, aka American Indians. Now there will be more.

"Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) today introduced legislation that will provide Indian Tribes with the same direct access to federal funding for foster care and adoption services that states currently receive. The Tribal Foster Care and Adoption Act of 2007 will provide federal funding that will allow Native American Tribes to establish independent foster care and adoption programs." Native American Times

It seems that separating an Indian child/adult from his tribal heritage is a more painful injury than separating any other American--black, or Irish or German--from hers or his.

Origami

is one of the crafts being taught at the Rhein Center at Lakeside this week. I think they are making strings of cranes to symbolize peace. If you want to see fabulous origami try out Painted Threads by Judy Perez. She features her son's entries at Columbia College in July. Unbelieveable!

Bev: if you're reading this, see if you can get me the premiere issue of "Artful Blogging," at B & N or another bookstore. She mentions it in her blog, and I'm not near any large bookstores. I'll repay you. Or we'll name it for you, like the toilet seat (inside joke, folks).

Thursday Thirteen borrowed

I borrowed this meme from JAM who borrowed it from someone else. I really am intending to write a TT on 13 reasons I read JAMA, but I have to find the draft.

What curse word do you use the most? I never learned to swear or curse. I've got pretty clean language, but there are many substitute words that most of us don't even think about that were added to the lexicon over the years. Gee Whiz. Darn it. What the? My mother used to say, "By Jove." If you are a potty mouth blogger, I'm probably not one of your regular readers.

Do you own an iPod? No, and I can't imagine why I would want one. If I need some noise, I turn on the radio. I worry about little ears with little ear buds constantly on.

Who on your MySpace "Top 8" do you talk to the most? I talk to real people in the coffee shop.

What time is your alarm clock set for? I wake up between 4:30 and 5 a.m., but never use an alarm. It would keep me awake all night looking at the clock because I would want to shut it off before it startled me.

What color is your room?My office at home is cream and khaki. Pretty dull, but soothing. I have a lot of paintings and it works as a background color. It used to have dark hunter green and taupe wallpaper, which made it the lightest room in the house. After we painted everything else, it started to look awfully dark.

Flip flops or sneakers?Sneakers. If I wear sneakers, it's Nike for walking, although I do own Reebok and Keds for casual wear. No flip flops since college days. Sometimes dress codes don't catch up with the times. I see Muslim women in sneakers and Amish women in flip flops--seems a bit of a disconnect.

Would you rather take the picture or be in the picture?I'm not such a great photographer, but I can smile. I still have all my permanent teeth--even my wisdom teeth. Here I am with my grandpuppy Abbie.



What was the last movie you watched?I think it was Amazing Grace in a theater. Lakeside, OH has the only theater in the county.

Do any of your friends have children?Yes. Most of my friends also have grandchildren (I don't), and some have great grands. As parents they were quite sensible and strict. As grandparents they are sappy blobs of Jello.

Has anyone ever called you lazy?Not in the last 50 years. And it was well deserved. I think when I was a child my Dad did if I whined about helping Mom with the garden or housework.

Do you ever take medication to help you fall asleep faster?No. I fall asleep in about 30 seconds. If it takes longer, I complain, or get up.

What CD is currently in your CD player? My head set CD player has an audiobook, but I have one with hymns ready to go.

Do you prefer regular or chocolate milk?Now there's a question I haven't been asked in years. I don't drink a lot of milk, but it would be 2% or skim white milk.

View More Thursday Thirteeners

4034

Jamming in Lakeside

Big power outage last night, and more storms rolling across northern Ohio. I'll have to turn off the laptop soon. Today I hope to sign up for an afternoon class at Lorenzo's Culinary School. It's on making peach jam. Isn't that a great idea for a one shot class? Registration is limited, so I might not get in.

We decided to skip the program last night (it was near 90), and walked down to the dock where we visited with a neighbor and two other teachers from the Rhein Center. The lake was such an unusual color reflected for a hazy sky--almost white. Many kids were fishing with their dads--always a fun sight. We got back to our cottage about 9 p.m. and realized the power was off. It was restored around midnight. So I suppose the program was interrupted too.

I'm enjoying the writing class--Pat is such a fun teacher. Yesterday one of the writers mentioned that she is in a book group with a newspaper journalist who told the group they are taught in journalism school to include opinion in their news reporting to make it more interesting. What a shame! I read a "news" story in today's WSJ about upcoming legislation for "universal" (i.e. compulsory and tax supported) pre-school. Although the reporter (and I use the term loosely) said there was research showing Head Start had not resulted in the hoped for outcomes (I think there is zero carry over after a year or two), everything she cited was pro-government pre-school. She particularly focused on wealthy supporters of the idea. There are so many ways to slant a story--and she (Deborah Solomon) had hit most of them. Having a mother who is married to the father, and who has finished high school, will get far better results than universal pre-school in closing the "rich-poor gap" a favorite economic term of today's journalists.

Update: The peach jam class was cancelled! Not enough people signed up. Also, the power outage was due to a fire in a transformer at Rts. 53 and 163. Most of the Marblehead peninsula lost power.

4033

North Korea lecture by Swanger

It's fortunate that Dr. Eugene Swanger, Director and Professor of East Asian Studies at Wittenburg University for 33 years and a lecturer for the Department of State, has such a calm demeanor. Otherwise, one would be tempted to run screaming into the streets after one of his lectures on China, Taiwan or Korea. Truly, I'm surprised the "Peace with Justice" people (nonviolence, social responsibility), want him around for this special week. As I noted yesterday, the truce that pulled our troops out of Korea over 50 years ago resulted in millions of deaths by starvation in the north and the most repressive regime in the history of the world. What little is known about Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, his heir, (both are considered dieties) comes from defectors who have written books. Dr. Swanger provided a bibliography:

Fujimoto, Kenji. Kim Jong Il's Cook; I saw his naked body. WaPo review
Kang Chol-hwan. Aquariums of Pyongyang; ten years in the North Korean Gulag. (horror and deprevation)
Kim Hyun-hee. Tears of my soul. (Blew up an airliner)
Lee Soon-ok. Eyes of the tailess animals. (Read a chapter)
Sin Sang-ok. Kingdom of Kim. (Kidnapped film director)

The take away of the lecture: "North Korea has never kept any agreement with any country."

4032

How to clean Meladur or Melamine

If you grew up in the 1950s, you probably ate a few meals off melamine type dishware. My mother stayed with china and glass, and I never really cared to use plastic myself, but I did inherit some. When we bought our cottage in 1988 I chose the colors pink, cream, and blue for the theme. A friend of mine was going to give away old dishware, so she gave the whole box to me--enough to feed 10 or 11 easily, although our cottage is too small for such a crowd. I think she'd built her set week by week at the old A & P (Currier and Ives made by Royal, made in the USA, blue and white). But there were a few odds and ends tucked into the box, some pink Melamine type, Meladur by Lapcor, which I didn't look at closely until yesterday.

We've used these 4 pink bowls (photo from e-bay) occasionally for ice cream because they are deep with a lip edge, easy to hold, and just about the right size for people who don't overeat. But they were quite stained from scratches and food chemicals and not particularly appealing. I decided to try my Mr. Clean Magic Eraser. It has worked quite well on removing the marks of our metal picture frames from the painted walls. Wow! It's not exactly like restoring a valuable mural in a chapel, but these bowls are now the color that God and American Cyanamid had in mind. Melamine was developed during WWII for the Navy so they could have lightweight, break resistant dinnerware that wouldn't conduct the heat. After the war, 11 companies, including Melmac, used this product. Now melamine is being used again and here's a link about new products. We also have 4 brown bowls, 2 different sizes, in Texas-Ware, another popular melamine type dishware.

If you have stained or faded melamine, try the Magic Eraser.

Russel Wright and Meladur This is an interesting site with all sorts of information on this product and a designer that used it.

The rise and fall of Melamine

4031

A busy Monday at Lakeside

Yesterday at 10:30 I had a writing class with Patricia Mote at the Rhein Center. Ghastly hot, and today I'll take a cushion for the hard chair. She's a wonderful instructor, very supportive, and has had such an interesting writing career. She no longer has her publishing company, but is keeping her hand in by editing and advising other authors on their way to print. She has recently authored one of the Arcadia series books on Columbus, Indiana, and since we just visited there last summer, I think I will try to get it.

Then at 2:30 I went to the Fountain Inn to hear Dr. Eugene Swanger talk on Taiwan. He is always so interesting--gentle, kind, and carries a wonderful background of his years at Wittenburg and teaching in the foreign service. I was tempted to raise my hand and ask, "Do any of the Democrat candidates for President know this?" but I didn't. Today's topic will be Korea. Regardless of what you think about the war in Iraq, think on this: Korean War "ended" with a truce--no victory--and we're still there and millions in the north have been left to die by starvation and bad policies; we ran out on our Vietnamese allies, leaving millions to die at the victors; now our peace and justice, can't we all just get along folk want to abandon the people of Iraq. Justice for whom? Just us. We're the kiss of death. Why would any country trust our government?

At 6:30 I hustled up to the Rhein Center for an evening watercolor workshop with Neil Glazer. I would like to jump start my painting again. Haven't done anything for a year. I did two paintings, both awful by my standards, but they looked better this morning than last night. I had planned to moan and groan when I got back to the cottage, but my husband was off to the neighbors to watch "The Closer." And the cat wanted to cuddle, but didn't care to hear my troubles.

Now it is thundering, so I'm on battery power, ready to set off for the coffee shop. Yesterday I chatted with a woman near 50 who is the daughter in law of a former neighbor. I think we probably met when she was a teen-ager, before she married, because I remember meeting her husband and some of his friends when we lived on Abington. At my coffee blog I'll probably write about our meeting. It's not like we ran into each other in Europe or Asia, still it's a small world.

Monday Memories

Last Friday my elementary and high school classmates, Sylvia and Dave, were in Columbus to attend a cousin's wedding, so we got together at their hotel. We had just seen each other at our class reunion in July.



I have fond memories of their parents and remember their contributions to our little community. Sylvia's parents lived on a farm when we were very young and she attended a rural school. We attended the same church and her cousin JoElla and I both lived in Forreston when I was in elementary school and later roomed together in college. Later her parents and my parents were neighbors on Lincoln Street. Sylvia had recently had the opportunity to take a look at the home in Forreston (of JoElla's parents) where we all played when we were about 7 or 8. I hadn't thought about that house for years, but in my mind's eye was able to do a walk through and see the kitchen (which still had a hand pump in the 1940s) and where grandma was sitting when we'd come in from school, and the big porch.

I remember Sylvia's parents as both being talented writers, her dad having a column in the town newspaper, and her mom writing a number of small historical booklets concerning the area. Her mother, Ada, must have invented the modern hobby of "scrapbooking." I remember when I was maybe 11 years old being amazed at the artistic chronicle of Sylvia's life her mother had kept--in our family, photographs were thrown into a box. I finally assembled them into several albums in the early 1980s.

Dave's parents followed his school sports closely, which means they also included the rest of us with rides to the games and home parties. His mother had a wonderful sense of humor and I never met anyone who didn't like her. Our parents had known each other either from high school, college or work before we were born. They are all gone now, but not forgotten.

Ghost bikes of Lake Erie

You've probably heard of the ghost ships of Lake Erie. Those are the freighters and ore ships that disappeared mysteriously (and some not so mysterious). This week-end we saw some ghost bikes encrusted with zebra mussels and seaweed and gunk. Well, now that a scuba diver retrieved them off our dock I suppose they don't qualify as ghosts anymore, but they were still pretty creepy. I'm guessing some 12 year old in 1977 rode this one a little too fast and had to swim back home.

"The Master of all [bikes] is now in command
The course is charted to that promised land;
Not a sound breaks the silence in the pale moonlight
on those Phantom [Bikes] that pass in the night."
[from Phantom Ships that Pass in the Night by Lyle A. Myers]

4028

Just your peace loving Muslims

"The [7] Mashad hangings, broadcast live on local television [last Wednesday], are among a series of public executions ordered by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last month as part of a campaign to terrorize an increasingly restive population. Over the past six weeks, at least 118 people have been executed, including four who were stoned to death. According to Saeed Mortazavi, the chief Islamic prosecutor, at least 150 more people, including five women, are scheduled to be hanged or stoned to death in the coming weeks."

Full story in WSJ, Aug. 6.

4027

I tawt I taw a puddy tat

Interesting dynamics when our cat, who thinks knows she owns our cottage, meets our daughter's dog, who is willing to share.

Who wants to play while we pack up?

Phttt. Don't even think about it!

4026

Why I lose faith in the experts

There is so much green goo on the environmental bandwagon, it's no wonder it's a slippery slope to humanistic destruction. There are wonderful, humane, spiritual and Biblical reasons to protect and respect our earth, many of them also fiscally sound. Others are pure nonsense, designed to make a buck or three. Like this description for an education course my husband received today from AIA

"A Living Systems Approach to Design: The impact of human activity exceeds our planet's capacity to accommodate change, ultimately harming Earth's ability to sustain life. This session, presented by architects Chrisna du Plessis and William Reed, explores the new realities, and responsibilities architects face when must consider how human and natural systems can evolve together."

Now let's compare that to this

"[Look at a midnight sky] It still reverberates from the Big Bang of its creation 13.7 billion years ago. . . Gamma-ray bursts release more energy in a blink than our sun can produce in a billion years." Robert Lee Hotz WSJ, 8-3-07

One or both of these descriptions of life has to be wrong. One says earth can't withstand the measly gasoline engine in the United States and Europe, the other says it created itself with no outside help almost 14 billion years ago, killing off millions of generations of species in trial and error before man ever appeared to dig an oil well.

4025

Reuniting before the nursing home

This morning the local PBS had the fund raiser running with the 50s doo-wop groups. How long before the current reunion tours end up at the state fairs, then the PBS fund raisers, and finally Lakeside? Today's Plain Dealer listed a few on the nostalgia (i.e. money) bandwagon.

Police
Genesis
Spice Girls
Raspberries
Eagles (got an early start on this in the 90s)
Fleetwood Mac
Smashing Pumpkins
Crowded House
Squeeze

Drug problems, big egos, stealing and womanizing usually break these groups up, and love of money and dimming memories bring them back together to play for audiences who want to reconnect with a time in their lives which they recall as less complicated.

Eric Carmen, singer guitarist of the Raspberries was quoted, "There's something about being in a band. It's like being through a war with someone. . . it's a powerful thing."

4024

The Abandon-the-Iraqis Candidates

Elizabeth Sullivan's column in the Plain Dealer today listed the Democrats who wanted to withdraw, run out, abandon, retreat, provide the enemy a timetable, whatever you call it.

Hillary
Obama
Edwards
Biden
Dodd
Kucinich
McCain

She was drawing attention to McCain, but I'd like to draw attention to her use of Mrs. Clinton's first name while addressing the others by their surname. Why is that? Is it familiarity? Demeaning? Less prestige? Removes confusion because her husband is called Clinton and she doesn't want to be aligned with him?

I'm not supporting Mrs. Clinton, but I think she ought to be addressed the same as the rest of the guys.

4023

What they're saying in Minnesota

about the bridge collapse. Ed Morrisey at Captain's Quarters is one of the best bloggers you'll read on any topic, but since the writer is a Minnesotan, his take on the local politics is instructive:

Yesterday, Senator Amy Klobuchar blamed the collapse of the I-35W bridge on a lack of highway funds -- even though the 2005 highway bill increased federal funding to Minnesota by 46% over its five-year span. Apparently realizing that line of argument wouldn't hold, Rep. James Oberstar accused MnDOT of being too cheap to use advanced technology for bridge inspections. He left out of his accusation that the technology hasn't proven itself for that purpose

Read the rest here.

I also read or heard somewhere that local environmentalists wanted the highway funds to be spent on light rail and other "non-polluting" transportation, not on bridges and highways. These are cousins of the folk in Arizona who won't let them cut down diseased trees for fear more people will find an area desirable for building, then scream global warming when the area dries up and burns. In any case, I don't think the administration of President Bush has a dog in this fight. As in hurricanes, the locals have the responsibility to be prepared after the Congress members bring home the pork.

More Signs of Lakeside

Many golf carts; many flags; lots of fun. Sometimes it's the only way to settle down some lively grandchildren--a ride with grandpa in the cart, followed by an ice cream cone.

It's been a lot of years since I dropped the little ones off at the staff supervised playground. Parents are also allowed, and I see there is a covered play area now. I had to move a few strollers to get this photo.

The sign says, Where the world comes to play shuffleoard, and it really does. There are international tournaments here, with a very impressive closing ceremony where the participants walk down the aisles of the auditorium carrying their flags. But usually we just see family groups--all ages can play this game together.

I hadn't seen this sign about profanity before--I guess Lakeside does eventually catch up with the "world." The only thing I've done on the court is square dancing, and you didn't hear anyone cussing with swing your partner round and round.

This sign is new too--probably a reflection of today's more cautious parents, or someone not accustomed to having their front door and street boundary so close. This is one of the oldest streets with a number of the cottages from the 1800s before there were set backs and footprint requirements. The newer areas have a bit more space between buildings.

Now it's all about bridges

Within 12 hours of the collapse of the bridge on Interstate 35W in Minneapolis, the kooks and krazies of the Daily Kos, the blogger behemoth to which Democratic presidential candidates are all rushing (especially John Edwards), were blaming George Bush and the Republicans. Now the johnny-come-latelies of the MSM are trotting out, "if only we weren't in Iraq, we'd have enough to repair our falling down bridges." They don't blame the "experts" who have been doing the inspections, or the report in 2001 by the U. of MN that said the bridge had years of service left. Each inspection seemed to call for more reports and inspections; none called for its closing. They don't blame the engineers. They don't blame the Congress who doles out the Highway Trust Fund from our gasoline taxes. They don't blame our rush to bio-fuels which will defund that Fund. They don't blame the wall of red tape snarling local, state and federal agencies responsible for highway safety. Nope. It's all in the power of the president/king/emperor George.

I looked at the list of bridge failures since 1980 in the USAToday. All seemed to be human error (barges or boats hitting them) or caused by earthquakes. None were on the list to watch, that I know of. I've been hearing stories for 20 years that the infrastructure of our cities was crumbling, but that George Bush is so powerful, his hand can reach backward.

Friday Family Photo

Last week my niece Cindy and family visited us. She and her husband are teachers in Bradenton, FL. About 18 years ago, Cindy also got a nursing degree. Here she is with her proud mother, my sister Carol, and her brother Greg at her graduation ceremony in May 1989.

4019

That was our parents' Play Station

said one cartoon character to another in Salt and Pepper, the Wall Street Journal cartoon. They were walking past a playground with monkey bars, swings and a metal slide. Maybe it should read grandparents, because I don't think I've seen them in the last 35 years.

It may be a cartoon, but it might also explain the rise in childhood obesity. It's a drawing of the playgrounds of the 1940s and 1950s, not the 70s and 80s. By the time my kids could climb on to a swing in the mid-1970s, playgrounds had profoundly changed from my school days. More plastic and rubber, special ground covers of shredded mulch or wood chips, brightly painted little animals on springs that rocked with very little effort. Slides looked more like mystery mazes. Also, when I was a child, almost no one had playground equipment in their own yard--a few might have had a tire tied to a rope or a tree house. Usually we had to ride a bike or walk to a playground--our little towns didn't have parks so they were on the school property.

Yesterday I walked past the playground where my children played in the 1970s. It's still in the same place, but I think this is the third or fourth generation of equipment since then. The little rocking animals have been replaced with rocking race cars. It was a hot day, but only one mother was there with her children.

Thursday Thirteen

13 things to check for that important job interview
Yes, I'm retired from academe, but I remember a few things about being on a "search committee." Maybe things have changed since 2000, but this was my experience.

1) Check your personal appearance. Some will groan, others will say, doh! I can still remember interviewing women in the late 1980s and early 1990s (think shoulder pads and big hair) who looked like a time warp from Woodstock--sandals, peasant blouse, flouncy, ethnic skirt, and long, straight stringy hair. For the committee the message, even if incorrect, is that you haven't had a new idea in years. Maybe update the frames for your glasses or toss the t-shirts. Take out the nose ring and cover your tattoo; get a real haircut. If you're too proud or haughty to snip off the pony tail, maybe this isn't the time for a job change.

2) Check your resume's appearance and content. These days you've sent it in a digital format, but it still needs to be grammatically correct, attractive when printed out for the committee, accurate, and not too wordy. It's a job, not a biography. I remember reading a resume that had a sentence with more than 100 words.

3) Check your network. This is on-going whether you're job hunting or not. Don't burn any bridges. Someone at the new location/ job will know someone from your past. . . someone you dissed in the cafeteria or meeting, someone you flirted or slept with, someone who thinks you're not a team player, someone who's heard all your excuses for being late.

4) Check your references. Talk to them personally. What has changed? If it's been a few years and you're both in other jobs, maybe it's time to freshen the list, or it will look a little odd.

5) Check the geographic location. Unless the candidate grew up in Bucyrus, or had a parent living in Indiana, we all knew we have no oceans or mountains in central Ohio, but occasionally the candidate seemed surprised by acres of corn and soybeans and wanted more than we could offer. It was a waste of everyone's time.

Check your oral presentation

6) How's your English? Not your accent, but your grammar and slang. Do you mumble? Stare at your feet? Do you start every sentence with "like," or "now" or "yeah?" Work with a coach if need be. Videotape yourself if you need to give a presentation and have someone you trust critique.

7) How are your teeth? If you are 40 or younger, you've probably had them straightened, capped, bonded or whitened. If you are older, at least have them whitened if you smoke, drink coffee or tea. If this seems odd, just take a look at the smile of a Gen-Y friend (18-29). You'll be doing a lot of smiling (I hope) at this interview.

8) Talk too much? It's hard to break this habit--but for a job interview, you may have to bite your tongue. Do you chatter, leap from topic to topic, wear out even your spouse? Women particularly give out more personal information than anyone wants to know. Keep quiet about your children, your pets, in-laws, etc. Be prepared to answer a few probing questions with even fewer words.

9) Know something about the company, product, campus, etc., but also prepare some questions for others. People will like you better if you aren't a know-it-all. There's a fine line between sounding stupid and interested.

Check these at the door.

10) Evangelism. Whether it is religion, politics or your carbon footprint, you won't know who on the committee or in the personnel office thinks Al Gore is a nut, or who is a libertarian, or who hates Baptists, Mormons, Muslims, Unitarians, etc.

11) Your cell phone, BlackBerry. This should be self-explanatory, but a lot of people forget to turn them off, or think it is OK to check their e-mail at lunch. Leave it in the motel or the car! A blast of your your favorite rock ringtone wouldn't be good if you're sitting in the CEO's office. If you can't unplug long enough to complete an interview or resist text messaging your best friend, perhaps you need to stay where you are.

12) Your blog or social networking site on the internet. Unless you've been writing about a product line or an information service, dump these. Quick. Someone will always know, no matter how anonymous you think you are. I know I've seen conflicting advice on this, but not everyone in the company is up on blather and gossip as a networking tool and may think you just have a trash mouth on a back-stabbing body.

13) Your music. You wouldn't list your age on your resume, so why do it by talking about what's on your i-pod? You may be a fan of Led Zeppelin because the group was big in your teens, but that's "classics" or dad's music for the younger set.