Shameful expenditures

$18 billion in executive bonuses is the height of irresponsibility, but spending $1.2 trillion in government pork is a fiscally justifiable use of taxpayer funds. Here’s a visual that will demonstrate. Brain Shavings

Today's new word is CLAMANT

Actually, this was yesterday's, but I got a bit bogged down looking through google entries and went to bed. Here's the reference

We are content not to know the deep things of God. . . ponder the things He has said until we hear their clamant call, and obey." G. Campbell Morgan.

I didn't have a problem understanding the meaning--thought it might be something to do with "claim," because that is how I would pronounce it. But you just never know, so I looked it up. Big fat dining room dictionary says, it comes from the Latin clamare meaning to call, see claim. However, the meaning is "crying out, clamorous, loud, demanding notice, or urgent." I really don't get a sense of urgency in the word "claim." Like "quit claim deed," or as the CW song goes
You claimed you loved me,
but I was suspicious when
you dated three
of my best fren
So I checked google, and after about 40 entries that were just dictionaries, including Vietnamese, or were in Latin (clamant is 3rd person plural verb apparently), I decided no one is using it much these days, so there's no clamant call to learn or remember it.

It has only been a week

Africa and Hawaii have had their revenge for the European explorers and colonialists seizing their land. Our globalist, bi-racial president has taken this country further into socialism in one week than FDR and LBJ did in 4.5 terms. The stimulus package is a complete fraud--a ploy to take over what we didn't hand over since 1933; our future citizens, workers, soldiers and grandchildren will be tossed out with the FOCA garbage where they will neither cost us in social services nor contribute to the greater good; our cabinet officers are crooks and sneaks; and little acorns dance in the woods of green.

New roots in Vermont

The architectural article in today's WSJ is about a 3 generation Korean-American family (via Communist North Korea over 60 years ago) with a retreat reflecting Korean culture and Vermont practicality. They own quite a chunk of land and built the family compound for about $300 sq. ft. With 48' of glass in the 12' wide dining room, the children can play in the middle of winter without shoes as the room can heat up from the sun to 87 degrees. Our little manufactured porch, 6' wide, at Lakeside does that too--in the winter sun we can almost heat the entire house built in the early 1940s.

I grew up in northern Illinois and even in the 1940s and 1950s I saw many out-buildings of similar concept on farms. They were probably designed by a clever farm wife who helped support the family and send the kids to college with her butter and egg business. These buildings had steep pitches to drop the winter snow and clerestory windows for warmth and light, the nests for the chickens were framed high enough for manure droppings to fall to the floor (also helps with heat and composting), with easy access waist high to reach under biddy for her precious eggs.

Outsiders who come in to rural areas or the inner city or to vacation/leisure towns and set about to recreate a feeling, or to preserve the past, or to establish a name for design, need to realize that eventually, the locals will not be able to afford to live there. I've seen that myself at Lakeside, where my husband has beautified the town with about 35 projects, being the architect for a renovation, a total remodeling or completely new designs on empty lots. When an area is "improved" the property values around it go up, and then the taxes go up. The early sellers do quite well; those who wait or who want to stay there because of location (ice fishing, boating) or family (generations of quarry workers from east Europe) may be out of luck. We have home owners from across the nation coming there for a few weeks in the summer to stay in fabulous cottages--that would have never happened before the 1970s gasoline crisis when leisure spots closer to home began to look more desirable to Ohioans, and the idea spread. Water mains and gas lines were laid and roads improved, and real estate development boomed. I've seen many homes in Lakeside, Marblehead and Catawba leave a family after 3 or 4 generations because the heirs cannot afford to own it, so it is sold to wealthier families. And I've seen owners sell because although they haven't "preserved" or "renovated," the neighbors have and they can't afford the taxes and insurance on a home they only use a few weeks of the year.

Most noticeable is what happens to the urban poor, what happens when a city neighborhood is "improved" or as we say these days "gentrified?" When I drive through some of the wonderful neighborhoods of user friendly townhouses in downtown Chicago full of white and light brown yuppies, close to the parks, the lake, museums and shopping, I do wonder what happened to all those poor and black welfare families of razed Cabrini Green. Did they go on to be middle or upper class citizens, no longer dependent on the government for housing?

When we moved to Columbus in the 1960s, one of the first architectural tours we took was German Village, which had been a run-down slum, and was experiencing a new birth. It was so exciting to see--I still have the fading color photos we took. Tiny brick houses and duplexes that still looked quite traditional on the outside and were already being subjected to some fairly rigid codes, were light, airy and contemporary on the inside--never really reflecting the humble origins of the German working class that built them in the 19th century. That was 42 years ago, so I'm sure those kitchens I lusted for have been done over again, once or twice, and now maybe are being subjected to all sorts of green remodeling to conserve energy, fight radon or remove toxic materials installed just 20 or 30 years ago. So where did the poor go when the gay decorators and lawyer-doctor trendy couples moved in? Well, they moved further out, maybe rented or got a foreclosed house with help from the government and started that neighborhood on a downward slide with trucks up on blocks and broken windows covered with plywood.

Some may have ended up on the Hilltop, where in the past 10-20 years non-profit housing groups with government grants have been trying to "improve" the housing, fairly solid early 20th century 4-squares cut up into 4-plexes. If they succeed, they will push the poor further away from jobs and city services, which are being cut back anyway, strangled by new environmental codes and regulations and the housing meltdown created by our government's belief that everyone needed a piece of the real estate pie.

I don't have a solution; but every improvement, whether private or government, has consequences. The green ones more than most.

Obama is not Jesus; he's Joseph

Excellent post at Billoblog on the stimulus package that concludes

We can look forward to the economic miracle that is Zimbabwe and the liberty of Cuba. And, like the Egyptians, we will sell ourselves, and our children to the seventh generation, thoughtlessly. The only big difference is that the crisis for the Egyptians was real, while the Democrats are hyping a false sense of crisis about a problem they cannot solve using their socialization policies, but, as with the Depression, can only make worse. But, like the environmental “crisis” and the energy “crisis,” the goal is not solution; it is the destruction of individual rights in the name of socialism.

NYT needs to encourage births

Babies grow up to read newspapers and pay the salaries of journalists and editors. I heard about the March for Life because I listen to Christian radio, but I think that was the only outlet that mentioned it around here. Maybe the media were still drunk from the Tuesday festivities.

“More than 300,000 people assembled in Washington, D.C. [January 22] for the 36th Annual March for Life. But as far as The New York Times is concerned, it never happened,” Feder observed. [BoycottNYT.com editor Don] Feder was the keynote speaker at the event’s Rose Dinner.

He continued, “If 50,000 feminists had gathered on the Mall in D.C., to demand passage of the so-called Freedom of Choice Act, it would have been above-the-page-one-fold coverage in The Times, accompanied by an aerial photo of the crowd.” From Accuracy in Media

If 10 Code Pink ladies stood under a street light at 3 a.m. outside a veterans' hospital protesting, the NYT would have sent a crew. Didn't they get front row seats at the inauguration?

Invitation to President Obama.

From Washington Post story (section A):

"Deirdre McQuade, spokeswoman for Pro-Life Activities at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said turnout at the annual Mass at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Northeast on Wednesday night filled the basilica's 16,000-person capacity and spill into two overflow buildings. A morning youth concert and Mass yesterday at Verizon Center also filled up -- there were 20,000-plus seats -- and crowds were sent to nearby churches. . .

For eight years, marchers had been greeted by a message from President George W. Bush, who supported their cause and appointed two Supreme Court justices who voted to uphold federal restrictions on some abortion procedures.

In contrast, Obama issued a statement yesterday reaffirming his support for a woman's right to choose to end her pregnancy. Roe v. Wade, the statement said, "not only protects women's health and reproductive freedom, but stands for a broader principle: that government should not intrude on our most private family matters."

Of course, Washington Post is bi-lingual: "abortion foes," "abortion opponents," on the right side, and "a woman's right to end her pregnancy," and "reproductive freedom" on the left side.

Tonight's cruise dinner

You probably think this isn't the greatest time to go to the Holy Land, but reading the paper, it's not a good time to be in Mexico either. In fact, I'd say Mexico looks hotter than Hamas. Anyway, the people going on the cruise to the Holy Land are getting together for a pot luck tonight. We're in the section of the alphabet that's bringing a main dish, so I'm taking sweet sour meatballs. I've blogged this about 2 years ago, but it was an entire dinner. So here's the story excerpted from that entry

To make the meatballs you first have to leave the computer--probably when Blogger.com is acting up. Go to the kitchen and mix in a sauce pan one 15 oz can of sauerkraut, one 12 oz. jar of chili sauce, and one 16 oz can of whole cranberry sauce (sizes make no difference). Remove half of it from the pan and put it in the freezer for another day. Makes a wonderful topping for a boneless pork roast. While the mix is warming up, check the computer to see if Blogger is working, and if so, download that picture before it quits.

Go back to the kitchen and tear and crumble in a bowl at least two pieces of stale bread and let it dry a little while you go back and finish your blog entry. Oh, turn off stove and remove the sauce because you might forget and it will scorch.

Next, add one and a half pounds of ground chuck to the bread crumbs, an envelope of dried onion soup, and 2 eggs and thoroughly mix. Shape into 10 nice sized meatballs, and lightly brown for a few minutes. Spray a casserole dish with a non-stick (I use olive oil), and arrange the meatballs. Pour the sauce over the meatballs, completely covering them. Put in the oven at 375 for at least 45 minutes. Check your e-mail. Freezes well, or makes great sandwiches the next day.

For this event I used a mix of ground pork, sausage and hamburger, probably a total 2.5 lbs, making 8 large meatballs to take tonight and a bunch of smaller ones which I popped in the oven at lunch time, of which I've just eaten 2 in case I don't get any tonight. Because I had more meat, I used all the sauce. Actually, I think I like the ground chuck version better.

A lot goes a little way

I just read the ingredients on my Trader Joe's "Next to Godliness Liquid Dish Soap" formulated to perform effectively while being safe for the environment. Usually, I love Trader Joe's products, and I thought I'd used this one before and found it satisfactory, but. . .

coconut derived surfactants, earth salt, lavender oil, tea tree oil, grapefruit seed extract and water

just doesn't do it. The label says it hasn't been tested on animals so we don't even know if it's safe for humans, do we?

My tea bags of black leaves come from bushes, so I asked Google, "what is tea tree oil," and was told that it comes from steam distillation of the leaves of Melaleuca alternifolia, a plant native to Australia. It's not even tea! "Tea tree oil contains consituents [sic] called terpenoids, which have been found to have antiseptic and antifungal activity. The compound terpinen-4-ol is the most abundant and is thought to be responsible for most of tea tree oil's antimicrobial activity." You can use it for vaginitis, dandruff, acne and athletes' foot. Gee, I didn't know those ailments were even related!

Anyway, use twice as much of the TJ Soap as the bad old stuff and don't expect suds.

Father John Corapi

If they are not praying to saints or Mary, or saying the rosary, I love to listen to Catholic radio. And Father John Corapi is one of the best. I heard a stunning sermon this morning in the car, rushed into the house leaving the groceries, and turned on the kitchen radio. It was all about his profligate past in Hollywood outrunning the police with cocaine in the trunk of his Ferrari and hanging out with starlets. I think he said he was at a party with John Belushi the night he died. Here's what catholic-tube says about him

A soldier, investment banker, multi millionaire real estate investor, cocaine addict, and Catholic Priest. It’s said that every saint has a past and every sinner has a future. So too, is the path of Father John Corapi, now famous for his touring the world to spread the good news of Jesus Christ and his Church. Fr. Corapi’s past has led to a great witness that has led many back to the church. He has put together many series that have aired on EWTN, including his famous series on the Catechism of the Catholic Church. You can find out more about the ministry of Father Corapi by visiting his website.

And I always thought it was the Baptists that had the great testimonies, but his is hard to beat. And he has a great voice.

Cash or cans?

Food is flying off the shelves at food pantries across the country. Instead of the clients being people on food stamps, it's people newly unemployed and living in their own homes. I'm a member of a large Lutheran church with three campuses, and we support (I think) an exceptionally well run "choice" Food Pantry with very capable staff. Our church, UALC, heard the appeal in November and December.

"Through November and Thanksgiving services, enough food was donated to carry the local LSS Food Pantry through much of February: donations of 1,549 bags of food, cash and gift cards were valued at $30,935." UALC Cornerstone, January 11-17, 2009

Last year LSS of Central Ohio food pantries served 148,546 people. I'm guessing that is "visits" and not actual people, because when I've volunteered, I see the same people over and over. Most of that is a 3 day supply of emergency food for people with documentation and in the computerized system, but "over-nights" are at the discretion of the manager until the client can get into the social service system.

Is it better to give cash/checks or food stuffs? Here's my opinion. The manager/director can buy much more food for your dollar than you can. However, that food is cheap because of federal funding--so you're paying for it either way. Churches, clubs and immigrant societies have always had a community food basket for the poor, elderly and unemployed. Compared to the volunteer spirit that goes back to the roots of this country, the government is a newcomer as a food donor. The present food stamp program began during Johnson’s Great Society in the 1960s and was expanded during the Carter years, and every administration since, including the Republicans. It's political suicide to cut it and it began as welfare to farmers.

According to the Cato Institute, “The largest portion of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s budget consists of food subsidies, not farm subsidies. Food subsidies will cost taxpayers $55 billion in fiscal 2007 and account for 61 percent of the USDA’s budget. The largest food subsidy programs are food stamps; the school breakfast and lunch programs; and the women, infants, and children (WIC) program. The federal government as a whole has about 26 food and nutrition programs operated by six different agencies.“ When I serve at the food pantry I see brands and companies I've never heard of; I suspect they serve only charities with government surplus, or outright purchase. In Columbus we have a huge warehouse, Mid-Ohio Food Bank, that serves only the food pantries and they're asking for funding to enlarge it. MOFB's stocks are down. Supermarkets are more efficient and waste (donate) less, there are more odd-lot type discounters to buy up near due date and over stocks, and health regulations have cut down on what can be donated. Which means more of your tax dollar for food subsidies.

The biggest distributor of these programs is "faith based and community" initiatives like our Lutheran church. So any food pantry, whether they are supported by your church or a community cooperative, is really tax supported via the USDA (it was also involved in housing programs in rural areas which contributed to our melt-down). Which brings me to my point--purchasing your donation at the local level.

For every can of soup or package of pasta I buy locally whether at Marc's or Meijer's, I am helping a stock boy or produce lady keep their jobs. They in turn can meet their rent payments, put gas in their used auto, and eat a meal out occasionally at McDonald's. This allows the bulk gasoline driver to keep his truck on the road, the landlord of the apartment building to avoid foreclosure, and the feedlot owner in Kansas to ship spent, older cows to slaughter in Iowa where the butchers and packers will pay their rent, fill their gas tanks and maybe donate to their local food pantry to help the unemployed who planted too much corn for ethanol due to Al Gore's environmental hysteria which helped contribute to food shortages world wide.

I'm a pensioner. Every time I go to the grocery store, I pick up a few cans of soup, a package of pasta, a jar of jelly, or some canned meat and drop it off on Sunday in the food box at church--amounts to about $10 a week--and you know the prices, that doesn't buy a lot. I've read every label and compared every price, and I know the money is circulating right here in Columbus to help the people who aren't lining up on Champion Avenue.

Blago and the Gitmo detainees

Not that I have any sympathy for Rod Blagojevich, the Illinois governor accused of trying to sell Obama's senate seat, but the rush to impeach and marginalize him by his own party, particularly Obama supporters, is interesting in light of the care, feeding and pro-bono legal care of the Gitmo accused terrorists by the left. The smell of the bread crumbs that lead back to Obama's campaign managers, appointees and lackeys has the whiff of 3 day old fish left in the hot sun.

From little ACORNs marxism grows big trees

If you check out the roots of the various housing organizations to whom the Bush administration gave money to keep the housing industry afloat (literally throwing it with little oversite) and the tangled web of the various "get out the vote" groups in 2006 and 2008 that bussed people hither and yon for registration where they weren't eligible, you'll find ACORN or groups it is funding. So this item on Newsmax is no surprise--they had power to spend and money to burn long before Obama, the community activist, team took the reins.

"Ordinarily, neighborhood stabilization funds are distributed to local governments. But revised language in the stimulus bill would make the funds available directly to non-profit entities such as ACORN, the low-income housing organization whose pro-Democrat voter-registration activities have been blasted by Republicans. ACORN is cited by some for tipping the scales in the Democrats' favor in November.

According to Fox news, Sen. David Vitter, R-La., could appear to be a “payoff” for community groups’ partisan political activities in the last election cycle."

Republicans were so busy supporting the war abroad and fighting the Democrats in Congress, they forgot to check the foxholes and bunkers within our own borders for our homegrown axis of evil.

New notebook time and new word for the day

The notebook I started Dec. 5 is full. Last week I bought four spiral bound, hard cover note books, 8.5 x 5.3, lined, 100 pages, at Marc's for $.67 a piece. There is a clear acrylic over the front cover. They are called "Sherbert Notes Journal" and I bought them in pink, lime, pale blue and lilac. The stationer is FYI Stationers and the producer Carolina Pad of Charlotte, NC. Marc's carries overstocks, remaindered and seconds so if you see something you like, buy it--it won't be there when you return 10 minutes later. A few weeks ago I saw some plain white, Mikasa china bowls (probably seconds), 2 for $.99. I have white china with a silver band and am short a few bowls (replacements cost about $60.00), so I thought I could work with something similar, and they looked fine, but when I went back there weren't any more.

Now for the new word. About 20 years ago I was a volunteer in a nursing home with a young woman who had suffered a brain aneurysm when she was 18 and was totally paralyzed. She needed people with her during her waking hours because she couldn't generate thought (a theory of another volunteer). Fortunately, she had parents and sisters and not a husband who wanted to be free of her, so no one starved her to death to end her life, but she did eventually die at about age 50. She couldn't talk, move voluntarily or see, but she could definitely experience emotion, as I found out if ever I said "Would you like some sherbert." She is the one who taught me that there is only one R in sherbet. It took 10 minutes to spell it on her message board which involved rows of letters each assigned a number and holding her hand to see if I could detect a movement if I called out the right letter. So when I saw that these notebooks were titled, "Sherbert Notes," I decided someone didn't know how to spell sherbet. But when I looked in my dictionary, here's what I found:

sherbet n. Turkish and Persian from Arabic Sharbah for drink. 1. a cold drink of sweetened and diluted fruit juice 2. or sherbert, an ice with milk, egg white, or gelatin added.

Even my spell check tried to drop that second R. And this is my new word for today.

The inaugural luncheon

Perhaps this is just a poor shot, but the wait staff is more diverse than the guests or head table.

History turned on its head

The story of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Don't miss this fascinating series featuring Joan Peters, White House advisor during the Carter administration discussing her writing of her 1984 book Time Immemorial.



HT Lady-Light

Things to do during an Ohio ice storm

Especially if you live in an all electric home and are watching the tree limbs outside droop to the ground.

Run some water through the coffee pot to clean it, and watch the little clumps fall through

Brew a 1/2 regular, 1/2 decaf pot of coffee in case you can't get to the coffee shop tomorrow, and put it in a thermos

Run that load of laundry that's been sitting on the floor for 2 days

Heat up a can of that wonderful hearty beef and vegetable Progresso soup and put it in a thermos

Check the flashlights

Look for batteries in the basement and office desk

Find the candles and matches

Finish the watercolor started yesterday while the light is good

Make sure the double garage door which weighs 5 tons isn't frozen to the driveway in case the opener won't work

Check for your scraper and shovel, this looks like more than a credit card size storm

Call about that hair appointment and plead for a rescheduling

Call "the children" (40 and 41) to see that they got to work OK and nag them about being careful on the roads

Enjoy the peacfulness of fat snowflakes slowly falling.

From my archives

Today I'm waiting to see what happens with the weather. The rain has turned to sleet, has turned to ice, and now a layer of snow. So I was playing around with the google site search command for my various blogs. Since I often change the quote at the top, I see that a 2009 quote may be attached to a 2003 blog entry. That must really mess up people doing keywood searches and the quote pulled them in. Oh well. It was fun to browse. For your reading enjoyment, but mostly for mine.

From October, 2003

"Why do cats love to watch people in the bathroom? Not just the obvious stuff, but want to hang around even when the hair dryer is running and that's got to hurt little feline ears. Want to be with you, want to touch your arm when you're applying mascara. Why, when you close the door, do they slip their little paws under it? Do dogs do that? Or do they just whine and bark and chew up the rug until you come out?"

"Today it was reported in WSJ that Harvard University researchers found a 55% greater risk of heart disease among grandmothers who care for their grandchildren than those who don’t. 36.3% of U.S. grandparents provide intermediate or extensive care for their grandchildren. One theory about the stress is that there are other events in the lives of their adult children, such as divorce or substance abuse, that causes the parents to have to help out, thus causing a lot of stress. And those of us with no grandchildren have a 47.95% greater risk of a broken heart. (I made that up.)"

In February 2007 I was commenting about illegal aliens getting mortgages with false documents and lying on applications. I noted

"When there is a practice or law so clearly working against the average, tax paying, law abiding citizen, I always say the trite and true: FOLLOW THE MONEY. Who benefits when undocumented workers buy homes? [Now we know it was Barney Frank and ACORN and the supporters of our future president.]

MurrayT has a home in Florida and the recent tornado wiped out some of those homes. He says FEMA is trying to find the home owners to give them aid--but they have fled fearing arrest for being in the country illegally and are afraid of the INS. Property owners paying taxes in that county and paying high insurance premiums and the rest of the nation (me) who donate to the very inefficient Homeland Security Department are paying."

"I've learned a few things in retirement that I wish I'd known earlier. a) Always use a non-stick spray when cooking--sauce pans included. Sure makes clean up easy (I use a soybean oil spray). b) Trader Joe's sunblock makes a wonderful hand lotion--has zinc oxide, and their c) shaving cream works wonderfully for washing your face. Leaves your skin soft and smelling yummy. d) I can buy a B width shoe if it has laces or elastic inserts. e) Since I buy 1/2 decaf with 1/2 regular for my morning coffee, it just tastes a lot better if I start with 1/2 cup of regular and leave out the decaf until I'm ready to go (about an hour later). It also stays hot longer if you start with 1/2 cup. f) In the last few months I've learned there is life after peanut butter."

"As much as I hate to see horse slaughter for human consumption, I would hate to see the laws become so restrictive, that disposing of an animal became difficult, and therefore would lead to abuse such as poor health care, food, or being sold to bad people just to get if off your hands. Also, if species-specific legislation outlawing slaughter for human consumption works with horses, you can bet pigs, cattle and chicken supporters will be watching very closely." [with a link to an extension article on how to compost your horse]

In June 2005 I was commenting

"Shoe [a librarian] doesn't really mean it, but she'd like to announce it [“unattended children will be sold“]. She writes about unattended children in libraries. That wasn't a significant problem in an academic library where I worked from 1986-2000--although I did keep coloring books and crayons in my office for children of the occasional negligent parent who would lose herself in the stacks reading about nematodes or cryptorchidism."

"I'd forgotten how effective that do not call list really is. Since we arrived around noon on Saturday [at our summer home] the phone has rung about every two hours--and since we have no answering machine, we don't know what is happening when we're out for dinner, or walking along the lake front, or attending a program. I've been offered a subscription to the Toledo Blade, a summer resort vacation package, several new phone plans, a lower mortgage rate, and possibly waterproofing something, but I hung up too quickly. We never added this phone to the list--indeed, we may get rid of the land line altogether and just use the cell phone, as many do here [we did that]. We're probably getting a huge share of the calls, since so many people's numbers are not accessible."

"We're finally in Lakeside, rolling in about 11:15. And the cat didn't poop or puke. Good trip! The gates are down, the lines are long, and it is hot, hot, hot--about 94 I think. One more hour and our flowers would have been dead. We've watered twice, and they are starting to perk up. Dehydration is a painful way to die." (obviously a slam at you who thought Terri Schaivo was not human enough to feel pain)

Today's weather and coffee shop dilemma has happened before, according to this entry at my Dec. 23, 2004 coffee blog. While doing this site search I discovered that there is another blog called Coffee Spills but the URL differs by one letter. It's in Polish, I think.

"Usually I don't see my doctor at the coffee shop, but today I didn't get there until about 3 p.m., and he said they'd cancelled all appointments at his office. It takes a level 2 to keep me from my 6 a.m. trek to the coffee shop, but we were socked in here with first rain, then 6" snow, then sleet, then rain, and then back to snow. Just south of us, it is a level 3, and you get a ticket if you're on the roads looking for a cup of coffee. But by 3 p.m., I was a bit stir crazy, and our roads locally were in good shape. By 5 p.m. about 400,000 people were without power and the temperature was dropping. We called a friend to see what was happening in Lakeside, Ohio, and he said they'd had 18 inches, but no ice. Streets were clear."

I'm supposed to get my hair cut today--hope this mess clears up!

What would we do without twins?

The media were all abuzz this week with the revelation from a pre-print e-article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS 2009 : 0806746106v1-pnas.0806746106) that analyzed 1,110 adolescent twins from 142 schools and discovered "your genetic background may help determine not only how many people count you as a friend, but also how many of your friends are friends among themselves." This apparently explains why on Facebook some people have hundreds of "friends," many of whom count each other as friends, and other people only have a few. But you wait, no one really cares why you have 120 cyberfriends, and I have three. Eventually they'll find a way to tie this into 1) poverty, and 2) global climate control. I read a lot of medical articles, and this is where they go--follow the (grant) money. Already one of the researchers is planning for this direction--otherwise, where would his funding come from?

"Given that social networks play important roles in determining a wide variety of things ranging from employment and wages to the spread of disease, it is important to understand why networks exhibit the patterns that they do," Matthew Jackson, a Stanford University economist, wrote in a commentary accompanying the study.

All quotes are from the WSJ summary, because I didn't want to wade through the original. Similar reports appeared in Boston Globe, Columbus Dispatch, etc. Whether the writers actually read the pre-print, I don't know.

When I read the article I immediately thought of my friend Von. I hadn't thought of her in many years as she died about 20 years ago. She had the most amazing circle of friends--it was vast. I think we met at a neighborhood Bible study--and there was just something about her--the voice, the smile, her flashing black eyes, her attention to you that made you think you were the only person in the crowded room. At first I was a little puffed up to be one of Von's friends--basking in the reflection of her popularity. Then I discovered that if I wanted any quality time with her and we pulled out our pocket calenders, she had no time free for months! I'm a "can we meet tomorrow for coffee" type of woman, and if my friend has to schedule me in for November when we run into each other at the supermarket in July, I start to scan the horizon for someone with fewer friends. But she really was a fabulous woman. When we saw each other one autumn at a community event, I noticed she was gaining weight, but only through the middle. I didn't say anything, but within a few months I learned through mutual friends she had a massive tumor. And it was malignant. Her friend network didn't fail her. Most of us knew each other. There were management friends and line friends--she had many people to sit with her in the hospital and hold her head when she vomited; many to bring meals into her large family; many to call and send notes. Many to call each other and consult and grieve together. Eventually, her deteriorating health caused her to be selective because she needed to save her energy resources just to stay alive and hold her husband and children close.

This morning I saw something out of place on top of a bookshelf--a retail bookmark I'd never seen. My office may be messy, but the living room is rarely a place for clutter. I picked it up--the illustration was either a sunset or sunrise over an ocean. I turned it over, and there was a note from Von to my husband, written in 1977 for his *Cursillo week-end, November 10-13, 1977, Men's 52nd, Columbus. So Von's friendship is still here to bring a smile and thank-you.

-------------
*A three-day experience of Christian renewal which originated in the Roman Catholic Church. The Cursillo program has been duplicated in some Protestant denominations, Walk to Emmaus, Vía De Cristo, Tres Días, with changes made to reflect the doctrines and culture of different denominations. In Columbus it is now called Cum Cristo, and is mixed Catholic and Protestant event.

Today's new word is IATROGENIC

This word entered the English language in the 1920s and the short version is that it means "physician induced," as in iatrogenic illness or iatrogenic disease. IATRO means physician. However, it started out meaning the distress a patient has from an incorrect diagnosis. Now it's much broader, according to an article in MedSurg Nursing June 2001. Today's meaning includes nosocomial infections in hospitals, adverse drug effects, reactions from anaesthesia, complications from surgery, errors in diagnostic tests, mistakes by nursing staff, misdiagnosis--really, just about any error caused by a human that can happen in a medical setting. It's the drive behind your doctor's office to computerize your records (it would be my bet that this could really mess things up, but what do I know), and lots of law suits. I tried to find some recent statistics that didn't have huge ranges or weren't guesses by groups with conflicts of interest (everyone sites a 1999 study), or surveys of patients, but the CDC reports just hospital infections as 1.7 million infections and 99,000 associated deaths each year, so if you add up all the other iatrogenic illnesses, you begin to see the problem. Here's a list of some nasty bugs you can pick up just by being hospitalized. You can check the mortality rate for hospitals in your zip code here.

Nancy Pelosi, the most powerful U.S. female Roman Catholic, supports a pro-abortion president and harvesting human embryos for research.

Pelosi--fewer babies, reduce costs to government

Wait! Isn't she a Catholic with five children and a bunch of grands, with illegals working in her gardens and vineyards? She had hers, heated up the globe, so now you can't? Especially the brown and the black who already have the highest percentage of the costs from Planned Parenthood and its "family planning."

San Fran Nan
She's the baby gran
who brings home the bacon
and fries it in a pan.

From her lips and her face,
Nanny Gran's in a race
with mother nature, father time,
so baby girls will have no place.

"Don't procreate!
It's much too late.
I've had my turn,
Your future's with the state.

When workers we don't grow
and the economy is slow
the planet then will cool
and greenward we will flow."