I get really tired of the advertising spam

So, why is it that it is okay for someone to blast post anonymous comments to blogs that are really spam - advertising? You would think that google could manage to filter these out. But they don't. So, I am reduced to requiring you to do more to comment. Not that that truly happens a lot but then....

Avoid Direct TV like the plague

Okay, so they seemed like a reasonable service. I did not like Cox Cable and satellite service was my alternative. I bought a receiver with Tivo from them and enjoyed it (though I was not happy about the damage their installer did to my wall). Then suddenly, it did not work. So I called to get a new one. They would charge me $400 or let me use one for "free" but I had to accept a 2 year service agreement. I saw no reason why I should not (although if I had know it cost $480 I would not have accepted it - they neglected that detail). So I get the receiver- it no longer is a TIVO because, it turns out, they have been illegally using TIVO's software code...

Fast forward several 10 months, my job is eliminated due to budget reasons. Every other provider is willing to work with me. Direct TV is willing to let me put my account on hold for 6 months. I have to sell my house and move in with family. I am unemployed a total of 10 months and end up making two moves of more than a thousand miles each. But I don't get a job and apartment that will let me resume the Direct TV. Direct TV insists that I either pay a monthly contract fee or a cancellation fee. They know I do not have a dish, just the "free receiver" but they still insist on charging me a programming fee for the receiver and they have moved me up to a more expensive (by $8 plan).

I call to cancel. I am bounced around till I get to a person who tries to talk me into remaining with them or coming back later. and this is when they start to lie. He tells me that if I will provide my credit card and pay the bill right now, he can reduce the bill to $48 and change. No other changes, including no cancellation fee if I just pay it today and return the receiver in the kit.

Yesterday, I got a bill charging me a cancellation fee and the receiver programming fee. The first person I got, Andrea, hung up on me. The second one, Paul, just told me that the fees were legal. The supervisor, John, told me that the person I talked to about canceling did not leave notes. In very indirect terms, he told me that I was lying and that the circumstances did not matter, it was a legal charge.

DO NOT DO BUSINESS WITH DIRECT TV UNLESS YOU ARE PREPARED TO BE TREATED AS A CONVENIENT ACCESS TO YOUR MONEY AND TO BE LIED TO BY THEIR PERSONNEL.

Grandma had a stroke

Okay, so it is quarter of 11pm and I am totally pissed. My beloved grandmother had a stroke that seems to be affecting the nerves that control her eyes. Effectively, it is blinding her.

My mom took her to the ER by car instead of calling an ambulance because it did not seem to be life threatening and was faster. The ER staff left her in the waiting room for over an hour!!! They missed the bloody window of opportunity to intervene because they did not see her right away. Not important enough to triage ahead if someone delivers you by car instead of ambulance? For once I understand the desire to sue some one for damages. Personally, I cannot quit swearing, and I generally don't. I would have a strong drink but I decided an antidepressant was not the ideal addition.

What makes it worse is that I am on a business trip back in Omaha. I have been living there for 5 months. It happens one of the few times I am away. Mom has no one there to hold her hand or give her a hug. Grandma doesn't understand what is happening or why she cannot see.

She already wanted to die. When every vertebrae in your back is broken because of osteoporosis, you hurt all the time. She cannot hear much even with her hearing aids. She did not want to live in a nursing home or be dependent on anyone. Dieing would be a relief.

Instead she has a stroke that may leave her blind. Her major recreation is reading, playing cards, crocheting, correspoding with friends, and watching Jeopardy. ALL of those require sight. Living independently is hard if you cannot see. If she cannot see, it would have been kinder if she died. I so don't want her to have to live out her nightmares.

I Am a Native American

Tonight I found myself confronted by the same darned problem -- a discussion about "Native Americans." I never know how to have this conversation without sounding like a bigot. The problem is, at least as far as I see it, the topic doesn't have an easy answer, and everybody seems to think there ought to be. The problem in this case is the issue of "Native American" people and the reservation system.

My problem starts with linguistics. I hate the term "Native American" -- it implies that in order to be a native to the United States, your ancestors have to have lived here prior to the immigration from Europe. That might have made sense when the average individual could trace their ancestors to an immigrant with in one or two generations. It makes absolutely no sense to me; I'm born and bred state of Montana, which is located in United States of America on the North American continent. My identity is Not based on my European ancestors or where they came from. I don't doubt that my European heritage is strongly influenced how I think of myself etc., but I define myself as an American and one native to this country at that. So if we say that someone is "Native American", we are effectively saying that I am Not native to this country. I refuse to cooperate with a system like that -- I am a native American. I'm proud to be an American, and like the generations before me, I consider myself to be a native American. And I am offended when people imply that I am not.

And that leaves me with the problem of what word do I use to refer to people who call themselves Native Americans." They don't want to be called Indians, says the term really refers to the idiocy of a man who didn't know what continent he'd landed on. I can't say as I blame them. My personal term for them would be "Tribal People." Problem with that term is that I'm sure somebody will object to it. I suppose I could use the term "First People" but I don't happen to believe that there's any evidence currently sufficient to support the use of such a term. Scientifically, it would be possible to determine if the people living on the continent at the time of its rediscovery by the European explorers were in fact, evolutionarily unique to this continent. However that's never going to happen thanks to legislation that prevents us from using any human remains found that are old enough to be considered as part of the "Native American" peoples.

And so, despite all of its potential for being politically incorrect, I guess I'll write the rest of my musings on this topic using the term "Tribal People." My apologies in advance to those who it offends, and I'll accept yours for the offence you cause me every time you imply that I am not native to this country.

Musings on Culture from a Darwinist Perspective

I am not sure what prompted this, but lately I have been thinking about the cultures of countries from a Darwinist perspective. More specifically, I have been thinking about North American and Australian cultures relative to each other and the European countries that so many of our immigrants came from.

If genetic selection leads to behavior, then it seems to me that immigration/emigration influences gene pools. So, what characterizes those who are most likely to immigrate? Those factors must be both social and personal:

• Conditions in the home country must not be to the immigrant's liking. So, I would expect that those who are poorer, who have less access to the cultural definition of success, who have value systems at odds with the majority culture, etc, to be the ones most likely to immigrate.
  
• They must have the means to immigrate. Early history, this was the indentured, condemned, enslaved and the well-to-do. Current conditions probably favor the middle class, as they have the money to travel without being in an economic hierarchy, those whose locality allows physical travel, and those able to access social networks. Legal immigrants probably come in 2 groups: those with means and those with social networks. Those with both means and networks are probably those who are most likely to come directly. Those with means but fewer destination social networks are probably those who can afford to come for education and then stay. Illegal immigrants probably come from a different combination of groups: locality and networks that allow them to find and arrange for transportation and integration into the community.
  
• Personalities that are risk takers, more action oriented, and more comfortable away from family and location of origin. Our current policy also selects those who are more likely to be intellectually bright and educated. Emigrating requires a willingness to take on the unknown, to give up that which you know for chances in an unknown set of conditions. There are probably hundreds to millions who face the same conditions as the emigrants, but who never leave the conditions that prompted emigration. These individuals are probably more risk adverse, more passive (or more external locus of control), and/or more attached to people and place. Those traits that lead to at least modest success in the home culture are those that are most likely to allow the accumulation of capital necessary for travel.
  

If these are true, then I would expect that the genetic pools of Europe and North America to have developed differential levels of these traits. Since the US, for example, is predominately populated by immigrants, it should have a higher genetic disposition for risk taking, etc. And because emigrants contribute less, on average, to the gene pool of the home country, Europe should have experienced a decrease in the genetic predisposition for risk taking.

Of course, that just talks about the genetics. The social factors are probably just as important, but it is intriguing to think about how immigration/emigration could influence the genetics of population groups.

A singer to love

Susan Boyle's performance on Britain's Got Talent is so spectacular. Now there is the kind of music I want to be able to buy!
Of course, part of the hype is that she doesn't look like the expected star. Far as I am concerned, that is an indication of why we are missing great voices in today's music industry - looks count too much, voice too little. What I want to know is when the CD comes out.

You only miss it when its gone.

So I had a hernia in my belly button. No big deal to fix, except I am one of the people to have a side effect from the mesh and the result is that they fixed the mesh problem by removing it and the hernia by removing the bellybutton.
I never thought about my bellybutton. I don't particularly use it, except, as my brother pointed out, for storing lint. So removing it did not seem like a big deal. Right.
Surgery wasn't fun. The site hurts but is healing well. But everytime I look in the mirror, my stomach looks weird and I feel like an alien in a bad science fiction movie. You know, the one where the only way to tell the alien from the people is by the lack of a bellybutton.

Its just weird. I think I miss my bellybutton...

It's Only Money!

There comes a time when you really have to wonder what in the world anybody's thinking, at least the people who get to make decisions. The federal government has spent $350 billion of the bailout money. And they didn't spend it where they thought they were going to, mainly because Congress didn't seem to see fit to provide an oversight or restrictions on how it was spent.

So last night, I'm watching television news (the News Hour on PBS) and they show one of the leading Republican senators talking about how they don't want to release the next 350 billion because, after all, it wasn't spent the way they thought it ought to be last time. Gee, you think? why on earth would President Bush and his administration possibly have done it the way you thought they'd might? You didn't bother to put in place any restrictions on how it was spent or to tell him to how to do it the way you wanted it done. And this is the president has lied about everything since he got into office -- did you think he was going to change his spots overnight?.

So now we have a new president coming in, and Congress thinks maybe they should've done something different and so with going to start now? They're crazy! The barn is on fire, the horses are burned, the money you spent to put out the fire got spent on something else, so now you're going to delay medical treatment for horses? It's much too late to develop qualms now.

Might as well give the new administration a chance to prove whether they're better/more honest than the prior one. After all, it's only money...

Sun Dogs

this morning on the way in to work I saw the most amazing pair of Sun dogs. We don't get the very often around here and I have never seen a pair with complete rainbow arcs. I wish I had a camera, so I could show you what they look like. But I didn't, so I'll content myself with saying that they were the most amazing things I've seen in a long time. The rainbow arcs stretched all the way from the horizon to about 45° above the Sun, say a quarter of the circle surrounding the sun. You had the feeling that if you could just keep your head at the right angle, you could see a full rainbow circle. I think I was the only one who really paid any attention to it; it would be nice if we all took little more time to appreciate the beauty around us.

Bailing us all out

It's overwhelming see the government is planning on handing out scads of money to bail out commercial investors. Mind you, it strikes me that it's going to be necessary that we do something if we want to have the economy in good working order. On the other hand, I don't want to see us put a package together the rewards the greed and idiocy that got us here the first place.

As I understand the proposal, the federal government is proposing to get involved in the purchase and sale of mortgage-backed securities. That's not such a simple thing -- when they are turned in to bonds, the Wall Street bond brokers took your standard mortgage and split it up into a whole lot of pieces. Say, for instance, that you had of 30 year fixed rate mortgage. One of the ways it could be split up would be to split the interest from the principal. But that's a really simple split compared to the current options. By the late 1980s, the bond market consisted of mortgages that have been split into a principal portion, the first five to 10 years worth of interest, second five to 10 years of interest, and so forth until all of the interest stream had been sold. Because the mortgage can be paid back early, the farthest out interest streams had the greatest quantity of risk in them. As a result, they were sold at a discount in order to increase the rate of return.

As far as I'm concerned many of the people buying these investment assets really didn't understand what it was they were buying. They made the assumption that because it was underwritten with real property that there was relatively low risk. Unfortunately they didn't take into account the rapid rise in home prices over the last couple decades. While real estate may be a very solid asset, there's only so much the value of an asset can increase relative to the average income. After all, at certain point, you reach a point where there aren't any people in the market who have a sufficient income to buy the property.

And that's how we end up where we currently are. Make no mistake; mortgage brokers, the banks that put together these bonds, and the banks that sold these bonds were all making a substantial profit just by creating them. They didn't have any incentive to make sure that the quality was sufficient for long-term viability because they were getting paid to the short-term process.

Give you an example: I bought a house two years ago. I was a new homebuyer and I had a small down payment. I had done my research and knew that I qualified for an Investment Finance Authority Loan. These are loans which are backed by the FHA but which also have state level support I don't know how many states have them but I believe that several do. In my state they offer two different alternatives: a) no money down or b) 3% down with a reduced rate of interest. Both of these are 30 year fixed mortgages. I had to do a substantial amount of fighting in order to get that 3% down mortgage. The mortgage broker really wanted me to go with two mortgages. The first would have been a 30 year fixed rate at 500 basis points less than the rate of the mortgage through the IFA. The second one, however, would have been an open ended, variable rate loan for the 30% that was not eligible for FHA financing. The terms on that loan seemed really generous on the surface: 1% less than the IFA loan, and repayment other than interest was not due until after the 30 year mortgage is paid off. Now, like I said it seems on the surface that this is very generous. But if you read through the fine print, you will notice that it was a variable rate mortgage. And this is a sort of instrument which is gotten us where we are today. Everything would've been well and good if I taken that, at least until the interest rates went up. The jump would've been to something close to 16% and I doubt I could've paid the resulting mortgage payments, which would've led to me being part of this current disaster.

So now the federal government wants to bail out all those people who profited from making those inadvisable mortgage loans. I don't have a problem with us doing something about a problem of illiquidity in the system. But I think that we need to go about it in a different way. It would make a lot more sense if instead of bailing out Wall Street, we bailed out the people who couldn't make their mortgage payments. Let's spend that money on creating low-cost loans that allow people to refinance and requiring Wall Street takes a hit for the difference between what they can realistically pay for every month and what the mortgage brokers talk them into signing on for. That infuses cash into the system, but makes the losses go to those who bet on the future value of all those mortgage payments.

I'll do my rant about how we administer this In a different post.

Not all bad, not all good

As I have thought about what I have read and heard this last week about the shootings in TN, I have come to recognize some themes I think are problematic. I would like to share them, though I doubt they will all be popular.

Greg McKendry is being portrayed as a hero/saint who used his body as a living shield. I was not there, we don't know what Greg McKendry thought, but I doubt he was a saint. I suspect he was a real person with lots of good traits and a few not so good traits. What I do know, is that by being a living shield, regardless of intention, he was living out a principle of love and compassion. When we give for the sake of others, even though the personal costs are high, we become all that is good in humanity. In the moment that Greg McKendry became a living shield, he came as close to emulating Christ as is possible.

Jim D. Adkisson, the man accused of the shootings, is not a saint or a hero. Jim Adkisson is not totally evil either. Rather he is a man who was unemployed, losing his source of food, divorced, and angry. His anger was channeled against liberals in general and the UU church in particular. It was not who he knew, but what he hated about UUs. It would be easy to say he is crazy, because I think premeditated murder is crazy in general, but there is no evidence that Jim Adkisson is anything other than a sane man who acted on his rage. I don't know if he claimed to be a Christian, but his actions take him far from emulating Christ.

I don't hate him – I feel sorry for him. I don't want him to die; I do want him to find peace from the hatred.

I believe that people are essentially good, but that there are a few who are evil. I believe that UUs, like every other group, has some good people and some who are not good. I believe that most Christians are good people and that there are a few Christians who are not good. But what startles me is how someone who claims Christ can also preach intolerance and hatred. Jim D. Adkisson acted on hatred of that apparently influenced by the books of the right-wing Conservatives. How any person who claims to be Christian can stand the hatred some of these people spew is beyond me.

And that is where I get stuck. It is beyond my understanding. Some of the web postings show no compassion, yet they think UUs are a cult because UUs are not Christian like they believe a Christian should be? I don't get it. Christ preached love and compassion. He acted out that love and compassion. Perhaps Rev. Laurel Hallman said it best "We are committed to the dignity of every person. Every person is a child of God." We may not be Christians as others think we should be, but how could any belief be less Christian…

I am a Unitarian Universalist

I am not much into forwarding the various things that pass through my inbox. But today I got a copy of a blog entry, which is one that expresses one of the ways I feel about the world right now. This is my way of forwarding it; it is also my way of changing the world. You see, I am a Unitarian Universalist and last Sunday a gunman entered a UU church in TN and shot several congregation members. It was a children's service and the kids were performing Annie. Linda Kraeger and Greg McKendry died and 5 others were injured. The reason for the shooting? UUs are a liberal denomination.

I wish I could say this is the first time UUs have been targeted for their liberal faith. It is not. One of the things a minister once asked my congregation is if UUs were ever targeted again, would anyone know we were UUs. It is a question that has remained with me for years, particularly as I have listened to the ultra-conservatives talk.

Pastor Martin Niemöller wrote a poem which goes (depending on which translation you read):

When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak up,
because I was a Protestant.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.

I first read that poem in college. It has remained a reminder to me that we have an obligation to stand up for others if we want them to stand up for us. That society is really a collection of voices, and if ours are not heard, then society can go terribly wrong.

And so today I want you to know that I am indeed a Unitarian Universalist. And I am speaking up. I may not have known the individuals involved, but I feel a lot of pain, not just for the children who witnessed this horror, not just for the families and friends of the dead and injured, but also because someone so hates what I believe in, that he was willing to take a shotgun into a UU church and open fire on people he did not know. I am horrified that there has been so little news interest in this event. And like the writer, I am struggling to forgive the hate mongers who encourage this kind of behavior.

Please take a moment to read this wonderful entry on Unitarian forgiveness!

What are we thinking?

Okay, so I admit that I am drastically overweight and that is mostly because I eat too much at a meal; but today I got an absolute shock. While at the convenience/gas station all these people came out with 52 ounce glasses of soda. Now given that a cola has about 100 calories per 8 ounces, which means that these people are drinking about 650 calories per glass. For a woman who is moderately active, 2000 calories is probably the maximum number of daily calories she should consume. So that drink is about 30% of a woman's calorie needs.

Perhaps the most startling was the little girl (probably 5-6 years old) and her sister who each came out with a 52 ounce drink and a snack. Assuming that the pop was not diet pop, that means they were getting about 45% of their daily calorie needs in the beverage alone.

Like I said, I am really overweight but even I have to wonder at the beverage consumption habits of the US population. Now I know that those drinks were on sale for 79 cents, but just because it is on sale does not mean we need to buy it.

Gorgeous Country

Today we started a trip through Wyoming and South Dakota on our way from Montana to Omaha, Nebraska. Today we drove from Great Falls, through Billings, then across MT212 to Alzada and then south into Wyoming, stopping at Hulett. For those who think that eastern Montana and Wyoming are desolate country, I can only ask where you have been. This was beautiful and the trip from Alzada to Hulett is gorgeous. We had the advantage of early evening, just when the shadows are long enough to make a beautiful view spectacular.

I admit that this is not the lush green land of the humid east, nor the majestic grandeur of the Rockies. But that does not mean the country is not beautiful. The flatter lands give way to ravines and washes as you proceed east. Hay meadows snuggle up to pine tree covered ridges and rock outcroppings become yellow and red. One particular cut was a lovely purple tone. Antelope graze in sagebrush dotted prairie.

And then you start south. The sage land suddenly becomes a forest with meadows and amazing numbers of grazing deer. Time and time again, you drive over a hill or around a corner and see a gorgeous vista. My Dad would have had to come back several times to get all the pictures possible. I can tell that this is the route to take, at least if you are not traveling in winter!

Respect (Neither Wolf nor Dog)

I just went home to visit with my mom. Because I was going to be there for her book group, I read Neither Wolf nor Dog by K. Nerburn. It was a really good book on the differences between "white" culture and Lakota culture, at least from the perspective of Dan (a Lakota man) and Nerburn. Reading it, particularly the first several chapters, really helped me understand some cultural and perspective differences. But there were some points that I really strongly disagreed with. I thought I would take a moment to think about them here.

One of the most problematic items is the issue of respect. I keep hearing these demands for respect but they are so one sided. Dan frequently demands respect under his own terms, but is totally unwilling to offer it under his white author's cultural rules. In fact, Dan is downright insulting and the Nerburn talks as if we are supposed to believe that is okay. If we are ever going to heal the rifts between the individuals in this country, we are going to have to start respecting each other. That does not simply mean that I respect you; it also means that you show me respect. If we come from different cultures, then we each should be striving to show that respect under the other individual's cultural rules. We won't always succeed, but we should try. It is not okay with me if any member of a "minority" culture is insulting. Different cultures are not an adequate excuse, particularly if I am trying.

slowly getting back into the scheme of things

Dad died 28Feb08. So hard to deal with. I guess I thought I would always have my dad. Not that I don't have a dad, just that I can no longer call him up and chat.

The physical therapist rules

Today seems to have been a fairly good day, although when I first called I thought we might have a crisis on our hands. But that was just bad timing. Seems the physical therapist and the lady who came to help Dad bathe both came at the same time. Not sure what the bath lady contributed but I am once again reminded of why I like physical therapists – practical grounded people who worry about outcomes but not so much about the means of achieving them. For instance, Dad's guy made my mom feel that this is possible and that there are solutions. He came up with several this morning:

1. Bed rail (not hospital bed). Hospice was going to deliver a hospital bed for Dad tomorrow. There is no room for it in the bedroom without taking out their bed, which would have forced Mom to sleep downstairs. More to the point, Mom and Dad do NOT want to sleep in separate beds. Mom has been terribly upset that they would not be together. So when the PT guy says, "why are you getting a hospital bed, don't you want to sleep together?" he helped my mother immensely. He made me feel better because now I know they have someone who gets "it."
   
2. Fix wheel chair – Mom has been having a terrible time with the wheel chair. Dad's leg keeps falling off the foot rest (toward the center). PT guy took one look at it and told Mom they needed a different chair because this one has a tilt to that foot rest. He is ordering it for her.
   
3. Extended bench for shower. Dad would rather not have his privacy invaded by others. Mom has not been able to get him in the tub by herself but it turns out there is a bath bench which extends out of the tub (sounds like it slides). He got them one so Mom can help Dad into the tub.
   
4. Gait belt – finally, someone showed Mom how to use the Gait belt and how to fit it.
   
5. Raised platform for Dad's chair. One of the things the PT guy is unhappy about is Dad's chairs. They all either rock and swivel or roll and swivel. On top of that, Dad's favorite chair (also the best fit for him) is shorter than ideal. So he is having a carpenter in town make a platform for the chair. Turns out this guy works for hospice at $50 a platform and they are steady enough not to add to the danger.
   
6. And finally, Physical Therapy to help Dad help Mom help him. At last, someone who sees Dad as having the potential to help himself. If Dad can keep some of the muscle tone in his arms and legs, he can help Mom help him move. He probably also would have fewer crashes into the tub if those muscles were worked regularly. So that will be starting. I am so pleased by this because I know how much it will help Dad to 1) be treated as a person and 2) to be able to feel like he can help himself.
   

On other fronts, I found out the hospice does not have in-home continual care (yet). But Mom/we are working on solving the problems that causes. Mom is going to try to hire a home health aide for a couple of hours every day. In the mean time, their friend Mary came this morning while Dad in bath. Had her husband Mitch come on over as well which was a good thing because Dad fell into tub again. Tub was padded in the section he has been landing in but Dad landed in the other end, of course. He's not hurt (maybe a benefit of not being able to react?) but fixing this is a top priority. A bath chair so he can sit while he shaves, etc. is the new plan. Mean while, it turns out we are going to have a family conference while Jeff and I are both home. Have no idea about what.

Not all Hospices are created equal

Today I called the Hospice program in Great Falls and spoke to Lisa, our social worker. I explained my concerns and that I wanted to know if there was a way we could get Mom help with getting Dad in and out of bed. Turns out that the hospice program in Great Falls, unlike any of the other ones I know about, does not have a 24 hour care program. They are in the process of putting one together and we would be the perfect candidates but it is not functional yet. Argh!

On the other hand, Lisa thinks my parents are "delightful" and was able to talk to Dad about what he wanted for his final days. Not that Dad was totally cooperative – he told Lisa that his dad lived long after the doctors thought he would and that he expected to do the same. He also told her he had no spiritual beliefs – not exactly true as I understand his beliefs. He is strongly atheistic – he believes we are only a collection of atoms and electrical charges: no soul, no afterlife.

Dad’s Health Update

Since so many people have asked me for updates on my father, I decided to just write update for everyone who wanted to know what was going on. I emailed many of them, but am putting a copy here because it as good a journal of this part of the journey as I will get. The top of this is the current plan, such as it is, and the latter part is what happened yesterday.

Plans

I am honoring Mom's wishes that I save as much of my available time until later; when she thinks that she will need me more. That means that I am flying home on Saturday with a return booked on Tuesday. I have promised her that if she changes her mind about needing me now, that I will stay. It leaves me in limbo but Mom needs care taking too. She needs to feel she has some control over what happens around her. She also needs to feel that we believe she is doing a good job and that we trust her judgment. Besides, I do respect my Mom and she is the best judge of what she needs to cope. I also have a ticket to Great Falls on the 21^st of Feb with a return on the 26^th.

Last night

Today was a really bad day for her. It started early (3AM). Dad somehow got out of bed on his own twice during the night, though most times he cannot move much voluntarily. When she got him up this morning she discovered Dad is now incontinent. She got him braced up against the bathroom counter to wash his face and then went to take care of the bed. While she was running their bedding downstairs to the washing machine, he fell over backward into the bath tub and got himself wedged in there. Near as I can tell, he fell even though he was using the counter to maintain his balance. That is not the only possibility, his back is very itchy and when he tries to scratch it, he often unbalances (though never before when braced against something).

She could not get him out of the tub herself (though she did get him straightened out and a pillow under his head. She had to call the fire department for help. Dad was a little scraped up but otherwise uninjured. The firemen were incredibly helpful; they got Dad out of the tub, cleaned him up, dressed him, and showed Mom how to safely help him into a wheel chair. Thankfully, hospice had delivered a wheel chair the day before so as of today Dad is in a wheelchair except for using the toilet.

Jeff (my brother) is not going to be there tomorrow as planned. They have blizzard conditions with 40 mph winds. Mom is really disappointed - she was counting on him for help lifting Dad. I think she also just needs a little more help with the daily chores. She has some help - their friends have an informal calling circle and show up to take care of household problems. Two of her friends are taking turns keeping Dad company and Mitch came over last night to help her put Dad to bed. Mary, Mitch's wife, fixed the toilet problem Dad created while Mitch helped Mom.

Today, Thursday, will be a day with more help. Hospice is sending a home health aide to give Dad a bath and a physical therapist to help Mom figure out how to keep Dad safe while transferring him

Sometimes It Just Doesn’t Get Better

As those of you who follow this blog know, the last year has not exactly been a great one for me. It doesn't look like this year is going to be any better -- in fact I think it's going to be worse. Dad's cancer is growing again. It's obviously sending little spiderwebs out into new sections of his brain. The oncologist confirms that it's a growing, although I have no idea how fast or how far, etc., because nobody tells me this. I don't think they tell me because I don't think they register it. Dad not only doesn't remember things, I don't think he's registering things or processing things the way he used to. Sometimes he's really good, seems like his old self, and then other days he has hard time holding a conversation because he gets lost. He forgets what you just said to him so you can have the whole conversation over again.

The growth of cancer also means that dad is having problems in new areas. The scariest may be that he is now having balance problems. He's fallen at least twice, although he doesn't remember falling. The hardest time for him is the transition between sitting down and standing up. I don't think I'd ever really registered just how much balance was involved in that.

Anyhow, it's gotten really tough for me. I'm having a terrible time focusing on anything. And I spend a lot of time crying this week. I'm hopeful that will resolve itself as I get adjusted to the fact that it's now definite Dad is dying. God, what a horrid thing to say! But it's true, my dad is dying a slow, debilitating death.

And if that wasn't enough, I found that yesterday my best friends are moving to Seattle. This is going to be really good for them, but I will miss them terribly. Since they're a big part of my support system, I don't know how I will function without them. I've started crying again -- don't know if it will ever stop

Playing with Money

Okay, I admit it - hobbies are strange. I can say this because I've acquired a new one: Where's George? For those of you who don't know, Where's George is a website, more specifically, a website where you track where your money came from and where it's going. Sounds innocuous enough, right? Maybe yes, maybe no. It turns out that when you really start playing around with Where's George, you start spending your money in smaller bills. I suddenly found myself asking the bank teller if I can have that in flies in ones instead of asking her to make sure I get large bills. Suddenly my preferred build size is a five dollar bill instead of 20. Madness I tell you -- pure unadulterated madness. And yet, I'm having a lot of fun, some serious frustration, but a lot of fun.

For those of you who are not into the whole tracking your money hobby, here is a quick primer on how it works. I get a dollar bill (or five dollar bill or $10 bill or $20 bill etc. etc. etc.), then a rush off to my computer, go to the website, log in so I get credit for this event, and enter the basic information off the front of my bill. The basic information consists of the denomination, the serial number, and the year it was issued. I also enter the zip code which I'm currently residing (or visiting), and any comments about the bill what I want to enter such as where I got it. And then comes the magic moment -- I reach over and hit the enter button. This is the moment when I find out if somebody else has already entered the bill or if I'm the first one to do that. Generally, a bill is going to be marked if it's been entered, but not always. The ones that aren't marked are called stealth bills, among other things. I keep hoping to find a treasure trove out there -- a whole bunch of bills that haven't been marked. But so far no luck, I'm the first one to mark them and the first one to enter them. But all is not lost – there is the magic of a hit. Somebody could enter the bill I already entered, and I will find out where my bill went.

That is the frustrating part -- I have to wait! I have to wait until some stranger I don't know finds my bill. I have to trust the stranger is going to enter my bill into the computer so I'll know where my bill has gone. The good news is that statistically about a fifth of the bills I enter will end up being entered by somebody else at least once in the bill's life cycle. But it could be a long time. And that's the frustrating part. So why would anybody do this? The answer has to do with inconsistent rewards. It turns out that we are very motivated by rewards, as most of us know. If it is a consistent negative reward, we avoid the stimulus. If it's consistent positive reward, we seek out the stimulus. But the strongest effect occurs when it is an inconsistent positive reward, those are the events we really look for. So here you have this innocuous hobby where you enter dollar bills serial numbers into the computer in hopes of getting a hit and a hit is nothing more than an inconsistent positive reward. So you suddenly find yourself hooked. And that's how I became one of those funny people who play with their money.

Want to try it for yourself? Go to www.wheresgeorge.com and open an account. It is a free website and a cheap hobby. All's it takes is the money you were going to spend anyway and a little time. But I warn you – you might also start using smaller bills…

The joys of technology

I write for a living. I don't write novels or short stories or anything the general populations is likely to read, but nonetheless I write for a living. I write manuscripts to submit to technical journals, and I write grant applications in hopes of getting money to collect the data so I can write more articles for more journals. With all that writing, you think it would be easy for me, but it's not. Somehow it's incredibly difficult to get the thoughts in my head down on the paper. Most of the problem stems because I think faster than I write, and I really think faster than I type.

That where technology comes in. Several years ago I tried a dictation program but was really unhappy with it because it took so long to train. I plugged along and had just gotten up to about the point where it was working for me and then they upgraded Windows, and it didn't work anymore. The technology people all said to me, "look, Windows does come with a dictation program; you're going to love it." Who were they kidding? Like so many things, the Windows dictation program was much worse than what I'd been using. So I gave up on dictation programs for awhile. But a month and a half ago, I got a new 1 -- Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9. I like it! It still isn't perfect, but then what is? The thing is, I can talk out what I want to say. And then I just go back and fix all the errors it makes. Sometimes I can't get the original thought, but all how much easier it is to draft out that original copy.

And that pays off for those of you who glance occasionally at this blog. Why you ask? Because it is so much easier to write a blog when I could just say what I'm thinking. I don't have to worry about my hands keep up with my head. And so that whole list of items that are in my drafts pile is likely to get and posted.

Blogging your dreams

A friend of mine, the Cheeky Librarian, sent me this link for blogging your dreams. It's a contest, which I'm likely to enter and unlikely to win. But it got me thinking about what are the things you dream of and how possible are they. For instance, I dream about economic justice for everybody in the world, about children having access to a good education no matter where they live, about available medical care, food and shelter for everyone, about a world without war, where people could visit one another across boundaries without worrying about nationality or religion. I would love to see a world where we lived with nature, instead of trying to conquer or overrun the nature. I don't even know how I would go about building economic justice in my own hometown. When the football coach who was fired makes 5 million and I'm making about 1% of that, I really don't see how I'm going to affect the difference.

I also found that I got to thinking about what dreams are practical and which ones aren't. For instance, I dream of a US political structure, where Bush is not president, where civil liberties are more valuable than so-called security measures, and where politicians really try to help the citizenry, all the citizenry, have better lives. Between you and me, I don't expect that to happen anytime soon. I suppose I could submit my dream of getting rid of Bush , but that's going to happen anyway. And unless you and I get off our duffs and elect an all-new cadre of politicians, I have little hope for Congress. But that presupposes that we get a different type of candidate running for office. Of course, the real solution would be for somebody like me to run for Congress.

Which brings me to another dream -- I'd like to be a Congressional Representative. But I don't have that much hope of obtaining that one either. First place, I live in Nebraska. For those of you who don't know it, Nebraska is a very conservative state. As far as I'm concerned, our Democratic candidates would be Republicans in any other state. So what are the chances of a woman who with a very liberal political views ever getting elected in Nebraska -- probably nil. And of course I'm not rich -- seems like you have to have an incredible amount of money to even run for Congress. And finally, who wants to go through the mudslinging that is part of modern politics.

And so I will probably enter my very plebeian dream of having a backyard refuge for birds. I love wild birds and I truly do dream of having a yard which provides food, water and shelter for hundreds of birds. I'd have splashing fountains, run by solar panels. I would put lots of bushes with fruit around the edge of my yard, the part that still get sunshine (I have a big tree in the backyard). I woulf find a place to put a cherry tree and leave all of cherries for the birds. I would put up a swallow house; the summer I bought my house, there were swallows in the yard, but I haven't seen any this year. I'd have bird feeders that the squirrels could steal all the food out of.

Or maybe I could have my dream of an aviary so I could free all those poor birds at the pet store from their little tiny cages. But I really don't have a house for that. So I probably won't use that one. See it all comes down to what's practical -- after all, they're only talking about $5,000. Maybe if it was $200,000...

what's your dream? Is it practical? What could you do toward it if you had $5,000? Maybe you should enter the contest too. The contest is run by the advertising team of Washington Post Newsweek Interactive: http://www.bloggingyourdreams.com/registration.html .

Just in case you thought the Bush cared about civil liberties

Just in case we had any misconception about how much of a dictator President Bush wants to be, read the quotations about Hepting vs AT&T case. Perhaps the following is the most telling:

“"Did you go to the FISA court on this case?" Pregerson asked. "Again, your honor, that gets into state secrets," Garre replied.”

Not only are they unwilling to discuss the basics of the case, the administration is unwilling even to tell one court if they got permission from another court. That is how dictators operate – they are unwilling to let anyone know what they are doing in case they try to stop them.

Enough is enough. It is time for everyone to start bombarding their congressional representatives about maintaining American freedoms in America. Otherwise, we are just letting al-Qaeda win. They want us to loose our freedoms; that was one of the goals of 9-11. Now Bush is handing it to them on a platter. God help us all.

Another secret policy change

The Washington Post has article that reads, in part, “A decision by the Bush administration to rewrite in secret the nation's emergency response blueprint has angered state and local emergency officials, who worry that Washington is repeating a series of mistakes that contributed to its bungled response to Hurricane Katrina nearly two years ago.”

I really hope that they don’t expect me to be too shocked. Bush long ago convinced me that he wants to be a dictator. He doesn’t want to hear bad news or any opinion that doesn’t match his. He doesn’t believe in democratic processes. He doesn’t believe in individual rights. So why should his administration believe that any individual, regardless of their expertise or responsibilities, would have anything to offer on public policy?

The sad part is that we have over another year of his administration. It may take decades for us to realize the amount of damage he has wreaked, let alone reverse it.

What we need is for the states to write an emergency response blueprint that would work and provide it to Congress. Only if the record shows that there is an alternative, will we have any hope of coping when the next big disaster strikes.

Sprint just doesn't get it.

So I am reading the Washington Post today and there is an article about Sprint investing in new technology in order to improve their market share. What a joke! I am in the process of dumping every sprint product I have. Earthlink went first, then Sprint PCS. Home long distance is next. Why am I dropping Sprint? It sure isn’t because they lack web browser capacity.

Nope, I dropped Sprint because their customer service sucks. They treat existing customers like an asset that cannot go anywhere. I did not have many problems but the ones I had were huge. Like I had to sign a new contract to get the promotion they sent me an offer for but then they did not give me the promotion (they gave me a different one). Called and they promised to correct it. Didn’t happen. Called again, oh yeah, we can fix that. But instead they added the feature and changed me for it. Called back: “Too bad. You can cancel the contract if you like but it will cost you $200.” Needless to say, I was in the market for a new service.

Did offer them the chance to keep me. I wanted more minutes. But they would not give me any better offer than their new customers. Switched to Alltell and got a much better deal for the same price. Now if I could just get Sprint to give me my refund...

Sorry Sprint, too bad your customers are leaving. If you want them to come back, better improve your customer service. Oh, and offer competitive pricing.

Some things just make you feel good

The Washington Post has a story about the injured daughter of an Iraqi interpreter being brought to the US military hospital after a car bomb. It is the sort of thing that makes you feel really good. But it also makes me wonder, if we spent more time saving the lives of Iraqi citizens, the everyday people caught up in a fight with the extremists, would we win the war for their hearts?

I cannot help thinking that in our past actions we have unsettled the region and harmed many people by destroying the social stability. We should be giving them a social structure that helps them - reliable electricity, water, and sewage; an education system; and decent health care.

When it rains

I am beginning to have some real sympathy for Job. Every time I think that the bad news must be done, I get another item to deal with. First my Dad gets cancer…

Then it was my job;, improve my performance in the only area not outstanding or get another job. That was a blow to the ego. Never mind that I have been working hard and I am doing lots of things very well, the one item I am not so hot at is what they need for the foreseeable future…

Then I lose an employee slot so I have to re-juggle everything around. That would not be so bad except that I hired the current staff with specific roles in mind and the person who will have to do the work for the lost person is NOT a good hire for the job. And since it is contract position, I cannot simply find someone else… Urgh!

Then another employee makes a mistake with the possibility of a significant financial loss (33% of the contract funds). And of course, I had specifically told her not to do what she did because I did not want it to be an issue. This is still up in the air while we wait to find out the consequences. She, of course, is claiming that I never told her not to do what she did.

Then my niece could not come to visit after all. I have been looking forward to it for months. It was going to be my big treat for the summer. But increased gas prices and airline prices combined with limited time meant that we cannot get her the 1200 miles between her place and mine.

Now, as if that is not enough for 6 weeks, I find out that the lay leader of my small group at church has been arrested for "illegal pornography." He admits it is there but says he was just doing research so he could help someone he counsels. Say what? how in the world does he think that would justify child pornography? Why would you need to see it in order to understand the person you are counseling? Personally, I feel betrayed and appalled and sickened.

Guess I should just hope that this doesn't last 7 years...

New Chapter - Dad gets Cancer

My Dad has cancer. There I have said it. But it really is a very inaccurate statement. Yes, my dad has just been diagnosed with anaplastic astrocytoma, but that really does not convey the full impact. You see, he was diagnosed with the disease, but in many ways the whole family got diagnosed with cancer.

My dad is the stable post around which my family revolves. Okay, so we have one of those picture book ideal patriarchal families. Two happily married parents, 2 children ( a boy and a girl); all, for the most part, happy and loving. Add one living grandparent, a spouse, and 2 grandkids, plus assorted pets, and you have my basic family.

The thing is, we always talk about cancer as if only the individual is affected. The reality is that all of us are affected. We worry about him but we also worry about what it will be like when he dies. Suddenly we just cannot ignore the fact that he has a vastly shortened life expectancy.

It is hard to live in the present. It is hard to remember that he is neither helpless or an invalid. It is hard not to be able to do something, anything, to change the realities or the uncertainties.

Three Cups of Tea

I have just read the most amazing story about a man who is conducting a mission towards peace in Central Asia. Finally, proof that I am not the only one who believes that Bush's policies are only leading to more terror, not less. And a way to do something about it. But that is for later, after you have read this book.

It takes place at the base of K2, when a man promises a school to the porter who saves his life. The man, an American, begins an odyssey that will lead to a career building schools and other small public health projects. In an area where the US is synonymous with horror, pain, and the disruption of life accompanied by lies about helping to build infrastructure, the small NGO created out of his promise to build a school, now proves that not all Americans are bad.

The book is a must read!

Do Not Call number for Avenue

What is it with companies deciding that you want to receive an automated phone call from them at any time of the day or night? Make the mistake of buying something from one and you then are deluged with spam phone calls. Bad enough that their spam fills your post box and your email inbox, now they have to clog up your phone line as well. And they pay no attention to your indication that you do not want to be contacted.

So today I called Avenue and asked them to take me off all their spam lists. First, I had to spend about 15 minutes on hold. Then a nice woman named Adrian listened to my complaint, requested my information, and put me on hold while she did some research. She came back on line about 4 minutes later to tell me that she gave the information to her supervisor but that I should call their do-not-call list number (800.695.3198). Of course it will take about 30 days to take effect…

Maybe I won’t buy from them again… Still I need to get clothes some time.

Sympathy for Cho Seung Hui's Parents

The events of Monday at Virginia Tech were a horror that many of us will not recover from for many years. The media has painted a singular picture of the gunman, a young man with psychological problems. They have also painted a singular picture of the victims – the individuals who faced gunfire and their parents, families, and friends.

But the media has forgotten one set of victims – Cho’s family. His parents must be grief stricken by the loss of the son, just like any other parent. But they also have to bear the burden that their son was responsible for the deadliest mass shooting in the USA. I don’t know them, but all the parents I know spend a lot of time second guessing themselves when their children make bad choices. How much worse it must be when their child’s bad choice results in the death of others.

And so, I extend my sympathy to Cho’s family for the loss of their son.

Time for some rational choice making about health care

Today I read this article in the Washing Post on the Texas Futile-Treatment Law and how there is a fight to prevent hospitals from withdrawing “care when a patient's ongoing treatment is declared "medically futile." The patient in the case is described as “A 17-month-old deaf, blind and terminally ill child” who, as I calculate it, has been on life support in a pediatric ICU for about 100 days. An ethics review board decided that the case is hopeless and that it would be best to terminate life support if the mother could not find an alternative hospital to provide care for the child. The right-to-life people are all up in arms about turning off the ventilators and letting the child die the natural death that technology is preventing. They seem to believe that we need to keep everyone alive as long as technologically possible regardless of the costs. But it is about time that we thought about the very real costs of keeping infants alive at any expense:

1. This child is taking up valuable resources without any hope that he can be helped: bed space, doctors and nursing staff time and energy. What if there is another child who is denied a bed in the Pediatric ICU because there is not enough space, a child without a terminal condition?
2. What is the emotional cost to the staff? How debilitating it must be not to be able to relieve the child’s pain and suffering and even worse if they think the technology is only allowing them to make the child suffer more. According to the Post report, “doctors have declared that continuing treatment is potentially painful and is prolonging the child's suffering.”
3. Who is paying for this prolonged ICU stay? Extrapolating from Ampofo, et al (PEDIATRICS Vol. 118 No. 6 December 2006, pp. 2409-2417 (doi:10.1542/peds.2006-1475) (who estimated the cost for a child’s influenza hospitalization - only 29 of the 325 of whom were on respirators), the average hospital cost for a 6mo- 23mo childs stay, per day, was $1,397 and the average hospital charges were $2,006. That would result in a charge for this child’s care somewhere between $139,000 and $201,000 assuming that the charges are not any more than they were for the Ampofo et al study. More realistically, the costs are higher AND that does not include the physician charges and the costs of medicines. So let’s just guess that the daily cost for this child’s care is about $3,250 per day, before attorney fees. That means the outstanding hospital bill is $325,000 and climbing.
   Who is paying that bill? If you and I are really lucky, Mom and Dad are paying it out of their pocket. Second best, Mom and Dad have good health insurance and can pay their share. Worst case, Medicaid pays part and the hospital charges off the rest of it as charity care. Why is that the worst case for you and I? Because we pay for Medicaid with our tax money, the hospitals charge us more to cover that loss, and too many losses drive our hospitals out of business.

Every dollar we spend on this child cannot help another. For example, we could be ensuring that more children are vaccinated, including the vaccinations for influenza. By one estimate, “For every dollar spent on immunizations, as many as $29 can be saved in direct and indirect costs.” So, if you use the CDC’s cost estimator for vaccines, the daily $3,250 cost of keeping this terminal child alive would buy us:

• 2,387 pediatric vaccines for influenza (which, extrapolating again from Ampofo would prevent 239 cases of influenza, 48 hospitalizations (with an estimated average cost of $292, 411) and 14 deaths. Or we could have gotten
• 1,475 doses of DTAP vaccines or
• 269 doses Quadrivalent Human Papillomavirus Types 6, 11, 16 and 18 Recombinant Vaccines (which prevents cervical cancer)

If we spend our money on this terminally ill little boy, we cannot spend it to save the lives of other children who have a chance of surviving!

Yes, I feel sorry for his mother. But keeping a terminally ill child on a respirator indefinitely because his mother is not ready to lose her child is insane. We could be saving lives with that money. Instead the courts will hold a hearing on the injunction in another 7 days (That is another $22750 or 1671 cases of influenza we won’t prevent, 334 hospitalizations with a cost of $2 million we won’t prevent and 100 pediatric deaths from influenza we won’t prevent).

Today I read an article in the Washington Post about a man injured at Guantanamo. One quote really struck me. His mother asked, "What did the Americans do to him?" It struck me as a huge part of the problem. She sees Americans as this undifferentiated group who are complicit in maiming her son. Americans see all Arabic people as Muslims who want to destroy the USA.

I did not do anything to her son. I deplore what I know about Guantanamo. Its very existance and police state/secret police identity are not endorsed like Americans like me. Yet how can the people of each nation know about the people of another nation? How could she know about people like me - who abhor what our government is doing, who keep telling their political leaders that the current policy is unacceptable, who want a different way of dealing with issues. How can I know about the Muslims who practice the Quran in unmilitaristic ways?

Right now, the media are busy capitalizing on the differences, the sensational. They don't focus on every day people who disagree with the policy makers. They don't make waves by letting us understand the people of another nation, particularly ones in a nation where we are at "war". The media has no reason to work toward an understanding of the people of Iraq in terms other than terrorists and victims. We hear about Sunnis and Shites, but only when one group visits atrocities on the other.