January Week 3, 2008
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January Week 3, 2008
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Thank everyone who calls out your faults, your anger, your impatience, your egotism; do this consciously, voluntarily. Jean Toomer, poet and novelist (1894-1967)
Tuesday
January 15 , 2008 Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day; give him a religion, and he'll starve to death while praying for a fish.
Wednesday
January 16 , 2008
Never, Ever, under any circumstances get in a ‘flame war’ with anyone… ever… Period. There is no way to ‘win’. The best that can happen is that… well… there is no best thing. Wasting your time and energy attempting to reason with a closed mind is just pointless. Been there, done that, lost a lot of sleep.
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There are folks who are confrontational by nature, they can’t help themselves.
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There are folks who never lose arguments because they are prepared to out
escalate the intensity until you quit or surrender… facts, truth, compassion
reason none of that matters because their goal is to ‘win’.
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Then there are the folks who have so much invested in their point of view that
nothing will ever get them to change their mind, it impossible to break through
their defenses… can you spell d-e-n-i-a-l? .
The trouble with Political Blogs and other media is that they are either
‘Preaching to the Choir’ or, if it contradicts the beliefs created over a
lifetime, the content will labeled as subversive bullshit and dismissed. We all
have biases to set aside and we should all be questioning our preconceptions and
seeking truth but, unfortunately what we do is seek out data to support our
preconceptions and discard data that contradicts it… silly humans. It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.
Voltaire
I believe that there is no such thing as one truth because we all have different
perspectives, we all have different motives, needs and goals. We all have
‘bullshit detectors’ in our brains that we created by accepting or rejecting
what we have been taught and what we have taught ourselves. We have trained our
brains over the years using our
experiences’, successes and failures, to form opinions and create a belief
system, no one has had the same life experiences so no two bullshit detectors
are exactly the same.
Some folks, even folks I respect, can listen to the Ann Coulters of the world
and know they are hearing a rational oracle of truth… Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’
Riley, Savage, and their ilk carry more weight with them than Paul Moyer, Greg
Palast, Eric Margolis, Al Gore, or any other person with a message contradicting
their beliefs.
The growing army of Shock-Jocks, Pundits, and other shills who, for whatever
reason, have discovered that there is an audience for any and every idea you can
come up with, there is a Conspiracy Theory to explain away every inconsistency.
Anger sells, confrontation sells, innuendo sells, outrageous sells, bigotry,
elitism, doom, death and destruction all sells and the Media will provide a
pulpit for any crackpot with the chutzpa to use it.
Our problem is obvious, where do we fit in, which aspects of our reality are
based on poorly programmed bullshit detectors… no way to tell for sure. All
anyone can do is presume that they are sane and try to seek out likeminded folks
to commiserate with. Before you commit to an ideal, question your beliefs,
verify everything, check out everyone. I have found that Sacred Cows taste a lot
like beef… No facts are to me sacred; none are profane; I simply experiment, an endless seeker with no Past at my back.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Thursday
January 17 , 2008 The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human. Aldous Huxley, novelist (1894-1963)
STROKE:
Remember The 1st Three Letters....
S.T.R.
STROKE IDENTIFICATION: During a BBQ, a friend stumbled and
took a little fall - she assured everyone that she was fine (they offered to
call paramedics) .....she said she had just tripped over a brick because of her
new shoes. They got her cleaned up and got her
a new plate of food. While she
appeared a bit shaken up, Ingrid went about enjoying herself the rest of the
evening. Ingrid's husband called later
telling everyone that his wife had been taken to the hospital - (at 6:00 pm
Ingrid passed away.) She had suffered a stroke at the BBQ.
Had they known how to identify the signs of a stroke, perhaps Ingrid
would be with us today. Some don't
die... they end up in a helpless, hopeless condition instead.
It only takes a minute to read
this... Neurologists say that if they can
get to a stroke victim within 3 hours they can totally reverse the effects of a
stroke... totally .
The trick is getting a stroke recognized, diagnosed, and getting the
patient medical treatment within 3 hours, which is tough.
RECOGNIZING A STROKE Sometimes symptoms of a stroke are
difficult to identify.
Unfortunately, the lack of awareness spells disaster.
The stroke victim may suffer severe brain damage simply because people
nearby fail to recognize the symptoms of a stroke . Remember the "3" tests, STR. Now doctors say a bystander can
recognize a stroke by asking three simple questions: S -
Ask the individual to “SMILE”. T -
Ask the person to “TALK”
(i.e. Speak a simple sentence coherently, like, “It is sunny out today”) R -
Ask him or her to “RAISE
BOTH ARMS”. If he or she has trouble with
ANY ONE of these tasks, call 999/911 immediately and describe the
symptoms to the dispatcher.
NOTE: There is one more newly added Sign of a Stroke. Ask the person to
“Stick out your tongue”. If
the tongue is 'crooked', if it goes to one side or the other , that is also an
indication of a stroke. Friday
January 18 , 2008
As Mankind becomes more liberal, they will be more apt to allow that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the community are equally entitled to the protections of civil government. I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations of justice and liberality. George Washington (1732-99), 1st US President, general First Annual Winter Festival in
Metaline… It was today and it was a rousing success. There were a couple hundred
people, at least, the weather warmed up from 10°
the day before to almost 30° today and then it
snowed about 4 inches, how perfect can it get.
Nikki and Shane It was their concept and their persistence and hard work that
pulled it off. Several people helped set it up and most all of the businesses
chipped in but in reality they did it almost single handedly. Rick worked his
ass off cooking for six solid hours and Russell (The cowboy who lives in the
trailer set up behind Pete Anuff’s (sp) house) showed up with his horse and
sleigh. He led that horse around the park till he couldn't walk any more, it was
really a lot of fun for the kids. The kids also played with the snowball
slingshots and the little guys loved the maze, and the Frisbee golf. Tons of
potluck food, even some hot spiced wine. from Don Wilson. My girls (Monica & Calie) had
basketball games so I had to run back and forth to the schools. Monica’s JV team
got annihilated 29 to 63 but Calie’s Varsity team came from behind and won by 3
points, Calie did well, even with a jammed finger on her shooting hand… Christy
went with me to the game, she doesn’t usually attend because she is upset with
the coach… Calie and Trevor went to the Prom tonight, they won't be back till midnight Sunday
January 20 , 2008
1. good night, ladies Evelyn was an insomniac so when they say she died in her sleep, you have to question that. Probably she was sitting propped up in bed reading and heard the brush of wings and smelled e cold clean air and the angel appeared like a deer in the bedroom and Evelyn said, "Not yet. I have to finish this book." And the angel shook his golden locks, which made a skittery sound like dry seed pods, and he laughed a long silent laugh and took her pale hand in his. He’d heard that line, "Not yet," before. He was always interrupting people who were engrossed in their work or getting ready for a night at the opera or about to set off on a trip. Evelyn’s brother died after his wife sprayed the house with a rose-scented room freshener that made Frank sneeze so hard he had a coronary, but he made it to the phone and called the office and told them he’d be late, and then lay down and died. The angel took Evelyn’s hand gently in his cool hand and off she went with him, leaving behind the book, her bed and the blue knit coverlet, her stucco bungalow in Lake Wobegon redolent of coffee and fresh-picked strawberries, her bedside radio, her subscription to the New Yorker paid through the end of the year. It had been a good wet summer, plenty of rain, and as she drifted out her back door she noted how green the grass was. A cat announced itself from the shadows. The smell of burning charcoal hung in the air. A red ball lay by the walk. She wanted to pick it up and throw it but the angel rose and she with him and, hand in hand, they flew up into the sequined sky, the little town arranged below, all shushed and dozy, the double row of streetlights on Main Street, the red light blinking on the water tower, the dark fastness of the lake, the pinpricks of lights from houses where they all slept, the cranks, the stoics, the meek, the ragtag dreamers, the drunks, the martyred wives, and she saw a woman’s pale face at a window looking for evildoers and the single pair of headlights threading the serpentine county road, and after that she did not look down. She flew up through a meringue cloud into the mind of God and the embrace of her sainted ancestors all gathered at her grand- father Crandall’s farmhouse on a summer morn, the patient horses standing in the shade of a red oak tree, white chickens pecking for bugs under the lilacs, Grandma whistling in the milk house, holding a pan of cream. The windbreak of pine and red oak, the weathered sheds and barn, the hayfields of heaven. It was a green summer day like what a child would draw, a crayon day with a few white cumulus children’s clouds, and the sun with yellow radiance lines sticking out. It was a day when after breakfast Dad did not go out to do chores but sat down at the upright piano and played by heart O dusky maiden of the moors, my heart you do beguile—O do not hasten to your chores but stay with me awhile. There was one day when he did that and this is that day again. The day after she was begotten.Evelyn was a whistler, she learned it from him. The rest of the family was disposed to gloom, dark Lutherans who pitch down the rocky slope of melancholy and lie there for days, sighing, moaning, waiting for someone, usually Evelyn, to rope them in and haul them back up and comfort them with dessert. A people waiting for the other shoe to drop. Phlegmatists. Stoics. Good eaters who went for recipes that start out Brown a pound of ground beef and six strips of bacon and in a separate pan melt a pound of butter.She was a finicky eater, a forager in the vegetable crisper. She’d whomp up a big feast and wait on table and have a smidgen of goose, a single stalk of asparagus, a crumb of cornbread, and that was enough for her. She was the only insomniac in a family of very good sleepers, folks who climbed into bed gladly and lay in their cottony caves and slept like stones unless awakened by heartburn. At night, she lay awake and listened to The Bob Roberts Show on WLT and when Bob’s callers got cranking on the evils of taxation and the treachery of the media and the shiftlessness of the young, she drifted off to sleep, and if not, she switched on the bedside lamp and reached for a book and read about the Saracens and the Crusaders, about the tortured lives of great artists, Van Gogh and his prostitutes, Chopin coughing at the piano, Keats expiring in Rome, Shelley sailing in the storm, Melville languishing at the customs house, Twain and his bankruptcy and Dickens’s unhappy marriage and his romances with actresses. She adored Dickens. Especially Little Dorrit. The weary worker trudging home from the blacking factory, the yellow glow of London street lamps, the night fog, the newshawk on the corner, the flower girl, the streetwalker in the doorway, the cabbie dozing on his hack parked by the curb, the horse’s head drooping—she dozed off too. Or she got up and fixed herself a toddy and put on a recording of the Stuttgart Male Chorus singing romantic songs about moonlight and longing and the maiden who opened my heart to love and in the morning she was gone and now I can never love again, alas—that one was guaranteed to put her right out. And if not, she put on her robe and fixed breakfast."It’s the radio and the dang books and the crazy CD player that are keeping you awake," said her sister Florence. "Turn off the radio and take a pill. You look like death on a biscuit." Actually she looked great right up to the day she died, a Friday night in July. She had a long neck and a prominent nose and high cheekbones; after she kicked Uncle Jack out she looked even better, happier, looser, janglier, jaunty. She was tall and wiry and stayed limber by hiking everywhere and doing her Daily Dozen. She was the outspoken aunt in a family of murmurers. Other people said No. 1 or No. 2 and she said pee and take a crap. She also said hell and damn and son of a bitch. She had soft green eyes and gray hair like a winter sky in the morning. She cut it short. "You look like a man," said Florence. "What’s got into you?" "Piss and vinegar," she said.She was found dead on a Saturday morning, having gone out to supper Friday night with her buddies Gladys and Margaret at the Moonlite Bay supper club where she enjoyed the deep-fried walleye and a slab of banana cream pie, along with a mai tai and a Pinot Grigio. Three old Lutheran ladies, stalwarts of the Altar Guild and the quilting circle, who had put in their thirty years teaching Sunday school, and now in their dotage were having a little fun. Every second Wednesday they drove off to the Big Moccasin casino in Widjiwagan to play blackjack and take advantage of the $6.95 Blue Light buffet and catch the 6 p.m. show of Richie Dee and the Radiators and once, they entered the Twist contest ( wotthehell) and won a night at the Romeo Motel (hot damn) and went and stayed, the three of them, turned out the lights, lay in the hot tub, looked up at the ceiling mirror, and drank champagne from their shoes.Tonight the three chums sat at a table by the window and laughed themselves silly over Gary and LeRoy the town constables—LeRoy is Margaret’s nephew—who got a federal grant to purchase a bulletproof windshield for the squad car and a dozen tear gas grenades and grenade launcher, six antiterrorist concrete barriers, and a bullhorn to be used to negotiate with terrorists holding hostages. They recalled the chicken salad LeRoy brought to the Labor Day potluck picnic, which had been sitting in the rear window of his car for a few hours, and the waves of propulsive vomiting it caused. Men, mostly. Big men so sick they couldn’t go hide, they had to stand and empty their stomachs right there in plain view of their children. They chortled over that and then they took up Gladys’s husband Leon who had discovered Viagra and now, after a ten-year layoff, was up for sex. Viagra gave him a hard-on like a ball-peen hammer. "Or in his case, like a Phillips screwdriver," said Gladys and they all cackled. Scheduling was an issue. He preferred mornings. Gladys wasn’t interested in getting unharnessed at 10 a.m. and climbing into bed, but she tried to be a good sport. And then it took him forever. He’d go at it for a while and run out of breath and lie down and wheeze and then try again, and in broad daylight, the sight of the two of them in the dresser mirror struck her as hilarious. "Four hundred pounds of menopausal flesh bumping around and breathing hard. He told me the least I could do was pretend to be excited, and I said, ‘For that, you have to pay me real money’"—Leon was not amused. "So he can’t pull the trigger then?" said Margaret. "He gets all excited and then he has to stop and rest." "And meanwhile you’re checking the clock." "The other day I had bread in the oven and I told him I had to go check it—I was baking for the Bible school bake sale—he said, ‘Don’t go! Don’t go! I’m coming!’ Then he kept at it for another five minutes—I said, ‘Jesus, if you can’t come just say so.’ He got all mad then, said it was hard being married to someone who didn’t care for sex and who kept poking holes in his confidence." "Who’s poking holes?" cried Margaret and they all three gasped and wheezed— O God—O God I am going to die—don’t make me laugh like that, I swear I’m going to wet my pants. The busboy heard all this and was quite surprised. A good boy from a nice home. And then Evelyn said, "Tell him if he needs to hump something, you’ll thaw out a chicken." And Margaret laughed so hard a whole noseful of something shot out. The busboy retreated to thescullery. The ladies wiped their eyes. Oh I swear I am never having dinner with you two again, you are a bad influence. A bad influence.Gladys said she was thinking of replacing those little blue pills with sleeping tablets—they chortled over that and about Margaret’s brother the aging sportscaster in Minneapolis with his hair transplant and jowlectomy. And they drove back to town in Margaret’s car and Evelyn got out at her little stucco house on McKinley Street and leaned on the car and said, "It was great. See you Wednesday." There was a full moon and she stood and admired it and headed for the house. She stopped and pointed to her moon shadow on the walk and danced a couple steps as if to elude it and that was the last anyone saw of her. She was 82 and in good shape, wearing a denim wraparound skirt and a white blouse embroidered with roses and a silky red vest and sandals, and she danced in the moonlight and went indoors to lie down and die. She was a realist. At 82 you have to be. To the roof shingler who told her that the roof would be a big headache in a few years, she said, "Not my problem." The porch sagged—"Let it sag," she said. "That makes two of us." For two years, she’d been packing up her unnecessities and shipping them off to rummage sales. Jack had died nineteen years before, leaving behind a basement and garage full of his accumulations, which had taken her months to disperse, and she didn’t want to burden Barbara with the same grim chore. Barbara lived three blocks away, up the street from Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility, alone since Lloyd drifted away to the Cities and Kyle went to college. "When I die," Evelyn told her, "I want you to be able to sweep out the place, take the sheets off the bed and the clothes out of the closet, clean out the medicine chest, and hang out a For Sale sign. Two hours and you’ll be rid of me. I’m a pilgrim. I travel light." Her name was all wrong. Evelyns should be plump ladies in spiffy outfits who collect salt and pepper sets and play canasta and fuss at their husbands. Evelyn was named after a battle-axe aunt, the pharmacist’s wife who took too many pills and they made her think everybody in Lake Wobegon was out to get her. The little girl should have been a Therese or a Catherine but she got evelyned. She was a divestor, not a collector, and after the children flew the nest and after Jack left, she drew a sigh of relief and shook off her long habits of vigilance and moral correction, and she became gleeful. Even at 82 she could pick up a ping-pong paddle and drive you nuts. She had her ears pierced and wore feathery earrings like trout flies. She bought a computer and mastered the Internet and chatted with strangers under her screen name, HotShot82. In Lake Wobegon, most people felt you should grow more dignified with age, even sour, but she became lighthearted, even girlish. If she ate lunch with the seniors on Wednesdays at the Lutheran church where a retired pastor showed slides of last summer’s cruise through the Norwegian fjords and everyone sang "Children of the Heavenly Father" and "Look For The Silver Lining" and "God Bless America," she was somewhat more Evelyn-like, but when she and her pals hoofed it up to the Moonlite Bay supper club or if she and Barbara dined at Fisher’s in Avon, she smoked a few cigarettes and enjoyed a libation and told some off-color jokes and if you asked her how she felt, she cried "Neverbetter!" and slapped her chest, and if you invited her to go for a walk she said "Delighted!" and reached for her old suede jacket. She could be exalted by a good ballgame, or by the dawn—a cup of fresh coffee, the open door, the pink and silver and pale blue sky, the inhalation of lake and grass—and she wept to hear the contralto sing, For He shall feed His flock like a shepherd. She could marvel at the ingenuity of screws or apply herself to polishing up her Spanish. She liked to get in her red Honda and drive away for a week or two—"to visit cousin Grace in St. Louis" or "to check up on Phyl and Earl in Sacramento," distant relations who nobody else was in touch with—and when she got home, she was vague about the details. "Oh, it was all very quiet and sedate. I was in bed by ten every night," she told Barbara, who could smell a lie as well as the next person.She was a welcoming person in a family of wary observers. Let a strange car pull up in the driveway, she walked toward it smiling. If someone died, she went straight to the house with a casserole for the survivors. But she could speak her mind. She went to the Town Council meeting when they took up a resolution to ban nudity, and she stood up, the lone dissenter, and said, "Why are you wasting time on this ridiculous law? So now Gary and LeRoy are supposed to get out their binoculars and watch for naked people? What does it matter to you if I go over to the Hidden Beach and go skinny-dipping? We all used to go over there—should I name names? Well, so what? If you’re offended by the sight of bare-naked people, then don’t go over there. And if you have a nice body and you want to show it off, more power to you." They had never heard anyone speak in defense of nudity before. When the school board took up a resolution that every child be required to say the Pledge of Allegiance she stood up and cried, "If you require me to go to church, then it’s no longer faith, and when you make somebody pledge allegiance to a flag that stands for freedom—you are just being stupid." She sat down with a thud. The school board was stunned. Finally Mr. Halvorson moved that the resolution be referred to the executive committee for further study and everyone said "Aye" and it was gone and forgotten. So she was memorable. And when people heard about her death, they stopped what they were doing and stood, hands at their sides, and felt her absence. A tall tree had crashed to the ground.
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