Snow Days

There's been a lot in the news -- and in the minds of parents -- about the 'excessive' number of snow days this prolonged snowy cold winter has been responsible for.

It's crazy. All the time and attention that the media and our lawmakers are giving to this consideration.
It's ridiculous.

The whole concept of education paid by the day is ridiculous. Children learn when they are interested, not between 9 and 3 on weekdays. Requiring so many days in a desk/chair is not, never has, and never will force learning.
Can you think of any other business where this is the model of operations?

I don't know the solution -- maybe not have school during January and extend it through June, before it gets hot.
We spend a lot of time teaching to the test (which isn't even a good test of learning) so maybe reaching year-end goals could be part of when to end the school year. Although that might require more real teaching than modern teachers are allowed to do.

Before modern times, school schedules were made at/for the families' convenience. In the agricultural society, school was scheduled around planting/harvesting times. Weather was also a consideration.

Above all else, the consideration was for our children. Too hot, too cold -- they stayed home. Roads unsafe, whether due to ice or floods or winds -- they stayed home.
Their health and safety was the vital deciding factor.

Not how many days they had been sitting in their assigned seat.

This is how we take care of our children?
This is how we "educate" them about what is important?

Now, some places figure their finances based on having so many seats filled for so many days. Nothing else matters in figuring costs and expenses. As well as the costs of schools being closed, and the costs of additional (unnecessary) day care, we can now add in the cost of legislating giving ourselves permission to keep our children home in inclement weather. There are no more important issues before our government. Death Penalty, Drug Wars, Bigotry, Hate Crimes -- our lawmakers are being paid to decide if we are allowed to use common sense in weather matters.
Why?
Because some bean counter says x seats = x dollars, and that's the way it is.
Because some statistician says "1 in 5" or "2 in 12 "or whatever numbers they can make do the tricks that push their platform?

I say, while they are wasting their time and our money over three to five days, why not take a long hard look at the whole 'requirement' system. And, of course, the way we pay for it.

They Think You're Stupid

One of the worst things about not working has got to be daytime TV.

One of the worst things about daytime TV has got to be the commercials.

Lately, these seem to have gotten worse. Many of them sound like they are talking down to you, some just use bad grammar -- and bad English, too!
There are some, I'm sorry to say, that seem to be actively looking for stupid people as their main source of customers.

This may even be true; I don't know. Maybe that is who they look to for a customer base. How hard can it be to confuse stupid people and get their money,after all?

The worst offender, commercial-wise, is LoanMax. This is a company that makes title loans on cars. Their main clientele, I think, is people who can't get a bank loan, even using their car as collateral. Banks don't want to make small loans, for one thing, and for another, they don't like older cars.
Title loan businesses know two things banks refuse to acknowledge. 1)People will generally pay to keep their car when it's all they have and 2) if it runs, they will likely get their money back at auction, if it should go that far. Maybe not all their (outrageous) interest, but at least the original loan.

The procedure is similar to a bank loan.  You get a loan using the car as collateral. If you ever try to sell the car, you have to pay off the loan/lien first.

Loan Max ads feature a woman who was just so relieved she didn't have to give them her car!  She got to keep her car! Imagine that!
Lady, if you didn't get to keep your car, it would be a/k/a selling your car, NOT a loan. How the blankety-blank did you ever get a car in the first place?

There's also a man who can't keep driving on tires with 'plugs' in them -- I was told 20 years ago they don't make tires you can put plugs in anymore. If that's still true, this man is driving around on excessively old tires, and I don't want to be on the road with him anyway. (I could, however, be wrong and someone somewhere did figure out a way to make plugs for modern tires. In that case, I'm the stupid one.)
There's a woman who doesn't want to drive around on bad rotors. I guess she can't plug her tires anymore and has no wheels.
And there's a guy who got a loan to get tattoo training -- not so bad, but you'd think they might go for something classier in the eyes of society as a means of going into business. And a fellow who buys storage units at auction. Maybe he'll be on TV someday!

There's a lawyer who "Gets answers done." Okay, I want answers, and I want a lawyer who gets things done. I don't want my answers done.

Then there's one of those infernal schools, with one-class-a-month, or one-subject-at-a-time classes. These people are really annoying. It's too bad the schools have no better representations than people who can't speak properly.
These women have their dreams accomplished.
How the hell does that happen?
I (or they) can accomplish a dream, but the dream doesn't accomplish. This person needs to speak with the lawyer who gets answers done.

This woman also talks about how the school 'accomplished' or 'created'  "new dreams for me and new opportunities for mySelf."
Only you can accomplish or create things for yourself.
The school can create or accomplish things only for itself
Only I can do things for myself.

Do intelligent persons want to go to a school that doesn't see basic communication skills as a selling point?

Do you? Will you?

I don't.
I won't.

Not even to get away from the inanity of daytime TV commercials.

No Child Left Behind -- unless They Don't Pay

Another Graduation Season is drawing to a close.

Another lot of students is finding out that their achievements, their attendance, their grades, and their test successes don't matter.

Students are being refused their diplomas on a regular basis, for a ridiculous array of reasons.

And people wonder why there are so many dropouts? They wonder why the 'children' can't finish anything?

Let's take a look at the news stories from the last few weeks.

One young lady didn't get to graduate because she put a feather on her tassel.
Another was banned from the ceremony because she could not be at an after school practice -- she was needed at home, some tedious excuse about a younger sister and a working parent.
Others have had their diplomas withheld because parents didn't pay the school fees, because of unreturned books, because there were charged lunches not paid up.

Universities and colleges have for years been withholding degrees because of unpaid tuition.
Then private schools got in on the act. What a great way to punish deserving children for their parents' failures! Why didn't someone think of that before?

Schools have a right to make rules for their ceremonies. The young lady with the feather -- she should abide by the dress code for the ceremony, or be absent from it. Her feather was a symbol or statement of her heritage -- nothing wrong with that, except that it wasn't allowed, and she knew it wasn't allowed. This was not the time and place for such symbolism.
She should have been omitted from the ceremony for her noncompliance. If she somehow insisted on being in the Grand Parade of Graduates, when it came time to call her name, her name could have been skipped. She could get her diploma in the mail next month.

But to not get her diploma at all? After she had met any and all other qualifications for receiving it? What is right about that?

The 'graduate' who didn't come to rehearsal because she had home duties? She, and others like her, should be congratulated and encouraged. Yes, there are others like her. They have jobs, and sometimes other schools to attend, as well as family commitments.
These students are our greatest successes. They are working, they are learning, they are part of a team (family, classmate, work crew, whatever.) They make commitments and they are committed.

So why are they being punished? How hard is it to schedule a rehearsal during regular school hours? Even then, some work program and post secondary students may not be able to attend.
Maybe that's why. If they can't attend because of something done through the school, the school doesn't have the power to refuse/deny. The only way to get away with punitive action is to make it the student's fault.

As for financial matters, why punish the student for the parental failures?  Does anyone in Academia really think that a non-paying parent is going to be impacted by the loss of a diploma? Is it going to affect the ability of the parent to attend a good college or get a higher paying job? Or any job at all?

The universities and colleges that have followed -- or perhaps started -- this policy should consider that they are more likely to get paid by someone who gets a JOB with their DEGREE. They are much less likely to be paid by someone who cannot find employment because of their UNFINISHED DEGREE.

Lower classmen who have seen their siblings, cousins, and friends treated in this manner have no respect for the process. It doesn't mean you are a good student. It doesn't mean you learned anything. It doesn't even mean you passed the meaningless tests.
It means that "They" will find some way to prevent you from getting what is yours, so why bother? Why try?
Drop out now before "they" can steal your victory.
Drop out now, before they punish you for having real life outside their walls.


"No Child Left Behind" was the motto for teaching to the test, for a generation or so of grading schools and rating teachers for things other than true education.

What it has evolved into, these days, is "No Child Left Behind" except those who can't pay and who can think.

Is there really anything new about that?

Mashed Potatoes: An adventure.

Am I an adventurous eater? I don't know. Most people would say no, because there are a lot of things I haven't eaten and don't want to try. Things like Chinese food (sounds like lots of bits and pieces. If I want leftovers I'll just eat leftovers. I also prefer  to be filled up by my meals, and rmor has it that doesn't happen with Chinese.

I don't like soy sauce or teriyaki or other Oriental seasonings, although I'm not always clear on the country of origin.

I just plain don't like seafood. I have yet to taste anything that does not overwhelmingly taste of vast anounts of stale salt water.

I don't eat Mexican food, either. It is way, way too spicy for me. Hot spicy. I've sampled this, while cooking, but not eaten as a meal or part of one. I don't like the ingredients.

I don't like  hot spices. I want to taste the food. I don't want my taste buds burnt out or overloaded to the point where they don't function. I want to enjoy the taste, to savor the flavor, and to be able to take in all that the food item has to offer.

If that makes me unadventurous, so be it.

I like food. I like to smell it, feel it, taste it, hear it, .and see it. Eating should be a sensual experience. Not all the senses will be used with every offering, of course. Mashed potatoes are pretty quiet.No crisp snap of the fresh potato. No crunch at the first -- or last -- bite.

But they can be cheesy, golden, salty, lightly garlic, smooth, lumpy, snowy white, steamy, dry, peppery, and even food-colored if you have a kid who will only eat green. 

Mashed potatoes are mundane and boring, but they sure can be jazzed up. 

That can be an adventure.

Seasonings and combined ingredients should enhance one another and especially the main ingredient. Too many people  and places do not use balance or moderation. jalapeno flavored should include the taste of jalapeno -- not taste like jalapeno and nothing else. 

So, if my adventures in eating aren't what you expect, I'm sorry.

But let me share with you my cheesy mashed, and maybe you will learn that true adventures start with the familiar.

Tumbling Trees.

The latest reports are out on the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) eradication of the Asian longhorn beetle. The numbers are staggering, and those of you living in neighboring counties to those mentioned -- or neighboring states -- might want to take a long hard look at the numbers before you decide that it's not really anything you need to worry about.

New York, 1st detection in August 1996. They found 6,275 infested trees. They have removed 18,467 trees. That is roughly three times the amount that were 'sick'.

New Jersey. Since October 2002. 729 infested, 21,981 trees removed. This is 30 -- yes, 30 times the number of injured trees.

Massachusetts, August 2008. 22,264 infested, 31,925 removed.

Ohio June 2011. 9091 infested trees, 8809 removed.

The good people in Bethel, the most affected area in Ohio, are fighting to save their trees. They acknowledge the need for infested trees to be removed, but are objecting to the destruction of the healthy. For most tree owners, they would porefer to have the trees vaccinated.
Yes, that can be done.
It is even less expensive than tree cutters, and chippers, and mulchers, and cherry pickers and earth movers and fuel for machinery (checked the prices on the fuel lately? -- bet you have.)

I want you, wherever you are, to go out in your backyard, or to your closest, favorite public park.
Look around.
Pick a tree, any tree, since this is an exercise in imagination.
The tree you have selected is sick. It has a bug. This bug is not airborne (as they say about viruses). But the tree is sick.
Say "Good-bye, favorite tree."

Now look around and see the other trees.
See the three closest trees.
Say "good bye" to them.
They must be assassinated because their neighbor was sick.

But wait, the neighboring trees have neighbors too. Pick any number, 3 or 30 or any other number, of the neighboring trees' neighbors.
Say "good bye" to them, too. They are neighbors of the neighbors of the sick tree, so they, too, must die.

Now, look around your back yard, or your park.
Are there any trees left?
Is there any shade left in your yard?
Are there any windbreaks left around your house?
What will hold the soil in your yard when the snow melts or the rains pound down?


My friends, this can happen to you. Yes, you may live far away -- but with the likes of Superstorm Sandy, (and the USDA wasted no time laying down the law in New Jersey afterwards,) is anywhere far enough away? Yes, you may not have the specific species of bugs that are eating these species of trees.

But you DO have a government agency that says it can come in and remove and confiscate your personal property (trees) because they can.

Infested trees need to be removed. No one is arguing with that. And the government has every right to take those down at its expense for the public good.

But they are claiming the right to take down all the trees that might become bug-sick. Not just likely, but "maybe perhaps someday might."

If they are allowed to do that here, in the heart of Ohio, in the nation's scenic heart, why do you think they will stop when they get to your back yard? They will be able to point to New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Ohio as having established "THE" precedent.

Goodbye backyard.
Goodbye parks.
Goodbye trees.

Help the Bethel ALB group stop this trampling of property rights.
Before it becomes your rights that are lost.

http://us4.campaign-archive1.com/?u=d9ab319101533a13ab1c45685&id=587ea78b12

Need Help? Hire Someone!

There's a lot of stuff on internet bulletin boards and in business magazines about how there really are jobs out there. There are scads of ads for schools to get you educated (and more in debt than ever) for jobs.

There are jobs out there, they insist. Companies are begging for workers.

Until you are ready to apply.

Then you are given the list of qualifications and conditions of employment. These terms usually involve higher education.

Companies are whining and crying -- and sometimes losing profits and shareholders -- because they can't fill the jobs.
Can't.
Applicants don't meet their standards.

If you ask me, it's their own faults. They have set their standards too high. If a job needs done, it needs done.   Pieces of paper accumulated don't make anyone more employable, yet companies are insisting that they "need" employees with more degrees, more education.

More education, at least to me, has made people less employable. They no longer know  (if they ever did) how to work as a team member. They can't follow orders. They won't follow a chain of command. They don't know how to ask subordinates for help; to get the job done; to be on their team.

Most of them don't know how to fill out a job application or write a personal resume -- they hire someone else, or order a before-mentioned subordinate to do it for them. And, by God, that person had better get it right!

Listen, people.
If you need help, you need help. Paper isn't going to help you -- people are.

If you want the work done, you need working people, not someone who has studied how "Star Trek Changed the World," and "Ghosts in the Bible." It doesn't matter how brilliant the essays or how deep the understanding of these topics. Unless you're exploring the final frontier or Ghost-busting haunted lands in the Middle East, those are not the skills that will move your product.

If there is special training needed, provide it yourself. That way your workers won't be distracted by how Jack and Joe do it, or what the professor told them was right or wrong. If you need specialised training: provide it.

Schools provide students.
Employers provide employees.

You need working people to do the work.

Forget the educated idiots. If that's your criteria, your product isn't a necessity. It's a luxury, and that is reason enough why your business is going down in troubled times.

If you desperately need workers -- hire some. We're out here.

Back to the schoolroom

It's back to school time, and the news is out. All over the broadcasts are good schools, bad schools, charter schools, school levies, buses, teachers, backpack programs, and a lot of discussions. Most of the discussions are about costs.

Anyone who thinks free public schools are free hasn't gone to one for more than two generations. When I was a child, we had school fees every year  to pay for workbooks to go along with the textbooks. These workbooks were not and are not optional. There are more programs today than there used to be to help parents pay for them, but that's not the point.
The point is that free schools aren't free.

There's been discussion, too, about the school year. About the whole school year concept. The September-to-May concept is fairly recent .  School, in my lifetimes, started after Labor Day and ended by Memorial Day. Many things have happened to change that -- standardized Monday holidays, for one thing. Memorial Day isn't the 30th of May anymore.

The school year somehow changed into a certain number of days in school instead of a season of education. I have a lot to say about this ridiculous concept. My daughter had to make up absent days one year by going to school during her Christmas vacation. She didn't have to learn anything -- she wasn't making up tests, or reviewing chapters she missed due to her injury. She just had to have her butt in a seat at the school building, so they could have the requisite numbers of students on the minimum number of days.

Education is not the goal of school. Attendance is.

Some of this -- most of it -- is due to funding formulas. #of students, multiplied by # of days = $$$. Never mind the learning. No child can learn in 52 days, they absolutely need to have 53 days. It's the law.

It's the law.

Schooling should never have been made a matter of law.
Once it was a matter of law, it should have remained a matter of local law.
Not state.
Not Federal.
Not run by dollar dictators who want only a return on their investment.

To get that return, they turned to athletics. The games children play at recess for fun have become big business and are the secondary purpose of having school.
Again, if you think school athletics are about equal opportunity, you haven't been living in the real world. All sorts of personal gear and equipment have to be purchased. One year it was name brand shoes decided by the coach, because they were best and safest. Problem was, the shoes cost more than the monthly electric bill. Without the proper shoes, the students aren't allowed to play.

Doesn't sound very free or equal to me,and kids have always been pretty good at playing games without help. Just because the town council can get a cut of the gate and the state can run the concessions doesn't seem to me a sound educational platform.

It's back to school time.

At least we don't have to worry (too much) about what's required of us or our children. All we have to do is make sure they get there (Attendance) and encourage them to play games (Athletics.)

That's what school is all about.

Dark Shadows. (No, not mine.)

Spent the weekend browsing the old show. YouTube has quite a bit, if you have the patience to weed out the Johnny Depp- Tim Burton overwhelming publicity. YouTube has quite a few clips from the old show, including one with the very beginning. Fan club events and interviews, from then and a few from now.

I saw a few clips that might have been from the short run evening version with Ben Cross as Barnabas. I didn't look at those.

What I did not see anything of, is the two movies they made from the show: Dark Shadows and House of Dark Shadows. Not surprising. The movies were pretty bad. By the time the movies were made, the show had lost focus and was campy. Blood and guts and 'boos' and very little story. An adventure into variations of time travel and ghosts and vampires and werewolfs and anything else 'not normal'.  It created a lifelong interest in these things for me, led me to some good reading that led to better research that led to more reading that leads to more research.

Interesting the bizarre storylines were, and even educational. Entertaining they often were not.

Over time, everyone seems to have lost sight of the fact that Dark Shadows didn't start out as a vampire-and-werewolf chiller and thriller.

It started out as a Gothic Romance.

"My name is Victoria Winters.My journey is beginning. A journey that I hope will open the doors of life to me.and link my past to my future."

Victoria Winters, you see, is an orphan. She has been pulled out of her orphanage to be a governess in a big old house by the sea. The residents of the house consist of an angry young boy, an angsty teenaged girl (and could anyone be more angsty than a teen in the late 60s?), the boy's drunken irresponsible father and the girl's mother who hasn't left the house for nearly twenty years.

Pure Gothic as far as genre goes. Nowadays cliched, but back then the genre was undergoing a revival. (Maybe as an outlet for all that built-up angst?)

It took Barnabas almost a year to appear. The first few months were dedicated to straight out mysterious events that had logical explanations. Then the supernatural began creeping in -- ghosts and premonitions and dreams.

Oh my lord, the Dream! I don't remember the details of the dream, but the storyline was that each person would have the dream, but each person added something to it. And when the next person had the dream, the last person who'd had it died. It was one of the most intricate and well developed plot arcs I have ever watched grow daily. Just seeing bits of it, and sometimes the actors, can give me thrill-chills because it was such a creepy story. (It was also a good way to kill off a bunch of characters that no longer fit, which as an author, I appreciate today and didn't realize then.)

The Barnabas-Josette- Jeremiah- Angelique story was well done as well. The ghost stepping out of her picture and opening her music box and waltzing through the big empty room. WOW! This story would be reworked over and over again throughout the show, but the first incarnation was damned good storytelling. So were a few of the others as Barnabas keeps going back to try and change the past, and Angelique or/and her cohorts follow to prevent him from doing so.

This is pretty much where the evening television remake started, and they didn't do a bad job with it. I would have continued watching. But too many people turned it off or turned away from it when it wasn't played for thrills or laughs. A common complaint was that there was too much sex.

Really? It was a soap opera. Or a Gothic Romance. Romance IS usually about sex, is it not? And exactly why was Angelique so obsessed with Barnabas? If it had just been for his money or his standing, his brother would have fit the bill just as well. No, she wanted Barnabas, and it wasn't so she'd have someone to talk to during meals.

So much good drama in there. Good plotlines, good story arcs.

It's a shame that it is being remembered as camp and memorialized for new generations as a comedy. although I don't mind the laughs. From what I've seen, they are mostly clever, if campy, laughs.

But I sure do wish they'd revive the "it was a dark and stormy night" genre of serials. The endings are so much more satisfactory than the endings to the current reality spooky shows.

Badly made by today's standards (and even their own) but entertaining and mysterious and fun.
I guess that's what most people remember -- the fun. 

TV judges and Social Security

I think they all need a crash course on Social Security laws. Of course, I also think anyone with a Social Security payout problem needs to take their case to Social Security, but there is probably a backlog, for one thing. For another, one wouldn't get to be on TV (or get paid for suing) if they handled their problems that way. I'm not real sure what the appeal is in displaying one's ignorance and stupidity (two different things) all over the world, but it seems important to many people.

And, yes, I will watch you air your dirty laundry. It helps me know how to keep mine unexposed. Judge shows are pretty good for quick character studies, and sometimes name finding.

The judges have different personalities and different agendas for their shows. The People's Court bends over backwards, usually, to apply the law of the state where the litigants live. That's a lot of work, and the result makes for educational entertainment most of the time. Judge Judy doesn't really seem to care what the law may be. Her 'courtroom' is her kingdom, and she makes all the rules -- even if they aren't the law of Anywhere Else. The other programs fall somewhere in between.

Recently there have been quite a few cases dealing with Social Security (and its affiliate programs) issues. Usually someone squabbling over who should get payee money for children, but not always.

One case was a man whose girlfriend 'stole' his payments while he was incarcerated. She used his money to maintain his apartment, buy his bills and other horrible misspending.

Prisoners are not allowed to receive Social Security payments, according to the documents my husband received. When you 'become incarcerated' your benefits are supposed to be suspended, until such time as you are no longer incarcerated. No exceptions, although there is an appeal process of some sort.

So why is the judge not educating people that this is an illegal act, if s/he must hear the case on TV?

Other cases involve payees of SS or SSI for the disabled . Now, any monies accumulated before payment is made should go to whoever is taking care of the child or person. Roof over the head, food in the mouth, entertainment, education, clothes on the back.
It is NOT for whoever takes custody later.
It is NOT to be saved up for college. In many cases, especially with SSI, if there is any 'extra' income, there will be no payments. The payments are to help support the recipient with basic payments.

Social Security can, and does, ask for an accounting. Every year there's a paper to fill out. Every now and then, the payee for the recipient has to haul off a year's worth of receipts and canceled checks and bank statements to the local office and show that the money has been used to pay the person's fair share of expenses. (In a four person family, each person can be responsible for no more than one-fourth of regular living expenses. Specific expenses for the individual for personal needs and medical expenses are handled differently.)

Whoever paid for these things during the waiting time is who should get this money. Period. The end. That, too, is spelled out in letters and forms the government sends out when there is a new judgement on receiving benefits. It doesn't belong to the recipient, unless there is leftover. It doesn't belong to the next person to take over -- except for that leftover.

Why do I know this, and so-called experts -- even ones who do detailed research -- don't?

Who educates the educators?

Hi now, Kai-lan, and Exploring with Dora

It's been a long time since I paid much attention to children's programming. Now that my granddaughter is watching it with attention, I'm paying more attention, too. (Because she's never watched anything in my care that I haven't also watched.)

Nick Jr is her channel. Not too much wrong with that, as this child also has a healthy interest in going outside and reading, writing, and 'darwing'. A lot of kids don't, but that's another story.

 Most of the shows are okay. A (very) few are brilliant. Some of it I don't get, but since I'm not its target audience, I'm not too worried about that. Should probably be more worried if I 'got' all of it.

Nick Jr tells parents (or whomever) what the show teaches. Interesting, but not as interesting as what the children -- or at least this child -- learns from it.

Dora the Explorer is supposed to teach all kinds of stuff: counting and Spanish and logic and colors and following instructions. Never mind the Spanish. What Dora teaches, apparently, is that there are different words for the same things. At 18 months, my little one watched Dora, and when Dora had to go across the river and through the forest, Hailey told her she had to boat the water and go in the trees. All English, but completely different words.

This week, Hailey applied the lessons from Ni Hao, Kai-lan, a show that also teaches bits of Chinese. When Mammaw got mad, she observed that Mammaw was mad, thought about what Mammaw was mad about, and decided Mammaw needed to CALM DOWN.

It was a little much, though, when she instructed me to sway back and forth, back and forth in order to do so.

The question I have is how will this work once she goes to school (months away if she can do preschool; only a year away for kindergarten) That swaying back and forth thing sounds like an invitation to mockery to me. Maybe not, if the children are all of an age and all watch the same programming -- or if they are programmed by teachers to do this. (Can't you just see a roomful of four-year-olds swaying back and forth, back and forth every time one of them has a tantrum. When would any teaching get done?)

But it troubles me, and I don't know how to address the problems. On the one hand, observation and application are good things. It's really great that a preschooler can understand you can be mad without it being their fault, or that a river is made of water and a forest is trees. On the other hand, the coping strategies should be private and somewhat internal, or they are invitations to misunderstanding and mockery.

The underlying message is the same as it has always been. The shows are a tool. The real learning comes from the family and from daily living. Know what your children are watching and let them talk to you about it. They are learning and they want you to tell them what's right for your family. And even that it's okay if it's different for others.
'
It's all good, as long as we're ALL involved.

The Adams County Informer

I bought my last issue today.

The Informer is a small newspaper in competition with Brown Publishing's  People's Defender here in Adams County. It was a nice paper, understandably small, but full of the small town (county) news. All the car accidents (well, a lot of them), ambulance runs, fire calls -- this information made it to this paper. The thicker, heavier, and more expensive Defender only reported a few, usually the most spectacular -- ones that made the city news broadcasts --  or the ones somehow involving *names* in the county. And  ad nauseum court news (which never really tell anything) and board meetings ad infinitum.

The Informer had  a Picture of the Week from readers, and a few words from the editor Troy Jolly every week. The personal touch.

There wasn't much advertising, which is normal for a little guy competing against an established and many-armed.competitor. There was some kind of political good-buddying going on that kept public service ads from being listed in the Informer. Something about having to reach more people instead of costing less and it really cost less per person to pay more to the bedfellow newspaper. Not fair. Not fair at all. I always thought that those sort of announcements -- sheriff's sales, village and school bids for goods or services, etc -- had to be published  with/in/through all available public media.

I faithfully bought my little Informer every week, because I liked the tone of the paper, and because I love, love, love the idea of a local paper produced locally.  The paper must have been doing okay, because there were new employees being introduced.

Then, in November, Mr. Jolly was elected mayor of Manchester. He's doing a good job, even according to his competition. They are faithfully reporting the changes and improvements happening under Mayor Jolly's watch.

His paper was faithfully reporting the changes, too. So much so that in the last few months the paper could be called the Manchester Informer. That's a natural enough change, so I didn't mind it. Not so happy about it, but I understood.

But now, the car accidents and fire runs have disappeared. The Picture of the Week is missing, and so are the 'Words'.The articles that appear are mostly publicity sent out by the various organizations. Fresh stories are few and far between. When there are fresh stories, they are badly organized and badly written. There are spelling errors and there are grammar errors.

This week there's a glaring grammar error in a Manchester story. AEP has went around and fixed the street lights.... That's exactly what the paper said.

Well, I have went and spent my last fifty cents on the Manchester Braggart's Bulletin. I expect  literacy when I read a newspaper. News would be nice, but literacy is a MUST.

I will have to look farther afield for my Adams County Information.

bone crushing

My husband had to go to the doctor Monday. The office called him and made the appointment. You can bet that set off alarm bells. He has so many health concerns we didn't even know which one to worry about. They did say something about his spinal x-rays, but that really didn't narrow it down a whole lot. Because we have had things show up in x-rays that are not what he was being x-rayed for. An enlarged kidney showed up in chest x-rays.

We were referred to a urologist who saw Rex once, sent him for some kind of test at a hospital that had to have cash before doing anything, and we never heard from that specialist again. Don't know to this day what, if anything, the test determined, in spite of calling and both asking and leaving messages. When our family doctor bulldozed us into this appointment, she felt the matter was urgent. Then, she left the group practice she was with and has apparently fallen off the face of the earth. Could it be his kidneys?

He fractured his spine forty years ago, could it be something from that?

Did something in his lungs show up in the background?

He has osteoporosis. Well, he's had that for a while, but this is advancing, which means getting worse. We've been referred to another specialist, this one out of state. His spinal column is collapsing and disintegrating. The T1 through T4 vertabrae are crumbs, with 'significant wedging' on almost all the rest.

Our doctor, who is new to us, says he has never ever seen anyone with such an advanced case of osteoporosis.  Especially not so young. Especially not a male.

We discussed smoking, we discussed heredity, we discussed childhood malnutrition. All factors. But, to figure out what to do, he needs to be seen by an endocrinologist. My guess is that they are considering he'll need the IV type treatments. (He was on Fosamax but began having too much bone pain in his hips and thighs, and we dropped that stuff like it scalded.)

So, we're again hanging in Limbo, and I'm bouncing from wall-to-wall maybes.

I'm also looking for information on what to expect if the deterioration continues. What do I need to be especially watchful for? How can I help? What needs to be reported to the doctors? I don't know, I don't know, I don't know.

And I can't find out. There are a few  million definitions of osteoporosis available on the internet. There are a few million treatments being sold, or advised, or encouraged. So far, there has not been one site that answers my questions. Apparently everywhere on the Internet is the belief that calcium, vitamin D and the magic of medicine cures osteoporosis, or at least halts it in its tracks.

Therefore, no one needs to know what advanced severe osteoporosis will do to a middle-aged severely emphysemic man with one big kidney.

I really hate that all the different websites say the same things over and over and over. Sometimes in different languages, but still the same-old, same-old.

In this great Information Age, can no one answer my questions?

Environmental Assessment: Asian Longhorn Beetle: Bethel Ohio

To anyone interested in this fight -- yes, that should be you, if  it isn't -- the Environmental assessment has been prepared, and the officals want to hear from you. They are seeking opinions from the public. Please read the report thoroughly -- it will take a while and multiple readings -- before deciding your stand. But please, do take a stand. Do make your voice heard. The report can be read here: http://www.bethelalb.com/ALB-OH-ClermontCounty-2012-EA.pdf

Now, they are not promising that they will act on what people tell them. They are a government organization which means essentially that they will infer everything and promise nothing. But they are asking for opinions. Let's give them that much.

This is important to everyone, although it is most important to the people of Bethel. It is their trees that are being eradicated. (Not the beetle.) It is their properties being destroyed, it is their countryside being laid bare for flooding and wind erosion. It is their small hometown being turned into a hot spot.

The numbers are hard to comprehend, but there are people gifted with the ability to put the concepts into words. Bill Skvarla, beetle activist, offers this example:  If the street tree in front of the Midway Theatre is the only tree in Bethel that has a beetle, every single healthy uninfested host tree in the entire Village will be destroyed according to USDA's EA-Alternative B.

Imagine that.
Imagine if your home town had to be denuded of all its tall shady trees because a tree in the town part of town had a problem. Would you like that? Would it seem reasonable to you to lose all the shade on your house because someone a half mile away had bug holes (and maybe-probably bugs) in one of their trees?

This is a problem for everyone, not just Bethel. If the government can do this to us, they can do it to others. Maybe the excuse won't be the Japanese long-haired beatles. Or green borers. But There will be something,
I promise you.

And you will have to suffer it, because allowing this without a fight sets a precedent. A precedent of government takeover of your private property. A government takeover of your community's landscape. A government takeover of your right to stand up and say "No!" to the chainsaws and bulldozers.

Read.
Research.
And speak out and speak up.



http://bugs.clermontcountyohio.gov/ALB.aspx;
http://www.agri.ohio.gov/TopNews/asianbeetle/;
http://clermont.osu.edu/news/asian-longhorned-beetle-found-in-ohio-osuextension-offers-information-hotline; the APHIS ALB plant pest page
http://www.aphis.usda.gov/plant_health/plant_pest_info/asian_lhb/index.s
html.

Natural Writing

I enjoy writing my blogs.

Of course, I like writing. It's as natural to me as breathing, and as necessary.

That's not a bad comparison. Over time, we sometimes have to train our breathing back to its easy, natural state. We begin to breathe more shallowly as soon as we begin to talk. We star gulping air into our stomachs instead of our lungs as soon as we begin to eat -- and that starts pretty soon. We hold our breath to get into clothes, we remodel our insides, squashing our lungs, cramping our diaphragm, to conform in our appearance.

Soon, we are no longer breathing naturally, although it is adequately for our survival. We go to doctors, we take exercise classes, we learn yoga. We do these things to get back to the natural and easy way of breathing.

Learning to breathe correctly is not easy, after years of doing it wrong and years of lazy breathing. It feels unnatural, to push out our stomachs as we breathe in. It's painful to fully expand the ribcage. It takes training, work, and lots of practice.
Aching muscles and sore abs and later on, we are improved by the improved oxygenation in our blood. We look better, we feel better, we are better.

It's not enough to breathe. We need to breathe correctly to be at our best.

This helps explain why a natural talent for writing isn't always enough. We may have the words flood and flow through our brains, tremble off our fingertips, but it just isn't enough. The words have to come out in proper order, in proper form, to be what they should be.

We need to write correctly to be at our best.

There are people who think that writing cannot be taught, that there is no need for training or practice.
There are people who think that the only good writing is easy writing.

Writing, they think, should be as natural as breathing.

My Strange Addiction

A&E has been plugging a new program this weekend. My Strange Addiction, they are calling it.

Really? I haven't seen anything on the commercials that look like an addiction, except possibly the girl drinking nail polish. There's a man in love with his car to the point of intimacy with it. I call that a perversion. A woman who is 'addicxted' to her finger- and and toe- nails. How does that work? What is she addicted to about them? Does she eat them?

These things are behaviors, they are not addictions. An addiction is a bodily medical function. Yes, there;s often a psychological or mental factor, but the primary cause and cure are physical. Deviant behavior, however mild, should be treated, but should it be lionized in this fashion?

Why is A&E giving these people fame for their perversions and delusions and willful acts?

A&E has, over the year, introduced many serious problems and helped the incomprehensible be understood. Hoarders, Intervention, Scared Straight. These are all good ideas, good programs, and no doubt, in their day, they helped a few families. Maybe even more than a few.

But they -- A&E --  don't know when to stop. Intervention has become a roll-your-eyes cliche, Hoarders has become an excuse, and Scared Straight programs have been so demystified that they have now had to go Beyond Scared Straight. That helps no one.

Needless to say, I will watch none of these shows -- they've outlived their usefulness. The only reason they are on is for viewers to feel superior and/or to be titillated by how some people (of lower class, of course, live.

If you think like I do, please don't encourage this type of programming by watching this (or these) programs. It puts money in their pockets, anyway, if you watch and then write a letter of protest, and then watch again to see if your letter had any effect.

If you don't agree with the content, DON'T WATCH.

Lesson Learned.

I recently saw an online ad for classes about alternative medicines. This is a subject I've long been interested in, and the thought of online classes is -- kind of interesting, especially now that I'm not working, and my husband's no longer in a health crisis. So, two weeks ago, I signed up for info.

When I signed, I did see that I had to give the school permission to call me, and that was okay. I might have questions for them, once I reviewed their online programs or looked at their literature. Follow-up phone calls are a fine thing, in most cases.

Oh. My. God.
What a mistake that was.
Not just a small mistake, either.

I have gotten phone calls.
And phone calls.
And phone calls.

Since 12 noon yesterday, until 12 noon today, I have had twelve phone calls from one number. This is after I put the number on the reject list because they have not stopped calling daily for two weeks. The calls started immediately, and have not lessened.

I have not received one e-mail from any of these schools. (Apparently there's a list of affiliates with a variety of courses, although I was applying for specific classes.) I have not received any type of information other than these incessant psycho calls. (Seriously, if these calls were being made by an individual to an individual, they would be considered psycho calls.) No e-mails, though that had to be on the sign in. No pamphlets in the mail, although mailing address had to be included.

Just phone calls.

Sorry, Ashford University.
Sorry, Kaplan College.
I don't care for the way you do business. So, I won't be doing business with you.

I do not need financial aid until I've decided when I want to take classes and what classes I might want to take. I won't know what those classes are until I see what is offered. See. With my eyes. So I can look and consider, re-look and reconsider.

I want information about what I'm interested in, not about everything else that's out there in the world. I know there's a lot of good interesting stuff out there. But I signed up to find out about a specific field, not the whole world.

If I want to hear from you, after I've seen what you have to offer, I'll call you.
Don't hold your breath.