Living with solutions is tough

It is 8:10 on Monday morning, the 10th of September. I have been up three hours, read two newspapers, had two cups of coffee, two slices of Rye toast with strawberry preserves and a lemon tart, put in a load of clothes to wash, taken my exercise walk of 2.9 miles, transferred the clothes to the dryer and am now writing this blog, drinking some water and contemplating the day ahead.
Less than three weeks ago Mary, my wife of 53 years, went to live in an Assisted Living facility where there are good people to give her the medical and physical attention she requires on a 24/7 basis. Since last November when she had her first stroke I have been her primary caregiver. The last ten months have taken a toll on her and me, despite the paid help who came into our home five days a week. Moving Mary into Assisted Living was not an easy decision but it was in her and my best interests and one based on medical recommendations.
A woman I have never met, Jo Horne, has written a nine-point "Caregiver's Bill of Rights" and number one is: "To take care of myself. This is not an act of selfishness. It will give me the capability to take better care of my relative." I never thought of this before my wife got sick. After all our life income was structured so she would be comfortable if anything happened to me. That is if she was up and about and could fend for herself and not have to live with the effects of two strokes and Alzheimer's problems.
The days, weeks, months, and years ahead, will be different from any of life's earlier experiences for Mary and I and our family. These are unchartered waters for us. Thousands of others have dealt with similar problems. We can learn from their experiences and the literature in the field - but these are no guarantee for successfully coping.
"There are no perfect solutions for Alzheimer's problems" and today's decision may look doubtful tomorrow. "Solving problems is easy. It is living with the solutions to those problems that are tough." (Duke Family Support Group, Duke University)

Off we go into the wild blue....

The Air Force is 60 years old this year. Congress and the President made it an independent service in 1947, co-equal with the Army and the Navy. I visited the Air Force memorial http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Air_Force_Memorial last weekend and came away much impressed. The memorial is a delight to visit and the Air Force band performed in the cool of the evening before a crowd of several hundred. The band members were neat, trim, slender and sharp in their summer uniforms and the music was delightful. Even more impressive was the high enlisted rank held by the musicians. Two soloists were introduced and each had a masters degree in music and song. With this kind of background it is easy to understand why the Air Force has promoted these enlisted persons into the top ranks.

An old friend from my Air Force service days (1951-1959) accompanied my son (also former Air Force) and my daughter-in-law for the evening. It is a new and exciting Air Force today I am sure, but I am proud to have been a member in those early days that were also new and exciting for us. The Air Force is also where I found my wife of 53 years, and we treasure the memories that bought a Yankee from Lowell, MA, and a shy, Southern girl from Georgetown, SC, together.

Sin pays and viewers enjoy it

I was relaxing at the kitchen table yesterday with a cup of coffee and having already gone through the morning paper I idly re-turned the pages until my eyes focused on a rundown of nine well known "soaps". I started reading and soon I was going through all the summaries. I discovered that the continuing story lines are based on seven cardinal sins widely committed ever since Adam was a lad. Each of these fictional dramas has gone on and on for years, undoubtedly snagging a lot of money for a lot of people - and giving a wierd vicarious experience to what has to be a strange, insatiable audience. I recall my grandmother listening to Stella Dallas on the radio, and there was probably a lot of double entendre that didn't register with a young boy, but I don't believe lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride were as openly paraded as in today's TV offerings. And, of course, radio was a listening experience requiring imagination whereas TV is a visual medium leaving little to the imagination.

Hospitality is lacking in some

A small minority in Charleston has forgotten its manners and run attack ads against Hillary in this morning's paper. Tonight the Democratic debate will be held at The Citadel and feature the leading eight Democratic candidates. This will bring nationwide attention to Charleston, the military college and several hundreds of thousands of dollars to the local business community. This is the first time such a debate has been held in Charleston's long and varied history. It calls for all Charlestonians to be on their best behavior and gracious even when they disagree with a candidate.

Not so for something called the National Black Chamber of Commerce (probably made up of outsiders and a few local folks) which took out a full page ad, complete with spiteful, out of context use of photos, to critically allege and charge Hillary of playing politics with AIDS relief. A ridiculous charge on its face. Her and Bill's efforts to combat this disease are a helluva lot better than most other public personalities.
The other, and smaller, ad by a couple of local citizens asks if Hillary will give Obama a 20 point lead in the Democratic Primary since she supports the University of Michigan which gives a 20 point advantage to applicants whose ancestry is considered desirable for diversity.

I am not going to the Democratic debate tonight and tomorrow when President Bush comes to speak at the local Air Force Base I will also stay home and keep my mouth shut, even though I disagree with him on several matters. For some of us, displaying hospitality is not a major sacrifice.

The cat who ignored me

This morning as I was rounding the far turn on my exercise walk I spotted a cat, light brown and white in color, squatting on her haunches on the cement sidewalk ahead of me. She sat right at the line where the sidewalk joined the residential lawn still wet from the night's rain. She stared straight into the street. As I got closer she turned only her head 90 degrees to the right and looked briefly at my ankles. Satisfied that I was not a four-legged threat she turned back to the left and continued staring into the street. I passed and she did not move. After about ten feet I looked back; she had not moved nor turned her head again. I felt like a commoner passing the royal coach whose Queen would not acknowledge her subject with so much as a glance.

Aim and Fire for $50 mil

A newspaper story this morning reports German people lifting a beer or lingering over a strudel at dessert are likely debating the question if a German soldier sees Osama bin Laden should he arrest him, call an American or aim and fire? Germans remain sensitive to the callous disregard for human life during the Hitler years and don't want to be seen as instant life-takers. In this scenario, however, let's give the whole German nation absolution in advance and urge option three: aim and fire. In fact, if Osama is with some of his buddies throw a grenade and take out the whole bunch. I believe the $50 million reward the American congress has offered for Osama would be payable to a German. As a public service a picture of the $50 mil target is shown here.

For two dollars

"A young man walking up the stairs to a bordello encounters his father coming down the stairs, "Dad" he says, "What're you doing here?" "For two dollars," his father replies, "why bother your mother?" (Joseph Epstein, reveiwing Sin in the Second City, The Wall Street Journal, July 7, 2007, pgP8.)

Mail delivery could be cut, curtailed

The federal government's three primary duties are: defend the shores, deliver the mail and get the hell off our back. Now if they are going to stop delivering the mail (AP story, The Post & Courier, Sat. July 7, 2007) then we ought to see a major reduction in our taxes, not that paltry average $34 we got the last time we were supposedly unburdened.

Happy Holiday

Happy Independence Day to one and all. No matter what comes or goes, America is the greatest place of all!

Oceans 13

It is Sunday morning. I have taken my exercise walk. It is humid this morning and the real feel temperature will be 105 around noontime. On my walk I thought about last night and I am embarrassed that a man of my age would fall for the latest hype, glitz and glamour of Hollywood. I went to see "Oceans 13," the Clooney, Pitt, Damon, etc. sequel to the sequel. What a farce. What a waste. Better I stayed home and washed my socks. (That's a question the CIA asks applicants: would you rather go to a party or stay home and wash your socks?) No one in the film ever breaks a sweat. Geppetto, of Pinochhio fame, could have made wooden dummies for this film. Al Pacino is the bad guy, Willie Bank. He screwed a friend of the Danny Oceans' (Clooney) gang. There is something about men who "shook Sinatra's hand" are not supposed to screw each other. What passes for action is a bunch of guys sitting and standing around talking about taking "revenge" on Pacino (who in any other crime scenario would have shot the lot of them.) Julia Roberts (congratulations on the new baby) is to be admired for having the good sense to stay out of this "Oceans" film. She was in the two earlier films. Ellen Barkin, a one-time sex pot in films and on TV, sadly comes across as a post menopausal broad with large mammilla and she gets turned on because Matt Damon has some scent around his neck. It is hard to believe Barkin and Damon (think mother and son) in a sex scene. The music is good, "Lara's Theme" is part of it. The best, however, is the ending when we hear Sinatra sing "This Town."

Patriotism and getting the message across

Two lawyers for the ACLU, Steven Watt and Ben Wizner, write in a letter in The Wall Street Journal (June 19, 2007, pg A15) that "defending human rights...is not an act of disloyalty in a nation committed to the rule of law" and that recent Supreme Court decisions squarely repudiate the government's position in three 'war on terror' cases. These are not cases involving mere legal technicalities but violations of American core values, according to the writers.

Americans are pre-occupied with salesmanship. Case in point. Gen. David Petraeus, the Army's top man in Iraq, says that sending military officers to civilian universities for Ph.D study opens their mind to four or five sides of an argument. A retired Lt. Colonel says anything beyond a Masters degree risks hurting an officer's battlefield judgement. He says such training led another Lt. Colonel to leave out of a counterinsurgency manual what he felt was an effective tactic: strapping dead insurgents to the front of tanks for locals to see.

# of book readers declining?

Has anyone but me noticed that Time and Newsweek do not regularly have a "Books" section any longer? Both mags review movies and have something called "Culture." I am not sure exactly when "Books" officially disapppeared but after searching several back issues of the two magazines its disappearance is obvious. Perhaps my not missing "Books" earlier exemplifies why it is missing. According to a recent article I read, many daily newspapers have also cut back on the space they devote to book reviews, especially in their Sunday editions. Does this mean the number of book readers is declining? Are TV, CDs and DVDs eclipsing the printed word? I hope not.

Al is on the job

The Paris Hilton saga gets more bizarre. This week, the Rev. Al Sharpton will meet with the sheriff, (who released Paris to home confinement for some unexplained medical reason before she was ordered back to jail by the sentencing judge,) to insure that all prisoners - not just the rich, but the poor, the wretched refuse and the tempest-tost - will get the same consideration if they suffer from unexplained medical problems. Only in America! Ain't this a great country?

Back in the slammer again

Remember Gene Autry's theme song, "Back in the saddle again"? The judge who sentenced Paris Hilton to jail originally must have been humming that as he ordered her back to jail - overturning a decision by the sheriff's office to let her serve her sentence at home. Following my blog item on her release from jail, I heard from four readers to wit:

Money talks in America

I for one am so relieved that poor Paris will do the rest of her time from home. I understand that shecould not even use a face moisturizer during her confinement. Perish the thought.

PLUS--they gave her a whole day off her time for Sunday, when she arrived just before midnight, and yesterday, when she left just after midnight!! So after spending 3 days in the slammer, she gets credit for having served 5. Yikes! Preferential treatment, who would have thought?!

It’s been standard knowledge for many years with working people that the law is made for the poor. Very few rich serve time and if they do, it’s in a luxury prison such as one at Elgin AFB and another one I know of in Louisville, Ky. They have them all over where the VIP's go. I hope the Judge tomorrow makes her serve her time. Otherwise, if I am ever sentenced I will tell them I may not be as rich but I'm a much better person than the tramp called Paris and want the same sentence she got.

California - A Soft Touch

So Paris Hilton, celebrity prisoner of the week, has been released to home confinement after only a couple of days in the lockup in Southern California. Reports are she cried her heart out all the time she was in her 8 x 10 cell, (with commode and sink.) I worked for six years in the South Carolina Department of Corrections and crying never got an inmate a release nor anything else.

Gone with the wind

The storm during the night of June 2, 2007 took this branch off a neighbor's tree (Bradford Pear) and brought it down on mail and paper boxes on the roadside. The good neighbors, Randy and Judy Burbage, have already cleared the road.

Upgrade is truly an upgrade

Lowcountry blogroll, a daily compilation of the offerings of bloggers in and around Charleston (aka: The Holy City) and the South Carolina "Lowcountry", has undergone a simple, sharp, clear, open-faced, easy to read upgrade. The sidebar listing of linked Lowcountry blogs has been doublespaced and moved to the left side of the frame; this permits American's natural reading practices to kick in. Bloggers in other parts of the country and the world can get fresh insights into Charleston and Southern ways via Lowcountry blogroll.

Ted Kennedy - A Little Republican Respect

In a recent speech to a Mississippi civic group, Sen. Trent Lott brought up Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's role on important domestic legislation, including Kennedy's latest push to overhaul the nation's immigration laws.
When Lott was finished, a man in the audience came up to him and said: "You did real good. But that part about Kennedy -- don't say that no more."
"He is the number one boogeyman for conservative Republicans," Lott said later of the longtime Democratic senator from Massachusetts. But, Lott added, "he is a good legislator, and you can't take that away from him." Elizabeth Williamson, Washington Post Staff Writer, Wednesday, May 30, 2007; A11.

Catch 22, Texas Style

Down in Austin, Texas, a majority of the State House of Representatives is highly dissatisfied with the speaker and would like to replace him. To oust the speaker before his term is up, a lawmaker must make a parliamentary maneuver known as a motion to vacate, and a majority of the House must vote in favor of it. It's called a privileged motion, and a lawmaker must be recognized by the speaker before he or she may speak to the House to make such a motion. The speaker won't do this and claims there is nothing anyone can do about his refusal. The House members were yelling and screaming and fighting with the speaker Friday night until about 1:30am Saturday morning. The parliamentarian and his deputy reportedly resigned.

Who puts these lists together

Some people have the knack for getting right to the bone. Consider Mr. Benjamin Woods of Menlo Park, California. Time published a list of who it considers the 100 most influential people in the world. In Letters to the Editor some agreed, others disagreed and a teacher, understandably, bemoaned the absence of any educators on the list. But Mr. Woods had the last say: "These are supposedly the 100 most influential people in the world, but not a single professional bowler? Who puts these lists together?"