The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. ―Edmund Burke
Has anyone tried Hill’s Science Diet Canine Mature Adult 7+ Savory Chicken Entrée Canned Dog Food
La Maya and La Bethulia’s aging dachshund has now lost even more of his teeth, so they’re going to be reduced to feeding canned dog food. They’re interested in ordering, since this looks like about the best price on the Web, but it’s unclear how much you get for the price. The can looks like this:
Let us know if you have a clue about the quantity!
Amid all the sorrow in Tucson, where a nine-year-old child was buried today, miracles are happening. Gabrielle Giffords is opening her eyes of her own accord, apparently recognizing those around her, responding to directions by moving her arms and legs, and even sitting up and dangling her feet off the side of her hospital bed. Her doctors, who profess their astonishment, are being greeted like conquering heroes.
So, it looks like what began as a submicroscopic hope that the wounded Congresswoman might recover is growing into a credible possibility, maybe even a probability.
Sadly, the demented wretch who wrought all this misery will never recover, nor presumably will his parents, whose lives have been destroyed by their only child’s mental illness as surely as his has.
Meanwhile, lunatics are climbing out of the woodwork and cockroaches crawling from beneath refrigerators all across the land. Three local Republican stalwarts resigned their elected posts, alarmed by the irrational violence and fed up with the nastiness that pervades Arizona politics, even within the party. You don’t have to be a Democrat here to become a target of flying vitriol.
Sarah Palin, she of the infamous crosshairs, has found herself the target of threats from dangerous-sounding fruitcakes—how many and of what nature, we don’t know, but we’re willing to believe her alarm. The poor ill-educated soul created another flap in trying to defend herself, in her ignorance choosing an amazingly inappropriate term to describe the criticism aimed at her over the misbegotten crosshair map publicity tool. It’s a terrifying situation. Much as some of us wish she would feel inspired to run for the Anchorage City Dogcatcher’s office, no sane person wants any harm to come to her. Let’s all hope and pray she stays safe.
Hope and pray we all stay safe: these are the times that bring the crazies into the daylight. Whenever some madman or child lets loose with a fusillade, he seems to be followed by a host of imitators. You can hardly blame Legislative District 20 Chairman Anthony Miller for knowing when to fold ’em, as his wife worries that the local right-wing activists will take pot-shots at their home. But as immediate threats, the vocal extremists can’t hold a candle to the silent sickos, known only to a few around them and isolated from psychiatric care by a dysfunctional healthcare system.
All things pass, they say. Let’s hope the present disaster passes soon, and without further incident.
Busy past few days! Haven’t had time to write much, so much has been going on.
The minute I sat down to the computer this morning, Gerardo showed up. His “8:00 a.m.” usually means “10:00 a.m.,” so I’d imagined plenty of time to get a few things done before I started to prune the roses, a chore I’ve put off now for three or four weeks. Today was my chance: get him to haul the clawed debris from the man-eating plants, instead of me having to chuff it into the garbage bins in back.
But nooooo…. Before I could even bolt down breakfast, he was on the phone, on the way casa mia. So while he and his sidekick did battle with the rest of the yard, I cut back eight roses. Then for reasons unknown he decided nothing would do but I had to meet him at M’hijito’s house (why??), so here I am, in front of a strange computer.
Probably was a wise thing. I see the lime and lemon trees were hard-hit by the frost. The lime was OK where I was able to pin sheets around it, but I’m just not big enough to sling frost covering over the top of it, so about a third of its canopy is frizzled. The lemon tree, too, oddly enough, suffered some serious frost damage. Usually lemons and grapefruit are the toughest of the citrus. Anyway, I’ll have to ask Gerardo to trim back the limbs that are obviously dead.
Yesterday I became so engaged in a client’s project I utterly forgot the evening Bach concert for which I had tickets. Recalled it about 4:00 this morning. {sigh}
A choir member gave away three tickets to Bach Festival performances. I was thrilled to get all three of them, and really looked forward to going. So was mightily disappointed when I realized that, once again, because it wasn’t written in lipstick on the bathroom mirror I lost track of it. Old age is the pits.
Sunday, though, was a full day of glorious music. We sang, of course, in the morning, which is always fun, but much more to the point, the chamber choir, which is mostly composed of music professionals and graduate students, put on THE most incredible performance. One of the pieces was just ethereal, it was so beautiful. As his finale, choir director Scott Youngs, a superb organist, played an astonishingly complex piece, the kind of thing that leaves you in awe of what the human mind and body can do. In the afternoon was the Bach concert, four sonatas played by violinist Stephen Redfield and harpsichordist Kathleen McIntosh. It was very fine. From there it was back to All Saints to join the chant choir for evensong, and that was very pleasant. At the end of the evening, Scott performed yet another amazing piece, dark, complex and noumenal. Did you know an organ can make a delicate sound like chimes? I had no idea… It can. And the effect, in a piece of music that already evoked the the other-worldly, was spine-tingling.
Monday I made a conscious decision to stay away from the computer and clean my filthy house. Actually, I intended to get to the roses that day also, but the housekeeping expanded to consume the entire day. I’ve never been fond of cleaning. It’s such an exercise in futility: the minute you finish, it needs to be done again. Didn’t do the greatest job yesterday, but at least I finally, very belatedly cleaned and oiled the kitchen cabinets and scrubbed the dirt off the floors.
The magazine article writing course is not making, and so I asked the chair for another comp course. He said he would try to arrange that, but so far no word on what will come down. Whatever, you can be sure he’ll hand it to me at the very last minute. If it’s anything other than a 16-week Eng. 102 section or a 5-week 101 section, I won’t be prepared. So I determined that I need to at least draft course outlines for a 16-week 101, a new 8-week 101, and a new 8-week 102, each incorporating my latest pedagogical strategy. Writing any of those will take two or three full days. Setting up three of them so they’re ready to go at a moment’s notice represents about a week of unrelenting work. Ugh.
Of course, I should have done this over the winter break. But really, I wasn’t kidding when I said I needed a real, extended break from the 7-day-a-week, 14-hour-a-day work schedule. Nor was I kidding about bringing a halt to the unpaid labor. It’s taken almost the entire month to unwind and get back to feeling more or less normal. I could do with another two to four weeks away from the grind, to tell the truth. Next summer, maybe.
So, nothing much of import here, except for the ongoing buzz over the Tucson shootings
Turns out the deranged perpetrator had been arrested for drug use, apparently had contact with the police more than once, evinced symptoms of madness at not one but two institutions of our fine education system…and still he could freely walk into Sportsman’s Warehouse and buy a 9-mm semiautomatic pistol. Nothing like your handy-dandy Glock for picking off doves, eh?
And of course, since Arizona has done away with all concealed-carry regulation, he could have walked through the Safeway with the thing tucked into his belt. Because in Arizona it’s perfectly legal to carry a concealed weapon in your vehicle, after he was stopped for running a red light on the day of the shooting, he just went on about his murderous business.
What a place!
A new set of crazies is set to descend on us, and they are SO wacked that the viciousness has even penetrated our thick-skulled legislators’ notice. A bunch of nut cases from Kansas’s Westboro Baptist Church (“church”!) announced their plan to raise hell at the funeral of the nine-year-old girl who was assassinated. They’ve already circulated hate material to the effect that Catholicism is not a real religion, that the ceremony is devil-worship, and on and on, and they’ve made known their intention to yell this hateful garbage at the grieving family and friends burying their child. The legislature promptly passed a measure blocking protesters from approaching funerals any closer than 300 feet. But 300 feet is within yelling distance. At any rate, it was a positive sign, to see Arizona’s legislators make a move in the direction of common decency.
Let’s hope they hold that thought.
Images:
Frost on a Nettle (Netherlands). Vincent van Zeijst. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
Johann Sebastian Bach im Alter von 61 Jahren. Elias Gottlob Haussmann. Public domain.
Broom, Sponge, and Towel. Chuck Marean. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
Compact Glock 19 in 9x19mm Parabellum. Vladimir Dudak. Released under the GNU Free Documentation license.
Førde kyrkje ein kald vinterdag, 2000. Roy Henning Helle. Public Domain
A comment from reader KML on my recent “bag lady syndrome” piece moved me to think more about this subject. I was going to enter a response as a comment to that post, but by the time I finished typing realized the result was itself a post. And so, more on women’s fear of a destitute old age:
Says KML: Thank goodness! I thought I was the only one who has this “syndrome” I seriously worry about being out on the streets simply bc I am single and have no one to fall back on. I have a comfortable house, good job and a few dollars in the bank, but I still have this irrational fear. Thanks for your post, I feel better just knowing that I’m the only one who wories about this. . . .
@ KML: It’s unclear whether a real psychological condition fitting the description of “bag lady syndrome” exists. It’s a pop-psych/pop-soc term. When you try to track down a little science on the subject, the best you come up with is that some psychologists think it’s a type of anxiety disorder.
Well, to my mind it’s perfectly rational to be concerned about whether your resources—savings, Social Security, kids who can help support you, whatever—will cover you until the end of your life, especially in a time when many people now in their 50s and 60s can expect to live into their 90s…and maybe beyond. It becomes a “disorder” when worrying about your financial security begins to inflict damage on your quality of life. Fear of destitution seems to have been observed among Americans , when psychologists Aaron Beck, Gary Emery, and Ruth Greenberg noted that one man anxious about the future was much helped simply by setting up arrangements to care for his family: talking with financial advisers, writing a will, taking out insurance policies.
A father’s concern about the well-being of his wife and children should he die, of course, is different from a single woman’s concern about her own future. To take advantage of a life insurance policy, you have to die…and that seems counterproductive.
However, whether you’re a man or a woman wondering about the future, I do think you can take a number of steps that help to alleviate that nagging worry:
• Plan your retirement income with the help of a financial counselor.
• Budget intelligently.
• Try to get yourself into a paid-off dwelling, if at all possible.
• If that’s not possible, seek comfortable, safe lodging at a reasonable rental.
• Try to get a reliable, paid-off vehicle that will last for a long time.
• As long as you’re physically able, arrange an ancillary income stream with a part-time job or by monetizing a hobby.
• If you can afford it, buy long-term care insurance.
• If you have a partner or a family member who will require care after you’re gone, buy life insurance.
• Schedule time once a month to reconcile bank accounts and pay bills; avoid thinking about finances at other times.
• Get out of the house frequently, so you don’t sit around stewing.
Most of us can do many or all of these things. And really, maybe the best thing we all can do for ourselves is to recognize when we’re worrying to much and decline to continue with it. As Scarlett O’Hara reminded us, “Tomorrow is another day.”
Sarah Palin has taken down her bull’s-eye map, the one that targeted Gabrielle Gifford, the U.S. Congresswoman just shot outside a Tucson Safeway by some nutcase—or, we’re told on the fly, maybe two or even three nutcases. Lest we forget, let’s take one last look at the disappearing map of Ms. Palin’s target:
Just now MSNBC in Tucson is reporting that Gifford survived brain surgery and is expected to live. But the surgeon said another of the hospital’s patients, a girl estimated to be about nine years old, died.
No doubt Ms. Palin is proud of what she and her supporters have accomplished. Clearly they haven’t the sense to understand the consequences of their irresponsible demagoguery.
A nine-year-old child died because of the hatefulness promulgated by people who subscribe to that kind of thinking. The kind of people who think a map making targets of other human beings is funny.
Got a blog? Post this damnable map.
Don’t let Sarah Palin erase it. Don’t let anyone forget what it was and where it was and who put it in front of a rabid animal with a gun.
Not long ago I mentioned that J. Money of Budgets are Sexy has banded together with some other bloggers to create a charitable enterprise whose purpose is to “drop” a gift on a worthy person or family once a month. The idea is to donate a small amount—as little as a dollar a month—on the theory that there’s power (and wealth) in numbers. Here’s a video about Jill, recipient of the group’s first love drop:
Well, now Love Drop has kicked it up a notch. They’ve started a blogger network, which you can join for free to help publicize each new project. You don’t have to be a PF blogger—as you can see, the list of members is wildly diverse. Join the network, blog about Love Drop once a month, and each month they’ll send you a link to the latest video. Take it a step further: become a team member, donate as much or as little as you can afford and you can join the group’s forums, helping to brainstorm new creative ideas. You also can give a gift or provide a service: gift cards, household goods, football cards/jerseys for the boys, web design services, pampering gifts for the month’s recipient, etc. (email all ideas/questions to team (at) lovedrop.us, and they’ll make it happen).
I’m hereby joining up. Join me in joining Love Drop!