Support System

 I don't remember getting from the wheelchair to the operating table. I do remember that there was a gurney involved, because I remember being asked to move from one flat surface to another. "Mr. Savage, can you you move your butt over just a little bit more... That's good." A nurse took my pants and underwear off. I don't remember the removal of my shirt, nor being dressed in a hospital gown.

What I remember more than anything else was how bright the lights were. I entertained myself by watching the floaters in both eyes dance around against a white background -- not the usual milky orange that I would normally see when my eyes were closed. And then the clouds rolling in from the outside edges, battleship grey and swirling around my field of vision. Was this death? If the clouds completely occluded my vision, would that mean I had died? I wasn't afraid, just curious. Was this the great mystery that only the dying understood? But the cloud cover was never complete. The white always peeked through, with those damn floaters, which I get more and more of as I age, still dancing.

It seems odd to me that I thought so little about my own death when for everyone around me that was the first thing on their minds. For me, the whole ordeal was about the discomfort and inconvenience. The plan, for a while now, is that I will be taking care of my surviving parent when the time came. If I'm not there, who would do that for me? My kids? Gaby? Gaby has his citizenship interview and test on Thursday. He'd have to reschedule. And I've got Etsy orders to ship. Would anyone even think about closing my shop?

The surgery was done a couple of hours after we arrived at the hospital about 5:30 Wednesday morning. A little after 5am, I had awakened sweating and unable to catch my breath. My old plumber, Big John, had retired after a heart attack. He described feeling as if an elephant was standing on his chest. For me, it was more like I had spandex tightly wrapped around my upper torso, which prevented my rib cage from expanding the way I needed it to. Also there was a small intense pain in my solar plexus that felt like I really, really needed to burp. So I took a couple of Tums. They didn't help. All this woke Gaby up, who asked if he should take me to the ER. We got dressed (ish), and Gaby ran a few red lights on the way there. My GP works for Integris, so they already had all my medical and insurance information. The put me in a wheelchair and whisked me right in. They put three stents into the arteries around my heart, pushing them into my body through the radial artery from my right wrist. (That was actually very painful, and apparently I flinched because I was told to lie still.) Afterwards I was moved to a room in the ICU (ICU7). 

I slept most of the day, but was aware of my family arriving and being in the room. My mother, a retired RN, was very interested in looking at my vitals on the monitoring screen next to the bed, and explaining what it all meant to everyone else. This annoyed my daughter, who didn't want to think about any of that stuff. (When Sarah told me about that a day or two later, I reminded her that her grandmother was fascinated by those things because of her old profession, but also it was a coping mechanism. She said she knew that.) 

My favorite part of that day was listening to my kids' conversation, though I had to have them move their chairs closer so that I could hear better. McCauley had gone on a first date with a girl that he met via a dating ap, and he liked her right off. Sarah said she was glad for him.
My least favorite part of the day was when they turned off Survivor. Seems they assumed I wasn't watching it just because I was asleep. 
Later in the evening, our good friends Zach and Frank came by, having driven all the way from Mustang for a ten minute visit. We love these guys.  
Gaby took the opportunity to go home to check on the dogs and shower. It was the only time he left my side.

Gaby. Gaby called my family. He called my boss. He texted and Facebooked with friends. He ordered my meals,  fed me, helped me pee. He scratched my forehead and did a lot of other trivial things because the IVs in both arms prevented me from bending my arms. He got me blankets and pillows, and straightened them for me and helped me adjust the bed when I couldn't get comfortable. He slept when he could, which was not much, in the recliner in ICU7, and on the uncomfortable couch in room 517 after I had been moved. He only left the room to go eat and go to the restroom, and usually then only when other family was there for me.
When we finally got home on Friday night, He laid down next to me in our bed, buried his face in my shoulder and started to cry. Which made me cry. It was the first time I had really felt the emotion of what had happened, but not for me. For him. But I wasn't actually physically strong enough to cry, so I had to stop.

The next time was because of McCauley. It's been handy having a minion living next door after he moved in last summer. This weekend he took care of the dogs, and made deliveries, and just stayed. I had made a date with him to go to dinner and shopping for his birthday, which was on Friday, but now we we're all joking that I had to cancel because something had come up. I didn't know how he was feeling until I saw his Facebook post. Again, a big sob, not for me, for him. But I don't have the strength, so I just had to deal with the tennis ball in my throat.

One of the things he delivered was my phone, which had been left on the drafting table in the studio. Gaby had been telling me about some of the good wishes I had been receiving, but that was my first chance to see it for myself. I have friends. I have people who love me. I called our best friend Charla via Facetime, and we chatted for a while. I wanted to do the same with other friends: Ted, Brian, Melody, but I didn't have the strength to hold up the phone.

Besides not being able to use my arms, the lack of strength was what bothered me most. I would get winded just trying to straighten my blanket. The first night I was home I slept fourteen hours. I told my mom about how exhausting it was just trying to take a shower, and she said that the first time she took a shower after a surgery she had had recently, she felt like she had climbed a mountain. But it's been getting better. I've been taking a lot of naps. The minion and the man-spouse have been doing the lifting and the driving. I'm watching a lot of TV. McCauley drove me to the post office and the grocery store. Gaby drove me back to the post office to mail a couple of Etsy orders -- one of which was sold while I was in the hospital.

Main thing now is figuring out the diet. I hardly ate anything in the hospital. Most of that was because my mouth was so dry that nothing but fruit and salads sounded good. Our friend Michael brought a care package with a lot of snacks that I couldn't eat. S'alright, Gaby needs to eat too. In fact he's taken it upon himself to eat all the salt-filled foods we have in our cabinets and fridge. Once that's done, he'll join me on my diet.
He fixed me an egg white omelet Saturday morning, with spinach and string cheese. It was really good. Sunday morning I was feeling well enough to cook my own omelet. It wasn't as pretty as his, but still good. I looked up what a heart healthy diet was supposed to be. Discussing it with Gaby, we figured out that most of the problem with the diet are just simple fixable things. We buy ingredients at the grocery store that are healthy, but we also buy chips, cookies, and ice cream. And when we are (I am) in a hurry, it's too easy to stop off at a fast food place and pick up something to eat in the car. From now on, it's more meal planning, watching the salt and fat intake.

So that's the project for the next year. Just learning how to live healthier.

Thank you, my friends, for your support.

I Totally Carpéed That Diem

One of my biggest character flaws is self doubt.  It's kept me from doing a number of things in my life, and worse, kept me from even trying a lot more. 
    At the end of this coming summer, it is my intention to retire from the hotel and find a job with daytime hours.  I will have been nocturnal for thirteen years at that time, and, frankly, I'm tired.  I also know that some of the things I need to do for my own health and welfare are not going to get done as long as I'm working nights, so I need a life change to get me started.
    There are a number of things that I'm thinking of doing.  I enjoy hotel work, but I'm wondering if there is such a thing as an executive concierge. A former co-worker has gone to work for a tourism agency, and she gave me a card with a number to call.  Perhaps they have such a position.  But I'm open to different possibilities.  Another co-worker gave me some info about temp jobs for the State.
    My dear friend Ted wants to open a frame shop/ co-op art gallery with me.  I would love to do that more than anything, but he wants me to be a partner, not an employee, which means I'd have to come up with a chunk of cash for the investment, and neither of us wants to go into debt to get it.
    Then a few days ago, my Dad sent me this email: 

Ron,  I saw in yesterday's paper that the Edmond Public School District is going to have a teacher job fair on Tuesday, February 2 and Thursday, February 4 at 1001 W. Danforth.  I looks like there might be all kinds of opportunities.  They want people to bring their resume and be prepared to meet with the site principal for an interview. 

Dad

Edmond Public Schools is hosting a teacher job fair from 4-6 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 2 and Thursday, Feb. 4 at the district’s administrative headquarters located at 1001 W. Danforth in Edmond.

“Despite the multi-million dollar cut to public education by the state which resulted in Edmond losing nearly $1.3 million in funding, we must still hire quality teachers,” said Chief Human Resources Officer Randy Decker. “A great teacher is critical to a student’s future success.”

The Feb. 2 event is for individuals interested in a job in secondary education. Prospective teachers interested in a job in elementary education should plan to attend the Feb. 4 job fair. The district will have open positions posted in the areas of elementary, early childhood, math, English and special education among others. "Already more than 30 teachers have notified us that they will retire or quit at the end of this academic year and that number will continue to rise, so we must replace them with the best educators possible.

”Participants should bring several copies of their resumes and be prepared to meet with site principals for interviews.  The district is also urging college graduates with non-teaching degrees to attend the job fair to learn more about the rewards of the profession. District staff will be available to offer information about alternative routes to teacher certification.Edmond offers teachers a starting salary among the highest in the metro area, extensive peer mentoring, paid life and disability insurance and the opportunity for supplemental pay for additional duties such as coaching or sponsoring a student club.  In addition, the district has unmatched community support of bond issues which funds the construction and maintenance of schools.   A full list of benefits can be found on the district’s website at www.edmondschools.net.

    Twenty-five years ago, I graduated from college with a degree in Art Education.  I never got to use it.  It was at a time when several school districts were eliminating their art programs, and a job close to home was difficult to find.  Family obligations required me to remain close to home, so I never ventured out further to look for a job.  After a few years, my teaching license expired, and I never renewed it.  Anyway, life's an adventure, and sometimes it takes you places you don't expect, particularly when you have trouble accepting who and what you are, and spend your life trying to be something you're not.
    The whole self-acceptance thing also translated into a lack of self confidence, and one of the things I find to criticize most about myself is my fear of failure, which, I guess, would be better described as a fear of trying.  I have missed so many opportunities in my life simply by not having the courage to try something outside my comfort zone. 
    After I got Dad's email, I spent a tortured couple of weeks trying to decide whether to even try applying for a teaching job.  On the one hand, I had no accreditation, and I had doubts that they would be interested in me.  And yet, Kansas is hiring people off the streets, practically, because their conservative tax policies have driven their economy into the ground, and they can't keep teachers in their schools.  Is Oklahoma to that point yet?  Is Edmond?  If so, do I want to work a job knowing that the reason I got it was because of circumstances I despise.  I described this situation to my friend Dane.  He said, "What's the worst they could say?  'No,' right?'
   "No, the worst they could say is 'Yes.'"
    And that was true.  It's been a quarter of a century since I've been in school, and I don't know how to make lesson plans, or how to assert myself to a bunch of unruly kids...  There's just too many bad scenarios in my head.  No confidence.  None at all.  What if they said yes, and I'm plunged into a situation that I'm just not prepared for?
    But then, do I really want another regret?
    True to form, I waited till the last minute, but I did it.  I got online and found a resume template  (a subscription, which I'm going to have to do something about sometime) and I printed off several copies.  I rummaged through the closet and found some dress pants that (almost) fit.  I shaved and gelled my hair.  And I set out to try.  Only a few minutes late.
    The first person I met, when I came in the door was Randy Decker, an old friend from college.  I expected him to be there, since he was mentioned in the email.  He recognized me right away.  It took me a moment; he looked twenty five years older than he did in 1991.  I reminded him that I still had his portrait that I had painted of him back in our college days hanging in my studio.
    He asked me if I had checked in, and then directed me to the place I needed to go.  In part of that check in process, I found out that, no, I was not qualified at this time, but there are some papers I can fill out to apply for re-accreditation.  I said goodbye to Randy, and went home.  And that was it.  No muss, no fuss.
    So I didn't get the job, but just the fact that I had tried is a big deal to me.  I was telling my Dad later about how it all went down, and that even though it turned out the way it did, I'm happy that I don't have the regrets that I would have had otherwise.
    He was pleased too.

Blue Plaid Memories

 



I'm going through old photos and I come across this one of me in the third grade, shortly before I got my first pair of glasses.  The photo was taken on Christmas day, 1970, in the house on East First Street in Edmond where we lived until the summer of 1973.  I'm sitting at the desk that my Dad refinished for me, working on a model of a souped up 1911 fire engine called the Firecracker by Monogram.  I had begged my parents' to get me that particular model for Christmas for weeks.  That year, for some reason, we had celebrated Christmas on the evening of the 24th, so I didn't get to start building the model till the next day.  I still have that model in the china cabinet in my dining room.  The antique globe sitting on the desk is also in my dining room, on top of the china cabinet, and the desk itself is at my parents' house.
    Other things in the room also bring back some rather random memories.  My mother made the curtains.  My Dad had laid the orange carpet squares as part of the process of remodeling the house into a quadraplex.  That orange thing with the black handle next to the desk is the Sears typewriter with the snap on cover that I had gotten for my eighth birthday the previous summer, and the turquoisey container I was using for a trash can was actually a Lucerne potato chip canister from Safeway.  I loved that belt I was wearing, and was disappointed when I outgrew it.
    But what stands out to me now are the pants that matched the curtains, and the bulletin board full of pictures of Donnie Osmond.  How is it possible that no one knew I was gay?

From the Bad Husband File

Gaby doesn't usually ask me my opinion about housekeeping, but tonight he came to me while I was sitting at my computer and asked me whether he should mow the lawn, do the dishes, or bathe the dogs. I considered the question momentarily. I would be fixing dinner starting at 9:00, so the dishes would need to be done by then. At the time he asked, there was plenty of time to bathe the dogs before doing the dishes. The lawn could be put off till tomorrow. So I told him, "Dogs first, then the dishes." Then I went back to my Words With Friends game.
About 7:40, I got in the shower so that that would be done before Big Brother came on at 8:00. By the time the show started, I was dressed for work. As I watched the show, I was vaguely aware of the sound of the lawn mower. When Fritz the dog was let in the house, I noticed that he hadn't been bathed. I briefly wondered about it, but this wouldn't have been the first time Gaby asked my advice about something and then did something else. Oh, well. As long as he gets the dishes done.
After Big Brother, I got on Facebook to discuss the show with a couple of friends. It was an amusing conversation, and when Gaby came in the door, I shared a bit of it with him. He said, "You know, you could have watched the show in the studio while you were bathing the dogs."

I suddenly realized that my interpretation of the initial conversation was ALL wrong.

I also realized I was in the doghouse.

He went on to complain that I had been sitting in front of the computer all day doing nothing, and that it wasn't like I'd been to busy to help when he asked. Which is true; I'd been practially inert in the whole five and half hours I'd been awake. And worse, I'd been entirely self-absorbed and had not paid any attention to what he was doing at all.
So how do I fix this? Ideally, I would fly around the world in a westerly direction so fast that I would actually cause the earth to rotate backward and thereby turn back time and correct my mistake before it happened. But that seemed impractical.
But I still had more than an hour before I had to go to work, so I figured that if I went and got dinner at, say, Subway, and then washed the dishes before and after I ate, that should at least get one job done. So that's what I did. And it worked out.

I still need to do the two fleabags, but that'll have to wait till tomorrow.

The Crux of the Issue

From Marriage Equality USA:
The debate over the freedom to marry is about the right to enter into the state-created institution of civil marriage only. After all, marriage is a civil right and two consenting adults should be allowed to enter into the institution if they so choose.
Unlike some religious definitions, civil definitions of marriage do not usually mention childbearing, sexual relations, living arrangements, or religious belief/observance.
When clergy or congregations marry couples it is a religious rite, not a civil ceremony, though the government may recognize it. Clergy and congregations choose whom they marry. They aren't compelled to accept the state's marriage definition, and indeed, many religious institutions don't accept it. Many religious institutions are more restrictive than the state, rejecting interfaith marriages or remarriages after divorce. Some have a broader definition, blessing the unions of same-gender couples. (Marriage Equality USA would like to thank Interfaith Working Group for this passage.)

In the U.S., a marriage is only legal with the signing of a marriage license. That is why many opposite-sex couples can go to a judge or any other public officiant and need not go to a church, synagogue or mosque. Our government has made the process simpler by allowing religious leaders to perform a religious wedding AND to act as a civil officiant. Each religious leader must sign the civil license before witnesses and the couple for the marriage to be legal. In Europe, couples MUST go before a public official to marry. A religious ceremony is 'secondary' and optional -- only occurring if the couple wishes to have one.
This fact is important to note because many same-sex couples are simply interested in the government's acknowledgement of their relationship. We are not asking for any religion to accept our marriages, although, many religious institutions throughout our country do.

• Civil and religious marriage are not the same thing. Many religious faiths already recognize religious unions or marriages between same-sex couples, even though such unions are not recognized by the government.
• Individual congregations of Reform Jews, American Baptists, Buddhists, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Unitarian Universalists, Methodists, the Society of Friends and the United Church of Christ have performed marriages for same-sex couples.
• Even after civil marriage becomes available to same-sex couples, religions will retain the right to decide for themselves whether to perform or recognize any marriage, just as they already do. No court decision or legislative enactment can change the basic tenets of religious faith. For example, some religions will not marry someone who has already been divorced, although the person is free to marry civilly. We respect the right of a faith to decide for itself what marriages it will embrace.

Baby Steps

I needed new shoes for work, and after not finding what I needed at Academy, Gaby and I drove out to the mall.
He's become more and more angry about what he's begun referring to as "Chicken Pride Day" last Wednesday, and he's especially been disgusted by his own friends who saw it as a freedom of speech issue.  But he had an idea, and he shared it with me as we walked from the car to the Sears entrance.
   He wanted to know how many of his friends would be offended by seeing him kiss me.  Would they think it's different for us than for straight couples?  And if they do, why?
   I reached out my hand so he could hold it as we walked in.  He didn't notice.


So far, only three of his 200+ friends have answered.

Great Expectations

Today, Wednesday the 11th, was my 50th birthday.  I think it's a big deal, and I was hoping for some kind of big event, but it never happened.  So I'm a bit depressed.

I hoped that Gaby would have contacted our friends and my friends from work and worked with them to arrange a party or get-together of some sort.  It could have been at home.  It could have been out at the club.  Some of my friends from work had actually told me that they hoped Gaby would remember to put them on the guest list.  I wanted a big event.  But it never happened.

I hoped that when we were out at the club Monday night that Gaby would mention to Shantelle, the MC, that I was having a birthday in a couple of days, but he didn't.  It didn't matter, really.  There weren't many people in the club that night.  But still, it would have been nice.  Instead, he complained that we had eloped, which sent me into such a deep blue funk that we didn't talk for the next two hours or so.  I had strongly suspected he might not have planned anything, and what he said just seemed to confirm it.  I told him I couldn't talk about it for a couple of days, in the hopes that I might be wrong-- that he had some kind of surprize planned.  I also didn't want him to try to throw something together at the last minute just because he felt guilty.

Tuesday with family was better.  Gaby made a cake, and at my request we all drove out to a restaurant that was inconvenient and expensive.  My Dad bought me something I'd been asking for for every birthday and Christmas for the last three years or so.  But all in all the evening wasn't much different than any other family night.  It wasn't a big deal.

And I had to work tonight.  I had asked for the night off, but that request was denied, or ignored, or not even noticed, or whatever it is that my boss does when he makes the schedule.  Not that it matters.  Nothing else was happning.

So I'm feeling deeply and profoundly disappointed and depressed. I'm also trying hard not to let my feelings come to the surface because I don't want anyone to think that I don't appreciate the smaller contributions to my big day.  But it still wasn't what I hoped for, and I can't help the way I feel.

Have Yourself A Melancholy Christmas

I've been thinking a lot lately about the future of Christmas in my family. My parents are in their 70s now, and though they both are in pretty good health, still they are the lynch pin that holds this holiday together for the family. What will it be like after they're gone?
Christmas has never been a religious holiday at our house, even though my brother and I grew up in church, and my parents are still very active in theirs today. Nor has it really been about Santa, even though we all look forward to the gifts, both as givers and recievers. It has been instead all about the family getting together, and even when it seemed that portions of the family were splintering, this holiday still brought us together.
Our house became the place the extended family came to for Christmas since before I can remember. I know that that's true, but the earliest Christmas I can actually remember was in 1969. It was truly magical for us. My brother and I woke to find an HO guage railroad set up for him, and a Hot Wheels track set up for me. At the time, it seemed gifts filled the whole room. That's the last year I remember believing in Santa.
My mom loves Christmas. She loves the tradition of it, she loves decorating the house, she loves the food, she loves entertaining (any time of year). But somehow, Santa was never a big deal at our house. My classmates at school would get into heated arguments in the lunch line about whether he actually existed or not, but I never participated, because I didn't care. (They also argued about whether "The Wizard of Oz" was a movie for "babies.") On the other hand, my mom, my brother and I had some serious discussions about which was the "real" Santa Claus: the one at Sears, the one at the tree lot, or the one at Penn Square. We decided the real one was at Penn Square, and I think it was because he had to park his sleigh at the Antique store on Classen Circle, just down the street from the mall.
My only other Santa memory is from a day in the middle of summer. I think I was six years old, my brother four. An older cousin of ours had come over with some large jingle bells. My brother and I were in the kitchen, when we heard him start shaking them. When we ran into the living room, my Dad said that Santa was doing a summer check to see if we were being naughty or nice. We raced out onto the front porch and stared at the sky while our cousin howled with uncontrolable laughter.
Somewhere between 1969 and 1971, Mom had casually mentioned that Santa was just Dad in a red suit. I don't remember why this came up in conversation, but I do remember that we were in the car on our way to a mall in the city on a sunny afternoon. It didn't surprize me, since Santa had my dad's handwriting, but I did wonder where Dad hid the red suit, because I'd never seen it. But from then on, everytime Santa was mentioned at Christmas time, my brother and I always responded with that smile one has when one is in on the joke.
Christmas of 1971 was celebrated on Christmas Eve for some reason. Santa was passé by that time, so there were no questions about how that would affect his visit. Previously that summer, I had discovered plastic model car kits, and I had spotted one that I really wanted. It was a Monogram model of a souped up fire engine called the Firecracker. That was at the top of my list for presents.
My Dad had a little shack out back of the house that served as his man-cave. That's where he had been hiding the presents that year, and my parents were not finished wrapping gifts when the family started arriving. I heard my Dad struggling with the back door, so I went to help him. When I opened the door, he started yelling "Go away! Get outa here!" I left, but not before I spotted the Firecracker in the stack of boxes he was bringing in. I had to act surprized when I opened it later. I may have overdone it.
I still have that model. It's in the china cabinet in my dining room.
For some reason, whenever I think of the family coming to that house, the face that stands out most is that of my cousin Gary. We never saw him any other time of year, and I could write a whole 'nother post about his sad life. He died of alcoholism just a few years ago.
In 1973, we moved to a new house, one that had a real dining room, and my mom became the hostess for the family's Thanksgiving and Christmas feasts. But her mother died in 1989, and there were marriages and divorces, and kids moving across the country, and other things that happen in the evolution of a family. Thanksgiving just seemed to disappear from the calendar in a way. And yet, Christmas always brings us together. The extended family is no longer there, and the significant others have changed. We don't even celebrate the holiday on the actual day anymore; we have to work it around everybody's schedules. (One year we celebrated on December 15, and another was in February.) But my mom works really hard to bring it all together, regardless of the changing circumstances.

I've always loved giving gifts, and I love it even more if they're truly appreciataed. My first Christmas as a working man (I was 16), I got my brother a Pachinko machine. He loved it, and I loved that he loved it. Now he lives halfway across the country, and I know little about his home life. As a result, I'm having trouble this year figuring out what to get his significant other. I imagined she might be having the same difficulty, so I sent her a suggestion for one particular family member. She reacted with anger, and I was confused by that reaction until I talked to my mom, who told me that the current economy has been bad for them. She apparently took my suggestion as a demand at a time when they could ill afford even the trip. Then we find out that she can't get off work, and won't be coming this year, which is very disappointing. So she's been on my mind a lot this season.
But that situation also made me wonder about the future of the holiday in my family. Without Mom and Dad, Scott's family actually has no use for Christmas, and I'm thinking in particular that I wouldn't ever see his daughter again. I'm seeing Gaby and myself, grey-headed, sitting in a Cracker Barrel, exchanging small gifts over turkey and dressing, and trying to get that game down to just one golf tee. I hope the future is a bit brighter than that. Who knows, maybe by that time we'll be able to take a cruise or something.

Chain Chain Chain...Chain of...

While on my lunch break the other night I got on Politifact.org just to see what kind of silliness was going on in the world. Seems a woman, a Ms. McCaughey, appeared on Fred Thompson's talk show, telling about a section of the new health care bill where seniors enrolled in medicare would be required to attend counselling on how to end their lives in order to save the system money. Totally bogus, of course--got a "pants-on-fire" rating. But sure enough, the next day, my Dad sends an email about this very topic, which he prefaces with this comment:

If you are satisfied that NBC and ABC are telling you all you need to know about what the government is doing, you need to start listening to other sources of information.

Funny, since he believes that FoxNews is the only network telling us all we need to know about what the government is doing. Like in 1938 when CBS was the only network reporting that Martians had landed in New Jersey.

It seems sometimes that his thirst for knowledge begins and ends with Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and chain email.
Network news is not what I consider my primary source of information. I prefer to hear from several different kinds of voices with several different points of view. I like PBS and NPR particularly, but the networks and USAToday will suffice for a quick overview. And I don't trust any partisan website regardless of whose side they are on. But in spite of their brevity, I expect the reporting on NBC and ABC, etc., to be at least accurate, something Fox doesn't seem concerned with. (This isn't the only time I've gotten something from my Dad that originated from Fox, and then turned out to be less than factual.)
Politifact.org and Factcheck.org and Snopes.com have teams of people who investigate the stuff that goes out on the internet, and Politifact even goes to the trouble of explaining how they came by their information. Usually it's pretty simple, like a phone call or two. So why is it so hard for Fox to do the same thing?

Setting The Record Straight

My brother is in town, and yesterday morning I sat down with him and we talked awhile about what's going on with him, the things he's reading and learning about, etc. As I listened, I started to think that a previous post was rather unfair to him and my Dad, because it suggested that they may not be too bright. Actually they are very smart people.
My brother works for NASA, used to build his own computers, and has lately developed a thirst for knowledge about finance, marketing, and brain function with respect to social relationships. He's actually invented some computer and robotics products that are being marketed worldwide. (Check the link on the right.) I brag about him a lot.
My Dad was a quality control manager for a series of electrinics companies, also built his own computers (and mine), and knows everything one needs to know about real estate, having owned rental properties since the mid sixties. He's also a pretty good artist in his own right.
So in the future, if I say anything critical about either of them, understand that it's just a matter of disagreement on a position. I have the highest regard for both of them.

My Family and Politics

This post has been a long time coming, but it's been hard to get all of the different ideas about it into a cohesive presentation. To begin with I should tell you that my Dad, my Mom and I are all registered as Republicans, while my brother is a cynic. My dad is a neo-conservative (i.e. a Rush Limbaugh Republican), I am a moderate (I call myself a Theodore White Republican,) and my Mom is somewhere in between, though not very vocal about her opinions.
My brother believes that everyone is entitled to his (my brother's) opinion, but, like my Dad, is not too concerned about whether the facts actually support his opinions. They seem to believe something is true only if it supports a particular predjudice they might have. I don't express my opinions often, but I'd rather know what's really going on than what someone thinks is going on. On the other hand, I do find the editorials very interesting.
The reason this is on my mind is because I was cleaning out my email inbox the other day, and there was (is) a lot of chain emails sent to me by my Dad concerning how this administration is going to be the ruination of the country. I simply don't have time to respond to all of them, though some of the themes are the same: we are on our way to becoming a socialist (communist) country because a democrat is in the White House, and Obama = Hitler because he campaigned on "change." (Somehow it doesn't matter that McCain also campaigned on change; he just used different terms. So did Ronald Reagan, for that matter.) My Dad gets a lot of email back from me referencing Snopes.com, Politifact.org and Factcheck.org, but not everything he sends is that easy.
There was an episode of American Masters on PBS the other night about Garrison Kieller in which he said something that made me realize my Dad's problem: He gets all his information from people who complain a lot. I believe there are better sources of information.
But anyway, now that I've laid a foundation explaining where I'm coming from, feel I can post about things that come up without causing you, my adoring public, to wonder what the heck I'm talking about.

Family Reunion

I've reestablished contact with a cousin of mine that I haven't talked to in years. In fact, the last time I remember seeing him was in '89 or '90 when he stopped in at the restaurant I was working in at the time. Since then there have been a few emails, but I barely knew about anything going on in his life. We missed each other at the family reunions. He and a fellow everyone presumed was his partner came one year, I came the next, and there were no more after that.

When we were kids, he and his sisters were our main playmates, and for my brother and me PaulDebbieandTammy was just one long word. His youngest sister wasn't born until after the family move to a farm outside a small town some thirty miles away. We were part of the same social group when they moved back in the late seventies, but we never had the same kind of relationship again. He moved away for college and career, and though his family still lives here it is rare that he gets a chance to come to visit.

He sent me a picture today of himself and his partner, Mark. (He asked me not to post it). I'm hoping that we can keep up a correspondence. Thirty years is a long time to catch up on, but I want to try.