For My Devoted Readers in the Frozen North...

It's that time again: Time for

THE DIARY OF A MINNESOTA SNOW SHOVELER

December 8: 6:00 PM. It started to snow. The first snow
of the season, and the wife and I took our cocktails and sat for hours
by the window watching the huge soft flakes drift down from heaven. It
looked like a Grandma Moses print, so romantic we felt like newlyweds
again. I love snow covering every inch of the landscape. What a
fantastic sight! Can there be a more lovely place in the Whole World?

Moving here was the best idea I've ever had. Shoveled for the first time
in years and felt like a boy again. I did both our driveway and the
sidewalks. This afternoon the snow plow came along and covered up the
sidewalks and closed in the driveway, so I got to shovel again. What a
perfect life.

December 12: The sun has melted all our lovely snow. Such
a disappointment. My neighbor tells me not to worry, we'll
definitely have a white Christmas. No snow on Christmas would be
awful! Bob says we'll have so much snow by the end of winter, that I'll
never want to see snow again. I don't think that's possible. Bob is such
a nice man. I'm glad he's our neighbor.

December 14: Snow, lovely snow! 8" last night. The
temperature dropped to -20. The cold makes everything sparkle so.
The wind took my breath away, but I warmed up by shoveling the driveway
and sidewalks. This is the life! The snowplow came back this
afternoon and buried everything again. I didn't realize I would have to
do quite this much shoveling, but I'll certainly get back in shape this
way. I wish I wouldn't huff and puff so.

December 15: 20 inches forecast. Sold my van and bought a
4x4 Blazer. Bought snow tires for the wife's car and 2 extra shovels.
Stocked the freezer. The wife wants a wood stove in case the
electricity goes out. I think that's silly. We aren't in Alaska, after all.

December 16: Ice storm this morning. Fell on my ass on
the ice in the driveway putting down salt. Hurt like hell. The wife
laughed for an hour, which I think was very cruel.

December 17: Still way below freezing. Roads are too icy
to go anywhere. Electricity was off for 5 hours. I had to pile
the blankets on to stay warm. Nothing to do but stare at the wife and
try not to irritate her.

Guess I should've bought a wood stove but won't admit it
to her. God! I hate it when she's right. I can't believe I'm freezing
to death in my own living room.

December 20: Electricity's back on, but had another 14" of
the damn stuff last night. More shoveling. Took all day. Goddam
snowplow came by twice. Tried to find a neighbor kid to shovel, but
they said they're too busy playing hockey. I think they're lying.
Called the only hardware store around to see about buying a snow
blower and they're out. Might have another shipment in March. I think
they're lying. Bob says I have to shovel or the city will have it done and
bill me. I think he's lying.

December 22: Bob was right about a white Christmas because
13 more inches of the white shit fell today, and it's so cold it
probably won't melt till August. Took me 45 minutes to get all dressed up
to go out to shovel and then I had to piss. By the time I got
undressed, pissed and dressed again I was too tired to shovel. Tried to hire Bob
who has a plow on his truck for the rest of the winter; but he says
he's too busy. I think the asshole is lying.

December 23: Only 2" of snow today. And it warmed up to 0.
The wife wanted me to decorate the front of the house this morning.
What is she...nuts??? Why didn't she tell me to do that a month
ago? She says she did but I think she's lying.

December 24: 6". Snow packed so hard by snowplow,
l broke the shovel. Thought I was having a heart attack. If I ever catch
the son of a bitch who drives that snowplow, I'll drag him through the
snow by his balls. I know he hides around the corner and waits for me to
finish shoveling and then he comes down the street at 100 miles an hour
and throws snow all over where I've just been! Tonight the wife wanted me
to sing Christmas carols with her and open our presents, but I was
busy watching for the goddam snowplow.

December 25: Merry Christmas. 20 more inches of the
goddamed slop tonight. Snowed in. The idea of shoveling makes my blood
boil. God I hate the snow! Then the snowplow driver came by asking
for a donation and I hit him over the head with my shovel. The wife says
I have a bad attitude. I think she's an idiot. If I have to watch
"It's a Wonderful Life" one more time, I'm going to kill her.

December 26: Still snowed in. Why the hell did I ever
move here? It was all HER idea. She's really getting on my nerves.

December 27: Temperature dropped to -30 and the pipes
froze.

December 28: Warmed up to above -50. Still snowed in.
THE BITCH is driving me crazy!!!

December 29: 10 more inches. Bob says I have to shovel
the roof or it could cave in. That's the silliest thing I ever heard.
How dumb does he think I am?

December 30: Roof caved in. The snow plow driver is suing
me for a million dollars for the bump on his head. The wife went
home to her mother. 9" predicted.

December 31: Set fire to what's left of the house. No
more shoveling.

January 8: I feel so good. I just love those little white
pills they keep giving me. Why am I tied to the bed?

"Snow" day

Today's "snow day" wasn't like years ago, when a blizzard would shut down the whole state, and after it got dark, we'd come in* and do jigsaw puzzles or play Sorry.

*It could have been 20 degrees below zero with a 20 mph wind blowing, but we all played OUTSIDE! Maybe it was instinct, but one of the first things we'd do was dig a cave (we called it our "igloo") in one of the huge mounds of snow created when someone (yeah, we did that, too) shoveled the sidewalk. We'd make this igloo big enough to hold 3 or 4 kids in snowsuits (remember Ralphie in "The Christmas Story"?), and then we'd crawl into it and sit there, resting or packing snow balls. It was nice and warm in there. Had we paid attention in science class, we'd have known that the temperature of snow is something like 31 degrees ABOVE zero. So while the blizzard (yes, an actual blizzard by meteorological standards) raged outside, we were cozy warm and sweating a bit in all the layers of clothing forced on us by our mothers.

My "snow" day here just meant that I stayed indoors and mostly went through more of these effing boxes. I found all kinds of things I'm glad I didn't throw out. Like my Grandpa Dwyer's billfold--the one with Grandma Dwyer's photograph in it. She's holding, l. to r., my cousin Bill and my brother Paul in her lap. It must have been taken not too long before she died of a heart attack on the 4th of July. A year at most, maybe even a few days or weeks. I don't know...I wasn't around then.

Anyway, here she is with those two bonny boys. Bill graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis and went on to be one of the original faculty at the U.S. Air Force Academy (nuclear engineering). Paul grew up to be an executive for AT&T and after he retired, he was a consultant in the Middle and Far East as other countries set up modern telephone systems. He was the only one of my brothers, all much older than I, who ever had the time or inclination to play with me voluntarily when I was a toddler. Thanks, Paul.

There was nothing else in the billfold...I wonder where Grandpa's GROCERY LIST went?
A pound of bacon, two pounds of coffee, a loaf of bread, a can of tomatoes....I can't remember what all else was on it, but I do remember the total: $4.39.

Are we there yet???!!!

It's exasperating, reading the papers these days. Since the NYTimes sent Kristol away, I've been looking at their rag, also the WashPost. Not every day, but whenever I see one lying around in Starbucks. The impatience and badmouthing of President Obama's progress is breathtaking. This cartoon from Rob Rogers in the Post Gazette says it all.

It's here!

Here is my first homemade movie: "Snow falling, 1/27/09."

I looked out the window at 5 a.m., but there was nothing to see but the usual snowless street. Next time I looked was at 8:30 a.m., when Cathy called and said, "You can't walk this morning...it's snowing." Away to the window I flew like a flash, tore open the miniblind, and left the sash shut tight cuz it was C O L D. Well, Clement C. Moore said it better, but the excitement was the same.

It ain't Paris, and it's Georgia Avenue NW, not the Champs d'Elysee. It won't win an Oscar for in the Ultra Short Documentary category, and it shows the gritty view from my sun porch window, but the traffic sounds aren't too bad (no buses, usually 2-3 at a time, idling right smack dab under under the window), and you can SEE THE SNOW FALLING!!

My stars and garters!!!

First Snow Flakes!!

We had our first snow flakes here this afternoon. I saw half a dozen fall when I went down for the mail, but by the time I ran upstairs for my camera and back down again, they were gone. Cathy says we're supposed to get more tonight. Gee!!

Hope I can get a picture!

Real Science Comes to Washington

Salon's lead-off article this morning, "Real Science Comes to Washington" points out the natural catastrophe we're facing from manmade global warming. Here's what it says in the first three paragraphs:

(What we need to do:)

The greatest task of the Obama administration -- and the next 10 presidents -- is to avoid catastrophic global warming. The latest science warns that the unstable West Antarctic ice sheet has been warming significantly since the 1950s, the rate of Greenland summer ice loss tripled last year, and the planet as a whole lost 2 trillion tons of ice in the last five years. The best mid-range estimate for sea level rise by the year 2100 is 5 feet, much higher than U.N. scientists projected just two years ago.

(Does President Obama understand this:)

Fortunately, Obama clearly gets it. He devoted more of his inaugural address to clean energy and global warming than even the strongest advocate could have imagined, asserting, "We will work tirelessly to ... roll back the specter of a warming planet." More important, he has assembled a team with unmatched knowledge and commitment to solve the climate problem.

(The biggest obstacles are the media, major opinion makers, and the GOP:)

But the path toward a carbon-reduced future will not be an easy one. President Obama will be challenged by a lack of awareness by the media and major opinion makers, who still don't grasp the scope of the problem, and by the majority of GOP politicians who refuse to accept the dire facts of climate science. If Obama is going to lead this country and the world in the fight to preserve a livable climate, he will be forced to do so in a partisan fashion. That task can't be underestimated. But it's a huge relief to see the energy team that Obama has assembled for the battle.

Please read the whole post (click link in the first line) and give thanks that the President of the United States has at least gotten serious. The second page of the article is subtitled "Overcoming Eight Years of Disinformation," and it details the efforts of (guess who?) the Washington Post and the New York Times to continue to GET IT ALL WRONG.

Note to my fellow peace marchers of the past eight years: Now is not the time to relax. Bush is gone, but the media and the right wing remain. Let's keep marching!!

Daily Kos's "Health Care Friday"

Daily Kos has another home run with today's post:

Health Care Friday
by DemFromCT
Fri Jan 23, 2009 at 06:50:03 AM PST

* WSJ says pediatrician Richard Besser will be the new acting CDC Director. Besser was interviewed as part of a pandemic flu exercise post here, for some background.

* New human cases of H5N1 in China raise concern.

China faces a "grim" situation in preventing and controlling human cases of bird flu, the health minister said, after announcing four human infections in the last two weeks and three deaths.

China also says don't worry. Commentary from revere at Effect Measure at ScienceBlogs (the reveres will be interviewed for Flu and You - Part III, coming on Sunday Kos.)
* CDC weekly flu update

* From the Gates Foundation:

Global Health Community Commits Over $630 Million in Aggressive Push for Polio Eradication

Rotary International, Gates Foundation, United Kingdom, and Germany pledge critically needed funds and urge donor and endemic country governments to help end crippling childhood disease.

NY Times on the story.
* From a Physicians for Human Rights press release:

According to a press release issued today from the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, the mother of Arash and Kamiar Alaei recently broke her silence in an interview with Iranian news media. The press release stated that the mother told Rooz Online [link] that her sons had been held for 63 days in solitary confinement and that she feared that they might be tortured to coerce false confessions on camera.

More from the LA Times.
* The Infectious Disease Society of America (IDSA) and the HIV Medicine Association (HIVMA) make the case for more funding for infectious diseases in the stimulus package.

IDSA strongly supports infectious diseases programs that are funded under the National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD and TB Prevention. The House stimulus bill allocates "35 million in new funding for programs funded under the Center, but href=" billion infusion of resources would ensure that the national response to HIV, tuberculosis, STDs and viral hepatitis is adequate.

* Kaiser Family Foundation:

Medicaid enrollment in a number of states grew by 5% to 10% in the last 12 months as the economic recession continued and more people lost their jobs and employer-sponsored health insurance, the New York Times reports. In a nationwide survey by the Times, 16 of the 40 states that responded had experienced at least a 5% increase in enrollment over the past 12 months that data was available, and the growth rate has at least doubled in many states compared with the previous year.

The pressure on state budgets is enormous. Health reform (i.e. health finance reform, even more than access and quality reform, the other legs of the tripod) is an integral part of the economic picture.
* NY Times:

One in seven Americans under age 65 went without prescribed medicines in 2007 as drug costs spiraled upward in the United States, a nonprofit research group said on Thursday.

* What's up with Texas, anyway?

With President Barack Obama a strong supporter and bipartisan Senate support precluding the possibility of a filibuster, many GOP members of Congress who had previously opposed the [SCHIP] program joined the majority. Among them were Florida’s Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Lincoln Diaz-Balart and Alaska’s Don Young, all of whom faced tough re-election campaigns against Democrats who used their SCHIP opposition as an issue. Their near-death election experiences apparently provoked a legislative conversion.

No such rethinking of previous partisan positions was evident in the Texas delegation, where 20 Republicans voted against the SCHIP bill. The state leads the nation in percentage of uninsured children, with Harris County having the largest rate of unprotected youngsters.

It's their political funeral.
* DrSteveB reviews recent health care books.

This diary suggests 5 best readings, for the general public and would-be policy wonks, regarding our current health care system and changes to come, and the recent books by our new HHS Secretary, health reform czar, and former senate majority leader Tom Daschle, and by Ezekiel (and brother of Rahm) Emanuel.

* Autism may not be from vaccines, and the longitudinal children's study may take years and not provide answers for autism, but we still need to know more.

Autism tops Barack Obama's medical to-do list, according to the new president's website. Whitehouse.gov launched at 12:01 pm yesterday, even before the new president had taken his oath of office on the Capitol's West Front. Autism is the only disorder or disease mentioned explicitly in Obama's 24-point agenda. Heart disease and cancer don't get the call. Neither does diabetes, or other chronic diseases. But there are four hefty bullet points addressing autism. Obama called for:
1. Increased funding for research, treatment, screenings, public awareness and support services for autism spectrum disorders.
2. "Life-long services" for people with autism spectrum disorders, as children and as adults. Many parents struggle to find and pay for screening and treatments for their children, but there is even less coverage and capacity for adults with autism-based impairments
3. More funding for the 2006 Combating Autism Act, as well as improving state and federal autism programs.
4. Universal screening for all infants for autism disorders, as well as re-screening for all 2-year-olds. This is the biggie; children are currently screened only if parents or pediatricians voice a concern, so too many children aren't diagnosed until they enter elementary school. The earlier treatment starts, the more effective it is, and a national screening program would help reduce the number of kids falling through the cracks. It would also be a huge undertaking, at a time when both government and privately insured health care is foundering.

Thanks be for all the smart bloggers out there, posting what it would take me months to find out on my own. Cheers

GOP attack machine up and running - UPDATED

Daily Kos has a good post today, too. Read it and weep or gnash your teeth or throw a shoe at the radio!

The GOP Attack Machine Kicks Into Gear
by Jed L
Thu Jan 22, 2009 at 06:04:11 PM PST

It's as easy to see as 1-2-3:

1. Rush Limbaugh tells his radio audience that he wants Obama to fail.

2. Within four hours of Barack Obama's inauguration, FOX was pimping the Republican talking point that the Dow took the biggest dive of any inaugural day in history, mentioning it on at least ten separate occasions. (The talking point is technically true, but misleading. It ignores the fact that in percentage terms, the Dow dropped by about the same amount as it did on Ronald Reagan's inaugural day. More importantly, the drop had no more to do with Obama than the fact that on Wednesday, the Dow climbed by more points than it has on the first full day in office of any President in U.S. history.)

3. On Wednesday alone, Republicans stalled Secretary of State Clinton's confirmation until late in the day, lambasted Timothy Geithner for having screwed up his taxes a few years ago, even though he's subsequently paid back everything that was due, and blocked a vote on Eric Holder's nomination to be Attorney General.

President Obama has steadfastly extended his hand to these very same Republicans. He's tried in good faith to work with them. He's given them every opportunity to be a productive part of this government, even though they were battered in the November elections.

But so far, the GOP is refusing the President's olive branch. Instead of signing up to help turn this country around, they are playing the same old petty partisan games that led to their defeat in 2008.

They might be making the mistake of misinterpreting President Obama's gestures as signs of weakness. They might think that he doesn't have the heart for conflict.

If that's what they believe, and they insist on continuing on their destructive path, then they are making a grave mistake. They have no idea what's coming. If they thought 2008 was bad, just wait until 2010.

Smart Republicans understand that now is the time to jump on board the train. Trouble for the GOP is, not that many of them are all that smart.

After all, these are the same jokers who got us into this mess in the first place.

Didn't Rush Limbaugh see "Bambi" as a kid? You know, "Thumper, if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all."

UPDATE:
Kay Dennison and Peggy reminded me about Al Franken's wonderful book, Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot. Check it out HERE!!

Conventional Wisdom....the view of the masses

Glenn Greenwald has a great post in today's Salon.com: "New poll on torture and investigations negates Beltway conventional wisdom"

Here's a link to this illuminating article.

I won't re-post it all here, but here are some salient portions:

One of the most common and most corrosive aspects of our political discourse is the endless assertions -- based on nothing -- about what "Americans believe." It is exceedingly conventional wisdom that Americans generally view the world through the prism of Jack Bauer and therefore want our government to torture, want Guantanamo kept opened, and do not want suspected Terrorists to be tried in civilian courts inside the U.S. It is even more commonly asserted that Americans do not want, and even further, would never tolerate, criminal investigations into the various crimes of Bush officials.

A new Washington Post/ABC News poll released yesterday negates all of those beliefs.

...

By a wide margin -- 58-40% -- Americans say that torture should never be used, no matter the circumstances. Let's repeat that: "no matter the circumstance." That margin is enormous among Democrats (71-28%) and substantial among independents (56-43%). As usual these days, Republicans hold the minority view, but even among them there is substantial categorical opposition to torture (42-55%).

...

Moreover, a majority of Americans (53-42%) favor the closing of Guantanamo, with large support among Democrats (68%) and independents (55%).

...

Even more surprisingly for spouters of conventional wisdom, a majority of Americans (50-47%) believe that the Obama administration should investigate whether the Bush administration's treatment of detainees was illegal.

...

What's most remarkable about the fact that a majority of Americans favor investigations is that one has to struggle to find even a single politician of national significance or a prominent media figure who argue that position. The notion that Bush officials shouldn't be criminally investigated is about as close to a lockstep consensus among political and media elites as it gets, and yet, still, a majority of Americans favor such investigations.

Please read this if, like me, you are beginning to recognize the old lockstep moves the media are making in an effort to a) confuse us and b) discredit President Obama.

Cold Weather Behavior Guide

Just in case you think you've been having cold weather and don't know how to behave in it, here's a copy of a guide used in MINNESOTA. Thanks to my brother Gene for sending this. (He doesn't live there anymore, either!)

60 above zero?
Floridians turn on the heat
Minnesotans plant gardens

50 above zero?
Californians shiver uncontrollably
People are sunbathing in Duluth

40 above zero?
Import cars won't start
Minnesotans drive with the sunroof open

32 above zero?
Distilled water freezes
The water in Bemidji gets thicker

20 above zero?
New Mexicans don longjohns, parkas, and wool hats & mittens
Minnesotans throw on a flannel shirt

15 above zero?
New York landlords finally turn on the heat
Minnesotans have one last cookout before it gets cold

Zero?
People in Miami all die
Minnesotans close the windows

10 below zero?
Californians fly away to Mexico
Minnesotans dig their winter coats out of storage

25 below zero?
Hollywood disintegrates
Girl Scouts in Minnesota are still selling cookies door to door (This one is TRUE!)

40 below zero?
Washington DC finally runs out of hot air
Minnesotans let their dogs sleep indoors

100 below zero?
Santa Claus abandons the North Pole
Minnesotans get upset because the minivan won't start

460 below zero?
All atomic motion stops
Minnesotans can be heard saying "Cold 'nuff fer ya?"

500 below zero?
Hell freezes over
Minnesota public schools open 2 hours late
Vikings win the Super Bowl

Let's hear it for the Stews!!!

Echidne has a great post today about the other heroes of the Hudson River splashdown landing, and notice, please, their gender and their ages!!

Pilot Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger has garnered most of the headlines for safely piloting a crippled jet onto the Hudson River, but investigators and aviation workers say there is an unsung group that also deserves praise: the three flight attendants on board.

Sheila Dail, 57, Doreen Welsh, 58, and Donna Dent, 51 — with a combined 92 years of experience on the job — were the ones who opened emergency exits, ordered passengers to don life jackets and directed them out of the plane. All 150 passengers escaped.

"They did everything right," said Mike Flores, who heads the wing of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA (AFA-CWA) union, which represents the three. "Had they made one mistake, we would be talking about a completely different outcome than we saw on Thursday."

The pilot and copilot did great. But that alone might not have saved all the passengers. What the flight attendants did was very important: To stay calm, to act rapidly and with confidence.

This should shut up a bunch of 50+ women who whine about being "old." Nothing like cool-headed experience in an emergency!!

Diversity of First Family

Jodi Kantor in the NY Times has written a wonderful article, "First Family reflects a nation's diversity," published in today's International Herald Tribune. The text is printed here, but go to the following IHT link to see the beautiful photo!!

http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/01/21/america/21family.php

First family reflects a nation's diversity
By Jodi Kantor
Wednesday, January 21, 2009

WASHINGTON: The president's elderly stepgrandmother brought him an oxtail fly whisk, a mark of power at home in Kenya. Cousins journeyed from the South Carolina town where the first lady's great-great-grandfather was born into slavery, while the rabbi in the family came from the synagogue where he had been commemorating Martin Luther King's Birthday. The president and first lady's siblings were there, too, of course: his Indonesian-American half-sister, who brought her Chinese-Canadian husband, and her brother, a black man with a white wife.

When President Barack Obama was sworn in on Tuesday, he was surrounded by an extended clan that would have shocked past generations of Americans and instantly redrew the image of a first family for future ones.

As they convened to take their family's final step in its journey from Africa and slavery to the slave-built White House, the group seemed as if it had stepped out of the pages of Barack Obama's memoir — no longer the disparate kin of a young man wondering how he fit in, but the embodiment of a new president's promise of change.

For well over two centuries, the United States has been vastly more diverse than its ruling families. Now the Obama family has flipped that around, with a Technicolor cast that looks almost nothing like their overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly Protestant predecessors in the role. The family that produced Barack and Michelle Obama is black and white and Asian, Christian, Muslim and Jewish. They speak English; Indonesian; French; Cantonese; German; Hebrew; African languages including Swahili, Luo and Igbo; and even a few phrases of Gullah, the Creole dialect of the South Carolina Low Country. Very few are wealthy, and some — like Sarah Obama, the stepgrandmother who only recently got electricity and running water in her metal-roofed shack — are quite poor.

"Our family is new in terms of the White House, but I don't think it's new in terms of the country," said Maya Soetoro-Ng, the president's younger half-sister, in an interview last week. "I don't think the White House has always reflected the textures and flavors of this country."

Though the world is recognizing the inauguration of the first African-American president, the story is a more complex narrative, about immigration, social mobility and the desegregation of one of the last divided institutions in American life: the family. It is a tale of self-determination, full of refusals to follow the tracks laid by history or religion or parentage.

Obama follows the second President George W. Bush, who had a presidential son's self-assured grip on power. Aside from a top-quality education, the new president came to politics with none of his predecessor's advantages: no famous last name, no deep-pocketed parents to finance early forays into politics and, in fact, not much of a father at all. So Obama built his political career from scratch, with best-selling books and long-shot runs for office, leaving his relatives astonished at where he has brought them.

"It is so mind-boggling that there is a black president," Craig Robinson, Michelle Obama's brother, said in an interview. "Then you layer on top of it that I am related to him? And then you layer on top of that that it's my brother-in-law? That is so overwhelming, I can't hardly think about it."

Though Barack Obama is the son of a black Kenyan father, he has some conventionally presidential roots on his white mother's side: abolitionists who, according to family legend, were chased out of Missouri, a slave state; Midwesterners who weathered the Depression; even a handful of distant ancestors who fought in the Revolutionary War. (Ever since he became a United States senator, the Sons of the American Revolution has tried to recruit him. )

But far less has been known about his wife's roots — even by the first lady herself. Growing up on the South Side of Chicago, "it was sort of passed-down folklore that so-and-so was related to so-and-so and their mother and father was a slave," Robinson said.

Drawing on old census data, family records and interviews, it is clear that Michelle Obama is indeed the descendant of slaves and a daughter of the Great Migration, the mass movement of African-Americans northward in the first half of the 20th century in search of opportunity. Her family found it, but not without outsize measures of adversity and disappointment along the way.

Only five generations ago, the first lady's great-great-grandfather, Jim Robinson, was born a slave on Friendfield Plantation in Georgetown, South Carolina, where he almost certainly drained swamps, harvested rice and was buried in an unmarked grave. As a child, Michelle Obama used to visit her Georgetown relatives, but it was only during the campaign that she learned that her forebears had been enslaved in the same town where she and her cousins had played.

According to Megan Smolenyak, a genealogist who has uncovered the roots of many political figures, the first lady has ancestors with similar backgrounds across the South. The public records they left behind give only the briefest glimpses of their lives: Fanny Laws Humphrey, one of Michelle Obama's great-great-grandmothers, was a cook in Birmingham, Alabama, born before the end of the Civil War. Another set of great-great-grandparents, Mary and Nelson Moten, seem to have left Kentucky for Chicago in the early 1860s, a hint they might have been free before the end of the Civil War. And in 1910, some of the first lady's ancestors are listed in a census as mulatto, adding some support to family whispers of a white ancestor.

The jobs that her relatives held in the early 20th century — domestic servant, coal sorter, dressmaker — suggest an escape from sharecropping, the system that trapped many former slaves and their children in penury for generations.

Still, the family's progress has a two steps forward, one step back quality. Jim Robinson was born into slavery, but his son, Fraser, peddled wares and ran a lunch truck in Georgetown. In turn, his son, Fraser Jr. , struck out for Chicago in search of something better. But he was unable to find any work, and left his wife and children for 14 years, according to his son Nomenee Robinson. As a result, Michelle Obama's father was on welfare as a boy and started working on a milk truck at age 11.

After serving in the Army in World War II and finally securing a job as a postal clerk, Fraser Robinson Sr. rejoined his family. He was so thrifty that he would bring home chemicals to do the family dry cleaning in the bathtub. But his son — Michelle Obama's father, Fraser Robinson III — became overwhelmed with debt and dropped out of college after one year. He worked in a city boiler room for the rest of his life, helping to send his four younger siblings to college, then his two children, the first lady and her brother, to Princeton.

For all of the vast differences in the Obama and Robinson histories, a few common threads run through. Education is one of them. As a young man, Barack Obama's father herded goats, then won a scholarship to study in the Kenyan capital. When the president lived in Indonesia as a child, his mother woke him up for at 4 a.m. for English lessons; meanwhile, in Chicago, Michelle Obama's mother was bringing home math and reading workbooks so her children would always be a few lessons ahead in school.

Only through education, generations of Robinsons taught their children, would they ever succeed in a racist society, several relatives said. "My mother would say, 'When you acquire knowledge, you acquire something no one could take away from you,' " Craig Robinson said.

The families also share a kind of adventurous self-determination. In the standard telling, the Obama side is the one that bent the rules of geography and ethnicity. Yet the first lady's family, the supposed South Side traditionalists, includes several members who literally or figuratively ventured far from home. Nomenee Robinson was an early participant in the Peace Corps, serving in India for two years; later, he moved to Nigeria, where he met his wife; the couple now live in Chicago. Capers Funnye Jr., a cousin of Michelle Obama's and a rabbi, was brought up in the black church, he said, but as a young man, he felt a calling to Judaism he could not ignore.

In daring cross-cultural leaps, no figure quite matches Stanley Ann Dunham Soetoro, Barack Obama's mother. As a university student in Honolulu, she hung out at the East-West Center, a cultural exchange organization, meeting two successive husbands there: Barack Obama, an economics student from Kenya, and later, Lolo Soetoro, an Indonesian. Decades later, her daughter Maya Soetoro was picking up fliers at the same East-West Center when she noticed Konrad Ng, a Chinese-Canadian student, now her husband.

Now the Obama-Robinson family's move to the White House seems like a symbolic end point for the once-firm idea that people of different backgrounds should not date, marry or bear children. In Barack Obama's lifetime, racial intermarriage not only became legal everywhere in the United States , but has started to flourish. As many as a quarter of white Americans and nearly half of black Americans belong to a multiracial family, estimates Joshua Goldstein of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research.

Diversity inside families, said Michael Rosenfeld, a sociologist at Stanford University, is "the most interesting kind of diversity there is, because it brings people together cheek by jowl in a way that they never were before."

"There's nothing as powerful as family relationships," Rosenfeld said, "and that's why interracial marriage was illegal for so long in the U.S."

Initially, some of the unions in the Obama family caused consternation. "What can you say when your son announces he's going to marry a Mzungu?" said Sarah Obama in an interview, using the Swahili term for "white person." But it was too late, she said, because the couple was deeply in love.

Now, the relatives say, their family feels natural and right to them, that they think of each other as individuals, not as members of groups. Soetoro-Ng said that she was not "the Indonesian sister," but just Maya.

A special reunion

On Monday, some of Obama's Kenyan relatives milled around the lobby of the Mayflower Hotel here, their colorful headscarves earning them more curious glances than even the sports and pop music stars in the room. Zeituni Onyango, the president's aunt, explained that their family had always been able to absorb newcomers.

Pointing out that her male relatives used to take on multiple wives, she said, "My daddy said anyone coming into my family is my family." ( Onyango, who lives in a public housing project in Boston, recently faced deportation charges, but those orders have been stayed and she is pursuing a green card.)

At holidays and celebrations, "you get a whole lot of people who are happy to be around family," Craig Robinson said. "They happen to be from different cultures, but the common thing is that they are all family."

Like the inauguration, those celebrations draw on a happy mishmash of traditions and histories. Take the Obamas' 1992 wedding, which included Kenyan family in traditional dress, a cloth-binding ceremony in which the bride and groom's hands were symbolically tied, and blues, jazz and classical music at the wedding reception (held at a cultural center that was once a country club where black and Jewish Chicagoans were denied admission).

White House events may now take on some of the same feel. Four years ago, when the family descended on Washington for Barack Obama's Senate swearing-in, Ng strolled over to the White House and took a picture of his then-infant daughter, Suhaila — whose name means "gentle" in Swahili — sleeping in her stroller outside its gates.

A few days before leaving Hawaii for the inauguration, Ng stared at the snapshot and contemplated how much has changed since it was taken. After Tuesday's ceremony, he said, "folks like me will have a chance to be on the other side."

Genug with the speeches, already!!

It's way past my bedtime, but I'm glued to the teevee here in downtown DC watching the coverage of the many balls tonight.

Our new president and first lady are the handsomest couple ever, and our new vice president and his wife are a close second, though she's prettier than he is.

BUT....what's with all the speechifying?! Has it always been that way? I don't remember it, though the last marathon ball-watching session I put in was for President Kennedy's Inaugural. I don't remember him yapping on and on making speeches when he was supposed to be dancing and having fun. These men have very PATIENT wives!!

Also, I just emailed NBC the remaining piece of my mind about their announcers' calling our new president simply "Obama," not "President Obama." Have a little respect, NBC! Remember, we love and revere this guy. If you can't show good manners cuz it's the right thing to do, remember your audience is full of people who are gonna notice your rudeness!!

Joy in the nation's capitol

The celebration has begun. Saturday I was walking down 14th St on the way to Whole Foods, and one of the shops had a big, beautiful photo of Michelle Obama in the window with a banner, "Happy Birthday, Michelle!" It was her 45th birthday--she's the same age as Sally. People walking by would stop and say "It's her BIRTHday!!!" and hug each other or exchange high fives with strangers. Joy has returned to the nation's capitol.

Cathy and I went to the opening concert Sunday afternoon...walked for miles and froze, but it was GREAT FUN. Bishop Gene Robinson started it off with a prayer (interrupted by rowdies shouting "louder, louder, louder"), then a whole bevy of stars spoke or performed: Bruce Springsteen, Denzel Washington, Samuel Jackson, Beyonce, Queen Latifah, Tom Hanks, Herbie Hancock, Sheryl Crowe, Stevie Wonder, Pete Seeger (89 now!), Garth Brooks, U2!!!, and many others. These are just the ones I remember now. It was my first "rock concert," if you can call it that. People all around us were line dancing--who was playing? Herbie Hancock? Garth Brooks? It was before U2--It was very contagious and joyful. We joined in--even urs truly was stumbling around to the beat. I'm telling you, people here are HAPPY!!!!

The best parts have been the crowds. DC has been transformed--DC is something like 80% black, but you never see that ordinarily. But everyone was downtown yesterday (Monday) with their kids and grandkids and relatives from all over the country--friendly, smiling, chatting with strangers. Buying souvenirs to take home and treasure forever. It's very moving. Their relatives were brought here in chains, and now it's a new day.

Cathy lent me her OBAMA button that lights up and flashes, and a young woman offered me $100 for it yesterday. (I have my own, too, but I forgot to bring it!!!). Cathy actually climbed up on the base of a statue right by PA ave and has declared we're gonna watch the parade from there. We'll see.

By the time we get to 7th and PA, the crowd'll probly be 10 deep. It's just a few short blocks from where she lives, but they're not gonna allow people to camp out all night along the parade route. You can claim a spot by 8am, no earlier. (ha...when Cathy walked Squeak this a.m. at 5, the sidewalks were JAMMED.

I'm home watching TV coverage now..the motorcade bearing the stars of the day has just left the White House. CNN, for whatever brainless reason has impelled seemingly all the media for the past eight years< cannot shut up about RONALD REAGAN!!! Gag me with a maggot, as we said as kids. i shut off the sound. Cheney is in a wheelchair, but I'm willing to bet it was not because he was lifting boxes.

and how they're arriving.

Lest we forget....

Truthout has published the transcript of MSNBC's Keith Olbermann's "Bush Years: 8 in 8 Minutes." Here it is:

George Walker Bush.

43rd president of the United States.
first ever with a criminal record.
our third story tonight,
his presidency: eight years in eight minutes.

early in 2001 the U.S. fingered Al Qaeda
for the bombing of the USS Cole
Bush counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke
had a plan to take down Al Qaeda.
instead by February the NSC
had already discussed invading Iraq,
and had a plan for post-Saddam Iraq.

by March 5 Bush had a map ready for Iraqi oil exploration
and a list of companies.
Al Qaeda?
Rice told Clarke not to give Bush a lot of long memos.
not a big reader.

August 6, 2001
a CIA analyst briefs Bush on vacation:
"Bin Laden determined to strike in U.S."
Bush takes no action tells the briefer - quote
all right, you've covered your ass now.

next month Clarke requests
using new predator drones to kill Bin Laden
the Pentagon and CIA
say no.

September 11th
Bush remains seated for several minutes
to avoid scaring school children
by getting up and leaving.
he then flies around the country
and promises quote a full scale investigation to find
those folks who did it

Rumsfeld says Afghanistan does not have enough targets
we've got to do Iraq.
when the CIA traps Bin Laden at Tora Bora
it asks for 800 rangers to cut off his escape
Bush outsources the job to Pakistanis
sympathetic to the Taliban
Bin Laden
gets away

in February General Tommy Franks tells a visiting Senator
Bush is moving equipment out of Afghanistan
so he can invade Iraq.
one of the men who prepped Rice for her testimony
that Bush did not ignore pre 9-11 warnings
later explains quote we cherry picked things
to make it look like the president
had been actually concerned about Al Qaeda
they didn't give a bleep about Al Qaeda

July and Britain's intel chief says Bush is
fixing intelligence and facts around the policy to take out Saddam
January 03
Bush and Blair agree to invade in March
Mr. Bush still telling us he has not decided
telling Blair they should paint an airplane in UN colors
fly it over Iraq and provoke a response
a pretext for invasion

the man who said it would take several hundred thousand troops
fired
the man who said it would cost more than a hundred billion
fired
the man who revealed Bush's yellowcake lie
smeared
his wife's covert status
exposed
the White House liars who did it
and covered it up
not fired
one convicted
Bush commutes his sentence

then in Iraq, stuff happens:
Iraq's army, disbanded
the government de-Baathified
200,000 weapons, billions of dollars just
lost
foreign mercenaries immunized from justice
political hacks run the Green Zone
religious cleansing forcing one out of six Iraqis from their homes
Abu Ghraib
the insurgency
Al Qaeda in Iraq

other stuff does not happen:
WMD
post-war planning
body armor
vehicular armor

the payoff?
oil
and billions for Halliburton, Blackwater and other companies
while Mr. Bush denies VA healthcare to 450,000 veterans
tries to raise their healthcare fees
blocks the new G.I. Bill
and increases his own power with the USA PATRIOT Act
with the Military Commissions Act
public orders exempting himself from a thousand laws
and secretly from the Presidential Records Act
The Geneva Conventions
FISA
sparking a mass rebellion at the Justice Department

secret star chambers for terrorism suspects,
overturned by Hamdan v Rumsfeld.
denying habeas corpus,
overturned by Boumediene v Bush.
200 renditionings
sleep deprivation
abuse
Rumsfeld warned in 2002 that he was torturing
that it would jeopardize convictions
out of 550 at Gitmo
hundreds ultimately go free with no charges
dozens are tortured
eight fatally
three are convicted

on U.S. soil twelve hundred immigrants rounded up
without due process
without bail
without court dates
without a single charge of terrorism

it wasn't just Mr. Bush no longer subject to the rule of law
he slashed regulations on everyone from banks to mining companies
appointed 98 lobbyists to oversee their own industries
weakening emission standards for mercury
and 650 different toxic chemicals
regulators shared drugs
and their beds
with industry reps
the Crandall Canyon mine owner told inspectors to back up
because his buddy, Republican Mitch McConnell
was sleeping with their boss
McConnell's wife is Bush Labor Secretary Elaine Chao
her agency overruled engineer concerns about Crandall Canyon
and was found negligent
after nine miners died in the collapse there

Mr. Bush's hands off
as Enron blacks out California
doubling electric bills
after months of rejecting price caps Mr. Bush bows to pressure

the blackouts end

Mr. Bush further deregulates commodity futures
midwifing the birth of unregulated oil markets
which just like Enron jack up prices to an all time high
until Congress and both presidential candidates call for regulations
and the prices fall

deregulating financial services and lax enforcement of remaining rules
created a housing bubble
creating the mortgage crisis
creating then a credit crisis
devastating industries that rely on credit
from student loans to car dealers

firms that had survived the Great Depression could not survive Bush
those that did got
seven hundred billion dollars
no strings, no transparency
no idea whether it worked

unlike the auto bailout
which cut workers' salaries.
a GOP memo called it
a chance to punish unions

but Bush failed even when his party and his patrons
did not stand to profit
investigators blamed management cost cutting communication
for missed warnings about Columbia
Bush administration convicts include
sex offenders at Homeland Security
convicted liars
every kind of thief in the calendar
and if you count things that were not prosecuted
the vice president of the United States actually
shot a man in the face

the man apologized.

Mr. Bush faked the truth
with paid propaganda in Iraq
on his education policy

tried to silence the truth about global warming
rocket fuel in our water
industry influence on energy policy

politicized the truth of science at NASA, the EPA,
the National Cancer Institute, Fish and Wildlife
and the FDA

his lies
exposed by whistleblowers from the cabinet down
"complete BS" the treasury secretary said
of Mr. Bush on his tax cuts.

Rice's mushroom cloud
Powell's mobile labs
Iraq and 9-11
Jack Abramoff
Jessica Lynch

Pat Tillman
Pat Tillman again
Pat Tillman, again.

the air at Ground Zero
most responders still suffering respiratory problems.

global warming
carbon emissions
a Clear Skies initiative lowering air quality standards
the Healthy Forests initiative increasing logging
faith based initiatives
the cost of medicare reform
fired US attorneys
politically synchronized terror alerts

the surge causing insurgents to switch sides
that abortion causes breast cancer
that his first recession began under Clinton
that he did not wiretap without warrants
that we do not torture.

that American citizen John Walker Lindh's rights
were not violated
that he refused the right to counsel

heckuva job Brownie
some survivors still in trailers
New Orleans still at just two-thirds its usual population

the lie that no one could have predicted the economic crisis
except
the economists who did
no one could have predicted 9-11 except
one ass-covering CIA analyst
or thirty
no one could have predicted the levee breach
except literally
Mr. Bill
in a PSA that aired on TV a year before Katrina

Bush actually admitted that he lied about not firing Rumsfeld
because he did not want to tell the truth.
look it up.

all of it
all of it and more leaving us with
ten trillion in debt
to pay for 31% more in discretionary spending
the Iraq War
a 1.3 trillion dollar tax cut

median income down two thousand dollars
three-quarters of all income gains under Bush
going to the richest one percent
unemployment up from 4.2 to 7.2 percent

the Dow, down from ten thousand five hundred eighty seven
to eighty two hundred seventy seven
six million now more in poverty
seven million more now without health care

buying toxic goods from China
deadly cribs
outsourcing security to Dubai
still unsecure in our ports
and at our nuclear plants
more dependent on foreign oil
out of the international criminal court
off the anti ballistic missle treaty
military readiness and standards down

with two unfinished wars
a nuclear North Korea
disengaged from the Palestinian problem
destabilizing eastern european diplomacy with
anti missile plans
and unable to keep Russia out of Georgia

2000 miles of Appalachian streams
destroyed by rubble from mountaintop mining
at his last G-8 summit,
he actually bid farewell to other world leaders
saying quote - goodbye from the world's greatest polluter

consistently undermining historic American reverence
for the institutions that empower us
education, now "academic elites"
and the law, "activist judges"
capping jury awards

and Bin Laden?
living today unmolested in a Pakistani safe haven
created by a truce endorsed and defended by George W. Bush

and among all the gifts he gave to Bin Laden
the most awful, the most damaging not just to America
but to the American ideal
was to further Bin Laden's goal
by making us act out of fear rather than fortitude

leaving us with precious little to cling to tonight
save the one thing that might yet suffice:

hope

.

Where's the bloody pin so I can stick myself with it?

Well! I'm noticing on my little tape-o-matic thing that it's been ONE WEEK since liquor (yes, INCLUDING and ESPECIALLY red wine) has crossed my lips!! Don't you get a pin or a medal or a specially designed coin to squeeze in your pocket when you join that nondrinking outfit here?

It hasn't been too bad, but today I baked both chocolate chip cookies AND baking powder biscuits! This may explain the following experience.

When I knocked off the sauce, I decided to start up yoga again (after a shameful 10+ year hiatus). Well, and well again! It's been so long since I practiced this healthful art that I've gained A LOT OF WEIGHT in the nonce. Hence, I feel like I'm wearing a fat suit! You know, the kind Eddie Murphy and Gwyneth Paltrow put on in those horble movies. Interesting.

O Canada!! (What you learn when you read the Globe & Mail)

Several Canadians have commented on my posts recently to the effect that Canadians learn more about what goes on in the USA when they read Canadian rather than U.S. newspapers. So I thought I'd take a squint at the Globe & Mail, see what I could find out that I couldn't from reading, say, the WashPost.

Here's what I picked up:

*Painter Andrew Wyeth died today at the age of 91. Oh, too bad...snif. RIP. Loss of a major talent, etc. This bit of intelligence may have appeared in the WashPost, but since I don't read that particular yellow rag, I didn't get it there.

*Various members of the British royal family are fond of giving their friends and enemies nicknames. As, for example, the Queen has been designated by some as "Brenda." (Scene: the drawing room at Buckingham Palace. Prince Philip enters, stage left. "Where's Brenda?" A footman looks up from his copy of the Tattler and says "Out feeding her bloody Corgis with Brian." By this, His Royal Consortedness is given to know that Her Majesty is in the company of her eldest son, Prince Charles, as she spoons bits of beef & gravy into the faithful (compared with Philip) royal companions. Nothing on this in the WashPost, but that may be because our OWN royal person is known for giving nicknames to one and all--e.g., Maureen Down is known as "The Adder"--or something like that. The Barracuda? That's it!). Probly nothing on this in the WashPost, either. Tsk.

*Boy George has been sentenced to 15 months (!) in jail for handcuffing a Swedish escort to a hook in the wall at the B.G. residence and keeping him in that state for less than 30 minutes! The escort filed a complaint, saying he had been involuntarily confined while paying a call on the singer!!! BoTHER!!! Pretty stiff penalty for a little Sadie O'Masochism, wouldn't you say? Poor Boy George (which is one of those NICKNAMES again...his real name is George O'Dowd). One can only imagine the anguish of being an escort to the likes of Boy George and not being able to run away at will. A year and a half in the slammer serves the musician right. Maybe they'll ask him to sing. I'm guessing the WashPost is silent on this. It's not to go around pointing fingers at other people's harmless little torture gigs.

* Canadian subsidiary of Circuit City will remain open. Wot a relief!!! US newspapers have been showing their puckish headline writing skills all day by trumpeting that "Circuit City will pull the plug on all of its US stores.

That's enough. If you want more, go look yourself.

A Real Discussion....

Thank you to Glenn Greenwald for "a real discussion on TV regarding U.S. policy towards Israel" in the Friday, January 16, 2009, Salon. Greenwald writes,

...I wanted to post the two-part video of a shockingly balanced, candid and informed discussion of the Israeli war in Gaza and of the U.S.'s self-destructively one-sided policy towards Israel that actually took place yesterday on a major American television outlet yesterday. Numerous people emailed and commented about this segment, which was part of MSNBC's Morning Joe show [it's safe and worthwhile to watch because Scarborough himself was entirely absent (these are the grotesque results when he is present)].
The commentary from Jordan's Queen Noor, in particular, is extremely insightful and articulate, virtually never heard (as the participants note) on American television, and underscores how unbalanced and incomplete is the debate most Americans hear concerning this issue of vital importance to American intersts (i.e.: virtually unquestioning American support for Israeli actions). Bill Moyers apparently received among the most intensely angry response that he has ever received as a result of his quite balanced criticism last week of Israel's war in Gaza -- including a written "rebuke" from the Anti-Defamation League's Abe Foxman that disgustingly accused Moyers of "anti-Semitism"-- and Moyers intends to respond on his PBS show tonight.

Here is part 2

4 x 4

This meme just blew in from Rook's Nest up there in the frozen north. Like her, I'll do this but not tag anybody. If you want to play along, have at it!

Here's the rules:

1. Go to the 4th picture folder on your computer.
2. Post the 4th picture in that folder.
3. Explain the picture.

And here's the 4th picture in the 4th picture folder on my computer:



The explanation?"

I took this photo at the last big protest march Cathy and I joined...when?...was it last summer (2007)? Do you remember exactly what DAY it was, Cathy? And what exactly were we protesting other than the dimbulb incumbent in the White House?

There was a huge crowd with many young folks. Sorry the Code Pink folks didn't get in this one. They were in the adjacent photo and right next to this group. Maybe I'll put that photo in here, too.



Glory Days for Marching!!! Thank God we did--march, that is. Over the past eight years, it got to feel futeless toward the end, as if no one were paying attention. Ha! Surprise!!

Role Model

I've caught considerable heat over the years for the (mis)management of my life. The other side of that coin is I've caught plenty of admiration-from-afar for it, too. But Emily Hahn had it all over me. She's one of the biographees in today's Writer's Almanac (which also has a poem by Grace Paley). She really threw herself into the bidness of living! Here it is:

It's the birthday of the author of 52 books and nearly 200 articles and short stories, Emily Hahn, (books by this author) born in St Louis, Missouri (1905).

She went to the University of Wisconsin in Madison, and she was the first woman in the university's history to graduate with a degree in Mining Engineering. Many of her peers and instructors disapproved and insisted that she would not be able to get a job. After college, she and another adventurous young woman disguised themselves as men and set out on a cross-country road trip, driving more than 2,400 miles.

She wrote: "Then followed several years of drifting, or as near drifting as a middle-class well-brought-up woman can achieve. … I needed money, and began to write in order to earn some." She taught geology at Hunter College in New York, and then she took off for Europe.

While she was in England, her first book was published in the United States: Seductio ad Absurdum: The Principles and Practices of Seduction — A Beginner's Handbook (1930). She traveled around Europe, then joined a Red Cross mission to the Belgian Congo. She spent nine months there with the mission, and then stayed in Africa another year, living with a pygmy tribe and traveling around central Africa on foot. Her experiences in Africa formed the basis for several of her books, fiction and nonfiction, including a travel memoir, Congo Solo: Misadventures Two Degrees North (1933), a novel, With Naked Foot (1934), and Africa to Me (1964), a collection of articles she wrote for The New Yorker on the subject of emerging African nationalism.

She worked for a while in England at the British Museum Reading Room, and then moved to China, where she wrote for The New Yorker. She moved into an apartment in the red-light district of Shanghai, and she had a pet gibbon, which she brought to dinner parties. In Shanghai, she became romantically involved with prominent men in the city, including the poet and publisher Sinmay Zau. He taught her to smoke opium, and she became an addict.

She moved to Hong Kong, and became lovers with a British spy, Major Boxer [no relation the the rebellion: xe]. They had a daughter together a few weeks before Hong Kong was invaded by the Japanese. She recounted these experiences in her memoir China to Me (1944), which was a great literary success.

She and Boxer got married and moved to his estate in England, where they had another child. Hahn lived a domestic life in rural England for several years, but then escaped to New York, where she bought an apartment and wrote memoirs, articles, fiction, and nonfiction. She continued to go into her office at The New Yorker until a few months before she died at the age of 92.

Emily Hahn said, "Nobody said not to go."

One Day at a Time....

I decided to climb on the water wagon, as the Irish would say. I don't know how smart this is, but the red wine (which I'm allowed!!) has not been mingling well recently with all the freakin' meds I'm on. Like, boo hoo!

Why not quit the meds? Well, I have tossed out some of them--there's vitamins that work just as well as some of the HIGH PRICED CRAP from big pharma, and at my age, we're not talking about risking another 30 years of quality time. I'd rather drink.

But...tea, anyone? I've had so much tea--decaf coffee, too--today that I've spent lots more time than usual in the loo.

Well, I decided I will do this ONE DAY AT A TIME, which is about all I can manage. One. freakin. day. at. a. time.

Welcome, Paula....

My longtime friend Paula has started her own blog.

Unlike me, Paula is a believer and an active participant in--oh, my...do I have to use dialogue as a verb?--stating via letters and position papers the views of those Roman Catholics whose thoughts are at odds with those of the church's hierarchy. By her work on various committees, she expresses these thoughts in her clear, well-considered prose as befits the former teacher and lawyer she is. (Forgive me, Paula, for not being able to state these things intelligently. The last time I had to do this sort of thinking was in the, er, 1950s.)

The blogs she follows are all concerned with providing a voice for those not seated at the high councils of the church.

Anyway, she loves a good discussion and has a wonderfully open mind, so check it out. Tell her Xtreme English sent ya....

Dose Minnesotans are tough, you betcha!!

This is a heart-warming (my friend Nadine in Bismarck says "heart-worming") story from Duluth, Minnesota, courtesy of the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

As someone who grew up in Fargo and whose brother was a doctor in Duluth, I find it really funny when people here in DC complain about the "cold" at 40 degrees above zero. Guess it's all in what you get used to, right?

Here's to the astonishing grandma who didn't want to go see her sister in heaven just yet....

Cutting those wicked Social Security and Medicare costs

I applaud President-elect Barack Obama for appointing a financial watchdog to trim government spending. But why, in the face of all the wild spending going on in the Pentagon and on billion-dollar bailouts for clueless, greedy executives in banking and automaking--plus the scandalous, immoral costs of our ill-advised wars in Iraq and Afghanistan--does he feel he has to pick on the elderly and disabled to save money?

Is this the change we were looking for? Docking our measly social security checks and the only government health insurance we've got so far? Granted, if appointing a watchdog can bring about a change in the law so that the pharmaceutical companies have to negotiate lower costs with the government, it will save many bundles of cash.

Bah, humbug!!!

Five Myths About Our Ailing Health Care System

Hi, Readers....I've pinched this from Darlene's Hodgepodge, Truthout, and ultimately, the Washpost. Well worth reading!!!

5 Myths About Our Ailing Health-Care System

By Shannon Brownlee and Ezekiel Emanuel
Sunday, November 23, 2008; B03

With Congress ready to spend $700 billion to prop up the U.S. economy, enacting health-care reform may seem about as likely as the Dow hitting 10,000 again before the end of the year. But it may be more doable than you think, provided we dispel a few myths about how health care works and how much reform Americans are willing to stomach.

1. America has the best health care in the world.

Let's bury this one once and for all. The United States is No. 1 in only one sense: the amount we shell out for health care. We have the most expensive system in the world per capita, but we lag behind many developed countries on virtually every health statistic you can name. Life expectancy at birth? We rank near the bottom of countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, just ahead of Cuba and way behind Japan, France, Italy, Sweden and Canada, countries whose governments (gasp!) pay for the lion's share of health care. Infant mortality in the United States is 6.8 per 1,000 births, more than twice as high as in Japan, Norway and Sweden and worse than in Poland and Hungary. We're doing a better job than most on reducing smoking rates, but our obesity epidemic is out of control, our death rate from prostate cancer is only slightly lower than the United Kingdom's, and in at least one study, American heart attack patients did no better than Swedish patients, even though the Americans got twice as many high-tech treatments.

Moreover, the quality of health care is different in different parts of the country. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services have issued a list of 26 measures of quality, such as making sure that heart-attack patients being discharged from the hospital get a prescription for a beta blocker or aspirin to help reduce the risk of a second attack. It turns out that quality is all over the map, and it isn't necessarily better in the places we might expect, such as academic medical centers. Worse still, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), there appears to be no connection between how much Medicare and other payers spend on patients in different parts of the country and the quality of the care the patients receive. You are no more likely to get that beta blocker or aspirin in Los Angeles than in Portland, even though Medicare spends twice as much per beneficiary in Los Angeles.

2. Somebody else is paying for your health insurance.

Nope. Even when your employer offers coverage, he isn't reaching into his own pocket to cover you and your fellow employees; he's reaching into your pocket, paying you lower wages than he would if he didn't have to pay for your health insurance.

Rising health-care costs are partly to blame for stagnant wages. Over the past five years, health insurance premiums have risen 5.5 times faster on average than inflation, 2.3 times faster than business income and four times faster than workers' earnings. Four times. That's why wages have been nearly flat since the 1980s, even as U.S. productivity has been going up. In effect, about half the money you should be earning for being more productive is being sucked up by ever more expensive health-insurance premiums.

If you pay taxes, you're also paying for the health care provided through state and federal programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, the Veterans Administration and the military. All told, the average family of four is coughing up $29,000 a year for health care through taxes, lower wages and out-of-pocket medical expenses.

3. We would save a lot if we could cut the administrative waste of private insurance.

The idea that we could wring billions of dollars in savings this way is seductive, but it wouldn't really accomplish that much. For one thing, some administrative costs are not only necessary but beneficial. Following heart-attack or cancer patients to see which interventions work best is an administrative cost, but it's also invaluable if you want to improve care. Tracking the rate of heart attacks from drugs such as Avandia is key to ensuring safe pharmaceuticals.

Let's just say that we could wave a magic wand and cut private insurers' overhead by half, to what the Canadian government spends on administering its health-care system -- 15 percent. How much would we save? Not as much as you may think. Private insurers pay a little more than a third of what we spend on health care, which means that we'd cut a little more than 5 percent from our total budget, or about $124 billion. That's not peanuts, but it's not even enough to cover everybody who's currently uninsured.

More to the point, we only get to save it once. That's because administrative waste isn't what's driving health-care costs up faster than inflation. Most of the relentless rise can be attributed to the expansion of hospitals and other health-care sectors and the rapid adoption of expensive new technologies -- new drugs, devices, tests and procedures. Unfortunately, only a fraction of all that new stuff offers dramatically better outcomes. If we're worried about costs, we have to ask whether a $55,000 drug that prolongs the lives of lung cancer patients for an average of a few weeks is really worth it. Unless we find a cure for our addiction to the new but not necessarily improved, our national medical bill will continue to skyrocket, regardless of how efficient insurance companies become.

4. Health-care reform is going to cost a bundle.

Only if you think that covering the uninsured is our only priority. Yes, making health care available to all citizens is the right thing to do. But it isn't the only thing to do. We also have to fix the spectacularly wasteful and expensive way doctors and hospitals deliver care.

Our physicians are working within a truly dysfunctional, often chaotic system that prevents them from caring for us properly. Between 50,000 and 100,000 patients die each year from preventable medical errors. According to the Centers for Disease Control, 1.7 million Americans acquire an infection while in the hospital and nearly 100,000 of them die from it. Laboratory imaging tests are routinely repeated because the originals can't be found. Patients with such chronic illnesses as heart failure and diabetes land in the hospital because their physicians fail to monitor their condition. When patients have multiple doctors, there's often nobody keeping track of the different medications, tests and treatments each one prescribes.

Our doctors and hospitals are failing to provide us with care we need while delivering a staggering amount that we don't need. Current estimates suggest that as much as 20 to 30 percent of what we spend, or about $500 billion, goes toward useless, potentially harmful care.

There are two bright spots. One: We can improve the quality of care and cut costs without rationing. There are models out there for how to do it right -- the Mayo Clinic, the Geisinger Clinic in Pennsylvania, the Cleveland Clinic and California's Kaiser Permanente are just a few of the organized group practices that are doing a better job for less. Their doctors are better than average at using the best medical evidence available. They're more likely to be using electronic medical records, which can help keep track of patients who have multiple physicians and need complex care. And they're less likely to provide unnecessary care.

Two: Even moderate reform of the delivery system would improve care and save money. The Lewin Group's analysis shows that a bill proposed by Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, calling for a more comprehensive overhaul of the health-care system than either McCain's plan or Obama's could actually insure everyone and save $1.4 trillion over 10 years. More reform is cheaper.

5. Americans aren't ready for a major overhaul of the health-care system.

We may be readier than you think. A recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that only 7 percent of Americans rate our health-care system excellent. Nearly 40 percent consider it poor. A whopping 70 percent believe it needs major changes, if not a complete overhaul.

Now is not the time to think small, to cover a few million Americans and leave the bigger job of controlling costs and improving quality for another day. We can't afford not to reform the delivery system as soon as possible. At 17 percent of gross domestic product, health care is the biggest single sector of the economy, and it's consuming a larger and larger proportion every year. According to CBO projections, health care will account for 25 percent of GDP by 2025 and 49 percent by 2082. That's simply unsustainable. Any plan that reforms health care has to do more than simply cover the uninsured. The nation's health and wealth depend on it.

brownlee@newamerica.net

Shannon Brownlee, a visiting scholar at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center, is the author of "Overtreated." Ezekiel Emanuel, an oncologist and author of "Healthcare, Guaranteed," is chairman of the center's Department of Bioethics. The views expressed here are the authors' own.

Nine Steps to Peace

Happy New Year to all! Here is a memo, "Nine Steps to Peace," published in today's Truthout.org and addressed to President-Elect Barack Obama:

You have been elected by the first anti-war constituency since 1952, when Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected after promising to end the Korean War. But ending a war isn't the same as bringing peace. America has been on a war footing since the day after Pearl Harbor, 67 years ago. We spend more on our military than the next 16 countries combined. [XE: emphasis mine] If you have a vision of change that goes to the heart of this country's deep problems, ending our dependence on war is far more important than ending our dependency on foreign oil.

The most immediate changes are economic. Unless it can make as much money as war, peace doesn't stand a chance. Since aerospace and military technologies remain the United States' most destructive export, fostering wars around the world, what steps can we take to reverse that trend and build a peace-based economy?

1. Scale out arms dealing and make it illegal by the year 2020.

2. Write into every defense contract a requirement for a peacetime project.

3. Subsidize conversion of military companies to peaceful uses with tax incentives and direct funding.

4. Convert military bases to housing for the poor.

5. Phase out all foreign military bases.

6. Require military personnel to devote part of their time to rebuilding infrastructure.

7. Call a moratorium on future weapons technologies.

8. Reduce armaments like destroyers and submarines that have no use against terrorism and were intended to defend against a superpower enemy that no longer exists.

9. Fully fund social services and take the balance out of the defense and homeland security budgets.

These are just the beginning. We don't lack creativity in coping with change. Without a conversion of our present war economy to a peace economy, the high profits of the military-industrial complex ensures that it will never end.

Do these nine steps seem unrealistic or fanciful? In various ways, other countries have adopted similar measures. The former Soviet army is occupied with farming and other peaceful work, for example. But comparisons are rather pointless, since only the United States is burdened with such a massive reliance on defense spending. Ultimately, empire follows the dollar. As a society, we want peace, and we want to be seen as a nation that promotes peace. For either ideal to come true, you as president must back up your vision of change with economic reality. So far, that hasn't happened under any of your predecessors. All hopes are pinned on you.

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Deepak Chopra is acknowledged as one of the world's greatest leaders in the field of mind-body medicine. He is the author of over 50 books, including "Buddha: A Story of Enlightenment" and "Ageless Body, Timeless Mind."

What do you think? I like the idea of having military personnel working part of the time on rebuilding our infrastructure.