Category Life

Wake me in an hour please

Michael 2 Comments

You’re in for a treat this week. I am going to share the secret of happy, healthy living. And it has nothing to do with eliminating politicians but that’s always a good fall back. The secret that does not require physical violence is…are you ready…you should be laying down for … is naps!

The greatest cultures on earth embrace naps. I know, because I said so. Not the United States of America but we could hardly be called a one of the world’s greatest culture. But I digress.

This is not a new revelation for me, and likely not for you. Each time I’ve come out of the hospital I’ve succumbed to napping as part of my convalescence. Succumbed is the right word because the first few discharges had me fighting it all the way.  Americans don’t nap, we work in the afternoon – in the morning and late at night also. On rare, very rare occasions an executive may close his/her/its eyes for a short time after skipping lunch for a Power Nap. See, no great culture here. We can’t even nap restfully.

After the last hospitalization I felt so much more alive and in tune with my surroundings after a decent nap and I carried them over into my post recovery self life. Sort of. It didn’t last long. After a few months I was back to cramming as much activity as I could into those waking hours, even if the activity was just walking around looking for something to do. This time I altered things a little, I feel even better, and I think I can keep this routine going and invite you to join me. See, it’s not really a nap, not like the stereotypical afternoon siesta. It’s more of an intentional downtime, a short version or a riposo.  The riposo is the Italian version of a midday break. Many countries along the Mediterranean rim enjoy a multi-hour midday break. But it’s not a 3 hour nap. It is a time that work is set aside and family, friends, and self are the focus for a while. On my mini-riposo I used the time to call friends, to luxuriate in an extra long shower, to sort through my paints and make a list of what needs replaced, to make a fresh brewed iced tea, and to stretch out in the bed and close my eyes so I could really listen to the wind outside, and maybe even nod off for a short while. I shifted my priorities from “things I need to do today” to “I’ll get to them in a little while.”

2 + 2 5

Napping goes back to the source of just about everything, the ancient Romans. Boy those guys were busy. When they weren’t persecuting Christian’s, invading the Middle East, building aqueducts, or developing goofy numbers, they ate, and after they ate, they napped. I’ll skip the few thousand years in between them and me and note that today’s Romans don’t sleep as much during the day as the ancient counterparts and may devote only 10 or 20 minutes to actual sleep. The key to a happy afternoon is that riposo time spent not sleeping but simply resting.

There are actual studies (people will study anything if you throw enough grant money at them) that track sleep patterns and most nappers are more emotionally balanced, better learners and communicators, have better memory, and are generally more relaxed while also being more energetic. (The Sleep Foundation, January, 2023)

So I’m going to (try to) do what comes natural to about half the world, turn things down for a short while every afternoon.   Maybe I’ll fall asleep or maybe I’ll just rest and recover from the morning. Somebody check up in me in an hour so. I don’t want to get too relaxed and happy. Somebody might use me as an example of a great culture!

Best Laid Plans and All That

Michael 10 Comments

Ah, the best laid plans of men and morons. Get your vaccines, get your booster, have your supply of masks for the rare moments when you allow yourself time out of your own hovel, do NOT plan on entertaining a crowd bigger than maybe two. Still, you get covid.

Still, I got covid. And I got it bad. Yes that’s why it’s been over a month since you’ve seen a post from me, I got it bad, bad. Now before we continue, who ARE these people who get covid and are back at work in 2 days, smiling and grinning and passing ridiculous legislation like they had nothing more serious than a nose job adjustment. And just who ARE their second cousins who can’t go into the office but will work from home. I am not kidding when I tell you that I couldn’t remember how to turn on my computer one morning. Maybe it is because I have so many serious health issues to start, including being immunocompromised, that my body figured anything nonessential was really not essential!

Let me take you through what really happens when you breathe masklessly in the same space as some poor soul like me, from the first “hmm, I’m tired,” through hospitalization and a variety of transfers, to making follow-up appointments with all the medical community where more morons lurk in elevators and parking lots “defending their freedom” from the inhumanity of 40 square inches of material across their faces.

For weeks I’ve been trying to figure out how I became infected. I do as much on line, by delivery, or curbside pickup as I possible can for my shopping. Although sometimes it just isn’t possible and a quick trip into a store to the counter and back to the car is called for.  I wish I could but I can’t say I have ever, ever, ever been anywhere where masking was 100% (and/or 100% properly) executed. So since the beginning of the year there have been a place or two where I could have been exposed. I really should have known better and continued to Zoom or stream religious services but I went into the building where loving neighbors as themselves seemed to be a foreign concept and after two weeks I redirected myself to on-line religion again. That was also 1 week before the first sign of something in the body not functioning the way the anatomy books indicated.

The date was January 8, a Saturday, and a day I had spent most of it putting away Christmas decorations. I attributed the new cough to the dust and detritus generated from wrapping and packing. January 9, I woke to chills and shaking and a fever that would have made a dandy show and tell for an infectious diseases lecture.  A Sunday trip to the local urgent care center resulted in confirmation that my blood pressure and pulse were up, my coordination was down, that was a dandy looking sweater I was wearing and yes, you could fry an egg on my forehead. A swab was sent on mission up one nostril and out the other (actually it just felt that way but both nostrils were attacked from below), and I was given instructions to drink “literally gallons of water,” and check the electronic chart for results the following morning. January 10, shortly after the pair of acetaminophen tablets seemed to be kicking in, the phone beeped its “Message from My Chart” beep and I fumbled my way through the facial recognition security (apparently I looked enough like me even that early in the morning) to get to the results  – positive.  Crap. Calls to everybody in my family who may have been around me from January 1 (seemed like a good date to pick to me and all 3 other people (I told you you I don’t entertain big crowds!) agreed) and to my primary care doctor, who as fate would have, was recovering from his own battle with SARS-COV-2. Thanks to my weakened immune system, he managed to get me scheduled for a monoclonal antibody infusion, but unfortunately scheduled 3 days in the future. That’s okay, it’s the stuff politicians and former presidents got, I could wait.

Not Vaccinated SectionOn Thursday January 13, I drove myself across town to one of 3 clinics administering the more precious than gold elixir. About an hour later I actually felt better. The fever was low-grade rather than raging, the shaking and chills were reduced to a mild tremor, the squeezing headache relented, and the sore throat, eyes, sinuses, nose, in short everything north of the neck stopped hurting.  I figure in 2 days I’ll probably be breathing again. Ha!

For the next 18 days I woke each morning to take my blood pressure, pulse, temperature, and oxygen levels, always the same (good, good, low grade, good) then I pretended I was Howard Hughes, sitting alone in a darkened room watching movies, one after another. As long as I sat I was comfortable. Whenever I moved, I would become physically tired. Doing two things at once like standing and cooking, took as much out of me as a quick 5k around the neighborhood. I could do my own cooking but I often had to rest between cooking and eating, in the process, discovering that lukewarm eggs really do taste as nasty as reported even though I never had reason to question it before. I got neither better nor worse, but never “bad.”

That changed on Sunday January 30, my 3 week anniversary of the nostril invasion and subsequent positive test result. I woke up to my usual unchanging vital signs, made my breakfast, rested, ate my breakfast, rested, cleaned from breakfast, rested, then considered a nap. And for a few hours it was yet another day in the endless line of days that I was told would be always tiring and be slow to recover from. And then it hit me. Exhaustion like I’d never felt it. I could not walk across the room, the 14 foot room, without stopping partway and resting. Deep breathing was absolutely impossible, as was standing up straight. Shallow breathing was almost as impossible. In fact, breathing suddenly seemed a nee and elusive concept nit yet learned. Fortunately, my sisters had just stopped by to see how things were going and we commissioned their car as a civilian ambulance. The question was asked which hospital and answered without my input, one about 15 minutes north. No, I gasped, turn here. A mere 2 miles away was a new neighborhood hospital with full ER services.

I’ll spare you the details of the hospitalization, the tests the scans, the multiple IV attempts before hitting vein, the ultimate transfer to “the big hospital” because the current site couldn’t comfortably deal with the multiple problems I have and felt it was safer for me there. More test, more scans, more questions (yes I do know I have only one kidney, duh), more doctors!

To make a long story short (yes, yes, I know it’s much too late for that), all the days in and tests reviewed indicate my oxygen is fine and my lungs quite clear, I just cant breathe. With lots of exercise and home based therapy, I can strengthen the muscles that work the lungs which is where the virus decided to attack me and be back to my baseline by summer, maybe? (Everybody else gets pneumonia, I have to be different!)

So I leave you with this. If you’re going out, please wear your masks. Maybe you feel they infringe on your right to who knows what and who really cares, but when you don’t wear it, you are infringing on my right to live. Sorry but – I win. Wear your f-ing mask!

A serious send off – seriously, wear your mask, wash your hands, don’t breathe my air. If we were in the midst of some sort of global automotive crisis you know  darn well you wouldn’t take mechanical advice from (shudder) politicians, so don’t get your medical advice from your mechanic. If you’re really feeling the need to protest, don’t get vaccinated and put only yourself at risk for a cruel and unusual death. Leave the innocent bystanders standing please.

Shields up – phasers on stun

Michael 9 Comments

‘Tis the season! Time again to remind everyone the difference between vaccines and force fields.

Not Vaccinated Section (5)

Not Vaccinated Section (4)

If you don’t want to get the COVID vaccine, don’t, but please, don’t make up reasons. Just that you’re stupid, selfish, irresponsible, and probably one of those people who wears shorts in the dead of winter are plenty enough reasons. Saying you won’t because the vaccine doesn’t work or else why would we be getting all these new cases isn’t a good enough reason.

Why do the people with Twitter and Facebook accounts read the stories that COVID cases are rising and even those who are vaccinated are testing positive, but they don’t read the ones that the vaccinated people getting positive test results are typically asymptomatic or exhibit mild symptoms while the unvaccinated are the ones filling up the hospitals and funeral homes/crematoria?

As a reminder, vaccines work inside the body. They assist the immune system to defend against an intruder virus. When a virus enters the body, the immune system goes to work. It can’t do its job “out there.” It works from home you might say. I would say you can use that as interesting talk at a cocktail party, but… well…

You all know the drill. Get vaccinated and boosted, wear your masks, wash you hands, keep your distance, and eventually you will get to go back out. To those who think that’s a good idea, thank you for your help to save the human race.

Cute stories will return next week.

(PS: Now those are light sabers!)

(PPS: Yes I know I’m mixing my Trek with my Wars. Tough! 😝)

RRSB Persons of the Year

Michael 7 Comments

Nearing the end of the year most everybody will be writing about the year in review (ugh) or resolutions (still ugh but perhaps not disgustingly so). I, because I am me, will embark on my own end of year tangent and instead, celebrate the RRSB First (and Likely Only) Persons of the Year Award.  Yes, you read that correctly – plural “Persons,” singular “Award.” My choice for outstanding individual of 2021 is two individuals.

After careless considerat…  err, careful consideration, I’ve concluded there are two people worthy enough to be the Person of the Year, umm Persons of the Year and they is, I mean are: (drum roll, fanfare, etc, etc), Washington’s newest power couple, Liz Chaney and Joe Manchin.

Yes, that is a match made in Purgatory but they, and as far as I can tell, they alone are the epitome of Representative of the People. There are 535 elected voting representatives in Washington, 100 Senators, 435 members of the House of Representatives. Of those 535 people, 533 are more comfortable voting however their party tells them rather than those who hired them for the job. Only Chaney and Manchin have to the point of loss of standing and threats of censure, voted as they felt best benefited their constituents rather than their party leaders.

Seriously, as we enter 2022 maybe our Congress needs to resolve to improve themselves and the first step is for all 535 of them to write 100 times “I represent the people who voted for me” on any handy blackboard. Then they can rip out the aisles running down the middle of each chamber in that big white building on the hill and rather than assigning seats by party, get all the representatives of each state to sit together like they did when Congress was a new idea back in 1700s. Committee assignments will be made by members’ ability and background and leadership positions will limited to those identified in the Constitution. Yeah, that’s a bunch of pipedreams but they make just as realistic set of resolutions as wanting to lose weight and exercise more, but a guy can dream.

Now, getting back to Joe and Liz, my Persons of the Year. I agree it’s a sad state of affairs when politicians are singled out for bucking the system but face it, if your reps are always voting however their party leader tells them, why are they there. Let’s eliminate 531 positions and leave just one Democrat and one Republican in each house and they can vote on everything by rock, paper, scissors. Makes as much sense as what they’ve gotten done this year their way.

Manchin-Chaney

I remember…

Michael 5 Comments

Oh we are so very close. Just a couple days separate us from Christmas which means it’s well past time for a Christmas movie post.

I didn’t talk about Christmas movies last year. We were too busy praying. Actually, one can never be too busy praying but last year I put the prayer out in public. But this year, let’s talk movies again.

I’ve visited this subject four time before, the most recent from 2019 when I revealed my then current favorite Christmas movie. At the time I said, “I say my current favorite because like children there can be no real favorite among Christmas movies. The favorite is the one making you smile today or remember yesterday, the one encouraging a perfect alternative to an imperfect world and providing an escape from the ordinary.” I stand by that thought still. There can be no favorite among the 873 bazillion holiday film offerings, even if only a handful are truly good movies. If they make you feel good, then they are. Except Die Hard. It isn’t, it never was, it never will be, end of discussion, period. (And it’s not a western either even though the main character does say, “Yippee ki yay.”)

When you get down to it, almost any of our favorite “Christmas movies” can be reworked to be set in some other month, some other season, with some other set decorations, and would play just as well. Maybe we set the bar too low for what we expect of holiday film fare. Maybe we really need those classics that wouldn’t work any other time of the year. Ebeneezer Scrooge would not convey the same sense of repentance in August. A Christmas Carol is a Christmas movie.

My current favorite most likely would work any other time of the year. In fact, the basic story is released dozens of times every year, and I’m surprised Hallmark or Lifetime or whoever churns out a new Christmas story every evening between Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve hasn’t lifted the very plot for one of theirs. My current favorite wasn’t even in the theaters at Christmas, its general release coming in mid-January although it had a Boston release on New Year’s Day. That’s not at all unusual. There are more Christmas movies released in the summer months than any other time. Many studios feel winter releases won’t generate the type of first weekend or first month income their investors demand. One of the greatest Christmas movies of all time, Miracle on 34th Street, was released in June, the classic White Christmas was released in October, and for the younger crowd, it was barely October when Elf arrived. However, you have to give credit to George Minter Productions who managed to get the definitive Christmas Carol starring Alastair Sim as Scrooge released on Thanksgiving Day in the U.S. in 1951. No, release date does not a Christmas movie make.

If you are to go by set decorations and locations, it would be difficult to call my current favorite a very Christmassy Christmas movie. The tree in the Poseidon Adventure gets more screen time and there are few, precious few, presents unwrapped. Most of the action is in a court room and there is one scene where our top credited stars milk a cow. Other than snippets of “Jingle Bells” heard occasionally, there is no Christmas music in a movie featuring a half dozen full songs. Appearances don’t seem to make a Christmas movie either.

So what does make a Christmas movie and why should my current favorite rank so high this year? It has the same unknown last year’s favorite has. Imperfect characters making imperfect plans, and ordinary people doing ordinary things while dealing with ordinary problems. Somehow, among all that mediocrity come glimpses of joy until the end when you find yourself smiling amid the improbability of a happily every after ever happening and the true desire to wish it could.

2021-12-22 (1)My current favorite Christmas movie is the 1940 production of “Remember the Night,” pairing Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck four years before they team up to become the couple you love to hate in “Double Indemnity.” Here they are the non-couple you want so badly to become the couple you love. All the printed synopses are blah. The story they describe isn’t the movie at all. I saw this movie years ago and promptly forgot about it. Maybe it was where I was in my life. Maybe I wasn’t looking for joy. I saw it in the summer and maybe the joy was there but lost in the stifling heat of July. I saw it again a few years ago at Christmas and fell in love with it. This year I can’t get enough of it. To me, it really is “a perfect alternative to an imperfect world.”

As I was doing some research for this post, I discovered it is #69 on Rotten Tomatoes list of top Christmas movies. There are any number of questionable offerings ranked higher, including their number 2, but at least Die Hard isn’t among them and that my friends, is this year’s true Christmas miracle!

2021-12-22 (2)

Watch “Remember the Night” trailer

Doomed to repeat what you never learned

Michael Leave a comment

Two days ago we marked the 80th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor which ushered the United States into World War II, which you remember was the war after “The War to End all Wars.” Or maybe not. I was speaking with a friend that day (the day two days ago, not 80 years ago) and happened to mention I was watching a documentary on the Pearl Harbor of before the attack. The response I got was, “Oh, I’m not into that stuff. I guess I’ve never been interested. In school we didn’t talk about anything that happened before 1960.” This is not a young person saying this. I wanted to say back, “Uh, YOU happened before 1960.” Instead, I thought I’d take all of you on a little history lesson. Just in case.

On Sunday, December 7, 1941, the Japanese Imperial Navy launched 350 carrier-based aircraft and conducted an air strike on the U. S. naval base at Pearl Harbor outside Honolulu, and at Navy and Army Air Corps airfields at Kaneohe, Hickam, Ewa, Bellows and Wheeler. More than 2,400 Americans were killed and over 1,100 wounded. Twenty-one ships of the Pacific Fleet had been sunk or damaged, and 75 percent of the planes at the surrounding airfields were damaged or destroyed.

Many people think the attacks on Hawaii were the closest that ever came to mainland USA but in fact, there were four other Japanese attacks and one German incursion onto American soil. Japanese submarines launched missile attacks on the Ellwood Oil Field outside Santa Barbara, California and on Fort Stevens, Oregon, both with minimal damage. Oregon was also the site of aerial bombing when the wooded area at Brookings, Oregon was targeted with incendiary bombs, again inflicting little damage. In 1944 and 1945, the Japanese launched high altitude balloons carried across the Pacific at 30,000 feet on the jet stream. Bombs were timed to drop three days after launching with the hopes they would be over some city or wooded area that would be set on fire by the fallen devices. Over 9,000 such balloons were launched but less than 350 made it across the Pacific, some remarkably as far east as Michigan. The only fatalities were a woman and five children in Oregon. (Oregon had it rough.) Their deaths are considered the only combat casualties to occur on U.S. soil excluding territories during World War II. The largest German incursion onto American soil occurred when two 4 man teams of Nazi saboteurs landed, one in New York and one in Florida, with orders to attack transport hubs, power plants and industrial facilities. No attacks were ever confirmed to this group before they were captured and tried for espionage. In addition to these attacks on American soil, at least 10 ships were sunk by the German navy operating in American waters.

So, that’s enough battle history. If you can’t grasp the pain inflicted on the thousands of people in the then Territory of Hawaii including 68 civilian deaths and the six casualties in Oregon, you can assume it was worse than vaccinated.

Those Americans lucky enough to not be among the 16 million and some sent to war, were subject to terrific life changes. Virtually everyone worked, and almost all work targeted the war effort. Between 1942 and 1945, less than 150 new cars were sold in the United States. No new tires were available so if you were fortunate to have a car and some gas ration coupons and could go anywhere but were then unfortunate enough to have a flat tire, you weren’t going anywhere. But if you did go anywhere, you went there at a national speed limit of 35mph. In addition to gasoline, fuel oil, coal, firewood, butter, sugar, meat, milk (canned milk), shoes, nylon, and silk were among products rationed to be diverted to the military. War also disrupted trade, limiting the availability of some products, and controlling prices of other. To satisfy the war metal needs, basements, backyards, and attics were stripped of old cars, bed frames, and kitchen utensils.

Maybe you want to take a minute and re-read that paragraph in between complaining that you can’t find ANYTHING you’re looking for this Christmas and that it is taking SOOOOOO long to get the little you can find.

Still, most Americans were lucky during World War II. The daily bombing felt by England happened thousands of miles away, the mass executions of Italian and French resistance fighters were farther still. At least three million Chinese were enslaved to work for the Japanese during the war. Never forget the six million Jews who were victims of the Nazis. Also never forget the other casualties of the planned annihilation of “inferiors.” It’s been estimated as many as 17 million civilians died either as a result of Nazi ideological policies. In addition to the 6 million Jews killed during the Holocaust and an additional 6 million ethnic Poles and other Slavs, and Roma were killed in death camps or by mass shootings, and so also were homosexuals, religious, and other minorities similarly dispatched. On the other side of the world, almost 200,000 Japanese civilians were killed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki with at least as many injured. It has been estimated that of the 75 million who were killed in battle during World War II, 40 million were civilians. I said most American civilians were lucky. Not all. About 100,000 Japanese, and about 14,000 German and Italian citizens were interned by the U.S. In case you are wondering, Canada, our “nice” neighbors to the north, had a similar program.

Remember these numbers the next time you want to complain your rights are being trampled when you’re asked to wear a mask or get a shot.

So that’s enough for the non-battle history of WWII. And I even got my couple digs in. Wow, I wonder what kind of world we might be living in if they did talk about some of the history that happened before 1960. Maybe I wouldn’t have to dig so deep.

Sorry it couldn’t have been a happier post so close to Christmas. I guess 80 years ago those people on Oahu thought the same thing. Let’s try to remember these things on days other than remembrance days. Please? Thank you.

(sorry, no cute picture today either)

Better late than hurried

Michael Leave a comment

I’m late with this week’s post. I was heeding my own advice and after all, it’s not like I’ve a contract with anyone other than myself to put any of this drivel out into the – what’s this week’s buzzword? – metaverse. (Words are interesting only to the point that people can make such a big deal out of them. In their own right, words, even buzzwords, are merely tools. The right strings of words conveying thoughts, hopes, promises, dreams, fantasies, humor…those are interesting.) (But I – all together now – digress.)

2 + 2 5 (11)I was heeding my own advice to take time at the start of December and see where the year has taken me, or started me toward, and what is left to do or want or need before this year becomes last year and next year turns into now. It’s my idea that the beginning of December should be a time spent reviewing the year, clarifying unmet goals, tidying loose ends left by the current year so we can meet January and the new year with the gusto they deserve! (Yes, those we my exact words. More on that in a few sentences.) We more often rush through December as if running away from the carnage left by the preceding eleven months. (More of my words. I like the carnage reference, particularly to address this year.) (Sorry, once again, I – say it with me – digress.)

As yesterday was the first of December (First of December?) (no, that would make it more special than it is, like the Fourth of July – just first of December), I looked back at my goals for 2021 and pondered what I could do in the remaining 31, now 30 days to exit this year on a high note. Yesterday was also a Wednesday and I usually write out my thoughts for the post and schedule it so they are there waiting to share your morning coffee or tea or juice with you. Isn’t that a pleasant thought? Anyway, yesterday’s Wednesday I was busy contemplating my year in review. (I also spent a couple hours in a dentist’s chair but that’s beside the point.)

I’m not sure I’d call my 2021 a rousing success, but I don’t think it was the downer many people may have experienced. Knowing what I know about worldwide pandemics, “return to normal” was not on my list of things to do for 2021, figuring to hold that for another 2, possibly 3 years. Not that I’m clairvoyant, but I was forced to study such things in school and even though school was (wow!) over 40 years ago, viruses haven’t changed. Well, actually, they have, and that’s why I didn’t figure to be completely normal this year. Not that I’m ever completely normal but that “things” would return to normal. (And again, I digr……) (Moving on!) My expectations for 2021 were modest and still I haven’t satisfied them all. The trick now is: which will be deferred to next year, which will be kicked to the curb, and which will be the focus (or foci) of intense and unrelenting effort at completion before the clock strikes midnight on the last day of the year.

What the goals are is not important. That there is a plan to deal with them is. Why now? Who cares? Does it matter and will it make a difference? In order, why not, more than you know, more than you know again, and it sure will!

You may think, and I am right there with you, that December’s concerns should be centered around shopping, wrapping and baking for the upcoming holidays, school concerts, football playoffs, and holiday parties. But, particularly for those working, December days are also filled with short staffing periods, overtime requests, year-end reports, and demands from “upstairs” that this, that, or something else get done, written, and “by on my desk” by tomorrow! Even at home there are demands as decorations don’t hang themselves, dinners don’t cook themselves, holiday linens don’t freshen themselves and festively decked out trees don’t grow on trees. All of this is packed into a month that those whose only jobs are to opine and posit tell us is for family, positive work/life balancing, and retaining (or regaining) our mental health. (Here’s a little trivia for you regarding December. Although crime in general typically peaks during the summer months, most murders are committed in December (U.S. Justice Department).)  So would it kill you to spend some time deciding how you want to spend your December.

And so this is why you didn’t get to read this with your morning coffee, tea, or juice.

To read how to prioritize, please visit my work site and the blog post, “Epilogue.” It opens with “If the year was a book, December would be its epilogue. Epilogues summarize and clarify, often wrapping up those loose ends in the plot the action left in need of tidying, or of characters’ untold dispositions.” That’s what I want December to be, or at least the beginning of the month – a time to summary the year and clarify our actions to come.

And finally, since I’ve already thrown your day off schedule, let me ask you to visit the rest of the web-site when you get there. Some of you may recall I mentioned the education foundation ROAMcare I partnered with a friend and former colleague to establish last year. We began the foundation to instill enthusiasm and energy in the workplace, particularly pharmacies and health care systems given that was our background. As we reviewed our material and considered comments, we determined the concepts we are presenting are suitable for everybody and have refocused our efforts to the general public. We are in the process of removing specific pharmacy references from the site and that’s actually one of the goals I want to satisfy this year. On our home page we encourage all visitors to “Express your resolve, refresh your enthusiasm, add passion to your purpose, and put more care into everything you do in your personal life, your professional life, your family life, and everywhere they meet.” I invite you to visit ROAMcare.org, read our blogs, listen to our podcasts, or visit our Motivation Moments and let me know if you found them useful or at least not a waste of time. Thanks!

A Prayer for Thanksgiving 2021

Michael 4 Comments

ThanksgivingPrayerI published the post below in 2017. The world has changed since but our feelings toward it seem about the same. That no specific events are mentioned may be why I can look at that today and not be surprised that it doesn’t intimate the world’s current events. I wonder if it would have been as appropriate in 1945 or will be relevant in 2067. I wasn’t here yet for the former and don’t expect to make it to the latter so I will concentrate on 2017 and 2021 and find we are still just as clueless. Pity.

So here is my tale and my prayer from 4 years ago. I will repeat the prayer a few times today. Hopefully I won’t forget to say it on some other days also. That would be the real pity.

Happy Thanksgiving – or maybe we start with just Happy Thursday. Non-holidays need prayers too.

Today is Thanksgiving in the United States. It was or will be likewise around the world. Everybody is thankful for something and most nations have managed to work in a holiday to legitimize the feeling.

I don’t know how others do it but Americans have been managing to delegitimize feelings quite efficiently lately. We’ll tout our tolerance and claim to accept all and then slur anyone who doesn’t feel the same and blur want for welcome. We support everything and everyone as long as it or they support us in the manner to which we think we should be accustomed. Our gratitude for what we have is matched by our appetite for what we don’t.

Sometime today while I think of all that I am thankful for I’ll manage to miss most of them. So will everyone else. Mostly we’re not bad people as much as clueless ones. Clueless to the differences between our reality and the one that’s really out there. And clueless to how much we rely on what we don’t even know is happening.

So when you give your thanks today that hopefully you won’t restrict to just today I offer you the prayer I started today with.

Heavenly Father, this is the day set aside to give thanks for Your surpassing goodness to human beings. Let me give proper thanks for my blessings  –  those I am aware of as well as those that I habitually take for granted. And let me use them according to Your will.

Happy Thanksgiving today and every day you think to be thankful.

Oh so close!

Michael 2 Comments

It’s been a couple weeks now, I was reading the daily headlines and took note of one, “Ginny Mancini Dies.” Of all the thoughts I could have had, the one I had was, ”Wow, she must have been 100!” and not hyperbolically. I knew Henry Mancini would have been almost 100 because my father would be almost 100 and they went to school together. As I read the obituary, I discovered she was close, but not quite. The former Ginny O’Connor was 97 years, 3 months old at the time of her death.

Today’s post is not about Ginny Mancini, nor is it about Henry, not even my father. It’s about 97 year olds and other peri-centenarians.

Undoubtedly you remember some of my best posts have to do with obituaries. Well, not completely true, but I find them fascinating even if I wrote about them only twice, and one of those two times rather obliquely. It really doesn’t matter who is the subject of the obituary, (not to me, but I won’t speak for the family), it matters what is said in those first few phrases. Naturally you can’t get to the meat of the matter without getting past the name and age. We already talked about those names (What’s in a (Nick)Name), so now let’s look at those ages. For the last few weeks, I’ve been doing just that, looking at the ages of those memorialized in the daily obituary column. I’ve discovered a really popular age for people to move on to Phase II, at least for the last couple weeks, is 97.

20200430_164951On one single day I noted seven of the 15 death notices were for 97 year olds. One of the others was 95 and another 93. The following day featured obits at four more folks aged 97 and one 98. Over the course of that week, I counted fourteen 97 year olds, three at 96, five 95, two who were 91, and the lone 98 year old. (Yes, I did.) (Really.) (So don’t believe me, I know I did!!) That’s a bunch of almost centenarians. During that whole week I also noticed one news article noting the upcoming 104th birthday of a local citizen and of one other joining the ranks of the century-folks. These weren’t just your run of the mill, “John Doe Turns 100” fluff pieces. They were in-depth discussions on the secret to long living, happy lives, and what’s the most surprising thing you’ve seen in your century of roaming the earth. That’s important to me and it’s equally important to me that I get to 100. I find myself fascinating and deserve to be interviewed too.

The surest ways I’ve found for a non-athlete, non-politician, non-celebrity type person to be queried on the state of the world are to win a Nobel Prize or turn 100. In my case, turn 100. But in that one week I spotted only two hitting the hundred (or better) mark while twenty people had their famous 15 minutes distilled to three minutes or less reading time for just getting oh so close.

You know, even considering how old I feel on a lot of days, especially after rising but before coffee, getting to even “just” 97 seems like such a long way away. I wonder what Nobel categories I could sneak my way into.

It’s that time again

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Once upon a time they lived happily ever after (2)Did you notice we shifted time last week? Most of us. If you didn’t notice then you probably picked up on it if you were on social media, read any newspaper editorials, and tuned into a television or radio talk show as we once again took part in the semi-annual “why do we have to change the clock let’s stay on daylight saving time all year long” debate. Apparently in the last five days, traffic accidents have gone up 13%, hearts attacks increased by more than 50%, and two more glaciers have disappeared. I don’t know about the glaciers but the other stuff indeed I’ve read with my own eyes. Personally, I don’t care about whether we do or don’t have daylight saving time (and yes, that is the correct nomenclature regardless of the bazillion people who say daylight savings time). What I don’t understand is why if all these people are invoking that it is not natural to shift time twice a year are not also invoking a steady diet of natural, AKA standard time. Apparently they don’t want to be bothered with changing time but enjoy the extra hour of daylight at the end of the day rather than the beginning. The other thing I don’t understand is that 19 states have legislature pending to adopt year round daylight savings time and one to adopt standard time as the, um, well, standard time. That, by my rudimentary grasp of mathematics equals 20, and 20 from 50 equals 30 states who don’t care. Thirty is greater than twenty so invoking the age old democratic dictum that majority rules, let’s just leave it all alone. (Of course, exceptions to old dicta are made for former Presidents who can’t count.)

It’s that time again doesn’t mean the only thing we have to discuss this week is time. No, that’s just the warm-up. The main event is that it’s that time again to clear the desk of all the little sticky notes of stuff that has to be mentioned before the weight of them buckles the left front desk leg. For instance, did you know:

Pennsylvania’s state senate just passed a bill, now to go to the state house for debate, eliminating the need for a permit to carry a weapon, either open or concealed. Actually firearms, not all weapons. Apparently somebody has been reading only part of the Second Amendment again. From a news article, proponents of the bill said, “law-abiding gun owners should not need the government’s permission to carry a firearm.” I’m writing my state senator tomorrow insisting he introduce legislation saying that law-abiding citizens should not need the government’s permission to drive a car, own a car, practice law, medicine or cosmetology, be a nurse, pharmacist or barber, bury people, cremate others, or drive school busses filled with our future bullies, er leaders. And we certainly don’t need the government’s permission to set our clocks twice a year.

Also in the news: Dixie State University is close to changing its name, one often associated with the Deep South and slavery, but not without local opposition. It seems the name has a lot of support because the region has no history of slavery but that “Dixie” references its attempt to become a major cotton growing area outside the Deep South in the late 1800s. So now you’re confused also. Well maybe this will clear things up. The proposed new name of the college is Utah Tech University. Who knew Utah was a big cotton grower?

Circling back to Pennsylvania: An attorney was having difficulty navigating his way through the metal detector at the Allegheny County Courthouse. After removing his coat and emptying his pockets of wallet, coins, and keys, and still setting off the detector he asked the guard to “wand” him because it was his suspenders that were causing the alert. He knew that because he almost always is stopped there because of his suspenders. Apparently the guard was not impressed with His Dapper-ness and instructed him to take off his suspenders which the now less than dapper lawyer did along with the trousers said suspenders were supporting, and passed through the metal detector in socks, shirt, underwear, and apparently a good measure of attitude. The attorney was charged with disorderly conduct. A newspaper article detailing the incident reported the lawyer stated, “(the) security guard “got in my personal space” and demanded that he take off his suspenders or leave. (The attorney) said he was frustrated and did not want to be late for his pro bono work representing people in the family court.” Perhaps the next time he is off to do his pro bono work for the people he may want to invest in a belt. No word on if he was already late because he incorrectly reset his watch earlier in the week.

Happy Veterans’ Day to me and many many many many many others. Every now and then I have to remind myself that I really am a veteran. I’m not permitted to claim protected veteran status thanks to an executive order dating back to the Obama administration conferring said status only to those having served during combat or awarded the Armed Services Medal which was established on June 1, 1992. I was separated in March 1992 with no combat duty.

I think that’s enough although I could mention how Prince Harry claims to have forewarned of the Capitol riots, that Dr. Oz, an Ohio Native and a current New Jersey resident is mulling a run in the Pennsylvania 2022 Senatorial race, or that a cow closed a major roadway in England for an hour, a morning rush hour, while 10 police officers attempted to, ahem, corral the bovine. I thought cows jumped over the moon, this one jumped over the fence. And if that cow was planning on a trip to the moon, or at least to the International Space Station, she would be doing it in a diaper, just like the returning astronauts had to wear on their eight hour trip home because the toilet in their SpaceX capsule was broken. Not to worry that we didn’t get to these. There will be more time again some other time again for more of that time again.