Happy 217th to the USCG

Today marks the 217th birthday of the United States Coast Guard. I raise my roll of Life Savers to them all -- even my retired coastie brugly other.

Both my brother and his wife served in the Coast Guard. In fact, they met in boot camp. They both served as radiomen (I think they may have changed the title to communications officer, since the 1980s, but don't quote me on it. I only know what I hear, and I'm a little deaf ... or, is it daft?), and eventually were both stationed in Alaska, where they became serious enough to marry, and where my brugly other's little bathtub, the cutter Woodrush, received the emergency signal from the cruise ship Prinsendam.

My brugly other told us all, once, that the Woodrush was so old and so pitifully underpowered that, although it was the first ship to receive the distress call, it was the last to arrive at the scene. Nonetheless, it was actively involved in rescuing its share of the hundreds of passengers stranded on a burning cruise liner.

My sister-in-law, too, was involved in her share of heroics, but after they had been transferred out of Alaska to about the farthest point away.

Only a couple of weeks after her first son was born, she sent her family north to stay with relatives (my mom and dad) while she stayed stationed in Key West to bear the brunt of hurricane Andrew, to keep comm lines open and to pitch in anywhere else they needed her.

I know from experience that Coasties are among the finest people this country has to offer, and I will be proud of my family's ties to them always.

Happy Birthday, ye shallow-water heroes!

books books books books movin' up an' down....

oops. that's not how the poem goes. But it is a bit of a description of my house, and it's got me following Dean Barnett as he posted at Hugh Hewitt's blog. I went over to Library Thing, as he suggested, and found myself engrossed for several hours, trying to enter my library into their database... Sadly, I have not yet even made a hiccup of a dent in the list I need to enter.

This is the problem with being a compulsive verbivore.

Still, if you have a library (and, you probably do), check out this site. It's way cool!


Afterthought: I'm going to have to ask for a lifetime membership for my birthday. The free account only allows you to enter 200 titles. That doesn't even cover what's in the bathroom, at home.

I gotta get more shelves, or stop going to auctions.

The real thing

Coca-Cola.

I've liked it most of my life. Even though I'm supposed to avoid caffeine, I still drink a Diet Coke each day, to keep me breathing.

I now like the company even more -- since they're proving themselves to be a corporation with a mission beyond simple sales. They're building the world a house and furnishing it with love -- or, at least with water. According to the WSJ (HT: Scott Johnson @ Power Line), Coke is providing clean drinking water to people who truly need it:

In Kenya, where more than half of the rural population has no access to clean water, the Atlanta beverage giant brought water-purification systems, storage urns, and hygiene lessons to 45 schools in a poor western province. Children learn how to use a chlorine-based solution to kill diseases that come from contaminated, muddy pools or remote wells -- and are taught to teach their parents.

In Mali, Coke is helping extend municipal water taps beyond the country's capital of Bamako. In India, where the company has been accused of draining water from poor communities for its own use, the company is building rainwater-harvesting structures to help alleviate chronic water shortages. Coke's bottlers are also implementing water-efficiency measures.

Further,

Coke hasn't limited its largess to digging wells and buying clay pots. The company also spent $2 million last year to help create the Global Water Challenge, a coalition of corporations and organizations that is based at the United Nations Foundation. Coke also helped to entice the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to award a $9.5 million grant to CARE and other organizations to expand on the Kenya schools project, implementing it in as many as 1,500 more schools over the next five years.

I knew there was another reason for drinking Coke. Besides offering a particular gesture to Indra Nooyi, that is.

And now, back to the Hillside Singers...

Friday Catblog: Eddie makes himself comfy

I've been cat-sitting this guy,
Eddie Puss.
I've taken care of him before, last year about this time, and he took a day or so to get used to my presence in his house.

It's amazing how quickly he decided I had a lap worth cultivating, again.


He even likes to watch the news with me. I think he likes it most when they announce they're going to paws for station identification.



If you're looking for more beasties with which to cuddle (and a few less snuggly), make certain you visit Modulator, for Friday Ark #121, and, come Sunday evening, be sure to seek out the Carnival of the Cats, this week to be hosted by Pet's Garden Blog.

Jackie Danicki needs a little help

Jackie Danicki lives in London, and, while on public transportation, was assaulted by two brutes. She describes the circumstances without unnecessary ugly detail:

Don’t be fooled into thinking that, just because you’re minding your own business, some punk isn’t going to decide you need messing with. Sadly, scumbags like this have no problem with launching unprovoked attacks on women. If you dare to wear something as revealing as a pair of Levi’s and a long winter coat, you may not only be physically assaulted but have names like “slut” and “whore” screamed at you on a crowded Tube platform.

She has posted a photograph of one of her assailants, and if you are in the London area and know this person, Jackie could use your help in catching the scum and putting him and his pal behind bars.

Jackie also points out that the law in Great Britain does not allow for self-defense in such cases -- at least, not traditional tools for defense. In her comments section, she points out that one woman, was arrested and jailed for carrying a knife she used to defend herself against an attempted rape, and she had been carrying it since a previous rape...

When I first enrolled in art school at Pratt, in Brooklyn, NY, before Giuliani cleaned up Times Square, the first order of business for all new female student on campus was a self-defense seminar. New York's public transportation also barred carrying knives, guns, hat pins(!), etc., but our instructors taught us to sharpen our pencils to a fare-thee-well and carry them with intent. They also suggested that, since mace and pepper spray were uncontrollable, we girls should invest in a spray bottle of cheap perfume -- heavy on the alcohol content -- or one of those plastic lemons filled with lemon juice, to use instead of mace. It is a lesson I have not forgotten. I couldn't carry the perfume due to allergies, and the lemon juice proved too much of a temptation to me (yum!), so it was pointed sticks, for me. When I lived in the city, I grew my hair long and used sharpened chopsticks to hold it up in a topknot or a bun. Lucky for me, I only had to use the sticks once outside my hairstyle, and only to fish something out of a small space.

Regardless of all that, though, the real question is, will you come to help a woman you don't know? Or, is chivalry truly dead?


(HT: LauraW at Ace of Spades HQ)

Quiet reflection after the guests have gone home

In one of our downtime moments this morning, between baking pies and turkey-bastings, before the hordes descended, Mom handed me the US News & World Report, opened to Mortimer Zuckerman's column (available online here). I didn't have much chance to finish it until just now, that the guests have gone home again.

Well, Thanksgiving does seem to be the theme of the week, I guess. Zuckerman wrote about the American tendency toward giving and being seen giving...

We are blessed by our history. The early immigrants came mostly from countries with a strong, central government, a dominant church, and an energetic aristocracy. Central government assumed the responsibility for the public good, with its costs underwritten by taxes. America, by contrast, was a young, frontier society with no tradition of strong, central government, with no state religion and no established aristocracy. When American pioneers wanted to raise a church or a school or a hospital in their new communities, they had to build it themselves. One farmer couldn't put up a barn by himself, so individual farmers called on friends and neighbors, and when they needed help, the favor was promptly returned. The party the farmer threw for his neighbors after the barn was completed lives on in the wonderfully American phrase "raising the roof."

and how much a part of our culture it really is, as compared to...

Other rich countries have a far higher proportion of hospitals, libraries, and universities-all funded by the state. This reduces the sense of community. The commonplace cry is "Why don't they do something about it?" instead of "Why don't we do something about it?" Many Europeans believe that simply paying taxes absolves them of any further responsibility to their fellow citizens. It is an attitude that is beginning to change somewhat, given the American successes-the "thousand points of light" that the elder President Bush commended. But European governments vary from the stingy to the downright mean in their attitude to philanthropy. Charities in Britain, for instance, have recently been told by the Charity Commission that their endowments could be seized: You can be sure the British Scrooge won't be funding the kinds of imaginative ventures the private donors did.

In other words, by its very nature, in contrast to others', our nation's foundation is built of "If not me, then who?"

But I think he could take this, extend the idea beyond simple charitable acts, beyond barn-raising, beyond rebuilding after disasters, beyond all that. While Zuckerman points out the weaknesses in our system (e.g. the poor in America get lower-quality medical and early education than foreign counterparts), he nonetheless fails to remember how our tendency toward charity goes beyond simply writing checks or building houses.

The people who believe that charity must begin at home, the people who repeatedly say, "If not me, then who?" are also the ones who believe we are the ones to help relieve total strangers of the pain of living under a savage despot. Because Americans believed something had to be done about one threat to all humanity, it was dealt with. The ones who don't rely upon the government to make decisions for the masses expect their government to act when others need, for example, military help. Our civilian volunteers couldn't take down Saddam Hussein and stop his rape squads, but our volunteer armies could, and they did. And they remain in that country, trying to help those good people rebuild decent lives after decades of oppression. Our volunteer military is doing the right, the charitable thing.

If not ours, then whose?

Europe, the United Nations seem incapable of doing anything constructive against murderous legions -- they seem disinclined, in fact, to risk their small, crooked comforts in order to do the right thing for millions of innocents. Socialism, then corruption, and nobody is willing to try, any more, to stop deliberate attempts at mass murder, at genocide. In fact, they are eager to support murderers, either because it suits them financially, or it suits their prejudices.

And, so, it comes down, again, to the question: "If not me, then who?"

As Zuckerman points out, we are a charitable nation. We must never allow that to change.

Gratuitous Postcard: at the medicine lodge

As posted below, ex sailorette and I drove to the VA hospital for more of ex s's usual... tests, tests, tests...

There was a variance from the published plan, though. Me Muddah came along with us, &, in fact, drove us home. I had to take way more antihistamines than I expected, & ex s was pretty well exhausted by both prep and procedures, so, once more, I am indebted to the woman who done birthed me.

The drive to Iowa City is about 2 hours and change, and when we arrived in ex s's van, there was nary a parking space to be found. Lucky for us, there was an elderly couple exiting the V.A. hospital, so we followed them to their car, waiting for them to vacate their space. We'd been in place about 30 seconds when some other woman in a minivan pulled up on the other side of the old couple's car, acting as though she were going to have the space, no matter what.

Now, ex s can usually hold her own, but we all knew it was going to be a long day, & she wasn't going to want to wheel her little chair six blocks, so I offered to hop out & stand in the space for my friend, just to make sure she got this nice, close one (it was only about 25 meters from the main door). As I took my position and the older couple pulled away, the woman in the other minivan very kindly and patriotically waved a flag at me just like this one:


I smiled and waved back, then directed ex s to pull in.

We made our way up to the 8th floor, where ex s checked in, then we did what bureaucracies are so good at having people do. We waited. And waited. And waited. Her appointment was scheduled for 11:00 a.m. At 12:00, a guy in scrubs came past (we were seated in the elevator "lounge", the space between the banks of elevators, where they'd placed about 10 uncomfortable chairs) with a big ol' cardiac monitoring cart, and stopped to speak to a woman sitting on the far side of the hallway -- she was just out of my view, being beyond two fairly large men. She didn't respond. The doctor said, "Ma'am? Ma'am?" a couple more times, put his fingertips to her neck, then quickly said to the men beside her, "Help me get her down on the floor."

We then got to see how effective it is to call a "Code Blue" in Iowa City's VA hospital. I doubt there was a single doctor in the entire building not elbows-deep in a surgery who didn't make his or her way to the 8th floor elevator lounge. There must have been 30 or more people in scrubs gathered at the scene -- and most of them seemed to be doing something constructive (I think there might have been a couple of students there, as well, but don't quote me on it).

Not all of them were dealing with the woman on the floor, either. It seems she and her husband had been volunteering just down the hall, and hubby was in a daze, since she had just sort of passed out right beside him & he hadn't even noticed... He had been tired and looking out the window (or, maybe just zoning out looking past us, at any rate), & never even considered her silence to be anything other than restful. Somebody immediately attended to his needs, and at least three people came over to speak with ex s, Mom, and me, to make sure we weren't traumatized by the whole thing.

I was impressed. The young feller who was first to her side was alert to a crisis when nobody else was -- she had stopped breathing and had no carotid pulse for several seconds before he applied CPR. The rest of the staff on the 8th floor were quick to respond and checked on the needs of others when they saw their own skills weren't needed by the woman or her husband. And everybody maintained a professional demeanor.

That's something I don't always see in gummint-run facilities.

Still, it was almost 2 hours after her scheduled time before ex s got in for her procedure. So, the bureaucratic nonsense of hurry-up-and-wait wasn't completely absent.

Gratuitous postcard: Congratulations on quitting!

Today is the annual Great American Smokeout. Quitting is hard work for anybody. It's harder still, when you're under a lot of external stress.
My bud, ex sailorette, has had her hands full, lately. She has a boatload of kids she's responsible for, plus she finally managed to get her sister a new place to stay (I have to admit, if I shared a house with either of my sisters, I don't know how long I'd be allowed to survive... and we actually like and respect each other), and just recently, her brother's Great Dane bitch had a dozen puppies for her first litter. Add to it that she's still at war with the Veterans Administration over simple things like installation of a wheelchair lift in her van, and proper medical treatment for her back and knees (including appropriate pain medications). And that's not even the half of her headaches!

So that's why I had to spread the word far and wide that she's gone for more than three weeks, now, without a smoke. She got a 'scrip for the patch (she said, the first couple of hours wearing it, it itched like nobody's business -- but since ex sailorette has been in the navy, I've cleaned up her language, here). Since she's maintained this nice, long time without smoke, even under all the excrement her life keeps handing her, I've decided she needs this card. (C'mon, pal, brag a little!) It's hard enough to quit when life is easy...

If you know of somebody else deserving of the same, on this, the day of the 29th annual Great American Smokeout, please feel free to share this with him or her. Our lungs will thank you all, too.

Hunt to stop hunger

My local paper ran a slightly edited version of this press release today, for the Illinois Sportsmen Against Hunger. What it boils down to is this: if you hunt purely for sport, the folks who are seriously short on funds for food could really use what you bag. The IL Department of Natural Resources has, for the past few years, held a drive to collect deer burgers for the food banks and other charities within the state. If you donate a whole deer, the state will offer a $50 donation for processing it.

There's more, at the link, including contact info and the like.

Honestly, I've never much cared for venison, but I wouldn't look a gift deer in the mouth, this winter. Not that I'm personally begging for your catch, or anything.

I'm just sayin'.



(And I have to admit, this is more front-page-worthy than the article about a WWII veteran who plans to see a movie. Much as I respect the servicemen who survived the Pacific Campaign, I think the news would have been more appropriate if he'd just been to the film and was giving it a review of some sort. But that's my paper for ya.)