thinkingthings

Power Corrupts and the Message is Lost

2010-02-24T22:37:00.004-06:00

Turns out John Edwards is a phony, a sleaze, a stereotypical politician. From a clinical view it is sadly interesting that this man: the self-professed son of a mill worker, the first in his family to go to college, the postcard of the American Dream, could dash it all on the rocks of power and greed.

At some level he must have really hated himself or feared what he was becoming. Maybe for about a millisecond. But then the money and the authority and the power just kept rolling, rolling, rolling.

Maybe he's just got Antisocial Personality Disorder. You know, the whole "lack of conscience" problem.

In the final analysis, though, it doesn't much matter. His message, which was important and relevant, that our nation is divided into two Americas, and that those that have much need to help those that have little, is now lost in the sleazy tabloid headlines with a not-very-pretty 1980's cocaine chicky and her love-child.

I'm not re-writing history when I say that each time I waited in line at MSU (three times) and again at Fassnight Park to listen to Edwards speak, and each time I wrote checks to his campaign, a teeny tiny part of me wondered if this wasn't just a bit too good to be true. But I so wanted him to be for real that I pushed it back and cheered him on. I even dragged the Young One to his speeches and let him shake Edward's hand.

Now when I watch this play out on the news, I just feel sick. I wish I could get those pitiful little donations back. I wish I could scrub the Young One's hand, and apologize for taking away his afternoons of playtime to spend listening to someone who was creating a web of deceit and betrayal.

John Edwards did have some important things to say. Those words and messages are lost now, and that's the worst tragedy of this whole mess.

thinking things outloud

2010-01-27T23:06:00.004-06:00

I need to start blogging again.

I say that to myself almost everyday--usually when I'm trying to condense a thought into something short enough to fit into a "facebook" status, or when I'm feeling especially opinionated.

This mental list of things I need to do, of which the "need to blog" is a teeny tiny part, has gotten to a point where it is paralyzing. Perhaps that is the ultimate method of procrastination, I don't know. I do know that I've got to push through it or drown. So I'd doing what Morita would suggest: Feel your feelings, know your purpose, do what needs to be done. http://www.todoinstitute.org/constructiveliving.html (Once I get in the habit of this, I'll be able to make that a link. Soon, soon.)

In a moment what needs doing, for better or worse, is to push the publish button and begin to think things out loud and on purpose again.

Here goes...

Hey, this site just saved me 17 cents!

2008-07-04T00:12:00.002-05:00

Go here: gas edge to find out if its worth it to drive a little further for gas that's a few pennies cheaper per gallon.

In my case turns out it would have cost me about 17 cents to "save" the extra .03 cents a gallon to drive a few miles out of the way for a cheaper pump price.

Every penny counts these days.

Behavior Support starts in your own backyard

2008-06-25T16:37:00.004-05:00

I've been too swamped with work to post until I witnessed this craziness at a conference in Columbia yesterday. It was too rich to pass up.

Picture this:

A packed hotel conference room full of school administrators. That's fancy talk for Principals, Assistant Principals, Superintendents and the like. You know, the people teachers and students alike will walk down different halls to avoid, the ones who sometimes wield their power with wooden paddles drilled with holes. The authority figures, the check-signers, the deciders. Yeah, yeah, surely the vast majority are like Morgan Freeman in some 1980's movie where he saves the gang-ridden school from a horrid fate, but play along with me here, kids.

The speaker was a honcho, a muckety-muck and frankly, the real deal. He had flown in from Oregon, and is someone who is well-respected, frequently published, and clearly had gone to some trouble to speak to this huge crowd.

I'm in the back row, so I can see the crowd and the Expert.

Which means I can also see the three different people who are openly READING THE NEWSPAPER, cover to cover, while the Expert talks. When one woman finishes the sports page, she opens her laptop, connects to the hotel's wireless connection and begins shopping for a new cell phone.

They're not even trying to hold the newspapers on their laps. They hold them open, full page up, leisurely turning page after page, occasionally glancing at the speaker, and sipping from their coffee cups.

Do you think they would tolerate this rude behavior from their students?

I wish the speaker would have stopped his talk and sent them out.

I wish I would have had the courage of my convictions to have told them to go to the lobby to read and surf the net.

I wish I could tell you positively that a couple of them sported name tags from Lebanon Schools, but I'm only 85% sure.

More than anything I wish I'd only dreamed this horrible behavior.

Oh yeah--the topic of the conference? Missouri Schoolwide Positive Behavior Support.

Administrator--heal thyself.

A Tennessee Williams Kind of Day

2008-06-10T14:07:00.008-05:00

I have always depended on the kindness of strangers

After writing many blog posts describing sad situations, and after allowing my sadness to overwhelm me to a point that I just wanted to hide in the woods, I was reminded yesterday that it is truly through the kindnesses of others--sometimes the kindnesses of strangers-- that we see the love of God.

I am humbled and awed by the power of Kindness.

I vow to pass it on.

"What one heart cannot bear alone, a hundred loving hearts can bear with faith"

Earth to Parents...

2008-05-30T15:41:00.005-05:00

This sign now graces the door at the office where I work.

It is a sad situation when adults have to be reminded not let doors slam into their children.

However, so many parents needed to be told to hold the doors for their kids that the receptionist finally just put up a sign.

Stress and fear can cause people to forget to look outside themselves. There are many other causes of selfishness, though, some of them not so understandable.

Everyone has a battle to fight, I get that. But even if it is just about making sure doors don't slam in their faces--literally or figuratively--children need our protection. These days, I think we all need a little kindness--and an open door is a pretty nice place to start.

Leaning on the lamp post

2008-05-23T16:34:00.004-05:00

The Herman's Hermits were one of my favorite pop music groups as a kid. I remember going with my bff "hilba" to the Continental Theater in T-town where we'd munch on chocolate Flicks candy and watch those cute British boys' movies. The velvet seats and curtains looked pristine in the half light, and the summers seemed to last forever. It was an innocent time, and the music was a perfect score.

Now, though, thinking of hermits makes me think less of "Hen-er-y-the-Eighth-I-Am" and more of how much I'd like to be one. A hermit--not Henry the 8th. I'm so very tired of being disappointed in people. I'm tired of rudeness and I'm tired of haters. I don't want to have to crank up my iPod in the grocery store to drown out parents screaming at their children to "shut up" or bribing them with candy if they'll just sit down. I'm sick of switching news channels just to hear more "experts" yelling at each other, as if the pitch of their rants proves the validity of their argument. I don't want to think that my own city government was threatening to sue another city councilman because he questioned a decision.

A presidential candidate refers to his wife with the C-word? Oh please just give me a shack in the mountains. People say someone diagnosed with cancer "deserves" it because his political views differ from theirs? I just want to be off the grid, please. I don't think Mr. Twitty will miss me. A child tells me his mother says he's "worthless" because he forgot to take the bus home? Please let me stay in a corner somewhere.

Maybe the Herman's Hermit's line about "leaning on the lamp post" was right in one sense. It isn't "in case a certain little lady walks by" though, it's because I've got to keep myself upright. If I can't be a hermit, then I've got to keep fighting the fight. I'm raising a child in this world, and I'll be damned if I'm just going to sit back and let it be the sort of place where the mean spiritedness that seems so prevalent is acceptable. Someway, somehow, the pendulum must swing to a place where people think before they speak. And where thoughtfulness and consideration are expected, appreciated and acknowledged.

...second verse same as the first...

Riverside Chevrolet in Tulsa, Oklahoma Scams Old Ladies

2008-05-16T08:51:00.002-05:00

My mother turned 80 years old yesterday. Life without my dad over the past 13 years has been hard for her, and it gets harder as her bank account dwindles into nothingness.

When she got the flyer from Riverside Chevrolet, she said she was going to toss it in the trash like she would any other such brochure, but she got side-tracked by a neighbor. She wound up scratching off the covered area that the flyer said would show whether she'd WON A PRIZE!!!! if the numbers matched.

Of course they matched.

The prizes ranged from something like $100 to $1000 in WalMart gift cards and prizes and a new Chevy Van.

She asked the neighbor if this could be real. He'd gotten the same flyer but his numbers didn't match, so they decided that maybe it wasn't a scam. He called Riverside Chevrolet to check it out.

"All you have to do is come to the Lot and claim your prize," they told him. "You're guaranteed to win!"

Now my mother no longer drives. Osteoporosis has taken her from a statuesque 5'11" to a tiny thing with fractured backbones and twisted ankles. She pays people to drive to the myriad doctors she sees weekly and who essentially make up the bulk of her social life. So, she had to find someone who could drive her the twelve miles round trip to the showroom to "CLAIM HER PRIZE!!!"

So the night before my mama turns 80 years old, she stays up most of the night thinking about what a blessing it could be if she really, truly won $100. About how that money could make such a huge difference this month in her budget. She didn't really allow herself to believe that the $1000 or the Van could be a possibility, she said, but she'd dreamed a little bit about how many months that money could last if she gotten it as well.

She prayed, too. Thanking God, she said, for the possibility of the extra money. She said she never did feel really excited about the whole thing, that she'd not really gotten her hopes up too much.

Oh how I hope that's true.

Because of course when they got across the river to the car lot, they discovered they'd been scammed. There was no prize. There was no $100. No $1000 at Wal-Mart. No Chevy van.

Oh, wait, they got a $5 coupon at Wal-Mart, which my mother gave to the man who took off work to drive her there.

I'll call them, and the Better Business Bureau, and such, but how can I get the image out of my head of my mother, awake by herself, hoping against hope that she'd won this little prize? It's not about her having some time of happiness imagining the winnings. When you are elderly and frightened, it's not about "winning prizes" it's about surviving month-to-month and what that little extra can mean. And then to go all that way to find out you've been scammed.

Happy Birthday, Mom.

Searching... for trees

2008-05-13T22:54:00.005-05:00

Just by changing the search engine we use, we can help a world-wide effort to reduce greenhouse gases.

Give it a try: Go to Ecocho and run a search. It uses the Yahoo search engine technology so you get plenty of relevant hits, and for every 1000 searches Ecocho sponsors the planting of two trees.

When you click on their site, scroll down towards the bottom of the page, then click on "what's ecocho?" You'll get the straight goods about how the system works and how you can verify that they're actually doing what they purport to do.

I've been a die-hard Google user for a long time, but I've found that the Ecocho search engine gives me equally good results. And if I can help the planet even just a tiny bit by doing this I can't think of one good reason to not use it.

If we all use it imagine how all the tiny bits can add up.

Cut off your nose to spite your face?

2008-05-07T22:52:00.005-05:00

If the cable TV media is to be believed, scores of Democrats sit with their pocket knives open, poised and ready to slice off their noses, just to spite their own faces.

Pundits are tripping over themselves trying to convince us that Democrats are so enamored with one candidate or the other that if their's isn't nominated they'll simply vote for the Republican candidate John McCain.

Could someone who believes so intensely in what Barack Obama professes to uphold so easily sell out for four more years of economic peril, war and soaring energy costs, just to spite Hillary Clinton?

Or could a Hillary Clinton supporter be so petty as to just throw away their purported standards simply because their candidate didn't win?

An election for President of the United States is much, much more than a competition about personalities. It is also about a platform and standards and an overall philosophy. It should never be so simple as just flipping from one party to the other because you don't get your way.

The decisions we face in the next four years are monumental and we must take this election as seriously as if it were a matter of life or death.

Freedom of Speech--in Living Color

2008-04-08T21:13:00.006-05:00

Jack Merritt, the Sheriff of Greene County, Missouri while lobbying today in the State Capital, after hearing an American Idol finalist sing the American anthem, is quoted as saying:

"The way I hear Jason sing the national anthem makes you want to go out and kill a communist," Merritt said. "If that doesn't make you patriotic, nothing will."

Just because you think it, doesn't mean you have to say it.

It's time for President Gore to move into the White House

2008-03-30T21:59:00.006-05:00

The Democrats are about to blow it. In a year when even the stodgiest Republicans predicted an easy Democrat take-over in the White House, we're managing to do little more than look petty, stubborn and self-serving.

I'm almost embarrassed to claim membership in the Party. Obama and Clinton bickering and tripping over their own words are just a part of it. Add to that the DNC refusing to "count" the primaries in Florida and Michigan because they weren't held when the DNC wanted--bad PR, bad business and bad judgment.

Oh yeah, we've also got Democrat Joe Leiberman stuck like Velcro to John McCain, and politicians like Claire McCaskill and the newly-goateed Bill Richardson all starry-eyed, fawning over Barack Obama.

On slow news days, the media whips out the Democrat tradition of Super Delegates to bat around. Betcha they can keep the controversy going on that right up till the final vote. They're practically drooling over video clips of preachers hollering about the race relations, and Hillary Clinton exaggerating stories from 16 years ago.

Can we fix it? YES WE CAN!

www.draftgore.com

Its not too late. We elected him once, and in the years since, he's shown the dignity and intelligence he would bring to the office.

The situation in our country--in the world--it too serious, too dangerous, to let this election be about race, or gender, or age alone. There is too much at stake now. We need to elect a president who can resurrect the economy, stabilize the crisis in the Middle East, work to find solutions for the decay in society's foundation: Education, health care, housing.

And we need to nominate a candidate who can win the presidency.

Will tomorrow be any different?

2008-03-24T22:16:00.006-05:00

It was the noon hour on Good Friday. The atmosphere in Lucy's Chinese Food was casual, with good smells coming from the kitchen. I waited in line behind a woman ordering lunch for the three or four adults and some kids who were taking seats at the table closest to her. One of the kids was a little boy of about 6 or 7 who was jockeying for position next to the chair he wanted when he collided with a waitress carrying a full glass of coke.

Splash! Crash! Ice and soda tumble to the floor in a spectacular thunk.

You'd have thought it was a bottle of Dom Perrignon.

"KNUCKLEHEAD" the woman placing the order (his mother we assume) shouts at the boy.

Everyone freezes.

The waitress starts to push ice cubes back into the cup, when the mother turns ferociously again and says, "See what you did?" and then "What did you do?"

This kid has clearly learned his lesson before. "She did it," he said quietly.

"Whatever," whispers the waitress as she sweeps up ice and soda with a stiff broom.

"Are you lying to me? Is he lying to me?" She asks the waitress now, with her voice getting harsher, louder still.

"No," (by now the waitress has figured mom out, too), "No, that's what happened."

Mother then balled up her fist and shook it in the little boy's face.

Happy Easter.

A Sign of Our Impending Doom

2008-03-23T22:42:00.007-05:00

This advertisement was at the top of my gmail page:

"BookSwim: Why buy books when you can rent? Free Shipping, No Late Fees!"

Why rent books when you can borrow them for free at the library for heaven's sake?

Renting books.

I think my head is going to explode.

Nearest Book Meme Arrives

2008-02-21T17:16:00.003-06:00

Granny Geek tossed the "Nearest Book Meme" to us from her hopefully warmer-than-here abode in Texas.

The instructions are simple:

1. Grab the nearest book (that is at least 123 pages long).
2. Open to p. 123.
3. Go down to the 5th sentence.
4. Type in the following 3 sentences.
5. Tag five people.

That's an easy one for Thinkingthings--I pretty much always have a book or two that I'm reading, and an audiobook in the car CD or tape player, with two or three more waiting in the back seat.

The nearest book tonight--and the reason I haven't posted since February 14th--is Stephen King's Duma Key. Its a good'un, like most but not all of King's work. It's also a great read for icy weather in front of a warm fire (that is burning for pleasure, thanks, not because the power is out).

So here you go:

"Somebody better investigate, that's what I think."

"My daughter and I went exploring one day. It looked like outright jungle south of here."

Damned if I can figure out the purpose of this meme. But since reading books is way up on my list of stuff I love to do, I couldn't pass it up, and I also can't pass up flinging this meme on to others--mostly so I can find out what my fellow bloggers are reading.

So, you're up: Sky Girl, Fat Jack, Kate's Camp, Lovely Leah

How quickly we forget...

2008-02-14T08:56:00.004-06:00

It is fascinating how people (read: the media) are suddenly aghast at the thought of "super delegates" altering the wishes of democrat voters at the convention this summer. These delegates may cast votes which could swing the nomination away from whomever the popular vote selected!

How quickly we've forgotten how the United States elects our president anyway. We've forgotten the coup of 2000. We've forgotten that the popular vote in a presidential election basically means diddly squat. The dear old US of A only trusts it's government-by-representation process so far--it is one thing when we talk about city council representatives, or state legislators, or even U.S. Senators, but the president? Heavens no. We need a representative to represent our votes, sort of.

Here's the real scoop. The founding fathers decided to compromise--instead of allowing Congress to choose the president, and instead of allowing the unwashed masses (actually, that would have been the unwashed white male property owners) to elect the president, we-the-people actually elect a slate of "electors" who then vote for president.

You can get more details about the the Electoral College and the actual process here.

Frankly after the fiasco that landed GWB in office in 2000, I find it hard to trust the process of electing our president. So the thought that super delegates could swing a nomination one way or another doesn't really surprise me too much--with the small exception that it is the Democrats doing it. I say "small" because when I think about the old line party members in SW Missouri, I realize that this small group of people wield a large amount of power. I am sure it is even larger on a national level.

It is time that "We the People" refuse to accept the "compromise" made over 200 years ago. Middle aged white guys no longer hold the only authority in this nation, but they don't seem to have gotten that message yet. If the rest of us simply let them usurp the power as we did in 2000 and again in 2004 then we deserve what we get.

Dismantling the Electoral College, and electing the president by popular vote, is one way to ensure that the opinion of the people, not simply the weight of the states, is what drives our nation.

We insist that school kids study history--do voters need a textbook entry to remember something as recent and as significant as a stolen election only 8 years ago?

What good is an election if our votes are not counted and our voices are not heard? This is certainly more important in November as it is at the convention, yet one is surely a symptom of the other.

Note to self:

2008-02-10T23:09:00.000-06:00

"Attitude is the control center of your life."

Charlie Shore, phenom of the St. Louis Hawks 1958 championship team, was acknowledging his induction into the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame when he tossed out this gem on February 10, 2008. He had trouble maneuvering his elderly 6'11" frame towards the microphone, but his talk had the otherwise dazed-by-boredom audience alternately moved and in stitches. Funny how, after his statement about attitude resonated around my brain, the rest of the "thank you mom" speeches didn't seem so boring after all.

It is about attitude, and thinking. Thanks for reminding me, Charlie Shore.

Blogaroni Nominations Are In!!

2008-02-03T12:46:00.000-06:00

The nominees are in for the Springfield Area Local Blogger Awards (the Blogaronis) and Thinking Things got a nomination for Best Personal Blog! How's that for cool? Seriously, thanks for the nod. Being nominated is positive reinforcement for continued posting, and it is a great motivator when it feels oh-so-much easier to think a blog post rather than to actually sit down and type it out. I write at least three posts a day in my head. You can tell by scrolling down about how often I actually type one.

Go to Simple Thoughts to see all the categories and nominees. I am in some esteemed company, for sure. The deadline for voting is February 15th -- you can get all the specifics by clicking on the link.

The Springfield area is chock full of bloggers with much to say. Every blog listed is worth a click and a thorough read. I'm sure proud to be included in the mix.

Now, go vote.

Thank You Robin Carnahan

2008-01-31T22:41:00.001-06:00

Thank you for deciding to not run against Jay Nixon in a Democratic primary for Missouri Governor. Thank you for not risking another split in Missouri's Democratic Party.

Thank you also for saying that you'll run again for Secretary of State. Missourians are lucky to have you in office.

Now the Democrats, and Nixon's campaign organizers, need to get to work. Word has it Ken Hulshof could really give him a run for his money. Nixon isn't going to win by whining about Boy Blunt anymore. He's got to make his own platform clear, and tell Missourians what he's going to do--not what he doesn't like about the other guy. We've gotten that message loud and clear. So, to badly paraphrase the words of Japanese psychiatrist Shoma Morita, it is time for you to tell us what you think needs to be done and how you are going to do it.

While he's at it, Jay Nixon probably ought to spend a little time thanking Robin Carnahan as well.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

2008-01-30T19:42:00.000-06:00

Here's the scene: It is 8:00 on a cold Wednesday morning, and the Missouri House of Representatives Special Committee for Family Services has convened a hearing to listen to testimony about a House Bill affecting more than 147,000 children. Men and women have traveled from all corners of the state to provide testimony. People are nervously shuffling note cards, reading handwritten and typed pages, smoothing skirts and ties, and watching as the legislators take their seats.

As the hearing begins, the legislator sponsoring the bill explains the details and answers questions from his colleagues. Because it is the beginning of the session, I assume that the whispering and low laughter at the back of the hearing room is simply left over from our wait time and surely will taper off.

An MU professor begins her testimony next--she has much important data and research to explain which supports the Bill. But the talking and laughter not only hasn't tapered off, it seems to get louder.

As the legislators question the professor, the people in the back of the room keep twittering. No one raises a gavel or suggests that they take their conversation outside the hearing room. They are tolerated. They are ignored.

Next, the folks who have worked so hard to swallow their nerves and present their opinions to the Committee go one at a time to get their two minutes to speak, and still the noise in the back does not abate.

I finally turn around to see who could possibly be so disrespectful to not only the people speaking but to the entire proceeding. Turns out it is a row of twenty-somethings, three women with big hair (I didn't know that was back in style) and laptops, and a couple of men with open cell phones leaning over each other to talk.

The inappropriateness of this behavior just blows me away. They weren't there to protest the bill--the hearing was plainly open for people to present dissenting opinions (there were none). They didn't present any testimony at all. In fact it wasn't clear at all why they were in the room. Their chairs were in a row next to a door. They could have easily slipped out and continued their oh-so-funny conversation outside the hearing room.

It is just a matter of respect. Respect for the institution, for the history that resonates with a palpable energy inside the Missouri State capitol. Respect for the people who were speaking and who had invested so much into those few moments. Respect for the those who were actually listening to what was being said.

When did we begin to tolerate this kind of behavior? When did we begin to be surprised to hear "please" and "thank you?" How did we get to a point where adequate customer service is often the best we can hope for, or when hearing someone say "excuse me" after they've squeezed us out of their way is so shocking we actually respond with "no, excuse me!"

Something has happened to our society--it seems we've lost respect for each other and for our history. If we stay on this track, it will only get uglier. Respect and dignity go hand-in-hand, if we lose one, we lose the other, and I fear they will be hard to ever get back.

As the late Dan Fogelberg wrote: Lessons learned are like bridges burned, you only need to cross them but once, is the knowledge gained worth the price of the pain, are the spoils worth the cost of the hunt?

Please Robin Carnahan

2008-01-25T22:12:00.000-06:00

Please don't do it.

Please don't run for Governor. Don't split the Democrats again. Didn't we learn anything from the mess Claire McCaskill gave us when she drove a wedge in the party by running against Bob Holden?

I'm glad McCaskill is our Senator. But I wasn't glad she let her ego and her frustration with Bob Holden throw the last governor's election to Matt Blunt. Look at what that did--talk about a disaster.

I'm also thrilled Robin Carnahan is Secretary of State, and I hope she'll go far in her political career. Every time I've seen her speak she impresses me; she's bright, she's got great instincts, and if political potential is genetic, she hit the motherlode.

But she could really mess it up for Missouri if she jumps the gun here. Jay Nixon has been running this race for a long time. Where has she been? Was she afraid to run again Matt? Why has she waited until now? I can't imagine that she's decided to tear the party and possibly the election apart on purpose, but as my mother would say, she obviously didn't decide to NOT tear the party and the election apart on purpose either.

Stop the insanity before it starts Robin. Don't do this. Let this election play out and allow the Democrats the opportunity to regain the Governor's office without the extra strain of a party split.

Gubernatorial Ritalin

2008-01-23T22:31:00.000-06:00

I'm not sad that Missouri's young Governor Matt Blunt has "after a few days of thought and prayer" decided not to seek reelection. His decisions, and those of his party comrades in the state house and senate have wreaked havoc across Missouri, so I think we need to make some significant changes in Jefferson City, starting with the Governor. If he's telling the truth, though, about his reasoning and what was behind him choosing not to run again, Missouri voters need to look long and hard at how we were so easily conned into electing a man who now shows himself to be shiftless, impulsive and egotistical.

According to his remarks this week, in his one brief term as governor he's "accomplished all his goals." Now he says he's lost his "sense of mission."

Matt Blunt says he spent "a few days" making this decision? He is the leader of an entire state, not the manager of a Churchill's Coffee (oh yeah, that was just one of his other briefly-held jobs). The man has over $4,000,000 in donated campaign funds--and he spent more than that already running for reelection to this job he's now decided to quit--and he's as good as lining a bird cage with it. Too bad, so sad to all the people who gave him cash. And still he admits he throwing in the towel after "a few days" of thought and prayer.

If you didn't know better you'd think Matt Blunt just can't keep a job. Look at the guy's resume. A stint in the Navy that he's basically stuck with since he signed up for the Naval Academy, followed by one term as a State Rep (thanks, Daddy Roy), and then one as Missouri Secretary of State. Somewhere in there was the erstwhile stint at Churchills Coffee. The stereotype of his generation (he was born in 1970) seems to be that they hop from job to job when they don't get their way, or when they just get tired of doing something. They have an excuse for everything, and rarely take responsibility for their own actions. Don't misunderstand me, I know many folks of this generation who defy that stereotype. Matt Blunt, on the other hand, fits it all too well.

Maybe he just needs to take some Ritalin. Or get a script for some Adderall SR if the Ritalin warnings worry him. Clearly the dude needs a little help with impulse control and attention span. By all reports he has trouble staying in one place and he burns up the highways between Jeff City and Springfield--his carbon footprint from making that drive alone must be huge. And now we Missourians learn, yet again, that his loyalties shift with the wind. Or with whomever fans his ambition flames.

Is he hoping for a ride to the November elections with Mitt Romney? Or did he quit because the "secret" about the FBI snooping around the Capitol is no longer so secret? Did he really just decide to quit because he bored with his mission? That seems to be the least likely of the possibilities.

The most likely scenario? We'll find out the real reasons he's decided to quit later. Maybe in a few months, maybe not. But you can bet that the stuff he spoon fed us earlier this week was not much more than pablum.

We've lost a true Thinker

2008-01-15T22:06:00.000-06:00

From the Springfield News-Leader:
(The Associated Press)
Noted psychologist Weissman dies at 89

St. Louis — Psychologist Jane Loevinger Weissman, who wrote several books and articles on her research into character development, has died, her family said.

Weissman, 89, of St. Louis, died Jan. 4 at Barnes-Jewish Hospital. A cause of death was not disclosed.

Weissman worked under her maiden name, Loevinger. She elaborated on Sigmund Freud's functionalist version of the ego.

Her theory of personality emphasized the gradual internalization of social rules and maturing conscience for the origin of a person's decisions.

Icy truth

2008-01-12T23:19:00.000-06:00

In the grand scheme of things, the ice storm that began a year ago, and the resultant 13 2/3 days with no electricity was nothing. Nothing.

Most human beings on this planet don't have electricity most every day. Most human beings probably don't have access to as much food in a month that I threw away from my useless refrigerator. I was cold huddled next to the fireplace? Hardly tragic--there is a roof over that fireplace, and we (the bank and us)own it. I worried about the Other Half staying in the house when it was so incredibly cold and dark and kinda freaky late at night. But good friends with a chain saw and extra wood, folks who stopped by to bring a hot coffee and warm conversation, people checking in via cell reinforce the blessing of true friendship.

Truth told, those fourteen days were pretty awful. Each of those days I was reminded that its hard to do much of anything else when you are waiting. Waiting, particularly when you're waiting with that "maybe today" hope but no real end in sight, takes some serious mental energy.

In fact, it wears me out just remembering it. Yuck.

Pass the Thorazine

2008-01-07T20:39:00.001-06:00

I am truly thankful for the early warning systems that enable meteorologists to warn us well in advance when dangerous weather is approaching. I am. I know that sounding tornado sirens saves lives, that having an advance warning gives people time to get out of mobile homes, into basements, and off highways. The warnings allow parents time to soothe frightened kids while packing up stuffed animals and special blankets before heading for bathrooms and closets. It gives us a moment to turn on KSPR, grab battery powered radios to stash alongside our sturdy shoes, and basically watch and learn.

But holy funnel cloud Batman, the tornado sirens have been sounding virtually non-stop for more than two hours now.

Every now and then we're teased with a few blessed moments of silence, and just when the Orange Kitty drops off to sleep, the whooping starts up again. By the look he gives me when the sound starts up again, it is a good thing he remembers who gives him his tuna treats, or I think he'd have already clawed out my eyes. And I do understand. I'm thinking that a little side trip to the Marion Center may be in order if the sirens Don't. Stop. Soon.

I suppose the smartest choice would be to move to the (unfinished, dusty, chilly) basement and hole-up for the night. But here's the truth: I'm an Okie. I've become inured to tornado watches.

When I was growing up in Tulsa, a tornado siren was a signal for my dad, and all the other dads in the neighborhood to go outside and stare at the sky. The moms, on the other hand, would run around opening windows on opposite sides of the house. This, apparently, was to keep the house from exploding from the tornado's pressure. Then the moms would begin hollering at the dads to "Come in this house!" I would gather up my favorite Barbies, my older sister would glance up from her book and shake her head. And then we'd simply go on with the evening. End of story.

I'm not saying it was smart. It just was.

So honestly, getting worked up when the sirens sound isn't a natural response. That said, when Kevin Lighty started pointing out my part of town on his groovy weather maps, I did get the radio, flashlight, shoes and the Young One (and his shoes, too) and headed for the basement.

Clearly these are dangerous storms and the warnings are essential. I wonder, though, if folks in the city simply "tune out" the sirens when they go on for so long, and then delay acting. I haven't got a better idea, that's for sure. But I am relieved on several levels that, for now at least, the sirens are quiet.

Orange Kitty purrs in his sleep.

Pharmaceutical confusion

2008-01-05T13:22:00.000-06:00

The health care industry, this time in the form of pharmaceuticals, mirrors the oil and gas industry in some rather frightening ways.

For example: Americans often complain about the unstable price of gas; just last week I saved 18 cents a gallon by making a U turn on West Sunshine street to go back a few blocks. Waiting to fill up until the next morning may save you a few pennies, but it may also sock you in the wallet for another nickel or two--it is almost impossible to predict.

Since giving up full time private practice for the luxury of employment with benefits, including health insurance with a prescription card, I'd forgotten the capricious nature of medication costs. When my employer recently changed insurance plans and left us needing to meet a deductible before prescription benefits kicked in, I had an abrupt reminder of the situation.

Before purchasing a prescription refill, I called around trying to find the best price. I remembered from my self-employed, no-insurance days that usually the cost varied around $45-50, or so I thought.

Boy was I wrong.

Here's what I found for 60 tablets of the generic stuff:

Dillons: $49.49

Target: $53.00

Walmart: $58.00

Walgreens: $74.98

That's when I stopped making calls. I do not understand how the exact same pill can vary in price up to $25.00 by driving literally less than one city block across a street. (Walgreen's is basically catty-corner from the Dillons, Target is less than a half mile from the Wal Mart, too, incidentally). Don't talk to me about overhead, because that's irrelevant in all these situations. Could it be that the folks at Dillon's gave me a lower price because I was calling to refill a script for the Young One at the same time and they knew I am a regular customer? That's nice, but it shouldn't matter.

None of this makes any sense at all. It does, though, infuriate me. It is sad and embarrassing that people living across the border to the north of us can get quality health care and the same medications and never have to wonder if they'll pay $25 dollars more or less by simply driving across the street.

Seeing how other industrialized nations handle health care makes me ashamed of how we, such a wealthy and privileged country, treat our own citizens.

It is shameful, and it is wrong.

On a practical note, it is also very confusing.

And, yeah, I'll be buying my meds at Dillons.

Passing the...roar!

2008-01-03T22:53:00.000-06:00

Sky Girl has included Thinking Things in her list of five blogs worthy of a "roar for powerful words." This is incredibly cool, especially considering the paucity of posts I've had recently (say that five times really fast). Apparently this originated at Shameless Words, and means that I get to pass the torch, or "roar" on to other blogs, as well as basically define three criterion I think are necessary for powerful writing.

Powerful writing has to move me. It has to make me think. And in the final analysis it has to teach me something.

That was easy.

Blogs that meet those criterion:

Lovely Leah Leah is a young Irish woman living in Israel. She writes about her life, the history and traditions of Judaism, current events in Israel and Palestine. Her recent health scares and her incredible strength and upbeat outlook make checking her blog daily a must.

Mish Understood Also a young woman living in Israel, Mish is a member of the IDF. She writes some about life as a soldier, and the military situation as it affects real people there, as well as just every day stuff girls yak about. Between the photo of her with her weapon, and the sidebar scroll with Hollywood gossip, you meet Mish.

Kate's Camp New to my blog roll, but not new to me, Kate's Camp comes from someone who can make you think, and make you laugh--often at the same time. This is a blogger who can quote Paul Tsongas and talk about secret places Silver Dollar City in the same breath. Kate's Camp makes some serious and important points about the WalMart corporation and its practices in some posts.

Give these three a click. And then check out the other ones on the Blog Roll over there. A bunch of those are really great, and someone of them have great links, too.

Ozarks drivers be warned!

2007-12-29T23:22:00.000-06:00

It seems the good citizens of Republic are on a rampage. Maybe they're retaliating for the flack about the fish symbol on the city flag from a while back. Maybe they just need the revenue because they've given too many tax breaks to Wal Mart. Whatever the reason, Republic has apparently become a speed trap.

Feel like heading towards Republic Ford at 360 MPH, as the commercials suggest? Ha! I would not suggest going 61 MPH on Highway 60 these days. And keep an eye out for the speed limit signs. The limits may change without warning--they're almost as tricky as Macks Creek used to be back in their speed trap hey-day. Make sure your license plates are current and easily seen. Mud on the numbers? Uh oh, you're in a heap 'o trouble there, fella.

One sunny afternoon, Thinking Things was at a stoplight just outside Republic. Since something painful was stuck between my contact lens and my eye, I decided it would be a smart choice to pull into a little historic marker area just past a gas station and fix it. Good idea, right? Seems it was suspicious behavior, though. The Republic city police officer who came to my window said he thought I was hiding from him because my license plates were past due.

Oh puh-lease. I wish I was that creative. No, that's not right, surely if I was going to hide from the police, I'd find someplace better than right beside the highway in a rest area.

Anyway, you've been warned: Republic is no place to be in a hurry, or to forget your insurance card, or not wear your seat belt, or have an overdue plate, etc. etc.

Not that you'd do that anywhere else anyway, right?

It is so easy

2007-12-19T22:20:00.000-06:00

to complain and worry--as I so readily did when the airwaves were full of weatherpeople spouting doom and gloom about apocalyptic ice storms. And it was so easy to let it pass virtually unnoticed when the worst case scenario didn't come to pass--for me.

For many other folks, including my mom in Tulsa and my sister in Bartlesville, Springfield's January ice storm had just boomerang'ed back around, about 185 miles to the west.

Thank God my nearly-80 year old mother kept her power. She lives in almost constant fear of power outages, and keeps a supply of no less than 20 cans of potatoes, pears, peaches and the like on hand at all times. But she is way too frail physically to survive without heat, she breaks bones just by stepping too hard, and psychologically would not have coped at all. At all.

The utility company buried the lines in her neighborhood last summer, and though that is no guarantee the lights will stay on, it sure helps. Living a few blocks away from a gigantic (and oddly pepto bismol pink) hospital doesn't hurt your odds either.

That sort of luck chased my seeester, too, at least the living near a hospital part. Or maybe it is her Unitarian "I'm kind of amused by this entire life" outlook that makes it all fall into place. Anyway, she's got lights and heat, too, so she can continue her do-gooder work which is essential in the best of times, and during this sort of challenge, people like my dearest sib are precious and few.

Looking at the slide shows on the Tulsa World website was sort of like looking at a scrapbook from last January.

And I did not want to look. So after the first few days, I stopped clicking on the web page. As much as I hate the cliche, I have truly "been there, done that, got the T-shirt."

I tried to offer advice for the Maternal Unit from the benefit of our 13 2/3 days of no power, no lights, waiting for the blessed sound of a whirring refrigerator motor.

She might as well have put her hands over her ears and sang "la la la la" for all the good I did her. She gets her advice from the Tulsa Daily World and her State Farm Man thank you very much, and not from the peanut gallery.

That's okay. It is much more fun, during non-ice storm days, listening to her rail on about how "that awful George W. Bush" is ruining this country, and how "there is no reason US oil companies can't be using the wells we already have to get at the tertiary oil and gas sources..." Seriously--that's my mama.

Get that kind of heat going and we'll melt the ice in T-town in no time flat.

CU speaketh

2007-12-09T10:10:00.000-06:00

Props to KSPR, who during their Friday newscasts-showed an interview with CU's Joel Alexander. Guess I'm not the only one wondering what CU is doing to prepare for the potential storm. Alexander says they've done all they can, and have made sure they've gotten in touch with contractors around the region so that they can get power back on quickly if needed. I'd like to say he looked fully confident when he said this, but as a do-gooder, I hate to lie.

In my still-storm-wearied brain from last January, I interpreted his words to mean this:

Somewhere in downtown Springfield, between the tunnel of vampires and credit card savvy city employees, a contingent of utility workers and contractors sit at the ready. They're our version of Caped Crusaders. These men and women do nothing but prepare for the ice, with thermoses full of hot, steaming coffee, wearing an extra layer of long johns and thick woolen socks under their boldly embroidered CU capes. The first CRACK of broken branches will send them off to the Asphlund lot where they will jump into fully loaded yellow trucks, laden with spools of wire, every possible tool and magic wand needed to bring warmth and light back to the huddled masses. They'll speed off into obscure neighborhoods where, this time, they will hook up first the homes who had to wait the longest the last time.

There's still a part of my brain that holds out hope for a lovely icy-cold winter storm--with power--so we can curl up in front of the fireplace (where there's a fire for pleasure not as the sole heat source, thanks)and read. The Young One is reading Stephen King's The Stand (his English teacher thinks he's reading A Tale of Two Cities) and I'm finishing David Baldacci's Last Man Standing. There are three or four other library books waiting, not to mention bookshelves full of books to be re-read.

Until last January brought two weeks of waiting for power I was crazy for winter storms--I love snow and I still wait around the radio for school closings. I can't help myself. So for now I am going to behave like that is all that is in store. I mean, I've got the candles, I've got the soup. I've got a little wood. So as the Other Half would say, I'm gonna "kick back and reeeelax."

You'd think...

2007-12-07T08:44:00.000-06:00

we'd be prepared for another ice storm. And I guess I am prepared for ice, what I'm not prepared for is a long bout of time with no power. Again.

The TV news folks have asked county officials how they're getting ready for the potential ice storm heading towards the Ozarks this weekend. They're talking about shelters, reminding folks to get batteries and water.

Yeah, yeah, we get it.

What I want to know, and what I haven't seen any news outlets asking, is what City Utilities is doing to protect us from another 13 1/2 days of no power?

I realize they covered this ad nauseam last January. Reporters asked about tree maintenance and line replacement, etc. I watched it, I heard it, I got it. I guess I just want John Twitty's feet held to the fire (but not my fireplace, thanks, I'd like it to be just for pleasure this year). I want someone to say it won't happen again. We therapists call this "magical thinking."

I suppose that in the logical part of my brain I understand CU can't really prevent power outages in an ice storm, but dammit the instinctive part of my brain says one of these smart folks at CU oughta be able to keep the lights on.

This morning I went to the store with the sole purpose of buying the batteries and water and other supplies.

I left with a coffee cake.

For now my co-workers are happy. I think I'll get the supplies this afternoon.

Just the way it is.

2007-11-19T23:06:00.000-06:00

Sometimes it seems like I just have to learn lessons the hard way, over and over again.

The lesson this time?

The illustrious lyrics from John Mellencamp's Crumblin' Down says it:

You can't love 'em
You can't trust 'em
No good deed goes unpunished

'nuf said.

The grey was only in his hair

2007-11-13T22:36:00.000-06:00

My father's life was one of opposites. Born into big city life in Chicago, my dad lived most of his school years on an apple orchard in upstate New York. My father's father was an artist, and after studying in Cincinnati and Chicago, he moved his wife and two boys to the orchard where he painted trees and lush landscapes, sprawling skies and tow-headed boys in knickers. When the depression came, they made their way back to the city, this time to Brooklyn, where my granddad made advertising art and book illustrations to put food on the table, and my dad learned to pitch a mean curve ball.

Though he'd been raised by an artist and a dancer, my dad and my uncle both became scientists. I'd beg my dad to tell the story of how as a little boy, he'd brought a handful of rocks to his mother and told her he wanted to "be the man who studies them" when he grew up. He never changed his mind, and the Columbia PhD in Geology--funded by the GI bill--was just the jumping off place.

He spent five years in the Army Signal Corps in North Africa and Italy during WWII, but I cannot remember him ever telling war stories. What happened there, what happened to him there, he took to his grave. At his funeral his best friend told me that when they arrived back on US soil after so many long years my dad said all he wanted was "a fucking glass of milk." I'd not only never heard my dad tell a war story, I'd sure as heck never heard him use that word.

My dad's life of polar opposites continued when as a new geologist, Sinclair Oil offered him a position in either Ethiopia or Ardmore, Oklahoma. He'd had enough of North Africa, so he headed off to the tumbleweeds and black gold of southern Oklahoma. My dad used to love to tease us that both choices seemed just as crazy to a yankee.

From city boy to country kid. Artist's son to scientist. Soldier to father. Yankee to Okie. My dad's life sometimes seemed striped in black and white. Somewhere in the almost non-existent grey area is the belief that no matter where life takes you, no matter what life brings, you do your best. You try. You "make the best of it."

My Pops did that his whole life. I wish he was here to help me do the same.

Melt down in the fast food lane

2007-11-05T09:29:00.000-06:00

Or was it at the Stupor Center? Probably both.

I'm admittedly old-school when it comes to customer service--too many years of retail clothing sales at fancy-schmancy stores will do that for you, but I'm just so over pulling up to a drive through and hearing, "how ya doin'" followed by...nothing.

I'm waiting for someone to say something like "may I take your order?" or "what may I get for you today?" or anything that indicates they're ready for me to start rattling off what unhealthy mishmash of deep fried gak I want. Last week I was zipping out West Chestnut, on my way to the Chicken Killing Heaven we know as Butterfield, Missouri, when I decided to drive through Hardees for cheap coffee. "Welcome to Hardee's" I was told. Then silence.

"Well, thanks a heap for the Ozarks welcome, but let me know when you're ready for me to tell you what I want."

I didn't really say that, I just wanted to. Badly.

Instead I meekly asked, "Are you ready for my order?" Between chomps of chewing gum, she replied, "Yep."

Sometimes I just feel invisible. I wonder if maybe I've died and I just don't know it yet. Like yesterday at the supercenter--this woman almost runs me over with her basket (she was in a hurry to get to the cat food specials), and when I say, "Oh sorry" she simply glances my way and says...nothing. Maybe I'm simply a spirit--I see her, but she doesn't see me.

If I had a little less impulse control I would have leaned over my own basket and used my "outside voice" to say: "OH EXCUUUUUSE ME!!"(yeah, Steve Martin is my hero)

The "ignoring people" rudeness happens more often than not in the mall, at certain clothing stores, grocery stores, even Target. You say "pardon me" or "sorry" or such, and folks not only don't get out of the way, they don't even respond. I'd rather they tell me to "eff off," as the Young One would say, than just act like I'm an apparition. People put their shopping baskets in the middle of the aisle, or they stop to have a discussion with their long lost buddies smack dab in the center of the escalator exit, or meet up with an old boyfriend in front of the soda case and refuse to move. Maybe other people want to hear their stories but I don't. I just want to buy a freaking coke, okay?

Since I'm allowing myself this little blogger's meltdown, I'm also having a hard time with the recorded voices on the information operator and cell phone companies systems, etc. Her voice is just so "hip" that I want to reach through my cute little flip phone and choke someone. "Okay!" Ms. Recorded Coolness will say, "hang on while I connect you with someone!" Oooo! I can't wait!! Couldn't you please, oh please, just connect me with the human being to start with? Please?

Scottish psychiatrist RD Laing had it right when he wrote about how we tend to mentally turn other people into "petrified wood." But manners are not over-rated. Everyone deserves to be treated with dignity, even if it is just for a minute.

That said, watch out for the tall blonde Okie chick pushing a basket at the supercenter...she may just go all Dexter on you.

Confused and concerned

2007-10-31T10:40:00.000-05:00

As as mandated reporter (one of the joys of being a mental health chick), I've followed Darrell Moore's apparent vendetta against people he feels should have made a call pretty closely. Neither he nor the Christian County prosecutor's office have made charges stick against the three women they've prosecuted.

Most recently, the Rountree Elementary School's principal was sent to trial for failure to report child abuse after some children, who'd just participated in a "good touch bad touch" lesson, reported that their gym teacher had touch them inappropriately. Instead of hotlining, the principal apparently followed the public school's policy regarding such allegations. The school system did not discipline her, however Moore's hench-people did.

In the end, though, the principal was found not guilty. And once again the mandated reported law is being scrutinized as arcane and ambiguous.

The gym teacher in question was placed on administrative leave, and the prosecutor's office filed charges (9 counts) against him.

I assumed that if they would go so far as to put not only the teacher but also the principal through the horrors of public trials and humiliation, something very serious must have happened. If so many children were inappropriately touched, molested or abused, it would be right for the criminal justice system take this case and prosecute it to the fullest extent.

Yesterday, though, the Greene County Prosecutor dropped the charges against the gym teacher. They've told him he has to see a professional counselor for an evaluation, and follow any recommendations made, and that's it. They claim the parents of the children involved are "fine" with this decision, and wanted to protect their kids from having to testify in court.

These weren't little bitty kids--they were upper elementary age and clearly able to talk about what they allege happened.

Here's my confusion: If, as a parent, I thought my child had been molested by a teacher I would insist that he be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. I would not back down because my child had to appear in court. I would be furious if charges were dropped. I would do anything in my power to see that the perpetrator was punished.

It would seem, then, that there must be no evidence to support the claims, or that the kids recanted, or some significant information appeared that exonerated the teacher. Why else would they drop charges? I just don't buy it that the only reason was that the kids didn't want to testify. I've helped kids much younger than these get ready for court. I've testified in cases where all kinds of supports were put in place to lessen the stress of a court appearance for young children, and even for teenagers. Why are these kids different?

What is really going on here? It just doesn't make sense. At all. Why would they so vigorously prosecute the principal for not calling the child abuse hotline, but drop charges on the man they claim abused the children?

These priorities just don't jive for me.

Lives were changed, careers were ruined, parents had to deal with the possibility that their kids were put at risk in their own school, children were put through rehashing the stories repeatedly, and for what?

Busted

2007-10-23T08:34:00.000-05:00

I've been busted for Misdemeanor Boredom. Outed as Boring. Accused of dullness worthy of zzzzz's. Just check the comments at Chatter for the sad truth.

Gee. I kinda hate that. I mean, I only bore myself some of the time. I suppose I bore the Young One most of the time. I hate to think how often I bore the Other Half. Thankfully, he's too nice to tell me. When their eyes glaze over, or when Anderson Cooper is more intriguing than my stories of meth babies and trailers with holes in the floor, I typically know to stop--mid-sentence sometimes, and curiously enough, sometimes they don't even notice.

I should be grateful to the anonymous comment-maker at Chatter. Maybe I'll write less, or spend less time belaboring each word I type for this blog. I'll be more cognizant of how long I yammer on, and pay more attention to how much detail I spew for folks who really don't care about poverty, or kids, or mental health issues. When I teach classes or speak to groups, I'll work to keep folks focused.

At least for a while. Admittedly, the sting of being called boring will wear off, and then I may go back to old habits.

At least we've all got options. That's the beauty of free will--you can change a channel, turn a page, click a "next blog" button, push the forward arrow on the ipod, jump to the next chapter on your DVD, the options are endless.

This channel-changing freedom may be one of the last vestiges of personal control we've got left. Before you know it, we'll have telescreens on our walls, a la Orwell's 1984 so the Thought Police can make certain we're participating in the 2 Minute Hate, or pretending to pay attention to the boring stuff.

Ouch.

Matchmaker, matchmaker make me a match...

2007-10-12T11:48:00.000-05:00

Props to Fat Jack for his link to the Select a Candidate Quiz. My top three included John Edwards, who curiously was a very close second to Christopher Dodd. Hmmm.

At this point Edwards has got himself an uphill battle, but it isn't a total impossibility (I keep telling myself that); Dodd's basically (as John Wilson once told me when I was discussing a run for City Council) got a "snowball's chance in hell." Same for Dennis Kucinich, a close third on my quiz results, who in spite of his seriously gorgeous wife, has an even worse chance.

According to the quiz, ol' John-boy and I disagree on the Death Penalty and Line Item Veto. But he's got the right ideas -- and the best solutions -- about poverty and the direction we're going as a nation. So my pitiful little $10 donations will continue to go to his campaign for now.

Take the quiz and 'fess up, inquiring minds want to know.

Such a deal

2007-10-08T19:07:00.001-05:00

With a $2.00 rebate through City Utilities and the sale price ($2.99) at Weslake Hardware on South Campbell in Springfield, CU customers pay 99 cents for GE Compact Florescent Bulbs. CFLs are typically more than $5 for an individual bulb, so this is an incredible deal. Other utility companies probably offer a similar rebate, so if you're not in Springfield you still may be able to get this deal.

Switching to CFLs is an easy way to save money and lessen your impact on the environment. What are you waiting for?

Oh if only...

2007-09-30T23:14:00.000-05:00

For a few years now I've listened to co-workers and friends complain about the high cost of getting a teenage girl ready for prom or homecoming or some other fancy occasion. "You're so lucky" they'd say, "you've got a boy."

I actually figured they were correct. I mean, getting a boy ready for a big dance couldn't be nearly as expensive and time consuming as getting a girl ready, right?

Oh if only.

Back in the day when my granddad painted the art for this ad, elegant shirts were a dollar. Last week, in preparation for Homecoming, we spent $20 at Penney's for a shirt that was on sale.

There was the new suit, which thanks to John's Suit Shop, was "only" $109.00. Add in the $10 tie to match his date's dress. Since he's grown about 5 inches and three sizes since we last bought dress shoes, we gave Payless $23 for a pair that after two trips to exchange them for bigger sizes, looked pretty spiffy with the charcoal grey suit. Dress shoes mean dress socks, so toss another $5 into the till.

Of course he had to get his date a corsage. For $15 Dillons made a beautiful wrist corsage with white and red lilies which matched his date's dress. Too bad the Date managed to leave it in my car when I drove them between the dance and the after-party at her huge home overlooking a golf course. Easy come easy go, as my dad used to say.

Tickets to the dance were $13, and photos added $14. (Well worth it, though, since Mike Wingo did the photography.)

All complaining aside, the Young One looked like a million bucks--that's a pretty good return on the investment.

The idea that teenage boys are cheaper and/or easier than teenage girls is nothing more than a myth, though, and Homecoming 2007 is my proof!

How Do Others Perceive You?

2007-09-30T22:25:00.001-05:00

Ask Dr. Phil:

Dr. Phil's Personality Test

The 25 question non-scientific quiz purports to answer the age-old curiosity: what do other people think about me?

According to the good doctor, I'm perceived as:

Others see you as sensible, cautious, careful, practical. They see you as clever, gifted, or talented, but modest. Not a person who makes friends too quickly or easily, but someone who's extremely loyal to friends you do make and who expects the same loyalty in return. Those who really get to know you realize it takes a lot to shake your trust in your friends, but equally that it takes you a long time to get over if that trust is ever broken.

In the end, though, I think my "bff" (oh wise one of green hair and polyester) had it right when she reminded me that most folks are too busy worrying about what other people think to think about any other people.

She the one that's thinking things.

$9,009,992,588,819.30

2007-09-19T20:24:00.000-05:00

Nine trillion, nine billion, nine hundred ninety-two million, five hundred eighty-eight thousand, eight hundred nineteen dollars and 30 cents.

That's the amount of the United States federal deficit as of September 18, 2007. (You can go to Treasury Direct and check the balance on any given day or time period.)

When Clinton left office, we had a budget surplus. Seven years later, our government has racked up over 9 trillion dollars of debt.

This is the same government, the same group of mostly rich white men, who have the audacity to disparage Americans who have run into serious financial trouble because of personal debt and over-spending.

They degrade middle class Americans who, while trying for a bit of the American Dream, have obtained mortgages that may bankrupt them. They act as though they are above such behavior, that they would never make such risky personal financial decisions, but these are the same people who rubber stamp billions of dollars worth of government expenditures without blinking an eye.

Albert Bandura's research on social learning theory shows that modeling is a very powerful teaching tool. Our representatives are modeling unrestricted spending without consequences. Cognitive dissonance theory teaches that conflicting messages, especially when given by an authority figure, can be crazy-making. Which then begs the question: When our government falls into a level of debt that is mind boggling, yet talks about how irresponsible middle class citizens are when they have trouble paying their debts, isn't it likely the collective consciousness will become even more chaotic?

Each citizen's share of the federal debt is $29,738.26. While most of us would never think about leaving our personal credit mistakes for our children or grandchildren to pay, it is obvious that they will bear the burden of the unbridled governmental spending we've allowed.

The youth of the 1960's -- the men and women who now run our government -- were going to change the world. I used to think that meant they'd make it better.

I was wrong.

Click this link.

2007-09-13T20:58:00.000-05:00

Lovely Leah has written two posts about the attacks which occurred in America on September 11th, 2001.

Both posts provide moving and enlightening tributes to America and the victims of the attacks, particularly when you understand that Leah is an Irish Jew living in Israel. This young woman's maturity and intelligence are obvious when you read her blog, and these particular posts.

Take a moment and look at them both. The tributes are beautiful and thought-provoking.

I'm not that into you.

2007-09-13T20:28:00.000-05:00

I recently started reading, and occasionally posting on a blog that is related to an advisory board I joined. It seems most of the folks on this board are unabashedly conservative, and as I have experienced with other blogs that are mostly about conservative issues, if someone disagrees with what they write, they assume it is a personal attack.

One woman with whom a couple of posters disagreed, insinuated she was waiting for "hate mail." Twice people have misinterpreted what I thought was a pretty straight-forward argument against their opinions on health care and the mortgage crisis, and assumed I was making some statement about them, not the issue.

I am not particularly conservative in most of my political and social philosophies, but dig this: Just because I disagree with what someone else says (whether it is conservative, libertarian, liberal, or martian), it doesn't mean I'm attacking the other person.

I just disagree with the opinion.

Frankly I don't have the energy for the rest of the "hater" stuff.

Til Death Do Us Part

2007-09-11T08:03:00.000-05:00

At 92 years old, the wizened old lady was anything but frail. Mrs. Andrews been caring for her 90-something husband for years and although she appreciated her grandchildren trying to get her some help, she could not understand why Robyn and I were there.

Fresh out of college and full of do-gooder naivete, we drove to the woman's home in what old time Springfieldians call "Little Italy." Some houses in this area still had dirt floors, but Mrs. Andrews's thick plank floor was worn smooth from generations of bare feet and heavy work boots. She invited us into her kitchen, where she was taking a pan of biscuits out of a big black wood stove. Cast iron skillets sat on the burners, and battered old aluminum pans hung on pegboard. The kitchen was warm, hot really, since it was July and she had no air conditioning.

After we'd taken seats on the wooden benches at her kitchen table, she stood in her faded flannel nightgown, fists on her bony hips and looked fiercely at us. Her mouth tightened into a thin line as we explained that we worked for the Division of Aging and had some in-home services that might help her take better care of her bed-bound husband.

"You come with me," she snarled, walking briskly into the next room. There, under a mound of cotton blankets, lay a long, thin old man whose bald head barely made a dent in his feather pillow. She wiped a string of saliva from his chin, and gently patted his head. Then she whirled around, surprisingly fast for her age, and in a hoarse whisper said, "I've been with this old man my whole life. He's old and he's sick and I'm not about to let you young things come in here and take him away from me. Ain't no nursing home going to get my husband!"

We protested, trying to explain that we weren't there to take him to a nursing home, but she wasn't having any of it. As we continued to sputter, she reached into a dark corner by the old man's bed and pulled out a long shotgun, pointing it right at us.

Shouting "you ain't going to take him" and telling us to "get the hell off my property," she shooed us out the front door. We could hear her cock the weapon as she stood on the porch until we were in the car, spewing gravel as we sped down the driveway to safety.

Later that day her 50 year old granddaughter phoned to apologize, saying that her grandmother and grandfather would no doubt die together in that hot old house.

They'd been together for more than seventy years and to be together until the day they died was all they wanted.

Infinite loop of sadness

2007-08-30T22:40:00.000-05:00

He was old. Tall and bony, with silver hair laying flat against his head, he'd probably used a handful of Vitalis to keep his hair in place. His room smelled faintly of Old Spice layered over the scent of disinfectant and urine.

The room in the nursing home's Alzheimer's unit was neat as a pin. A colorful patchwork quilt covered the adjustable hospital bed, a big bible the only thing on a veneered nightstand. When the nurse took me by his room, he was standing in front of a small mirror, carefully buttoning his jacket. He wore a pale blue double knit suit and white shirt, only the bedroom slippers he wore instead of shoes were out of place.

"He dresses like this every morning," the nurse explained. "He thinks his children are coming to take him home."

He'd forgotten that they didn't even come to visit him anymore.

Celebrity "religion"

2007-08-28T15:27:00.000-05:00

The tabloids and entertainment media are reporting that Madonna and her comrade celebrities are planning trips to Israel during Rosh Hashonna. They've embraced Kabbalah, and along with their red string bracelets, are getting quite a bit of media hype about their "beliefs."

When I read this stuff, juxtaposed with what I read from fellow-bloggers who live in Israel and defend their faith through words and their nation through defense, both physically and spiritually, (go to: Lovely Leah and Mish Understood) I can't help but wonder what these women, and millions of faithful Jews, really think of her showmanship.

Leah has already posted about Madonna's visit. She noted that some of the ways Madonna shows her "beliefs" are actually not appropriate within their faith. Leah is gracious enough to explain the differences without sounding judgmental.

Spending time learning about a religious tradition seems to me to be an important part of embracing a specific faith. In the Christian tradition, we're told to "go into your closet to pray," and although many so-called Christians ignore that and sell their faith on TV, it is a valid admonition.

Kind of goes along with the old therapy stand-by: Just because you think it, doesn't mean you have to say it. Or as my dad would say: Make sure you've got the facts before you start talking.

Payback or Paranoia?

2007-08-18T16:22:00.000-05:00

I spent the better part of the past year fighting the minds at Missouri Medicaid about the changes they made to the way Medicaid funds mental health services. They had arbitrarily decided that young children could not have individual counseling. We fought hard, talking with state legislators, lobbyists, candidates, the department directors, the governor's aides, and so forth. Finally they reversed the decision, once again clinicians can decide if a young child needs individual counseling and if Medicaid decides to okay it, they can have five sessions with the child.

That's great.

About two weeks after that change occurred, I started getting notices from the Missouri Department of Revenue about taxes they think I owe. I've left messages on their phone lines, since they're apparently too busy to answer the phone, but the only response I've gotten is a notice that they'll take away my clinical licenses if I don't work out the problem.

Am I paranoid? Maybe the tax man just decided to focus in on my little income because it was my turn? Or is it payback for fighting the system?

Heat-related Gratefulness

2007-08-16T19:27:00.000-05:00

As promised, (Heat-Related Grumpiness), I'm practicing the Laws of Attraction (The Secret), trying to move away from focusing on life's annoyances. What you focus on is what you get, and as Howard Glasser's Nurtured Heart Approach teaches, when you energize the positive, it grows. You know: Water the flowers, not the weeds.

Here are some cool things that are easy to be grateful for, in spite of the heat:

1. 100% cotton clothing. It breathes and preschoolers don't care if it's ironed.

2. Hummingbirds are back in the yard, zipping about outside the kitchen window, dive bombing each other for a few sips of bright red sugar water.

3. The air conditioning in my car blows cold, and the Jim Widner Big Band's latest CD sounds awesome no matter what the weather does.

4. Tiny white clematis flowers are blooming in spite of 103 degree weather, and they've not been watered at all.

5. The heat has kept the Young One inside more so he's reading -- tearing through book after book. In the evenings we turn on Mediacom's "classical masterpieces" and listen to Mozart as we tear through our books together. He's re-reading Harry Potter, I'm re-reading Chaim Potok. Life is truly good.

6. Fresh lemons in icy cold tea.

7. Spending more time in Lawrence County during work hours means I'll get to meet my dearest bud for lunch more often. We'll talk about green hair and polyester over Hawg Wild or Acambero and laughter will come easily.

8. Orange kitty the gigantic ball o' fur is soft and fuzzy and his nose is cold even when the house impossibly warm.

9. CU says don't do laundry or run dishwashers during "peak hours." Oh how I love to obey!

10. The heat makes everyone slow down just a little bit. When that's not making me crazy, it's nice to simply slow down with everybody else, take a deep breath and say "oh well."

Heat-related Grumpiness

2007-08-14T13:56:00.000-05:00

In this heat, even with the a/c blasting in the car, it never really cools down. It's a little easier to find shady parking spots at rural preschools, but the hours driving to and from the little burgs can be really hot, and even the dulcet tones of George Guidall narrating an audiobook can sound like fingernails on a blackboard.

The heat makes things that should be teeny-tiny little annoyances become great big irritants.

Today I am heeding my "inner therapist" by venting my frustrations, processing my feelings. Here's my attempt at chimney sweeping:

--It is impossible to dress appropriately for this weather. If I dress to stay cool on the long drives, I go inside air conditioned buildings and turn into a gigantic goosebump. I miss the days of Jimmy Carter when 78 degrees was the norm for public buildings. Now the thermostats are set on 68, and I'm carrying a jacket around in August. Bump up the thermostat and save the world.

--The lazy way Ozarkers speak tests my impulse control (I do realize that as an Okie, my complaint is more than a little hypocritical). Springfield is pronounced Springfeld. Items aren't on sale they're on sell. People don't appreciate your business, they appriciate it.

--What happened to people asking "may I help you?" or "may I take your order?" I drive through Taco Bell and the disembodied voice asks "how are you today?" What the heck? Do they really want to know? How much time do they have? When am I supposed to order my burrito? Today I drove through the local cashew chicken joint, and all I hear is "Chinese Chef"... so is she answering the phone or am I supposed to know that she's ready for my order of potstickers? Other places the clerks just look at you and say nothing. Maybe I'm supposed to be getting the message telepathically? Sorry, I missed out on that talent. So of course I'm all Miss Bubbly: "Hi! Looks like you're busy today!" and "Thanks so much." Maybe I'm supposed to talk in text-speak: OMG ur so bzy! Thx! ur my new bff! Whatever.

--Folks who park their shopping carts smack dab in the middle of the store aisle to either: Talk on the cell phone, catch up with a neighbor, argue with their partner about what brand of hot dogs, or just leave the basket and wander up and down looking at stuff. Is there some invisible line that prevents them from moving out of the way? Are they entitled to more space than the rest of us? As my mom would say, "you're taking your half right down the middle."

--Ditto for drivers. Look, we're all hot, and some of us have to be somewhere. The left lane is for passing, so move over. It must be legal to pass on the right in California and Texas -- drive a few miles on I-44 and if you find someone going slowly in the left lane, most of the time they'll have Texas or California plates. If they don't, they probably just moved from there.

Ahhh. I feel better now. First of all, if these are the biggest complaints I've got today, I am one lucky chick. Secondly, following "the Secret" theory, I'm just going to attract a bunch of grumpiness if I stay on this track.

Now I can move on to the good stuff, and there's so, so much more of that. Maybe that's a good post for a Thursday Thirteen!

Turn, turn, turn.

2007-08-13T16:29:00.000-05:00

Sitting on the "back slab"-- the hulking concrete block that functions as a porch -- with the 100 degree heat shimmering off the horizon, I look at the landscape of broken trees which surround the yard. Limbs still hang from treetops, some with green leaves, but most looking fragile as they sway in the hot wind. Some broken tree tops have leafed out, which somehow makes them look even more pathetic.

The ice storm was 7 months ago. Yet even as the heat pulses around me, I can simply close my eyes and hear the gunshot CRACK of limbs, the showers of ice crystals as they tumble to the frozen ground, the eerie silence created by a city that's lost its white noise of electricity.

Thinking about the ice doesn't cool me off. It is too hot for that. It does remind me, though, that life is transitory.

There's a season for everything.

Health Care Dreams

2007-07-29T22:27:00.000-05:00

It's been a week since I saw Michael Moore's latest film Sicko. So many important ideas and issues were explored that I've no doubt it will take more than a week, and probably more than one viewing to fully "get" it.

During this week, one particular idea keeps pushing its way into my consciousness: How would my life (and the lives of my family and friends) be different if I had access to complete health care services without having to worry about the cost or how it will affect my insurability.

I've allowed myself to briefly imagine what it would be like to go to the doctor and be completely honest about my health; to ask for help and get it without having to contact the business office first. To be able to schedule an appointment for my child without having the receptionist tell me that they'll give me a time, but I have to pay the bill in full before the doctor to see him.

Since seeing the movie, I've daydreamed about allowing the pharmacist to fill all the prescriptions, instead of just the one's my insurance company will fund. How much healthier would we be? What if I didn't have to decide whether my burning headache is bad enough to take the $10 pill that might take the edge off. Would I be more productive? Of course I would. Instead of frantically applying Head On directly to the forehead, and hoping I can avoid swallowing $10 in search of relief; I'd see the doctor, take the medicine and have more energy for taking care of my clients.

What if my mother could have gotten a bone scan years ago? Could she have avoided the severe osteoporosis that caused her to fracture her spine simply by tripping in the living room? If she wasn't so worried about whether she'd end up in another argument with the business office at Tulsa's Springer Clinic and Blue Cross, would she get the weekly B12 shots her doctor prescribed and that she knows gives her enough energy to do more than wait to die?

Imagine if I didn't have to call the hospital before I take my child in for a lab test to ask how much the test will cost? (Of course no one can tell you the exact cost -- it's like buying a car, they adjust the price according to what they think you can afford.)

We're so proud to be Americans. We talk all big about how we're the "richest nation" and spew words about strength and business and the economy, but the fact is that this rich nation of ours refuses to do what other nations don't think twice about: Provide for the health of its citizens.

Someone interviewed in Sicko summed it up pretty well: The reason they have public health care in France is that the government is afraid of the people, and the reason they don't have public health care in America is that the people are afraid of the government.

Reading v. Ritalin

2007-07-23T21:25:00.000-05:00

"She's reading too much," Caryn whispered. "She gets on her bed and just reads books." She carefully puts her cigarette into a big glass ashtray and watches the smoke. "I don't understand how this daughter of mine can just sit in there all day."

On the table by the ashtray sits a half finished game of Yahtzee and two sweaty plastic tumblers of Big K cola on ice. A police scanner chirps in the other room; on the black and white TV Jerry Springer is talking to someone who has just pulled off her shirt. As predicted, Caryn's daughter Hailey is in her tiny bedroom, squinting in the yellowish light, devouring the first Harry Potter book. The July heat pounding on the trailer's metal roof, the racket from the scanner and TV, the squealing tires on the highway outside -- nothing enters Hailey's consciousness while she's lost in her books.

They are truly poor. The census bureau would consider them homeless -- they're just staying in this tiny trailer with the couple who own it. Caryn stays on the couch, Hailey gets to use the second bedroom. Sometimes a teenage mom and her 3 year old also sleep on the living room floor. As long as the guys next door aren't crazy-high on meth and revving their Harley engines late at night, though, it's an okay place to stay.

Caryn can't read. She's tried to learn, really tried, but she simply cannot do it. So she can't understand how it could be okay for an 11 year old girl to stay inside reading on a summer's day with no school. She worries that maybe something is wrong with Hailey.

Hailey's IQ is well-above average. I know this because when she was younger, she spent a few weeks in a psychiatric hospital where they tested her IQ, diagnosed her with ADHD, sent her home with a Ritalin prescription and the phone number to my office. Her choice to read in the quiet of the darkened bed isn't a function of anything more ominous than the desire to stay cool. This is something Hailey's mom can stop worrying about.

Hailey's a little surprised to see me when she comes into the room, then she grins widely, takes a big gulp of her mom's cola and grabs my hand saying, "You're taking me to the library today, right?"

Her "hardest decision"

2007-07-18T17:26:00.000-05:00

The Focus on the Family piece which just played on KSPR's 5:00 news, featured a young woman who became pregnant and gave her baby up for adoption. The woman said deciding to give birth and then give up her baby was "the hardest decision" she'd ever made

Why didn't she make a decision to use birth control, or if she wasn't willing to do that, simply decide to not have sex?

Those decisions are easy.

Thinking things better next time

2007-07-16T08:31:00.000-05:00

The lawn mower must have died while I was asleep. One day it was in sad need of a new blade but running at top speed, the next day the blade was still dull, but the engine was barely running. Briggs & Stratton on Valium.

I used the tranquilized mower a couple of times. It putted along so quietly I didn't even need to crank the iPod to cover the racket. Eventually, though, it switched from Valium to Thorazine and even the most energetic pushing only resulted in shredded grass. (It doesn't help, I am aware, that the grass was shin high and in need of a hay baler instead of a mower.)

New push mowers start at about $139. The thinkingthings abode sits squarely in the middle of two lots, so pushing a mower around it, even with the Young One's energy, takes more than a few hours. It's a lot of work, in other words. So, my eyes were continually drawn to the "Budget Mowing" sign hung on the board at Dillons: "Most yards $20!" it said. After a few weeks "$125 for the rest of the summer!" was added to the poster.

I started thinking things. I thought about how I could avoid buying a new mower, and avoid the hours of pushing and/or nagging the Young One and the Other Half to mow the hay field, by simply calling Budget Mowers and passing the task off to professionals.

I called them.

Oh they'd be happy to take on the yard. They said the first time would be $40 since it was so tall and obviously two lots, but that they'd stick by their $125 for the rest of the summer deal. I stopped thinking things at that point, and said "whoopee!" I signed the check and the yard was mowed. Not a great mowing job, really, but then I supposed that might be directly related to the fact that it was getting taller by the moment. They'd be back every other Friday the man said. Then they went directly to my bank and cashed the check.

Last Friday they were supposed to be back. The grass was pretty tall again, and definitely needed mowing. By 4:00 I was feeling very stupid, and very ripped off. I finally called the man, who said that with the holiday they were behind a day and would be there on Saturday. I felt significantly less stupid, and even made sure hoses and lawn stuff was out of their way.

Saturday morning, just as I was heading out the door to go play psychotherapist to a five year old, the men and the mowers showed up. Oh how happy I was! No more hay field! No more worry that I'd been ripped off!

Oh how wrong I was!

After a few hours of therapy I return home to find a little piece of note paper taped to the front door. "I can't mow anymore," it read, "$40 first time, $30 this time, $55 refund." They'd managed to mow the front yard, and about four strips of the back, and then apparently just gave up.

I clutched the note and scoured the porch looking for evidence of the refund. Nothing. I called them -- "This number is not reachable" a mechanically-happy voice told me. Not reachable?? what the heck does that mean? Disconnected? Blocked? Dropped in the lake?

The awful feeling that I had in fact not been "thinking things" very clearly was getting stronger by the minute. I could have bought the damn mower for that $125. Now I'm stuck. Gasoline has sucked every "extra" penny I have and now I've paid someone for something I'm not going to get, and they're not reachable.

Sunday afternoon I tried the number again. This time the guy was reachable. He says, however, that he'd taped the $55 to the door with the note. Ha. Even as silly as I am feeling for even hiring these people, I know better than to tape $55 to a door! He says he'll "get back with me" about the refund.

I hate confrontation. I really, really do. But I'll keep trying to get the money that is owed me.

I will certainly think things through more carefully the next time I decide something is going to save me time and money.

And I guess I'll be buying a lawn mower.

The place to be

2007-07-07T14:13:00.000-05:00

Saturday afternoon at the Lone Pine recycling center is most definitely hot. Not sunshine hot -- although the sweat factor today was way in the red zone -- but Paris Hilton hot.

Like the laudromat during the ice storm (Any Dryer in a Storm), the recycling center is a people-watching bonanza.

Cars and SUVs are parked nose to tail in front of each huge metal Dumpster, more cars and pick-ups line the center lane. By the plastics bin, an bookish elderly man with safety glasses sliding down his sweaty nose, is wandering about looking for an open section for his milk-crate of tin cans. Later he pulls away in an ancient Subaru wagon with 5 faded and peeling "power of pride" stickers arranged across the back bumper.

There's two thirty-something women dressed in capris and tanktops, carefully inventorying their Goodwill donations for the receipt. "Do purses count as clothing?" one asks the Goodwill worker. A simple shrug of the shoulders lets the ladies know that this man, who is drenched in sweat and surrounded by other people's cast-offs, couldn't care less. Undaunted they continue to count: "38 pairs of shoes, 2 bags of books..."

The gorgeous woman unloading her empty soda bottles is clad in only a sports bra and cut-offs. This chick doesn't sweat, she glistens. Everywhere. Nobody's really noticing her, though, so eventually she lowers her head, dumps the last bag and jumps in her Trooper to leave.

Two couples drive up to the yard waste bins and almost simultaneously begin lugging huge bags of grass clippings up the steps. A woman dressed in a pink t-shirt and keds stands with her hand on the open trunk, directing her husband's every move. "Don't you want to take them both?" "Why did you leave that bag down stairs?" "Gosh, honey, let's hurry. It's so hot!"

Springfield's spokes-model for those who don't quite get the whole carbon footprint concept is the perfectly coiffed blonde woman who drives her silver M-class Mercedes SUV from bin to bin. She idles the big vehicle at each stop, presumably to keep the AC pumping. No sweat on this lady. She doesn't glisten either. The little polo player on her crisp white shirt is visible from across the lot and she carries her tin cans and wine bottles in matching white baskets.

Folks carry their bottles and cans in paper bags, plastic laundry baskets and milk crates, green garbage bags and old grocery sacks. Glass bottles crash as bags of beer bottles are dumped into newly opened bins. The aluminum bin isn't as popular today, but it requires some abstract reasoning to fit larger-than-average plastics into the last open Dumpster.

A couple of guys are in the staff shack, looking more than a little stoned and leaning into a fan's breeze. They're not too thrilled to come back into the heat to sell bags of mulch to middle-aged gardeners who are anxious to buy the rich dark mixture for ripening tomatoes. Gardening's got to wait, though, since neither guy can come up with a way to make change for a $20. "Supervisor went to the store and he's got the money, I guess."

The sun, the asphalt and the smell of old beer and rotting grass are oddly relaxing today; people seem a little more willing to smile and wave pedestrians across the driveway. A few even toss change into the donations box on the way out.

Al Gore is right. If we take it one step at at time we can make a difference in the destructive path of global warming.

And hey, taking the recycling in is a whole new way to be hip.

8 is enough

2007-07-02T22:58:00.000-05:00

Thanks to My Corner of the Sky for including me in the 8 things you don't know about me meme. At the risk of compromising my anonymous-blogger status, here goes:

1. I secretly think these meme things are fun.

2. I collect first edition hardback books by Chaim Potok. My 11th grade English teacher made us read The Chosen -- I was hooked by the second page.

3. Every time I take the Beliefnet Belief-O-Matic quiz (answer some fairly intense questions and they'll tell you what world religions correspond to your beliefs) Liberal Quakerism lands in the top 4.

4. My addictions: Popcorn and Afrin. Breathing is a good thing. So is the fake butter flavor at the Springfield 8.

5. My music: Jackson Browne. It's all about the lyrics. And the politics.

6. I rode a horse for the first time at age 4. "Old Mother" was the pony I clung to at the now-defunct Ginger Blue Resort in Noel, Missouri. When they moved me up to "Brownie" and let me hold the reins I was in heaven. By the time I was 11 I put every dime I made into a box until I could afford to buy "Ebony Miss," the quarter horse that got me through teenage angst and hot Oklahoma summers. And yeah, I'm a city girl. A Hammons Hotel now sits where Ebony was pasture boarded oh so many moons ago.

7. Long before there were cell phones, my dad got a CB radio. His "handle" was rock doc. He christened me with the handle the pebble. He was geologist. I was his kid. I miss him every day.

8. I labor over these silly blog posts way too long. Geez, no one even knows it's me. If I'd put this much energy into my schoolwork, I'd have had a full ride to Harvard. Or not.

Curiosity abounds, so to these local bloggers: Consider yourselves tagged: Slice of Home; Lost Chord; Minutia; Ozarks Yin and Yang

5 Blogs That Make Me Think

2007-06-24T20:07:00.000-05:00

Strannix, over at Welcome to the Revolution, and Sniderman, at Two Dollar Bill gave me some serious positive reinforcement recently by tagging my blog as one of their lists of "5 Blogs That Make Me Think."

In addition to a groovy "Thinking Blogger Award" button (which I will put on the blog as soon as I can figure out how), I get to tag 5 blogs that make me think.

The Thinking Blogger meme works like this:

1. Wait to be tagged by another blogger, then you tag 5 blogs.
2. Link back to the original post for this meme: 5 Blogs That Make Me Think
3. Adorn your blog with "Thinking Blogger Award" button. Buttons come in Gold or Silver -- color coordinate with your blog!

I tend to visit blogs which make me think, and teach me something. There are boatloads of local blogs, many of which make me think, but when I had to narrow it down to five I discovered that the ones I immediately thought of weren't local at all. In fact, three of them are international.

Here's my list in no particular order. Click through and take a look:

Lovely Leah Leah is a young woman living in Israel. She writes about the Jewish tradition and her life in Israel. Her posts about Judaism definitely make me think. The fact that she is 18 makes her wisdom that much more intriguing.

Mish Understood A young female soldier with the IDF, Mish doesn't always get to post regularly, but her posts are always worth the wait. Her photos give an honest look at life there, and many of them cause me to reevaluate my world view.

A Girl Worth Saving This woman thinks about her finances, how to save money and still enjoy life. She also links to some cool sites, and has had some good suggestions that I've used in my own quest for saving a buck or two.

Walter Reed This is perhaps the most intense blog on my list. The author is privy to much of the goings on within the psych system at Walter Reed. His blog, and his links to other soldier's blogs, enable me to see ways the war affects our soldiers that the mainstream media either doesn't know about or isn't willing/able to explain. Anyone who thinks they have an opinion on the war should read Walter Reed and his linked blogs before they stumble over their ignorance.

Musings from Cambodia This blog is like a tapestry -- it is full of wonderful stories, history, current events, photos, opinion and philosophy pieces, and links to even more. The complexity of the blog reflects what I imagine is the complexity of Cambodia itself.

One of my college professors refused to give an "A" for term papers unless we were able to teach him something he didn't know. In my opinion, the blogs I've listed all earn an A+. These bloggers also earn my respect.

No tourist left behind

2007-06-19T22:11:00.000-05:00

Missouri's Lieutenant Governor Peter Kinder announced today that schools will not be allowed to start any earlier than 10 days before Labor Day.

The reason?

So kids can work longer and keep tourism booming in Missouri.

According to Kinder, Missouri's tourist industry needs kids to keep it afloat. We've got to make sure there are plenty of 16 year olds serving fries and selling t-shirts to keep the tourists flocking to Bass Pro, spending money at Silver Dollar City, and stopping at the local dairy dip when they're finished visiting Mark Twain's home.

Education? Pah.

As long as teachers ensure kids can pass the MAP test the "deciders" in Jefferson City don't seem to worry if students are being "left behind" by a government which values tourist dollars over education.

Learning the importance of work when you are young is great. Bringing money to Missouri businesses is also great. But if we really mean it when we tell kids to stay in school and put their education first, our legislative priorities should reflect that message.

As the kids would say: Duh.

Catch-22 and a 5 year old

2007-06-16T22:03:00.000-05:00

Lan's Dora the Explorer backpack swung back and forth as she twirled and bounced from foot to foot. The school buses were long gone, her friends and the big kids had all been picked up by moms in giant, gleaming SUVs, and Lan was getting tired of waiting. She was also starting to get a little worried. So was the principal, who watched as Lan spun in circles around the bike stand. They'd tried to call mom's house and cell phone, but no one answered. Finally, unable to get in touch with her family, the principal had to call the police.

Turns out Mom was so high she'd just forgotten to pick up her oldest daughter from kindergarten. Dad was too high to drive.

Lan and her brothers went to an emergency children's shelter that night. It was five months before they'd go home again.

After she got home, Lan's mom and teachers noticed that she was much angrier, much more easily upset that when she left. Of course Lan had been moved to six different foster placements in that short time. Eventually they learned that in the fifth home, Lan was repeatedly molested. Other people knew that before, just not the ones caring for Lan.

Lan has no scars, nothing to physically explain the sadness that lurks just on the edge in her smiling 5 year old face. Hugs and reassurance do little to relieve the pain.

Too often children are abused or molested at the hands of the adults trusted by the government with caring for them. Sometimes the children are abused or molested by other foster children while the families naively neglect to notice the suffering right before their eyes.

Most times, even in the worst situations, the child just wants to go home. They want their Mommy, they want their own toys, they want familiarity.

A few months after she got home, Lan began to talk to teachers and counselors about her Daddy "being mean" to Mommy. In her case "mean" was kid-speak for "kicking mommy in her belly." Dad gets cranky, mom is pregnant, and they're both in outpatient rehab, trying to stay clean.

The mandated reporters call the hotline to report the domestic violence. Case workers and juvenile officers start talking about what needs to be done. Should they remove the children again? Should they let them stay at home and increase services?

No matter what is decided, there's a huge risk involved. Lan could be taken from her family, moved to a strange home quite possibly several counties away, to live with a strange family who don't know how to cope with her behavior. She may not have a consistent place to live, and like what happened to Lan last time, she may be molested by another foster child or abused by her foster parents.

But there's a risk for Lan if she stays with her family. What if Daddy kicks Lan when he's grumpy? What happens to a child's soul or psyche if they watch a parent beat another? What happens if the father kicks mother's belly one time too many and the baby is killed?

In grad school they suggest you ask worried clients "what's the worst thing that could happen if you ... (ask her out, take that job, get on the plane, etc.)?" So, what's the worst thing that could happen to Lan and her family? In this sad Catch 22, whether the state intervenes or not, irreversible damage may be done to these children despite everyone's best intentions.

All those good intentions need to be focused on fixing the system. It's broken, and we're breaking children and families every day we allow the government to overlook the situation. The legislature is out for the summer, but your representatives still have phones and email.

Don't let them forget the work that must be done.

Sometimes birthdays aren't so happy.

2007-06-07T21:15:00.000-05:00

When Jessie was about 14, she took an embroidery needle, a chunk of ice and a deep breath, and shoved the needle through the skin above her eyebrow. She put a medium-sized hoop earring through it and trudged off to school. The teachers ignored the latest alteration of her appearance – between the blonde cornrows, numerous earrings and baggy black t-shirts, the eyebrow ring was just another distraction. They weren’t going to be distracted, though, Jessie was finally making all A’s. This was a kid who, after being held back in 3rd grade, slipped under everyone’s radar. When she entered middle school, and the evidence of mother’s ongoing methamphetamine addiction became more obvious, the adults started to intervene. One of the interventions was to send her to counseling, and after a few months, Jessie developed enough ego strength to appreciate her ability to do her best and not just float through life.

A couple of years later, even though she’d maintained her “A” average, Jessie dropped out of school. Her mom was almost always high on meth or hospitalized for a serious overdose or suicide attempt, and Jessie realized it was up to her to support herself and her mother. Jessie got herself a job at a fast food restaurant. She also got depressed.

Through the depression, the trips to visit her mother on ICU wards or in the psych wing, Jessie kept working. She’s been at the same fast food place for three years now, and they’re training her for a management position.

These days I can tell if she’s going to work by whether she’s wearing a bar-bell in her eyebrow and if she’s wearing her shiny now-auburn hair pulled into a tight knot behind her head. She’s never late for work, doesn’t call in sick, and it’s clear she takes her job very seriously. Of course she has to – who else will pay for mom’s cell phone bill, or make the car payment on the car that was totaled years ago. She’s got to keep another old car running, because when mom decides to go back to her “husband’s” house she inevitably calls Jessie to come get her. The man has no doubt hit her mother, or threatened her with a knife, or has brought meth back in the house and mom has relapsed. Again.

Jessie is a strong young woman. She has goals and dreams. She loves her family, and is loyal to a fault. She secretly wants a future that goes beyond rescuing a meth addict over and over.

Recently, though, Jessie began handling a lot of new stress. She’s turning 19 next week. Apparently at age 19 in Missouri, unless you are pregnant or disabled you lose your Medicaid health coverage. This is a big deal for a teenager as responsible as she is. She’s been taking care of her own health care since she was old enough to walk from her house to the local medical clinic. All by herself, incidentally.

These days she’s been frantically trying to fit in dental work, medical exams, renewing birth control and medication prescriptions, attending counseling sessions. Jessie’s been shopping for insurance, but she can’t afford what her employer offers, and besides, they’re going to drop that soon anyway. The local insurance agencies give her quotes that are way out of proportion for a young woman who makes less than $7 an hour. Jessie has taken care of her medical needs since she was little. No one else is going to do it now. She’s hopeful that if she gets insurance maybe she’ll still be able to stay healthy.

What is so magic about turning 19? Does being 19 make you an adult? You can vote, but you can’t purchase alcohol. You can join the military, but you can’t usually get a loan or even open a bank account without a co-signer. Most Americans consider age 21 as the defining moment of adulthood. However, the State of Missouri seems to think that at 19, if you are poor or on your own, your health doesn't really matter anymore.

Why do we seem to think that making noise about “insuring all children” is the ultimate good deed? Sure, providing health care for children is essential. But when did the health care of everyone else become superfluous? If an adult is ill, that person is either going to miss work or go in sick, possibly spreading their sickness. If an adult ignores serious medical problems because they can’t afford the doctor, or the co-pay or the medicine, the medical problem may get so much worse that they end up in an emergency room or desperately ill. The bill for lost work, lost wages, lost taxes, lost productivity, the trips to the emergency room and hospital stays will be eventually paid. The taxpayers will pay. People who scrimp and save to buy health insurance will pay higher premiums. Businesses may raise prices to offset lost production, and the consumer will pay.

In the end, somebody pays.

The contrast to the story is this: Jake, a recent high school graduate, turned 19 last week. His folks bought him a Nissan Versa, and had a group of friends out to Fellow’s Lake for a party. He’s looking forward to college and to driving his girlfriend around town in the new car. He’s not worried about his health, paying for insurance, or even how he’s going to afford gas for the car.

The last time I saw Jessie, though, preparations for her birthday were very different. She was calling insurance agents and spending time talking to her mom about how to pay the phone bill. She was hoping to have at least one more counseling session before her Medicaid ran out. When I asked how she was feeling about her birthday, she replied:

“I feel like it’s my death day, not my birthday.”

She deserves so much better.

Hot or Not

2007-06-03T20:53:00.000-05:00

I must be out of the loop. When did the News-Leader become so intent on making Springfield's Commercial Street suddenly the groovy place to go, simply by calling it C-Street? Is anyone besides the News Leader doing this?

I'm all for being cool, and I know lots of people who live on or near Commercial Street, folks who work there, and others who go there to shop or party. I do not, however, know one single human being who actually refers to the area as C-Street.

Like Shakespeare's rose that by any other name would smell as sweet, Commercial Street will certainly smell the same -- of stale beer, old urine, musty books and faded upholstery -- regardless of what it's called.

The Commercial Street district embodies hard reality. Those few blocks of shelters and bookstores and flea markets and bars will either succumb to gentrification or they won't. Pushing contrived hipness with a newspeak name doesn't seem to be the most effective way to get folks to go there. And what of the folks "from away" who venture down to C-Street to get a taste of the ambiance? I'm thinking they may leave the area pretty sure they'd been gypped.

It is truly yin and yang on Commercial Street in Springfield. Desperation and hope entertwine among the entrepreneurs and the poor, bringing it together with unique beauty.

I love that place. So am I really supposed to be calling it C-Street?

If you call Commercial Street C-Street, or have an opinion about it, let me know. Drop an email (thinkingthingsblog@gmail.com) or leave a comment. I just hate being out of style and I want to know what you think.

Not so anonymous after all

2007-05-31T23:20:00.000-05:00

Blogger Unmasked, a story from the Boston Globe, has an extreme, but relevant example of how even an "anonymous" blog can boomerang.

Talk about instant karma. The doctor's blog entries, posted anonymously, became the lynchpin in what sounds like major lawsuit. Attorneys threatened to show the jury what he'd posted; the case was settled the next day.

In light of the recent flurry of local bloggers arguing the merits of anonymous blogging, it's interesting how this story illustrates the tenuousness of privacy.

It may also illustrate the suggestion that just because you think something, doesn't mean you have to say it. Or write it.

Say hey

2007-05-31T20:57:00.000-05:00

Thinkingthings is moving up in the high-tech blog world.

As if.

I have, however, added an email link to this blog: thinkingthingsblog@gmail.com.

It'd be cool to hear from my vast pool of readers, so my best bud, says: e-yak away!

It was 1938

2007-05-27T21:17:00.000-05:00

when Buick invented the turn signal for its spiffy new automobiles. Almost 70 years later drivers in the Ozarks are still a bit reluctant to use this new-fangled device. Maybe it is the conservative, "show-me" nature of native Ozarkians that causes them to shun such inventions--especially ones that the government requires. Or maybe it just takes too much energy to use the signal.

It isn't very hard, though, to move your hand, or even just your fingers slightly to the left of the steering wheel and flip the little lever operating the turn signal. In spite of the fact that you don't see a lot of folks actually using them in these parts, turn signals are installed on all street-legal cars.

All of them, straight from the factory.

To pass the driving test for a Missouri license, you have to not only show the instructor you know where the turn signal is located in your car, you also have to use it consistently when you make a turn. So it is not a huge leap to assume that drivers licensed in Missouri truly do know how to use the turn signals on their steering column. So why don't they?

I'm an Okie -- you don't need to show me everything, thanks -- I have no qualms about using the tinker tonker as my scientist dad named the signal. I figure letting other drivers know I'm going to turn, and knowing a little in advance when someone else is going to turn is actually a pretty darn good idea. It's safe.

Then again, whether you're in the Ozarks or LA, maybe it is just too hard to hold a cell phone to your head, reach down to get your half-caf-mocha-caramel-latte, steer that gas-guzzling SUV and use your blinker at the same time.

So put down the damn cell phone already. And give me a little hint that you are about to jam on the brake to make the next left, or that you're going to slow down to about 2 mph before inching into the right turn lane to head on over to the K-Mart.

How much is that headache worth?

2007-05-25T16:52:00.000-05:00

I get headaches. Bad ones. I'm aware that Amerge, the medication which works best for my head pain, isn't cheap, but when I refilled the script today, I was stunned to be charged $45 for 4 pills. Four. Eleven bucks for one dose. Last time I filled the script, I paid $45 for nine pills, and I thought that was crazy -- clearly I was being naive.

The pharmacy tech obviously thought the situation was out of hand, and spoke quietly to me about how appalling it is that in the USA, supposedly the richest in the world, the government refuses to provide universal health care.

When I left the store, I called my insurance company, United Healthcare, to ask why they would not allow me to purchase the nine pills my physician prescribed. Of course they couldn't (or wouldn't) tell me -- "a recent policy change" was the best answer I got. They gave me a PO Box in Salt Lake City to "appeal" their decision to limit this medicine.

When I looked again at the prescription, I discovered that without insurance, I would have been charged $109 for four tablets. $27 per dose. That seems like robbery, and in reality it is probably at the low end of the out-of-control cost for medication.

I am incredibly grateful that my employer pays for me to have insurance, but even with that benefit, I have to think long and hard before I decide that my head hurts enough to, in essence, swallow a ten dollar bill.

If United Healthcare allowed me to see a physician of my choice, I would choose a doctor who practices at St. John's. They can, and do, give sample meds to patients. Because I have no choice but to see a physician associated with Cox Hospital, I don't have access to that option. Cox apparently had some sort of problem with fraud and abuse, and have been told they can no longer give out sample medications. Cox isn't being punished with this, the patient is.

I'm employed, and I have insurance. I am very lucky in both respects. I've met hundreds of people who don't have insurance, many of whom work harder in a day than lots of white collar executives work in a month. These folks don't just think long and hard about taking a $10 pill for pain, they think long and hard about whether or not their child is sick enough to see a doctor. They put their own health care needs aside, and ignore serious symptoms. Avoiding health care because of cost is definitely not just a phenomenon of people living in poverty. Middle class Americans, who have no access to Medicaid (which is supposed to provide healthcare for the poor), sometimes battle these decisions even more often.

I know other folks who, though they have insurance, don't go to the doctor because they can't afford the co-pay. $25 or $30 is just the start -- what if the doc says you need lab work or an x-ray? Or medication? Surgery? What if they say you need to take time off work? Americans really do face the decision of whether to buy medicine or groceries. That is a sin.

It is telling that when legislators asked him where Missouri would get the money to fund Medicaid managed care, the managed care rep had a ready answer: Prescription medications. The profit margin is so high for medication that the state could take millions to fund managed care contracts and the drug companies wouldn't really even feel it.

The price of medication is a barometer for the status of health care in our state and our country. The pressure is rising out of control.

Our only real recourse is to elect people who will take the health care crisis seriously, and make the changes to create a system that works. For everyone.

Leave my name out of it.

2007-05-21T11:44:00.000-05:00

Since I lasted posted about blogging anonymously, I've heard even more people talk about problems caused in their daily life because of blog posts. And I've become even more aware of how opinions posted by folks can backfire.

A piece in today's Springfield News-Leader, however, opines that bloggers should use their names. Click here: Our Voice to see the full text.

The way I see it, if I want my opinion published in the Springfield News Leader that badly, I will write a signed letter to the editor, or submit something for the Voice of the Day segment. I can put my name on that specific piece, and know (with the exception of what the staff edits in or out) what might appear for public scrutiny. Sending a signed letter of my own volition allows me some control over what is connected to who I am.

Is it disingenuous for me to blog anonymously? Apparently the folks at the local paper think so. But they're being paid to write their opinions. If they upset people, they're less likely to experience serious ramifications (like losing a job), they can just fall back on the old adage that "all publicity is good publicity." Not so true for folks who are paid to do virtually anything else.

Occasionally I might have something important or thought-provoking to write. An internet blog enables me to write words that may be far-reaching, and might even touch folks I will never meet. Whether or not they know my name is totally irrelevant. I think it is relevant, though, that people be spurred to think.

thinkingthings...the title pretty much speaks for itself--it is thinking things, not "thinking about the author." I blog about some important issues and and no doubt some pretty trivial ideas. In my opinion, ideas -- even the trivial ones -- trump ego every day.

And in the final analysis, I'd like to think I can maintain a little bit of privacy in this cameras-on-every-street-corner, cell phone tracking, GPS world of ours.

I've said it before, I'll say it again: Stephen Stills is right, Paranoia strikes deep.

Blogging in private

2007-05-12T21:49:00.000-05:00

Blogging can be a great way to spread information, stir up discussion, provide a little humor or perspective, give or get feedback -- it's even a good way to have a little self-therapy. It can be risky, though, just like virtually everything else we do on the internet.

Recently a fellow blogger gave me some grief because I write this blog anonymously. Lots of local bloggers know who I am, but I don't purposefully advertise my identity on thinkingthings. I've got reasons for this, not the least of which is that I'm a mental health professional. I hate to think that, even as deeply as I disguise information in some of my stories, a reader might believe they recognize something or someone in what I've written.

I worry about bloggers who so freely list their full names and locations or where they work, especially when they write about intimate or controversial topics. There've been several news stories recently about people losing jobs, licensure and certifications, even college scholarships because of what they wrote in their blogs. Is having a little readership of my rants about politics and social work, or my written "processing" of what happens in life worth potentially losing a reputation or a livelihood?

No way.

Maybe spending so much of my career listening to and guarding other's private thoughts has made me more cognizant of how so-called "facts" can be misinterpreted. I don't choose to limit who has access to my blog, so I can't control how what I've written is perceived. I knew that going into this project, but I also like the idea that maybe, just maybe, the stuff I blog about might cause someone who just happens onto thinkingthings to, well, think.

Remember that old campfire game where you whisper a secret from person to person? When you get around the fire, the story has usually changed significantly. That's just human nature, I guess. We all exaggerate or change information, especially if it makes the "story" more interesting, or funnier, or more dramatic. When I hit the "publish" button I give up control over what I've written, and I've figuratively sent the blog post around the campfire. Even without the whispering part, I am offering my words to other's interpretation.

Maybe the bottom line is that I am a private person. I listen to secrets, but I don't pry. I process other's private thoughts, but I don't volunteer my own. (A truly good therapist is always a tabula rasa for clients.) My opinions are just that: Opinions. Yeah, I want people to read my blog. I even secretly wish Tony Messenger would kipe what I've written to add to the "Voices" section of the News-Leader (wait! I think I just volunteered a secret) but not badly enough to add my name to my blog.

I want thinkingthings to be a catalyst. I hope that at least sometimes what I write might provoke some thought or discussion.

In the end, though, I want thinkingthings to provoke thoughts and discussion about what I've written, not who I am.

Paradigm shift

2007-05-04T16:49:00.000-05:00

In 1981, MTV was shiny and new. In 1981 most kids were very aware that the Soviets had nuclear missiles aimed at us, but they also understood that, like a "cats" game of tic tac toe, ala War Games, the Cold War could never be won. We'd survived the energy crisis, the fall-out from Vietnam and Watergate, and were smack in the middle of British Invasion punk and new wave music.

In 1981, Kim Wilde's song "Kids in America" was an anthem of sorts. In a way, it described the zeitgeist of life in the early 80's.

Here's a taste of the lyrics:
Friday night and everyone's moving
I can feel the heat
But it's shooting
Heading down
I search for the beat in this dirty town

Down town the young ones are going
Down town the young ones are growing

Chorus :

We're the kids in America
We're the kids in America, whoa-oh
Everybody live for the music-go-round

Bright lights the music gets faster
Look boy, don't check on your watch
Not another glance
I'm not leaving now, honey not a chance

Come closer, honey that's better
Got to get a brand new experience
Feeling right
Oh don't try to stop baby
Hold me tight

You can find all the lyrics here

Now, fast forward 20 years. In a coup that history will no doubt judge harshly, George W. Bush took the presidency from popularly elected Al Gore. Planes smashed into buildings--taking thousands of lives and changing America to its core.

In 2001, "Christian rockers" P.O.D. released "Youth of the Nation." This song--the lyrics and the music--is drastically different from the now-seemingly upbeat words from 1981.

Check this out:

Last day of the rest of my life
I wish I would've known
Cause I didn't kiss my mama goodbye

But who knew that this day wasn't like the rest
Instead of taking a test
I took two to the chest

Call me blind, but I didn't see it coming
Everybody was running
But I couldn't hear nothing

Except gun blasts, it happened so fast
I don't really know this kid
Even though I sit by him in class

Maybe this kid was reaching out for love
Or maybe for a moment
He forgot who he was
Or maybe this kid just wanted to be hugged
Whatever it was
I know it's because

[chorus:]
We are, we are, the youth of the nation

Who's to blame for the lives that tragedies claim
No matter what you say
It don't take away the pain

That I feel inside, I'm tired of all the lies
Don't nobody know why
It's the blind leading the blind

Read all the words here.

The twenty years between these songs span two generations, and seem like a chasm between two vastly different worlds. Have the "advances" made during these years really made society better? People are still starving, wars are still being waged, kids get shot in schools, other kids blow themselves up in the name of their God. We have instant access to information now, but does that really mean we're making better decisions?

The way young Americans view their lives and their world has gotten much darker. The zeitgeist these days is one of powerlessness and anger.

In the twenty-first century it takes work to maintain innocence.

Another blogger hits the mark

2007-05-01T11:41:00.000-05:00

Uri, via Lovely Leah,posted a beautiful quote from Mother Teresa:

"Everybody today seems to be in such a terrible rush, anxious for greater developments and greater riches and so on, so that children have very little time for their parents. Parents have very little time for each other, and in the home begins the disruption of peace of the world."

Our priorities shape who we are, just as much as who we are shapes our priorities.

What are your priorities on this day?

People are cruel to kids everywhere

2007-04-26T08:50:00.000-05:00

UK blogger Helen "Sparkles" (http://www.helensparkles.blogspot.com/) describes in specific detail two recently publicized cases of abuse of kids in foster and kinship care.

Adults can be cruel to children in ways that defy explanation. And abuse can happen without a hand being raised. Our words, our behavior and our reactions to kids can be abusive in some very insidious and horrific ways. Is there anywhere in our world where no children are subject to cruelty by adults who are supposed to be caring for them?

Looking at child abuse statistics around the globe, it is appears that violence towards children doesn't correlate only to tacit societal acceptance of hatred and aggression.

Child abuse is pervasive. But it is never, ever okay.

Harry and the Monkeys

2007-04-25T18:55:00.000-05:00

Even infants and toddlers have mental health screenings these days. For me, screening babies and toddlers is a respite from so much of my work. I love the time I get to spend with the babies. Snuggling with these little humans, getting spit-up on a clean shirt, wearing pee from a leaky diaper on my levis, wiping noses--the whole trip is a giggle.

Usually.

Sometimes I find babies who don't smile, or reach out, or squeeze fingers and noses, they don't make eye contact and they rarely cry. Many times these are babies whose mothers or caretakers either don't know or don't care that their babies need to be held and rocked and snuggled and loved just as much as they need formula or breast milk or mashed bananas.

Attachment is essential for survival--physical and emotional survival. Study after study supports the fact that babies who don't fully attach to at least one caregiver early in life may become children and adults with serious psychological and behavioral problems. Babies need love to survive.

If you made it through basic psychology class, you probably remember Harry Harlow and the monkeys. In 1958 social scientists spoke of cognition and conformity; "proximity" was more acceptable to discuss than "love." Harlow wasn't content with this, and ignoring mainstream psychology, experimented on the development of love--using monkeys and chicken wire.

I'm not sure if many other experimental psychologists in his day--or this one--would have gotten away with including in a research report poems like this:

The Rhinocerus
"The rhino's skin is thick and tough,
Yet this skin is soft enough
That baby rhinos always sense
A love enormous and intense."

or this:

The Elephant
"Though mother may be short on arms
Her skin is full of warmth and charms.
And mother's touch on baby's skin
endears the heart that beats within.

More by accident than by intent, Harlow discovered that when he took a little cloth pad out of the wire cages in which infant monkeys were held, the baby monkeys had big tantrums. They wanted those soft cloths--they didn't have their monkey mommies, but they had those cloths and had attached to them.

After seeing this repeatedly, Harlow expanded the research. What he found shaped much of the attachment and love research since the now-famous 1958 study was published. You can read his report (and more poetry) here: http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Harlow/love.htm. The gist goes like this: Infant monkeys, usually a day old, were put in cages with a chicken wire "mother." A baby bottle of milk stuck out of the wire cone-shaped surrogate. Other infant monkeys were caged with the same type cone, except these cones were initially simply covered with soft terry cloth.

The monkeys would virtually always choose to be in very close proximity of the terry cloth cone which had no milk, than to be with the wire cone which had milk. They ran and clung to the terry cloth cones when they were frightened. They slept laying on the cloth-covered wire. Feelings of being comforted, of comfort, was important for developing attachment.

Monkeys who were caged with terry cloth mothers tended to have a much lower infant death rate than those caged with wire cones. Wire cones tended to foster in the infants what we now call Failure to Thrive syndrome.

Babies who feel comforted and loved have a better chance of thriving. And surviving.

In terms of physical effort, it is less taxing to hold and rock a crying, screaming baby than it is to pick the baby up to scream back, or shake him, or hit her. Being a parent means leaving your own frustrations and fears at the door. It means if you're too angry to control yourself, you count, you breathe, you call someone, but you don't take it out on your baby.

Imagine a baby who flinches when you raise your hand to pat her cheek. Or a baby who no longer cries when he's hungry or hurt because no one consistently tries to make it better. Imagine a baby who doesn't look at colors or toys or faces. Babies who won't be comforted--maybe they can't be comforted anymore.

Imagine, then, a world of babies who are loved and comforted. A terry-cloth soft world. It's a much sweeter image.

Of hugs and bugs.

2007-04-10T18:38:00.000-05:00

Chicken killing supports a lot of families in rural southwest Missouri. Along with chicken processing come hatcheries, poultry houses, equipment suppliers, and jobs. It is hard work, but it puts food on the table. In one tiny rural Missouri town, 15 or 20 kids go to a little preschool on the main street while their parents work at the chicken plant. Some of them don't speak English yet, but they're learning. A few parents walk their children to the school, others arrive on a little yellow bus. Most of the children are desperately poor.

A few hours spent inside the cozy home-like preschool is a gold mine of stories.

Under her elastic-waist jeans, Serena wears pretty white mary jane shoes that are so big you'd think she was playing dress up. She is fiercely proud of these shoes, and lights up like Hailey's comet when a big kid from the high school notices them.

Jorge knows he's stylin' and profilin' in the black t-shirt that hangs to his knees. He proudly shows off the glow-in-the-dark logo to everyone at his breakfast table. The Spiderman picture is smeared with play doh and grape jelly but his hugs are so tight and warm that no one notices the jelly transfer.

It is the light-up shoe, however, that makes the biggest fashion statement for the pre-school set. At least half the kids sport shoes that flash red, yellow and blue with each step. Or bounce. Or purposeful stomp on the floor to show off the colored lights.

The cook brings out a nutrition lesson using apples, peanut butter and graham crackers. The little ones use math (counting apples and crackers, measuring peanut butter) and language skills, and the lesson totally incorporates the week's theme about transportation. Each child gets one slice of red, yellow, and green apple to stick to the cracker. Like a traffic signal--get it?

Preschoolers tend to get a little grumpy with each other after a couple of hours, especially when the unexpectedly cold spring rain prevents them from burning off a few zillion kilowatts of energy on the playground. So it's not a complete surprise to find Mason pushing Tysha against the wall. They've been side by side, digging in a big sand table, where they're sifting sand searching for plastic bugs. Fun times. Until you get shoved into the wall, I suppose.

"You can't do that!" he hollers as I step between them, kneel down and look Mason straight in the eye. "Actually, I can," I reply, "and I won't let you push her. Now you stand here with me for a minute and then we'll try again." Oh the tears! They course down his sandy cheeks, making little rivers in the dust. He's upset that he got in trouble, of course, and mad as hell that he's missing those precious moments of bug-finding. When he goes back to the sand table, though, he pulls me by the hand, snuggles into my side and has me watch him sift out 5 tiny black spiders.

Bryce and Tyler stand shoulder to shoulder, covered in plastic aprons and wearing light green safety glasses. They're using soft mallets to pound golf tees into cloth covered boxes filled with styrofoam. It's harder than it looks, and the boys are really working. With a triumphant whoop, Tyler finally gets one in. It's a blissful moment for him so thankfully no one runs over to remind him to "use your inside voice." At 3 years old and barely 30 pounds, Bryce isn't having as much luck. He's avoided hitting his thumb though, and shows me how his dad put his thumb in his mouth when he hit it with a hammer. "He said a bad word, too" he whispers, eyes sparkling with delight.

It's hard to believe this cute little blonde boy just a half hour before had his teeth clenched tightly onto Austin's sweatshirt-covered bicep. Thank goodness for the extra thick fleece--Bryce's sharp incisors could have done some damage. When Bryce responds to the teacher's sharp command to "stop that" (followed quickly with preschool-speak: "Teeth are for biting food, not people"), Austin simply looks down at him and shakes his head. "My little brother does that too. That's just the way it goes sometimes."

The wisdom of age.

They really think we're stupid.

2007-04-06T08:27:00.000-05:00

In a Missouri House committee last week, legislators met to hear testimony about problems with the current Medicaid system. A representative of Medicaid's managed care providers was asked what the rate of reimbursement for physicians is under their programs. (To keep folks totally confused, the areas of Missouri including Kansas City and St. Louis--typically referred to as the I-70 corridor--have a Medicaid program that is under contract for managed care, the rest of the state still uses a fee-for-service model).

The managed care representative refused to answer the House Committee, stating that because he "volunteered" to represent these organizations he wasn't able to release the figure. Later in the hearing, the Committee chair directly asked the "Interim" Director of Medicaid to tell him what this rate of reimbursement is.

Here's the shocker:

The Medicaid Director has no idea how much physicians and other providers are paid for their services under the managed care version of Medicaid.

He does not know.

You could hear jaws dropping all over the room.

He claims that under their contract, they only have to state a total amount of money used, but do not have to specify how it is used. In other words, the managed care company is within their contract to not tell us, the taxpayers, what we are paying to physicians in the I-70 corridor for their work with Medicaid recipients.

I've heard politicians refer to their constituents as "Joe and Mary Beercan." This sort of back-room, wink-wink/nudge-nudge agreement is an example of just how stupid they believe taxpayers are.

Don't let them get away with this. Ask your representative why our government, who funds these managed care companies through hard-earned tax dollars, doesn't know how much they pay providers. Ask who signed the contract that prevents us from knowing how our money is used.

Joe and Mary Beercan do think. We must not let them forget it. Ever.

Chocolate Stout and a Grin

2007-04-05T08:49:00.000-05:00

Local blogger and all-around eccentric, John "X" Stone died suddenly Tuesday. John died while doing what he liked to do--taking pictures and discussing his civil rights with the police. Look, the dude was the Webster's version of eccentric: "deviating from the recognized or customary character, practice, etc.; irregular; erratic; peculiar; odd." But given that his IQ was probably more than a few standard deviations above the mean, it stands to reason that his behavior would reflect a few deviations as well.

Along with being brilliant, cantankerous, funny, and a little bit kooky, he was also a inveterate dirty old man--his goofy comments made me feel all girly, and though I rolled my eyes and laughed him off, behind the laugh was my own goofy grin.

His life as a pilot, teacher, researcher, photojournalist, and Hooters regular will be remembered over chocolate stout tonight at Patton Alley. If he was right about String Theory, maybe he'll slide down the twine and join us in spirit.

He is serious, and that's dangerous.

2007-04-02T20:27:00.000-05:00

Jiffy Lube as a model for health care? It's got to be a joke, right? Surely this is an early April Fool's gag--providing health care services for Missouri's working poor, disabled, disenfranchised, even children, based on the model for a profit-making company providing automobile oil changes? It wasn't a joke. Governor Matt Blunt, along with State Senators Mike Gibbons and Charles Shields, kicked off a "statewide tour" touting their MoHealthNet program at a Columbia, MO Jiffy Lube.

No joke. No April Fools gag. He means it.

Matt Blunt thinks that Missouri's poor should receive healthcare in much the same way we get the oil changed in our cars. He talked about how Jiffy Lube maintains computer records with information about your car that can be accessed from any of their locations. Blunt believes that healthcare would be much better if it just made good use of technology.

Admittedly this sort of thing increases my paranoia "like looking in the rearview mirror and seeing a police car" (David Crosby, who else?)--I mean does he really want medical professionals to be able to access emergency records, or is it yet another way for Big Brother to get as much information about us as they can for their own purposes?

But when you set the paranoia aside, Blunt's apparent total lack of understanding about the realities of healthcare for Missourians living in poverty is dangerous. His focus on using technology to track patients completely misses the obvious fact that his cuts to Medicaid make it so that a huge percentage of folks who need healthcare coverage are unable to get it.

To borrow Blunt's analogy: If you can't afford to put gas in your car, you're probably not spending money getting your oil changed. Preventive medicine, like preventive maintenance, costs money. And most folks who need Medicaid aren't exactly flush with "disposable income."

When you have to wait until pus is running out of your child's ear before you take him to the Emergency Room because you can't afford an office visit co-pay, or when you're unable to eat solid food well because your teeth have rotted but you can't afford a dentist, whether or not you have an electronic record on file, or whether the physician's office has lots of high tech equipment utilized to prevent "fraud and abuse" is totally, completely irrelevant.

Matt Blunt's record is fraught with examples of his lack of compassion and tendency to make decisions that benefit a few at the risk of many. At first blush it is tempting to give him the benefit of the doubt--maybe he's just incredibly out of touch and doesn't understand the negative effects of his choices. By this time there are so many examples, though, and the people have spoken so loudly about these issues, that it could easily be said that Blunt must know the impact of his decisions.

He knows, and he just doesn't care.

Thursday Thirteen (Late, as usual)

2007-03-26T10:27:00.000-05:00

I recently attended a four day/three night conference in a warmer part of the country. It had been a few years since I'd flown, so some of the security stuff was new to me. The crowds, long lines, late flights and missed connections, rushing from gate to gate for no apparent reason, surly baggage handlers, rude first class passengers, crying babies...were definitely not new. Human behavior doesn't seem to change much, which made this "Thursday Thirteen" list pretty easy to construct.

13 reasons I’d rather drive than fly:

•I only have to take off my shoes if I want to rest my feet.

•I don’t have to take off my belt and put it, along with my shoes, my laptop, my purse, my liquids and my candy bar in a little grey tray to be x-rayed.

•I can carry a bottle of water,or even a coke, and noone will think I'm a terrorist.

•I can carry liquids in containers that hold more than a tablespoon, and I don’t have to put stuff in a Ziploc bag unless I just want to.

•My bag can weigh more than 50 lbs (of course I might need to lift it, but at least I can decide how much my back can take)

•I can stop the car and get out pretty much anytime.

•The windows open.

•No turbulence.

•No waiting on a runway.

•I can honk at other drivers who get in my way.

•I don’t have to wait for permission to board—I can just get in and drive.

•Since I’m not 30,000 feet in the air, it is unlikely I will need a flotation device or oxygen mask.

•I can actually experience the scenery, read the historic markers, know what cities I am going through, stop to look at rock outcroppings (the geologist's bloodline runs strong sometimes), even take an alternate route at the last minute.

My first car was a 1966 Buick LeSabre. It was about as big as a 727, but even when I was just going to the store for my mom, I knew that big hunk of metal was all about freedom and control. I'm not so good at giving that up just to save some time.

Suffer the children.

2007-03-21T21:11:00.001-05:00

All in a day's work...

A four year old boy puts his arm around my shoulder and says, "My mama ain't coming back from California this time. My gramma is going to take care of me now."

A three and a half year old boy, while waiting for his lunch: "My mom says she hates me. She says I'm stupid." To the girl sitting next to him: "Hey Hailey, my mom hates you, too."

A three year old girl, who has been sobbing inconsolably, refuses to move from the front window of her rural Ozarks preschool: "I'm sad because my grandpa loves me but we're not going back."

A four year old boy, playing in an outside playhouse at a different rural preschool, takes an undressed, lifelike baby doll and throws it inside a cabinet. After he slams the cabinet door, he begins kicking it, shouting, "Shut up baby, shut up baby, I can't take it anymore."

A five year old girl, while eating her snack, mentions, "My grandmother says when my mom gets out of prison, she might come to see me if she's not doing the meth anymore."

A four year old boy, after punching a boy in the stomach, is screaming and crying. He's trying so hard to explain why he's mad. Nothing he says, however, is understandable. His mom, who was 15 when he was born, didn't know she was supposed to talk to her baby, so now he doesn't know how to use words to communicate. He knows how to use his fists, though.

A preschool teacher, finishing her 15th year at the school, is crying quietly. "I don't know if I can make until summer. I've never had to deal with kids in so much pain before. I don't know how to fix it and I am so tired."

One day.

Years of suffering.

Shout it out loud.

2007-03-20T15:30:00.000-05:00

Matt Blunt has again showed his bias and lack of understanding about the agencies that help people living in poverty access services like health care. Blunt has withdrawn thousands of dollars used by Planned Parenthood to provide certain cancer screenings for low income women. He says women should not have to go to an "abortion provider" to receive their screening. Blunt, a Springfieldian, ignores the fact that Planned Parenthood does not provide abortion services here. If you need an abortion, you can't obtain one anywhere in Springfield. That situation was covered pretty significantly in the local paper when the last abortion provider closed up shop, guess Mr. Blunt missed it.

It seems that conservatives like Matt Blunt work to keep poor people down under the guise of “helping.” He thinks it is okay to remove funding from a legitimate and well-respected health care organization because of overblown information, and funnel the money into a different place where frankly the director is well-placed politically. Obviously federally qualified health centers do important work and the Jordan Valley Community Health Center (which will be getting all the funds earmarked for Greene County) fills a big need, but they are not the only organization in town which serves people living in poverty. If they didn’t have the funds to serve all women needing screening, did they refer the women to agencies who could serve them, like Planned Parenthood?

Planned Parenthood and other such organizations, like OACAC’s Family Planning program, make birth control accessible to women and men of all socio-economic backgrounds. Family Planning, using birth control, is probably the most effective, frontline defense against abortion, child abuse and neglect, girls dropping out of school, and so forth.

I’ve discovered recently that, even when talking among other professionals, if you start to speak about birth control people start looking around to see if someone is listening. They start to whisper like we’re discussing something evil.

Since when is it evil to plan a family? Why is it taboo to talk about birth control, about making sure children are wanted, and that women (and men, for that matter) are prepared to raise a child? Why do we tiptoe around such a hugely important topic?

Every day I am in contact with children who are abused. I am in contact with children who are neglected. I am in contact with children who live in foster care because their parents couldn’t or wouldn’t take care of them. I am in contact with teenage girls, some as young as 14, who are about to give birth, but seem to think the baby is basically a big doll that you can dress in cute little onesies. No one has talked to these girls about birth control methods after the baby is born. Why not?

Unless you buy into the theory that the conservative movement seeks to maintain or grow the underclass (and I don't want to believe that is true), I can’t find any reasons that make sense to not educate women and men about birth control. Why would our society refuse to condone abortion, yet also refuse to condone family planning? If society wishes to protect all children, shouldn’t we do whatever it takes to educate people about the many forms of birth control and family planning so that children are wanted, loved and properly cared for? I’m not even talking about parenting skills here—that’s a huge issue on it’s own—I’m talking about helping young women (and men) understand that whether they have a child is something they can control, and never even have to consider abortion. Sure, abstinence is the obvious way to prevent abortion, but since that clearly is not working (almost 15% of all Greene County babies were born to teens in 2001) we should make a serious effort to teach how to prevent unwanted pregnancies.

Rocking pitifully thin, sad and unresponsive babies, unable get a smile or a cuddle, reminds me how urgent it is that we teach women and men to use birth control until they are really, really ready to raise a child.

Sometimes the system works

2007-03-07T20:12:00.000-06:00

"Brittany" was barely three when I first met her. Blonde hair, blue eyed, with cherubic cheeks, Brittany looked like cotton candy on a peppermint stick. The sweetness was tempered a bit when she would sink her teeth into her baby brother's chubby arms.

DFS had been out to see the family a few times after repeated hotline calls, and all the do-gooders were trying very hard to keep the children with their mom. Brittany, though, was showing signs that she'd been sexually abused. Her speech was delayed so it was hard to know exactly what, if anything, had happened at first. A SAFE exam later made it all too clear.

When she started putting crayons and pencils inside her diaper and inside her body, and when cockroaches were found crawling over the younger sibling's baby bottle and inside the baby's breathing machine, the state took custody.

It was a long story of numerous attempts, over a period of years, to place the kids back with mom. She tried so hard, but she just couldn't keep them safe. After one weekend visit, Brittany used Barbie and Ken dolls in a play therapy session to show how her father had beaten her mother. Brittany was hiding in a corner during the beating, afraid she'd be next.

Brittany was acting out sexually in her various foster homes, especially after visits. There were too many foster homes to count during those days--even the most well meaning foster parents were unable to cope with her behavior, and eventually would call DFS and tell them to come and get her.

It was a long, long road, ending when the state terminated the parental rights of Brittany's mom and dad, and she was adopted by what would be her last foster home.

It has been six years since I last saw Brittany. Six years of wondering how she was--if she was doing okay in school, if she was able to bond with her adoptive parents, if she was happy, if she was healthy.

Through an odd twist of fate, something like three degrees of separation, I got an update the other day. I can't even describe the feeling when I learned that Brittany is happy. She is healthy. She makes good grades, has friendships replete with sleepovers and Bratz dolls. She still looks like cotton candy on a peppermint stick.

She's okay.

Wouldn't it be great if all the stories ended this way?

Evangeline Lilly on Letterman "lost" me

2007-02-28T20:47:00.000-06:00

Even though the plot has gotten boring, even though they decided to take months off the air, even though I'm getting way sick of the lame love interest subplots, I have stuck with "Lost" this season, hoping it would get better. I mean I've waited through seasons of Saturday Night Live (kinda like this year) that were pretty bad, and eventually they get back on track.

After watching Evangeline Lilly on Letterman last night, though, it is all I can do to give it one last chance tonight.

First, she comes out in a (cute) little dress that would have been fine if she was meeting someone for a coffee on a patio in San Diego, but everyone knows Letterman keeps it refrigerator cold. And she's been on the show before so she clearly she knew it would be cold, but she wore the dress and started the interview whining about how cold she was. So cold she needed them to bring her a blanket, which after wrapping it around her dress--and not covering any of her bare skin--she decided looked bad and promptly flung on the chair next to her. Geez.

Then she starts bitching about how awful it was to work as a flight attendant (she hated the people, the hours, the fact that she had to buy shoes 2 sizes too big, blah blah, blah). When Letterman tries to hand her a life preserver and asks if she liked the travel, she launches in on how everyone hates travel--you might get "stuck sitting next to the fat guy who stinks."

When Dave mentions her house burning to the ground last December, he asks if it was hard for her to lose everything, especially right before Christmas. Not hard, she replies, just "inconvenient." She complains about how Hawaiian homes are flimsy and made of paper or some such, and blathers on about how she just had second hand clothes and salvation army furniture. Very inconvenient, she insists.

Letterman barely gets the chance to ask her about the "Lost" hiatus before she starts a tirade about how she thinks they just can't please anyone. Waa, Waa. They play reruns and "it pisses you off!" They take a break to make new episodes and "it pisses you off!"

At this point I had enough and happily turned her off. My perogative, hallelujah.

She came off as shallow, petty and mean last night. Oh yeah, and stuck up, snobbish, and narcissistic.

At least we've still got Sayid and Jin for the hunk factor. Hey, maybe they'll actually film a couple of scenes with them and give us a break from the tired Jack-Kate-Sawyer saga. I was sick of them long before I endured the "oooo I'm cold and oooo people suck" rant from Evangeline Lilly.

The gal needs a jacket, and someone to tell her that just because you think it, doesn't mean you have to say it. Especially on national TV.

Read this, then act!

2007-02-23T14:19:00.000-06:00

DID YOU KNOW?

Medicaid won’t allow children under 5 to have individual counseling?

*No matter what may be happening with your child, if he or she is younger than five, the only mental health service Medicaid will allow you to use is Family Counseling.

*Even if your child has been diagnosed with a mental health issue like ADD or Autism, Medicaid won’t allow individual counseling if they are younger than 5.

*Many young children need to speak privately with a counselor for lots of important reasons, but Medicaid says NO!

*If the parent or guardian can’t or won’t participate in Family Counseling, Medicaid won’t pay.

*Many parents can’t take off work to go to regular counseling sessions and some don’t have transportation to get to an office or clinic for Family Counseling, but no other option is available.

*Even if a doctor recommends it, or even if parents want their kids to be in individual counseling, Medicaid says that does not matter—they still won't allow it.

YOU can help change this!!

If you are the parent of a young child with Medicaid, your voice is very important! You can make a difference for your own child, and for thousands of young children in Missouri.

Even if you are not a parent of a child on Medicaid, if you are concerned about what the current administration is doing to young children in poverty, you can make a difference.

*Go to: http://www.moga.mo.gov/ or call: 573-751-3659 to find out who your representative is.

*Call, write or email them—tell them you want all children to be able to have individual counseling.

*Write /email your newspaper. Tell the editor all children should be able to have private sessions with a counselor

*Attend a meeting to show legislators that you want all children to have the same access to counseling!

-------

Imagine this: A 4 year old girl, let's call her Kaylie, lives in a trailer with her mother and stepdad. The stepdad makes meth in a shed out back, and his friends like come by the trailer to drink a little Bud and shoot a little crank. When the stepdad starts tweaking, he gets angry. Mom's been thrown into walls, punched in the jaw, and threatened with a butcher knife while the little girl watched.

At the local Head Start Kaylie has started hiding under the table during the last 15 minutes of class. Lately the teachers have noticed when Kaylie has to use the bathroom, she begins to cry and tries to avoid going as long as possible. They've seen her rubbing and scratching her private areas when she's upset. The teachers and the counselor wonder if she's being sexually abused at home.

The mental health clinician who works there has talked to mom about doing some counseling for Kaylie. Mom thinks that it would help Kaylie, but she refuses to agree to family counseling since the boyfriend would no doubt hurt her badly when the counselor leaves. The mental health clinician knows that Kaylie needs to have individual counseling to help her be able to express what is happening at home, learn how to protect herself and how to deal with the trauma she's already experienced.

Unfortunately for Kaylie, Missouri Medicaid refuses to pay for her to be in individual counseling. Because she is four, and because she is poor, she is not entitled to have the same therapies other children get every week.

The government officials who decided this was a good idea will tell you that "evidence-based practices" show family counseling is the best option for young children. Sure, on paper it looks great. But do you think Kaylie would be willing to talk about her stepdad with him in the room? Do you think Kaylie's mom would be willing to talk about the violence in front of Kaylie and her stepdad? Do you think it is right for the government to decide what psychotherapy is best for a four year old child they will never know?

If this upsets you, please act. Don't wait for these young children to grow into dysfunctional, sad or violent adolescents. Contact your representative NOW and tell them that this is unacceptable.

The children are still losing.

2007-02-16T11:02:00.000-06:00

The Springfield News Leader ran a series this week about child abuse and neglect in our area. The series was interesting, occasionally depressing and sometimes just slightly off the mark.

They reported about a seminar held this week in which an out-of-the-area speaker (Victor Vieth) stated that “Greene County may be ahead of the curve on training mandated reporters, as well.”

The News Leader stated that “he interprets higher number of hotline calls and substantiated cases here as signs of better reporting, rather than a higher rate of abuse.”

Vieth should have done a little deeper research into the situation before he made such leaps of judgment. Mandated reporters in the Ozarks, especially Greene and Christian County, make frequent reports because they are scared—scared that they will be prosecuted. Some of these hotline calls are clearly unnecessary, but because the prosecutors have decided to take mandated reporters to court, ruining their finances, their careers (even though they were exonerated), and ruining their professional and personal reputations, mandated reporters pick up the phone at the slightest concern.

My mama called this behavior "crying wolf." When the "wolf" finally does appear, no one believes it because they've heard the cries so often when nothing was there.

Mandated reporters make calls, as this expert reported, and still up to 1/3 aren’t even fully investigated. The recent death of a six year old in Shell Knob (also discussed in this blog--Could this have been prevented, November 27, 2006) illustrates only too well how calls to the hotline by several different mandated reporters are simply filed away.

As a mandated reporter I have made countless calls. Of those calls, I can count on two hands how many were taken seriously, and even fewer where some sort of intervention was attempted.

A few years ago, I was asked to do counseling with a young mother—she was 19 at the time—who was diagnosed with mild mental retardation, and had just given birth to her fourth child. She lived in government housing, and had lots of do-gooders in and out of her house.

Her oldest child started in play therapy with me, and during the first session, without any questioning on my part, she used Barbie and Ken dolls to show how her biological grandfather, who had been imprisoned as a much younger man for sexually abusing his two sons, had molested her. I called the hotline on this case for the first time. Since the child had a serious speech delay, the investigators decided she couldn’t be trusted to explain what happened, and nothing was done.

Later the child used crayons to draw pictures of her grandfather naked. Again I called the hotline, and again nothing was done.

The next time I hotlined the case was when I came to the house unannounced and found one child locked in a bathroom and the infant had been left in the crib for hours and was almost swimming in waste his diaper was so full. Before I got to the front door a different child ran out the front door naked, swinging his dirty diaper over his head. When I got inside I discovered he’d wiped off the diaper all the way down the stairs—the brown, smelly streaks were still gooey along the handrail. The father was in the living room, screaming obsenities at the mom who simply cowered, unable to fight for herself.

Yes, I called the hotline. No, nothing was done.

Other workers that had been on the case had also made hotline calls, they, too, were "unsubstantiated."

It was on the fourth hotline call, after the oldest child used her halting words and her dolls to explain how frightened she was to have to go back to her grandfather’s for the weekend, that something was done.

I made the call to report the ongoing concerns about sexual abuse. The intervention, however, wasn’t because of the alleged sexual abuse, though. It wasn’t because of the seriously and persistently mentally ill father’s domestic violence, either. It wasn’t because the children had been left without adequate supervision.

It was because the house was dirty.

It was filthy, actually. The shit on the walls from the last week had been left to dry. The floor was coated in a sticky, slippery film. A broken lamp sat on the window sill, with big shards of glass covering the surface. The children were passing around a grimy baby bottle, sharing what was left of the infant’s formula. Dirty dishes and roaches covered the kitchen counters.

It isn’t that I think they shouldn’t have intervened because of the filth—I was cetainly relieved that something was finally being done, regardless of the precipitating events. After time passed though, I began to wonder about the State’s priorities when repeated calls about potential sexual abuse by a known perpetrator weren’t given the same credence. The filth was obvious, though, and no speech delay would prevent the workers and the police from believing it existed.

Now that Missouri Medicaid has made sweeping changes to mental health, I wouldn't even be able to work individually with that little girl, and it is highly doubtful she would revealed the abuse in front of her mother or father.

A Safe Exam, and repeated interviews eventually proved what she'd been demonstrating for so long--she had been sexually abused. She was only three years old.

I worked with this little girl for quite a while as she bounced from foster home to foster home. Ironically at one foster home I actually made a hotline call because it was so filthy. That family quit fostering long before the State actually responded. They quit, actually, after I came in the home to find my client bruised and scared to even play. I guess they knew they couldn’t take it—the child clearly had some issues, and even at age three she was difficult. Other foster homes discharged her after she sexually acted out on other kids in the home.

The State tried to send her back to her mother, but finally everyone agreed that mom simply couldn’t take care of her. By this time mom had already given birth to child number five, and was told by Medicaid officials that, even at her request, they wouldn’t perform a tubal ligation because she wasn’t yet 21.

There was a happy ending for the child, surprisingly. She was moved to a foster home where they simply dug in their heels and stuck it out with her. She got speech therapy, she got into Head Start. She continued in play therapy for a while longer. By the time she entered kindergarten, she was a bubbly, eager little girl, who already could read some basic children’s books, and couldn’t wait to bring her new kittens to the first show and tell of the year.

The story didn’t end so happily for her siblings, but that’s for another blog post.
The point of my telling this story is to give an example of how the system is basically set up to fail. Mandated reporters make call after call. Hotline workers call local workers, whose hands are tied by bureaucracy, poor training and high burnout. Nothing gets accomplished, and everyone, especially the children, loses.

Victor Vieth may have gotten his statistics right, but his interpretation of the numbers was fanciful at best. Anyone who passed a basic statistics course knows that correlations prove nothing. High numbers of mandated reporter calls doesn’t translate into “better reporting but not more abuse” in our area just because we wish it was so.

And as the bureaucrats talk about how to “solve” the problem, whom to prosecute for not calling, and even what constitutes abuse, mandated reporters and caseworkers will remain confused and unable to act efficiently, and most horrific of all, children will continue to suffer.

Do we give up the fight or change the way we throw punches?

2007-02-02T13:31:00.000-06:00

Just mention Missouri Medicaid and you get a reaction. Some folks react with a blank stare--they can't even imagine, let alone empathize, with someone who lives below the poverty line and who might want health care for their children or, God forbid, themselves.

Others respond with a Conservative's righteous indignation: How dare poor people bilk the government for money to pay for health care. Why don't they just get a job with benefits like everybody else?

Some people look genuinely concerned about poor children being able to get their shots or get medical care outside an emergency room.

Then there are those people who believe it is all a conservative plot--the Republicans in the majority hate everyone who isn't a Republican and they will use whatever they can to silence the liberals and the poor (or the poor liberals). Some conspiracy theorists believe that the conservative government cuts health care for people in poverty because that way they'll die sooner and be less of a burden on society.

The do-gooders line up to talk about the tragedy of how this rich nation of ours can fund big business, bail out large corporations, pump big money into big oil, and still refuse to provide universal health care.

Some do-gooders have been so burned by the "system" in place now that they are unwilling to even give their names when they publicly disagree with the majority in power. They fear for their professional license. They fear an audit of their files or their income. They fear they will be set up for ridicule or professional suicide. These fears are not unfounded. I know three mental health clinicians locally whose Medicaid files were audited within weeks after they'd met with certain government officials to discuss the impact changes to mental health funding.

Working within the system to inform politicians, local concerned citizens and the media about the serious problems caused by changes in mental health funding sometimes reminds me of Sisyphus, pushing that boulder up, up, up the mountain only to have it tumble back down.

It took an election year to get certain politicians to show interest in the problems. Once the election ended, though, so did the "interest." Candidates and politicians who acted concerned haven't followed up with any of their promises. People who'd been supportive and who encouraged us to talk to officials, now waffle: Perhaps, they worry, it is doing more harm than good to discuss the way Medicaid's refusal to pay for mental health for young children is guaranteeing a future of tax payments to juvenile detention and prison systems.

Maybe, as someone suggested to me recently, meeting with politicians and bureaucrats just gives them the kodak moment they need to say they listened to concerns on all sides. Or maybe it just causes them to dig their heels in even further and flatly refuse to listen anymore. The fact that Missouri Medicaid has re-issued the provider bulletin twice in the last four months (once almost immediately after a local politician actually met with the committee director) stating plainly that they will NOT pay for individual mental health care services for young children speaks volumes.

The way it stands now, young children whose parents are using meth in one room while rats bite them in another cannot receive individual therapy. A child whose mother killed herself in the yard while her child played in the house cannot receive individual therapy. A child whose mother's boyfriend threw her into a lake out of anger cannot receive individual therapy. A child who sexually acts out in her head start classroom, probably reliving her own abuse at the hands of her "uncle" cannot receive individual counseling.

The stories are horrific. The fact that the State of Missouri refuses to pay for individual mental health care in these situation is appalling and tragic. Please don't let the politicians take away hope for these children. Call or write your representatives and tell them young poor children who have been traumatized should be able to get individualized mental health care, and the sooner the better.

Go here: http://www.moga.mo.gov/ if you don't know your representative's name, then email, write or call them. Our children's future depends on it.

Back again...

2007-02-01T10:51:00.000-06:00

Got thinkingthings back to whatever constitutes normal. This time when the Other Half rescued me, I paid close attention and I think maybe, just maybe, I understood at least some of it. We'll see. In the meantime, I'm going to try really hard to avoid clicking any shiny buttons.

As if you couldn't tell

2007-01-31T22:19:00.000-06:00

In my zeal to create a different blog for posts not related to my "do-gooder" stuff, I managed to totally mess this one up. Now I am going to figure out how to get this back how I meant it to be. Since I was "helped" (read: he did the work while I watched) by the Other Half to add cool stuff to thinkingthings, I am either going to have to bow my head and ask for help again, or use a little Morita technique and do what needs to be done.

That and never mess with the "customize" tab again.

Thursday Thirteen (on Friday)

2007-01-26T13:48:00.000-06:00

13 musings about 13 days with no power

1. Flipping a light switch and actually getting light is a wonderful thing.

2. It is embarrassing that living without electricity is so damn hard.

3. You can create your own steam room by running a hot bath when there is no heat in the house. Breathe deeply then pray for power. (The electric kind.)

4. City Utilities has lots of patient people answering phones. The workers were very reassuring, and even though it didn’t get the power turned back on any more quickly, it helped so much to hear a real voice who assured me we weren’t forgotten.

5. Mediacom phone service is cheap…for a reason. I won’t switch back to Ma Bell, at least not yet, but I’d have been sunk without a cell phone since the cable phone is useless in a power outage. And the fact that the voice mail kept working was not helpful. CU called early on, left a message essentially saying “since your voicemail picked up, you must have power back.” Eventually I left a mean-sounding greeting that said “if you get this message without hearing a ring WE STILL DON’T HAVE POWER!!!!”

6. Sleeping in my own bed with fresh sheets in a warm room is true luxury.

7. Living out of duffle bags in a series of hotels is exhausting. Sending the Young One to school and to take final exams, from a hotel room was hard. It would have been worse, though to have had to send him to take finals from a cold, dark house.

8. The Hampton Inn at US 65 and Chestnut rocks. The staff there maintained a waiting list for possible room openings, the rooms had refrigerators and microwaves, thick comforters and free breakfast. The Holiday Inn North was nice because we could actually get a room there for more than one day at a time, but they charge 80 cents for local phone calls, had no free breakfast, and creaky old beds. The older lady who cleaned our room at the Holiday Inn was so kind, and gave me a tip on finding good firewood.

9. Hardwood floors take a long time to warm up after two weeks of cold. Wool socks are essential.

10. Laundromats may be the best societal equalizer-everybody has dirty clothes. An iPod cranked full blast is the best way to cope with adults having temper tantrums over dryer lines.

11. When you are waiting, it is hard to do much of anything else. Even going to the movies takes energy away from the waiting.

12. Co-workers and friends become a little embarrassed when they ask for the 10th, 11th, 12th, and 13th days if your power is back on, especially if they never lost theirs.

13. People bring Krispy Kremes to work more often when they feel sorry for you.

Missouri Medicaid refuses to fund appropriate mental healthcare for young children experiencing storm-related stress

2007-01-24T15:59:00.000-06:00

For folks who survived Katrina or the tornados that ravaged the Ozarks in the past few years, the ice storms and resultant power outages may seem like an inconvenience rather than a disaster. Maybe so. However, that doesn’t lessen the impact of the ice storm, and it doesn’t make the emotional upheaval of the past couple of weeks any less important.

The aftermath of the storms call attention once again to the ways in which Missouri Medicaid discriminates against young children living in poverty who need mental health assistance.

People living in poverty were especially hard-hit during this storm. Many poor families can’t afford items other families so eagerly purchased like generators, fuel-powered heaters or adequate wood supplies. Even flashlights and replacement batteries were out of reach for many folks--forget jar candles selling for $10 each at Walgreens.

Families living in homes with no fireplaces or other heat sources stayed in dangerously cold homes, slept in shelters when available, or stayed with numerous people in cramped hotel rooms or houses.

Many preschool aged kids were able to return to school and daycares last week. Local Head Starts, for instance, suspended their policy of closing when the public schools closed, and kept many of their full day centers open, providing two hot meals and lots of warm hugs for hundreds of poor children who might otherwise not have had access to healthy food and heat.

Now that the power outages are winding down, and people are trying to return to normal, symptoms of depression and Post-Traumatic Stress disorder are becoming more obvious. Many adults talk about cringing when they see dark clouds, or hear a weather report mentioning extra cold weather. Loud noises remind folks of breaking limbs, emergency sirens seem ever-present.

Preschool teachers and child care providers say they’ve noticed children are having difficulty napping and are having bad dreams during naptime. Appetites have decreased, and flickering lights or loud sounds reminiscent of breaking limbs have caused children to cry out in fear.

Mothers and fathers talk to the teachers in tears because they are having problems coping, and their children are well aware of the stress. Parents who live paycheck to paycheck have had to make serious choices about how to feed their families when they’re unable to cook or pay for healthy meals.

No matter how hard we try, children feel our stress.

Kids who are experiencing such stress may have emotional or behavioral problems. They may regress in their developmental tasks—they may wet the bed, return to thumb sucking, become more clingy, or even show behavior problems like aggression or psychological withdrawal.

Missouri Medicaid refuses to pay for those young children to receive individual or group counseling by a licensed professional. Medicaid will only treat young children through family therapy.

Parents are overwhelmed with responsibilities and stress now, so knowing that their children can get the emotional help they may need while they are at school or daycare would be such a relief for them. Instead, Missouri Medicaid says young children simply won’t be helped unless their parent is present for the session.

Refusing to allow children to receive trauma resolution counseling in small groups by licensed therapists at their preschools or day cares is cruel and frankly barbaric. Why shouldn’t a young child, with parent permission, be allowed to participate in a counseling session with a licensed clinician on a one-to-one basis to help them process their emotions when they’re trying to cope with new fears and emotions?

Missouri Medicaid insists that “best practices” only includes family therapy for young children in spite of pages and pages of research documenting otherwise which have been directly presented to the committee directors.

Young, poor children in Missouri once again will go without much needed mental health care because of a committee, whose oversight remains a mystery even to local politicians. I know how difficult getting through these past days has been for me as an adult, and I just ache for the young children in our community who could get help—there are plenty of counselors and social workers eager to work with them—but can’t because of a government committee.

How to say "Hello" in Springfield this week

2007-01-24T10:39:00.000-06:00

Stop the "Hey how ya doin'?" phrases. No more "you want fries with that?" Not even the ubiquitous "Pleasedtameetcha" is heard.

The current greeting in Springfield:

You got power yet?

To which I am still replying:

"Not yet. Maybe today."

260 hours and counting.

The Cleavers Survive the Ice Storm

2007-01-22T16:33:00.000-06:00

In a Leave It to Beaver world, here’s how 10 days with no power would look:

June Cleaver is well prepared—she’s baked a layer cake, white with sprinkles on top, and brought home lots of candles, the vanilla scent is already making the living room smell delicious. She’s stocked up on canned soup and chili, spaghetti-o’s and granola bars. June is smart, she didn’t load up on perishables when she heard about the storm. Two heavy weight coolers are full of ice, fruit juice and Guinness, and are waiting in the already chilly garage.

Ward stacked the firewood close to the garage door, and made sure the plastic runners are down so June doesn’t worry about her floors. They replaced the basic fireplace with a wood stove years ago, so they already know the house will be plenty warm. Clean sets of long underwear are neatly folded, and he’s gotten extra fuel for the camping lanterns.

Beaver, of course, has gotten down the board games, and he’s particularly interested in beating Ward at Yahtzee. The TV and Playstation are already forgotten in his excitement about a Clue competition with Lumpy’s family next door. Beaver printed out his school assignments before the storm, just in case the power went out, so he can turn the work in on time. His books and lessons are stacked on the desk, within reach of his boy scout flashlight with extra D batteries, of course.

The transistor radio has fresh batteries as well, and Ward remembered to check the smoke detectors, even though he changed the batteries last fall when the clocks went back to standard time.

June straightens the insulated curtains just as the first branches begin to crack. She turns to Ward, who has already gotten a fire going, and says “Here we go Honey, want some cake?”

Beaver dashes to his cell phone to call Wally, who’s away at college, warm and safe at Florida State. Wally says he’s seen the warnings on TV, and will try to keep in touch by cell. Beaver reminds him that he’ll be charging the phone on the car, so there may be some time he’s not available. “That’s cool,” Wally remarks, “I’ll write everyone a letter, and send a little sand from the beach, too!”

Just as the lights flicker for the last time, Lumpy’s dad calls Ward to sell him his extra generator. Ward politely declines—they’ll be fine with the stove, candles and lanterns, he says, plus they’re sort of looking forward to some straight-up family time.

On the third day, when the last of the ice has fallen for a while, Ward and the Beav bundle up to go check on the neighbors. June sends the left over chocolate chip cookies she baked before the storm, and reminds the boys to be home by five for roasted hotdogs and marshmallows over the fire. There are hugs all around, and Beaver reminds June that he’s one up on the Gin Rummy contest, and is planning on securing first place that night.

A few days later, when the walls start to close in a bit, June suggests they pile into the Volvo wagon and head out to the dollar movies. They splurge on buttered popcorn for all, and settle into an afternoon of escapism, Hollywood style. Later in the week, when the power is still out, the Cleavers spend the afternoon at the library, checking email, posting on their family blog and checking out new books for the rest of the week.

By day seven, they’ve finished the board game competitions, and canned chili has gotten a little tiresome. Ward sees that the local pancake house got their power back, so he loads up the family for a Breakfast for Dinner extravaganza. Beaver brings Lumpy and Eddie Haskell along, so they get to sit at their own table while the grown ups sip hot coffee and smile lovingly across the table.

June says she’s just about the luckiest mom around, even with no power and school out till next week, they’ve got each other, and what else could you need?

Yeah. Right. Makes me want to be sick, too.

Ten days and still counting. The Young One will go back to school from a hotel room tomorrow, and the Other Half will keep stoking the fire. God bless the CU folks—oh yeah, and send ‘em our way, okay?

Any dryer in a storm

2007-01-20T10:39:00.000-06:00

Usually people think of the Department of Motor Vehicles as the place where virtually everyone, rich and poor, has to go at least once. As an equalizer, however, I've decided the ice storm leaves the DMV in the dust.

The aftermath of three "waves" of ice storms continues to leave about 18,000 Springfieldians, and about 100,000 others, including my little family--now on our 8th day, without power.

Having no power means wearing levis that stand up by themselves or a taking trip to the laundromat. I spent the evening at the Bennett Street Laundry yesterday, and I gotta say, the laundromat in a power outage may truly be the ultimate place for people watching.

A snapshot: All 35 washing machines are in constant use. There's evidence of at least one washer overflowing, and crumpled dryer sheets litter the floor throughout the room. You can't get two washers together, so folks mark open washers with their baskets or trash bags full of clothes, and move quickly to the next open machine to toss another basketload on the top before starting the first one. Three older and clearly wealthy women, with perfectly coiffed white hair, black cashmere coats and sturdy wicker laundry baskets huddle together near one machine, trying to figure out how to set a permanent press cycle with cold water.

At the other end of the laundry, where men and women are queued up three deep waiting for one of the 17 working dryers, two middle aged women and their teenage daughters are pulling satin comforters and designer jeans out of the six dryers they've co-opted. One of the moms takes off her sleeveless mink vest as the steamy dryer heat makes a fur pretty useless. She adds another quarter to one dryer, opens the next, feeling the clothing, and asks her friend to decide if it is dry. The friend, decked out in a thigh length pink silk car coat, has to shift her matching pink cell phone to the other ear so she can reach in the huge drum. Not just yet, she proclaims, and in goes another quarter. The teenage daughters alternately fold colorful silky panties, sip bottled water and glance at science books.

The well dressed older ladies eventually move over to the dryers, where the three-deep line surely doesn't apply to them. A dryer opens up, and the younger of the three steps forward with a trying-to-feel-embarrassed look, and tosses her basket of unmentionables into the machine just as a young black woman and her four year old daughter realize their turn has come and gone.

The child whirls on her light-up Barbie shoes and goes happily to her A&W Rootbeer and pretzels. She perches on an orange plastic chair right next to a twenty-something guy with a soul patch who has been calmly folding his abercrombie shirts and putting load after load into the one dryer he's got. Just by how he folds the shirts, any former retail clothing salesperson knows this fellow has spent a lot of time straightening racks and telling little white lies about how those jeans look "so you."

Our fur-wearing comrade decides her things are dry, zips up her mink, grins at those of us waiting patiently for at least one of her six dryers, and informs us that she's "totally out of my league here!" Really?

I've spent a lot of time at this laundromat over the past few years when my 17 year old washer and dryer alternately went on the fritz. I must look like I belong there, since at least two ladies ask me how long the dryers last, and how many cycles it will take to dry 15 pairs of jeans.

By about 8:30 the lines are gone, I've gathered up the last of the long underwear sets and boot socks and am about out the door when a new wave of humanity starts arriving. I see a local engineer and civic leader come in, looking dapper in his Polo denims, followed by a tree trimmer swaddled in an insulated jumpsuit, and two Hispanic guys in t-shirts and dickies.

Part of me just wanted to buy a bucket of popcorn and settle into the warmth to watch the people the way I'd watch a good movie. But it is cold at home, the Other Half would probably enjoy some warm socks and a coffee. At least I've got some good people stories to tell him tonight.

Power Envy

2007-01-17T12:07:00.000-06:00

Reality therapists say one of the major human needs, and one that can become a big issue, is the need for power.

Man oh man is that an issue for me today. My need for power is not exactly what William Glasser had in mind, though, since what I want is electric power. Lights. Heat. Normalcy. Please.

City Utilities is a fantastic power company. Compared with what my mom goes through dealing with her utility companies in Tulsa, we are incredibly lucky. She never gets to talk to a human. We always do. Even in this disasterous ice storm, after holding for less than 5 minutes, I was able to speak to a real person, and even better--she was nice. With CU being customer owned, we have control over what happens through the CU board and City Council. We've got all our utilities in one company which also makes everything significantly easier.

All the warm fuzzies aside, though, I'm ready to see a big honkin' CU truck on my street. I'm ready to flip a switch and see light. (If I had a dollar for every time I've flipped the switch by habit just going into a room in the last five days, I could pay my CU bill!)

Driving around my neighborhood at night brings out another sort of power envy. We're only a few blocks from a fairly major intersection which got power back a couple days ago. Two houses closest to the library got their power back then, too. They're the only houses for blocks and blocks with power. Driving by, seeing their porch lights blazing, warm light emanating from the windows, it is almost like they are showing off. That wave of power envy passes quickly, though, and then I feel happy for them and recognize that when my electricity is back, I'll be blazing that porch light with the best of 'em.

Peter, Paul and Mary summed it up in their song "Power:" "everybody needs some power I'm told, to shield them from the darkness and the cold..." Go to lyricsfreak to see the rest of this groovy anti-nuke song.

Power. Today please.

Thanks for the warning, Mr. Gore

2007-01-14T20:32:00.000-06:00

Epic storm. Devasting ice. Destroyed trees. Power outages for up to 200,000 folks in Missouri alone--60,000 of them in Springfield.

This on top of record lows in California, two huge blizzards right on top of each other and an avalanche in Colorado, an 8.4 earthquake in Japan with tsunami warnings. Al Gore was talking about the long term effects of our conspicous consumption when he ran for president in the 80's. Looks like it took having the presidency stolen from him (and an award-worthy documentary) to get people to pay attention to his message of climate change.

I hope it is not too late.

This "epic" storm started Friday night, and even though the trees were beginning to crack under the weight of ice, we blessedly kept power. By Saturday noon, however, the lights flickered and died, leaving the house to grow rapidly colder. The fireplace, along with flashlights and vanilla candles, made it almost cozy, though.

By 1AM, when the last firelog and dry wood chunks burned up, extra blankets and undercovers spooning were what kept us from giving into the teeth chattering cold.

The front yard and driveway are littered with huge ice-covered branches and gumballs frozen into hockey pucks. The Sweetgum trees we alternately curse (because of the never-ending showers of prickly gumballs) and praise (because of the heavenly shade they provide) may not survive the inches thick ice. In the stillness of the cold house, breaking branches sound like gunshots and cannons exploding throughout the neighborhood.

I'm right in the middle of rereading Stephen King's The Stand which just compounds the eeriness of the storm. With the length of Glenstone, from Battlefield to I-44, in total darkness, along with dead street lights and electric wires coated with thick white ice hanging low over the roads, Springfield looks way too much the way I've envisioned King's post-superflu apocolypse.

This sort of event can bring out the best in people, which I sometimes forget. Tonight, just as a giant limb crashed onto the roadway blocking cars each way, the guy in a Jeep behind me pulled out a chainsaw and began cutting it into manageable pieces. Several of us got out to help pull the icy branches off the street before we went on our way. Drivers seem nicer today-- people are driving slowly, letting others go first, moving quickly out of the way at the first sound of a siren. Strangers offer suggestions about what to burn in the fireplace since stores still open in the city have sold out of wood and firelogs. People seem more patient, or maybe they're just resigned to several days of unavoidable low-tech living.

Tonight, however, I am warmly ensconced in a thick white quilt, watching Mythbusters and typing on the laptop, listening to the trees break apart outside the Hampton Inn. It's a luxury, and one that I'm not at all sure I would have endulged without the Young One. As it is, the Other Half is still home, watching Orange Kitty silently move from window to window, ears cocked, listening to the branches crack and fall in a shower of ice.

I talk real big about wanting to live off the grid. This devasting and beautiful ice storm reminds me why it would be easier said than done. Preparation is the key. That and learning to live without a blow dryer.

If you didn't know better

2007-01-12T08:57:00.000-06:00

"'I think decent societies are judged by how they care for and meet the needs of our most vulnerable,' Blunt said at the Family Resources Center of Boys & Girls Town of Missouri in Springfield..." (Springfield News Leader 1/12/2007)

If you don't live in Missouri or work with people who are the "most vulnerable," you might believe that Governor Matt Blunt was being genuine. You might think that he is working to help the poor and disenfranchised in our state. You might decide folks are better off now than they were when Holden, Wilson or Carnahan were governor. But you would be very wrong.

He's right on one point, of course--we are judged by how we treat the poor and underprivileged among us. So, let's look at a little slice of some of the changes he and his cronies in the state General Assembly have wrought upon our more vulnerable citizens.

-Thousands of citizens, including disabled adults, children, the elderly, and working poor families lost medical coverage when the Blunt-led government slashed Medicaid coverage.

-Elimination of dental health care for poor adults.

-Elimination of individual mental health services for young children.

-Elimination of coverage for certain pharmaceuticals and durable medical equipment including wheelchair batteries.

-Appropriations to Missouri's public colleges and universities have been cut drastically--100 million is the estimate so far but tuition increases have skyrocketed.

-Creation of seven new state agencies--reportedly to cut bureaucracy.

-The governor is said to have spent over $100,000 in tax dollars to redecorate his office, with rumors flying about his wife's fear of staying in the governor's mansion since inmate trustees work on the grounds. Some say the new security system in place was another drain on tax dollars.

-Funding for state supported child care programs are so far behind that at least two local preschool/daycare programs had to close for lack of payment.

Blunt's comments about meeting the needs of the most vulnerable were made while touting his proposed increase in the pay rate for children's residential care (for the third time since taking office). It is clear that these rate increases are desperately needed. Boys and Girls Town and other residential care programs do good work for children and adolescents, and should be commended for what they try to accomplish.

The fact remains, however, that residential care typically is, and should be, a treatment of last resort. He's cut mental health care for poor children, hasn't even begun to fix the horribly broken state Children's Division system, and seems to have ignored many programs which could prevent children from needing residential care.

The road to judgment which Mr. Blunt and his Republican-led General Assembly lead us down, is paved with cronyism, misplaced priorities, and self-serving choices that make our society less decent with each vote they cast.

Let's see if I can do it

2007-01-11T15:56:00.000-06:00

I don’t usually make new year’s resolutions—I’m more likely to follow through with giving something up for Lent, but unless its Dr. Pepper (as opposed to Guinness) that’s probably not going to happen, either.

This year though, inspired by the posts at agirlworthsaving I’ve decided to not only make a resolution, but to also blog it so that when I mess it up, I experience that guilt trip borne from having shared it with someone else. That, behavior modification fans, is punishment. (Don’t make me explain the difference between punishment and negative reinforcement—you’ll make me get out my red grading pen and assign F’s to all of your old psych 101 exams!)

Anyway here’s the deal: I love to eat out. I’d eat out every meal every day if I could. I rarely get taken out, or go out, to eat in the evenings, so I usually do my restaurant-going at lunchtime. Because I’m all over the Ozarks doing that do-gooder jive, I’ve experienced quite a few great joints, and nice places, in some unusual spots (try the Maple Street Grill in Buffalo, or Hawg Wild Barbeque in Aurora for example). I settle in with my book and my coke, and take a half hour or so away from the “trouble I’ve seen.” It is heaven.

It is a sort of therapy for me, especially when I’ve spent my days working in other folks’ homes or rural preschool classrooms, trying to help in situations too desperate to describe. It’s an escape for me, really, just a baby step removed from reality.

But it costs money. Even the 2.99 burger and chips at Hawg Wild adds up over time, and with that comes a different sort of guilt trip.

Now, it’s not like I spend a fortune at some five star place; taco bell drive thru beats the heck out of a sack lunch to me, but that’s money that I could save. Which leads to my resolution--I decided to cut back on the lunch money I spend. At first I thought I’d whittle it down to one or two days a week, but I understand enough about my nature to realize that wouldn’t work. So, instead of limiting the days, I’m going to limit my spending. I’m giving myself a dollar amount each week, and when it’s used up, then it’s back to sack lunches or microwave chicken noodle dinner.

If I win the lottery, though, after I create my foundation to pay for parenting classes and mental health services for children and families living in poverty (oh if only), and after I pay bills and invest so I never, ever worry about money, I’ll be hitting the restaurant trail again. And Hawg Wild will be serving up the rib plate instead of the burger, that’s for sure.

Oh yeah, I forgot—I don’t play the lottery.

Left Behind Missouri Style

2007-01-09T14:03:00.000-06:00

Marmot (snarling marmot) has a good post with background on the recent discussion about the Bush Administration's No Child Left Behind Act. I started to leave a comment on her blog, but realized it would take up way too much space, so I clicked over to the dashboard and began to vent...

A perfect example of why this NCLB is more of a negative influence on education: My officemate has a child in 5th grade. Yesterday she came home from school so stressed that she wanted to quit her gifted program which takes her out of school one afternoon each week. Why?

Not because of sports or ballet or music; not because of family stress or too much math homework, no, the stress is because of the upcoming Missouri Assessment Program, or MAP testing.

MAP testing, which actually began in 1993 as result of Missouri's Outstanding Schools Act, has been reworked to comply with NCLB, and often is the focus of Ozarks area schools from January until April. In the case of my officemate's child, on the first day back to school after winter break, she was told their schedule for MAP preparations. Essentially that is all they will be working on from now until the tests. They'll study for the test, have "MAP bowls" and other competitions, practice tests, study groups, and more. She's afraid that if she misses Monday afternoons she'll not be prepared for the test. This is a child who is gifted--and motivated. She wants to do well, and she's clearly gotten the message that the results of the MAP tests are the most important part of her school year.

Teaching for the test? You bet. Are kids being "left behind?" Maybe yes, maybe no, but what is definitely left behind is the education of our children to be productive, socialized citizens who are not doomed to repeat the mistakes of their parents. Instead it seems education has been reduced to scores on a test which in turn means money for the school. Dollars, baby, that's the point.

Even the Head Start programs are testing kids. Three and four year olds are subjected to NRS (National Reporting System) testing at the beginning and end of each school year. I'm all for making sure kids are getting prepared for kindergarten and to be lifelong learners, but asking four year olds to perform for national tests is just too much. They need to be in sandboxes and getting paint all over themselves, not being taken one at a time to little rooms with desks to be tested.

School is about learning--tests, homework, competition, heavy book bags, and bad lunches are part of this, but when months are dedicated to preparing students to take one big test, pretty much to the exclusion of everything else, all kids are left behind.

Positive reinforcement rocks!

2007-01-09T07:50:00.000-06:00

Wow! I actually blushed to my earlobes when I heard last night that this blog had been nominated for a "Blogaroni" award. Larry over at Simple Thoughts of a Complex Mind has all the award categories and nominees listed, so go check it out. Thinkingthings is up for two--Best Rookie blog and Most Improved blog. What a trip!

Rookie is definitely the right word for me. I'm lucky if I can get in a post a week and I have more than a few unfinished posts taking up space as "drafts." Of course I spend probably a lot more time than really necessary making sure that I sound coherent, and that I've been able to paint an accurate picture, especially when I am blogging about poverty, mental health, child abuse and neglect, and the MESS our government has made of health care and mental health care in these crazy times.

So yeah, it is way cool to have this positive reinforcement for my attempt at blogging. You can vote for the various awards by emailing Larry, or at the next bloggers meeting. Click on over to his website to get more info.

And thanks, kids, for the reinforcement. BF Skinner would be proud of my immediate positive response (this post and the warm fuzzy feelings) to the operant conditioning!

Another example of how the US Healthcare system is broken

2007-01-05T14:58:00.000-06:00

My friends Johnna and Mary (fake names, okay?) have lived together for about 8 years, maybe more. Their relationship or partnership is not recognized by the State so they can't have health insurance on the same policy together. Mary carries her own health insurance because she is self employed. She is probably one of the hardest workers I know. Her business involves major physical work including wallpapering and removal, painting, building clean up, etc.

Mary's 52 now, and she is in almost constant pain from her back. She's been seen regularly by a pain management clinic at a local hospital, and the physician has her on some very heavy narcotics so that she can continue to earn a living. Last week the doc told her that her insurance would no longer cover his services, and that the clinic wouldn't take self-pay even if she could afford the $300 a visit he charges. (For local readers, we're talking about CoxHealth, of course.) The hospital system her insurance will fund has no pain management center, and her general physician is reluctant to prescribe the narcotic medications.

Right after she heard this news, she received notice from the insurance company that her premium is being raised by another $100 this month. She said they've raised her premium $100 a year since she turned 50. It is now up to $500 a month.

$500

Mary's mortgage payment is about $525, so think about this: To get ongoing care for her myriad health problems she has to pay essentially the equivalent of her house payment every month. Mary works hard, pays taxes on time, is buying her own home--she is doing all the things we Americans are expected to do to be considered productive--yet she can't afford health care.

This is wrong. People like Mary are being punished by an industry which focuses on the profit margin and not on the patient. Since when did health care become a privilege for the rich?

The government intervened when Chrysler was about to go under. It funds billions and trillions of dollars worth of bombers and heavy duty hammers for our military (but forget about heavy duty armor for the troops), while making sure that companies like Halliburton get cushy contracts, but it refuses to take care of it's own citizens. The government intervenes when restaurants are unhealthy, when dogs are running loose, when downtown buildings need to be revitalized, but it won't stop the health care industry from running roughshod over the people it purports to help.

Why is it that my insurance plan would charge me a $25 copay for a medicine I recently purchased at Target for $4? If I had no prescription plan and didn't know about Target's program, I would pay close to $45.00 for the exact same medicine at a different store.

Why is it that when I see my doctor for a twice-yearly med check, he charges my insurance company $70 when all he does is tell me how his kids are doing in college? If he chats longer than 10 minutes, he charges more. If I go to a different doctor for the same medicine check, I may have to pay only $55, or then again, I may pay as much as $100. There is no predicting the fee.

I hear people complain about "socialized medicine" or point to the health care system in Canada as unreliable. The latest propaganda about how Canadian medicines may not be as reliable as American meds is beyond ridulous! As if Canadian citizens are so backwards they wouldn't be aware if they were getting bogus medications.

For a nation that fancies itself the "greatest" we've got some serious problems. When we can't take care of our own citizens, when we can't police huge industries that are stealing from the middle class and the poor, we're a long, long way from being okay. Our government should focus at least as much energy, if not more, on protecting it's own citizens as it does focusing on foreign policy.

And NO ONE should have to decide between paying for medicine or food.

Pardon the sarcasm...

2006-12-28T11:05:00.000-06:00

Here's a touching little scene:

It is Christmas day, and along with boatloads of other folks, the Young One and I are at the cut-rate movie theater, waiting for "The Guardian" to start. A row in front of us, also waiting for the PG-13 rated flick, are an adult man and woman, and two very young children--maybe 20 months and almost 3 years old. The older child is sporting a fuzzy 101 Dalmations coat, and spends a lot of time scratching at her coarsely chopped hair. When she isn't scratching, she's turned in her seat giving the Young One a serious stare. The littlest one, however, isn't so well-behaved. She's squirming, crying, unhappy with the wait, and with the fact that her mom keeps thrusting her angrily at the dad. Dad gets up to go to the lobby, and mom starts yelling. "Get your dirty ass back here!" "Where do you think you're going?" Toddler is now really crying. Dad stomps back, and grabs the kid. She's arching, crying, pulling away from them both. Mom hollers: "You be quiet or I'll call the cops!"

Brilliant. Now both kids are crying.

They didn't make it through the very loud 2 1/2 hour movie, although they lasted longer than I expected. What the heck were these folks thinking when they brought these children to a long, action-filled, loud and NOT age-appropriate movie? Did they leave their common sense at home with their teeth?

There's an old rule of parenting that makes alot of sense to me: Don't make a promise you can't keep, or a threaten something you can't do. I've met several parents who use calling the police, putting kids in jail, or giving them a shot as threats. Does it really need to be explained why these threats do more harm than good? Just ask the nurse that does have to give the child her immunizations. Just ask the police officer who has to come to the home to respond to a domestic violence call.

And yes, there were at least two G/PG rated films showing in the same theater complex, and none were sold out.

What a mess.

2006-12-14T15:45:00.000-06:00

Once again the minds at Missouri Medicaid have issued an edict that makes no real sense whatsoever, unless of course, their goal is to have more and more clinicians decide it is just not worth the hassle to provide mental health services for people living in poverty.

Here's the gist: Until late in 2005, if you were over age 20, Missouri Medicaid would not pay for mental health services beyond medication management. When the Missouri Medicaid wizards finally decided that people over the age of 20 might actually need psychotherapy, they also determined that clinical social workers and counselors would not be paid to provide that therapy--only psychologists are allowed to see adults. That alone makes no sense. So, it is okay for licensed social workers and counselors to work with children--you know, the future of our society and all that--but not adults? Whatever.

All that aside, it was truly good news when they allowed adults to receive any kind of counseling at all.

The good news was short-lived though.

The prior authorization rules that have caused such serious, tragic problems for children and families trying to get help, have now reached their tentacles of fear and confusion to the adult population as well.

This week's "hot tip" from Missouri Medicaid tells the tale:

"All psychology prior authorizations (PA) issued for adults during any calendar year will have an authorized through date of December 31st of that same year. For example, any psychology PA issued during 2006 will close effective December 31, 2006 regardless of any remaining unused units left on the PA.

Should a patient currently in treatment need ongoing services, a new PA period will begin on January 1, 2007. Providers may begin requesting a new authorization immediately under the guidelines established in the December 1, 2005 bulletin.

Reminder: Providers who have been paid for services in excess of four (4) hours for a recipient in the last rolling year will not receive four (4) additional non-prior authorized hours for that recipient."

To paraphrase Rachael Ray: "how stupid is that?"

Bureaucracy at it worst

2006-12-11T16:26:00.000-06:00

I tried to do a favor for someone today. I took a young woman to the Springfield Driver's License Testing Office to take her driver's test. No one else would do it--her DFS caseworker's boss said she couldn't use a DFS vehicle, the transitional living program where she stays said their employees couldn't do it because of insurance. The lists of excuses just got longer and longer. She's getting ready to move out of state to go to college, and will be commuting from off-campus, so having a valid license is pretty darned important.

We got to the license bureau, she filled in their form, got her photo taken, and then all wheels of progress came to a complete halt.

We sat.

We sat some more. We listened to another young woman and her dad call the mother to tell her they'd been waiting for almost two hours. There were other people also waiting, and though they were speaking in a different language, it was very obvious they, too, had been waiting for hours.

I finally had to leave, favor or no favor. So, I asked the one employee I could find how long the wait would be. She explained that the examiners were taking their lunch breaks and there were only two examiners available. (Available? Where were they?) She said that we could come back in the afternoon, but it would be packed, and it didn't matter whether we'd been waiting or not, when 4PM came, they'd stop testing. The end.

According to the Missouri Government website, the only Springfield office that does the testing is on Park Central Square. You can go to Republic, on Tuesdays from 9 - 3:30. The wait there is often more than three hours, and even then you might not make it under the time limit to be tested. So, you pretty much need to carve out an entire day just to take a driving test, which they say takes less than a half hour.

This was like something on a bad 1970's comedy,like Airplane or Police Academy, only we'll call this one Driver's License Insanity. Or maybe: How Governor Matt Blunt punishes the masses while giving favors to the people who donate large sums to his campaigns.

Political favors and profit margins pretty much always trump "regular" folks.