Monday, October 19, 2009

“Possum Philosophy: Putting health first - Southwest Virginia Today” plus 4 more

“Possum Philosophy: Putting health first - Southwest Virginia Today” plus 4 more

Possum Philosophy: Putting health first - Southwest Virginia Today

Posted: 19 Oct 2009 10:10 AM PDT

By ROBERT CAHILL/Columnist

Well friends and neighbors, it's sure been a mighty rough week so far here at the old homestead. For anyone unaware, my darling wife, Terry, took a nasty fall a week ago this past Saturday. In so doing, as her specialist described it, "…she demolished her elbow."
Now let me give you a quick-and-easy basic anatomy lesson. The human arm is a wondrous thing. It starts in a big old funky joint, the shoulder, runs down the side of the body to connect the hand to the rest of the gizmo. In the upper part of the arm is a large bone. It attaches to the shoulder on the upper end and the elbow on the bottom. The elbow is actually a ball and socket joint. It has the ability to move the lower arm in many directions.
On its lower end, the elbow attaches to two more bones, each somewhat smaller that the large one between the elbow and the shoulder. Then we hit the wrist and the hand with its phalanges and tendons and ligaments and a huge bunch of gobbledygook with which I will not bore you. (It's been a long time since my college biology and I don't want to spend a couple of hours searching the Web for the names and descriptions of all this "other stuff." Suffice it to say it's all important and necessary stuff, okay?)
So here is the condensed version. Terry fell, pretty much nothing between her and Mother Earth except her right arm (a somewhat fortunate turn of events as she is left-handed). The entire force of her fall was concentrated in one small area, her arm. The force of the fall, complicated by her locking her arm as she fell caused a lot of damage. I mean a big old bunch. Starting at the top, the bone in her upper arm suffered a fracture. It didn't break apart but fractured. The lower arm was even worse. Both bones in it broke completely away from the elbow. As if that were not bad enough, the elbow apparently dislocated from its normal position. In doing so part of the ball-and-socket actually broke away. Even worse, it absolutely shattered.
No popping the old elbow back in place; putting the whole mess in a sling and giving it a couple of weeks to heal. If it were that simple, Dr. Alford would have fixed everything up the night of her accident and by now she would be probably nearly healed. (Well believe me, she ain't. Not even close.) Dr. Jason Brashear, an orthopedic surgeon who specializes in injuries of the upper extremities, has to go in there and rebuild everything. It will have pins and plates and who knows what else. The guy was pretty up front.
He told us that, yes, he could fix it and would, but it would never have the normal full range of motion that it had before the accident. He also pointed out that as with any serious surgery there is a chance of severe bleeding and also of infection. Terry is a nurse and a darn good one. She already knew all this, but she was hurting so bad that if he had said he'd do it right then if he could borrow my pocket knife, she'd have jerked my pocket off trying to get it. (Hey it's a Case XX Jr. Trapper and sharp as a razor. I think it would make an outstanding surgical tool.)
All this conversation took place on Tuesday, Oct. 6. They scheduled her pre-operation blood-work, and such for Thursday, Oct. 8, and a return to discuss the pre-op results with the surgical staff on Friday, Oct. 9, at 12:45 p.m. We were hoping for surgery no later than Monday. Alas, it was not to be. On Friday, she received a call asking her if she could come in early. In case you are wondering, this lady is both tough as nails and totally dedicated to the care of her residents at the nursing home. She is an employer's dream, dedicated, smart, good at her job and refuses to miss work if at all possible. She missed almost no work while suffering with her arm and elbow in the condition it is. The doctors all were surprised saying that it was a terribly painful injury.
Finally, we get to his office, and they ask if she has ever had any kidney trouble. No. It seems that the levels of her kidney function were elevated in one test. The surgeon said he needed her to see a nephrologist (that's a kidney specialist) and get clearance for Terry to undergo the operation. She had extensive tests run and rerun in late April; the ER staff ran numerous blood samples the night of her fall. None showed any kidney troubles.
Still, the surgeon wanted clearance as he told us he did not want to chance putting my wife under anesthesia and when she awoke having her need to be on dialysis. I am in 100 percent agreement on this point. My only question was why not rerun the test first. The lab where she had the tests done is a fine one, however it is as busy as a Super Walmart on a sunny Saturday afternoon. The possibility exists that a mistake took place. It happens. Re-running the test would either confirm a problem or clear up the matter so she could proceed. However, a visit to the kidney specialist won out, so off we will go the day after this is being written to visit a nephrologist in Bristol. I feel sure Terry will get good news, and we can proceed to getting her arm repaired and back to almost normal. On a subject as important as the health and well-being of Terry, I will fall on the side of overkill every time.
Please let me say this. Over the last week and a half she has received an abundance of good wishes and been placed on a plethora of prayer lists thanks to our friends on the Internet. She has received phone calls from Florida, good wishes and prayers from all over the Southeastern U.S., and get wells from Texas, Oklahoma and Oregon. And from many friends that we simply do not know where they live. This is not to mention our many wonderful friends right here at home. She wanted me to be sure and thank everyone. We truly appreciate all the thoughts prayers and kind wishes so many of you have held for us. Thank you dear friends from the bottom of our hearts.
And one last thing. In describing the abilities she would still have after surgery, Dr. Brashear said she would be able to do an up and down motion, which he illustrated as a chopping motion. Terry grinned and said that would be enough. At least she could still do the Tomahawk Chop to cheer on her beloved Atlanta Braves baseball team. 

A freelance journalist, Robert "Rocky" Cahill writes regularly for the News & Messenger. His Possum Philosophy column appears in each Saturday edition.

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A New Economic Philosophy for the Left: Rise Up Economics - DAILY KOS

Posted: 19 Oct 2009 11:28 AM PDT

Rise Up Economics is a new philosophy that says the economy should be set up to benefit the vast majority of middle and lower income Americans, not the people at the top. The money that in the past has gone to tax cuts for the rich, corporate welfare, bailouts for the banks, and massive bonuses for CEOs should now go directly or indirectly into the hands of working people.

It is demand-side economics: when working people have more money to spend, it increases demand and helps the whole economy rise up.  

It's the opposite of Trickle Down Economics. You've got to hand it to the Republicans: they just came out and said that what's good for big corporations and the wealthy is good for all of America, and they set out to cut taxes on the rich and corporations and paid for it by cutting programs for the poor and running up the national debt, alleging that the wealth would trickle down to the rest of us.

Now that we're in power, it's time to set out an audacious plan to provide real economic assistance to the vast majority of working people in the middle or below. We need to make the wealthy and the corporations pay their fair share of taxes again and tax carbon pollution, the financial industry, and the oil and gas industry, and distribute those funds directly to working people in the form of tax credits and indirectly through important government programs like health care and education.

Many current issues are key to Rise Up Economics: we need to strengthen the right to join together with our co-workers in a union and get a contract with wage increases by passing the Employee Free Choice Act. Uniting in unions is the traditional way to get more of our economy's wealth to flow to working people, and even though only less than 12% of workers in America belong to a union, getting that number up to 15 or 20 percent would have a profound effect on raising wages for everyone.

We also need affordable health care coverage for all, more education funding, job creation projects in infrastructure and green technologies. I think it helps to take what are now separate and independent campaigns and unite them in a simple, repeatable package that the public can easily understand: Rise Up Economics.

The key new idea is providing income directly to working people through new tax credits. I think the public is angry and incredulous that we spent trillions bailing out the banks, which are now making record profits again, and we didn't get a damn thing. The tax cut that was passed was minuscule, and hidden within paychecks so nobody really noticed it. And the stimulus funding will be helpful but it doesn't touch most people directly.

We can start out with modest tax credits that provide a few hundred dollars a month that folks can count on every month. Eventually, we should establish a serious Income Security Tax Credit that provides enough income so that everyone is starting out above the poverty level, about $10,000 a year.

We need to truly stimulate the economy on a permanent basis by providing a level of income security that most people just don't have now. With unemployment pushing 10%, people with jobs facing cuts in hours, businesses moving to an employment model where employees are independent contractors with no benefits of any kind, it has become apparent that our economy is set up in a way where we are totally reliant for income on jobs that we really can't rely on much at all.

As corporations figure out ways to eliminate jobs and pay as little as possible and move operations all across the globe to find the lowest labor costs, and new technology makes some human work obsolete, it's time to face facts: we have an economy where we desperately need good jobs, but it's not in the corporations' best financial interest to provide them. We need them, but they don't need us.

We will never have true economic security if we are reliant on corporations to provide us with enough good jobs. We should try to get the government to create as many good jobs as possible, but even that would probably fall short. At some point, to ensure economic security for all, we need to establish a level of income security that is independent from our jobs.

Basic income security as a human right: that's what Martin Luther King and many others in the progressive community advocated for in the '60s as the guaranteed annual income. It's time to revisit this as a key issue for the 21st Century. A movement for a basic income for all has already begun across the globe, and it's building here in the US as well.

With all the talk about socialism from Fox News and the rest of the right, how about a modest proposal that keeps the best of capitalism--free enterprise, individual ownership, the marketplace--and mixes it with a strong dose of social programs. The best of both worlds: filing down the rough edges of capitalism.

There may be many ways to accomplish this: instead of providing income directly to people, we could expand existing programs for the poor and make them strong middle class programs like Social Security and Medicare. We could make middle class working people eligible for food stamps, housing vouchers, Pell Grants, and the Earned Income Tax Credit.

There are also many ways to pay for what would be a massive outlay of money to millions of people. We could start by reversing trickle-down economics: make the wealthy and big corporations pay their fair share in taxes again. How is it that the highest tax bracket is $250,000? How about new ones at $1 million, $5 million, $20 million etc.?

Cap and trade or a carbon tax could raise billions in revenue; we should make sure it goes to working families. Henry George and his followers have proposed land use taxes that would be much more fair and equitable than current taxes. And the state of Alaska gets revenue from the oil industry that it puts into a permanent funds and pays out a dividend to all residents. We should capture profits from the oil and gas industry and others to spread out amongst everyone.

We could pay for it by eliminating billions in corporate welfare that supposedly goes to help create jobs. We could also pay for it by eliminating the many government programs that would be made obsolete over time: food stamps, welfare, unemployment.

And then there's the deficit. Reagan never paid for his trickle-down economics; Bush never paid for his tax cuts or for the invasions of Iraq and Afganistan. We can budget for a reasonable deficit, especially if it means a stable and productive economy.

We are many, many years away from providing a basic income for all. Yet I think it is important to project a vision of how the world could be: a world where everyone has enough income to at least get by, people work for what they need on top of that, and workers have more power than they do now because they won't need the jobs as desperately as they do now.

As John Lennon said, Imagine all the people, sharing all the world. Imagine a world where we share the wealth so that everyone has at least enough to get by, where there's no poverty except among the most downtrodden drunks and addicts. Imagine work and jobs taking more of a secondary role in our lives instead of dominating most of our waking hours. Imagine working less and living more. Imagine less crime because of less desperate need. Imagine a better life and a better society where we're all in it together. Imagine Rise Up Economics.

What's your vision for the future?

Crossposted on www.riseupeconomics.org

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Birthday serves as reminder of philosophy of life - Midland Daily News

Posted: 19 Oct 2009 09:34 AM PDT

    Happy birthday to me! Happy birthday to me! Now, if I only had a big German chocolate cake with 85 candles to light. The only problem would be, who is going to help me blow them all out? Maybe we could use a string of Christmas tree lights and just pull out the plug.

    Often when people learn how old I am, they say "Boy, you really don't look that old!" We all know that looks can be deceiving? But one thing I have learned in life is to never interrupt someone when you are being flattered! I thank them for their nice comment but I still know that I am 85, regardless of my looks!

    I am taken back sometimes by that old man in my mirror. I am blessed to have lived long enough to have my hair turn gray. Or is it silver? Yes, there is a bald spot on the back of my head but that doesn't bother me because I can't see it. And, those etched groves in my face are due to my frequent and youthful laughter. Ha! Unfortunately, too many people have never really laughed and some have even died before their hair could turn gray or they could develop wrinkles.

    You can tell the age of a tree by counting the rings in the trunk. I think you can tell the age of some people by counting the fun things they have stopped doing. So, come on folks, start doing those fun things again and get some gray hair and wrinkles!

    Okay, now comes the moment of truth and the reason am writing this article. I have learned something that could prolong your longevity. I have lived 85 years and I've got another 20 years to go. How do I know that and why do I say that? Let me explain. I recently had my annual physical and while going through the stress tests, the doctor asked me if I took daily naps. I replied, "No, just once in awhile."

    He then proceeded to tell me that if I took an hour nap every day, I would live another five years. Wow! I told him I was going to start immediately taking a daily hour nap and live to be 105. I explained this to him by telling him I was already planning to live to 100 because of my family genes and the extra five from napping would make it 105 . Whatcha think? Does the doctor know what he's talking about? Regardless of the final results, I am still enjoying the nice naps!

    Now I'm going to offer some philosophies of life that I try to live by. I believe in being yourself and doing what comes naturally. Be yourself and do whatever you want to whenever you want to. Don't worry about what people will think. You're not hurting anyone by being yourself and expressing your feelings.

    I truly believe that the more you express yourself and your feelings, the happier you'll be -- and that's what life is all about, being happy. It's contagious, just like a smiling face. If you smile at someone they will generally smile back at you and then you have two happy people. Now all we have to do is get half the people to smile and we'll have the whole world smiling. Remember what they say, "Smile and the world smiles with you; laugh and the world laughs with you; snore and you sleep alone."

    One of the things I have learned in my journey through octogenerianship (that's a new word of mine) is that the healthiest seniors I know refuse to act their age. I also believe the key to their happiness is a positive attitude. When you think positive, your whole life will be positive. I firmly believe that a positive attitude, a good sense of humor and the ability to live one day at a time, not sweating the little things in life, will definitely help us all maintain a long healthy and happy life.

    To put it more succinctly: "Life's journey is not to arrive at your grave safely in a well preserved body, but rather skid or slide in sideways -- totally pooped out -- shouting, 'Wow, what a great ride I had in life'." Thank you, God!

    Joe Lubbehusen is a resident of Midland and an occasional contributor to the Daily News editorial page.



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Manchin Says EPA Is 'Way Out Of Orbit' - Metro News

Posted: 19 Oct 2009 12:33 PM PDT

Governor Joe Manchin says it's time for President Barack Obama to reign in Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson.

Friday the EPA announced it was beginning the veto process of Arch Coal's Spruce Mine No. 1 Clean Water Act permit. Manchin says the federal agency has gone too far.

"Knowing their intention of wrecking havoc on the economy and the lives of the people of our state is not something I'm going to tolerate," Manchin told MetroNews Monday," And I will do everything humanly possible to bring that to their attention."

In fact, the governor has been in contact with Valerie Jarrett, the senior advisor to the president. He's requested a meeting with Obama to talk about the EPA's destructive behavior. Manchin said. "I don't think the total facts have reached his desk."

Manchin says he understands Mr. Obama has a lot on his plate with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and health care reform here at home, but when his top leaders step out of bounds, he then has to step in.

"If I'm looking for a balance and they're going way out in orbit, I'm going to pull them back. And I'm asking him to do the same," the governor said.

Meanwhile, Second District Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito is taking action of her own.

"I think the best way to react to it is to hit it head on and go to the source and that's what I'm going to do," Capito said.

She's set up a meeting with Jackson for next week. Capito says just like Manchin she's discourage with the Obama administration.

"This started the day the president really went into office with a change of philosophy. And I think we can deal with a change in philosophy better if we know where the rules of that philosophy are going to take us," the congresswoman told MetroNews Monday.  

Both Manchin and Capito agree the Obama administration must come up with standard policy when it comes to surface mine permits and explanations to back up its decisions.

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Alain de Botton on life, work and his Swiss influences - PR Inside

Posted: 19 Oct 2009 11:43 AM PDT

2009-10-19 20:47:33 - Alain de Botton has made a career of philosophy. He discusses his Swiss roots, his views on architecture and on working life with Jennifer Davies on World Radio Switzerland

AUDIO/ PODCAST: The writer Alain de Botton has been described as 'a philosopher of everyday life', and is now interviewed by independent journalist and broadcaster Jennifer Davies - also the editor and founder of design/culture magazine Inside Magazine - on her radio show, Swiss By Design on World Radio Switzerland.

Based in London, the Swiss writer Alain de Botton talks about

his Swiss roots and how they've informed his view of philosophy and architecture. Have his ideas on philosophy, aesthetics and architecture stemmed from this early exposure to Zurich's minimal aesthetic? He also explains why he believes he's become a "popular" philosopher and he discusses the notion of work. Why is work so integral to our sense of identity? We ask him if the current economic crisis will force us to re-evaluate the way we think about work and status - what does the new economy mean for all of us in our everyday lives?

Listen to the podcast at:
worldradio.ch/wrs/programmes/culture/swiss-by-design-philosophic ..

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