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 |  My Blog....Pearls of wisdom and/or foolish mutterings.....You be the judge.... |
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A little of this, a dash of that......epic mood swings.......A LOT of foolish mutterings and occasionally a few words of wisdom. It's a crapshoot. You never know what you'll find in here... |
Reading Rainbowapple  's blog entry this morning about the issues she's having with her car and the difficulty of getting it repaired, made a phrase pop into my mind. Planned Obsolescence. Think about that for a minute.Way back in 1980, I heard a very successful businessman from the local community lecture on an insidious trend in the American economy. He used the phrase "Planned Obsolescence" to describe an economy built on the foundation that every product we buy has a "shelf life" of short duration. His premise was this: rather than using quality components to build everything from toasters to cars, manufacturers had begun a shift toward producing products of lesser quality and considerably less durability, believing that American consumers tended to prefer new and improved products over the tried and true. With this mind-set as a foundation, it was easy for manufacturers to push consumers toward the belief that "buying up" was preferable to repairing something broken. Accordingly, consumers performed true to those predictions and the result was a move toward a "throw-away society." Combining that shift in thinking with a marketing campaign that constantly touted "new and improved" products = a better, more satisfying life, consumers could conceivably be pushed toward making more purchases, more often. Consequently, instead of building a quality product that would not only last, but could also be repaired, thereby lengthening the "shelf life" of said product; there has indeed been a shift toward turning out "throw-away" products. The trend started with small household products - toasters, coffee makers, can openers, for example - and was so successful that it has now permeated every strata of the manufacturing industry, from electronics to furniture and even up to, and including, automobiles. The American public, with its constant hunger for the newest, biggest, and best, has wholeheartedly embraced the concept of the "throw-away" society. If the toaster breaks, we don't repair it; We throw it out and go buy a new one. If a lamp quits working, it's time for new lamps. Two issues are at work here. Number one: the toaster and the lamp are designed and manufactured to wear out after a predetermined amount of time, having not been originally constructed to be durable or worth being repaired. And number two: have not small appliance repair shops met their demise, having been made obsolete by our obsession for newer and better "stuff" and by the impracticability of repairing a product that was manufactured to wear out in the first place? Surely, there are still manufacturers that build a quality product with premium materials - products that are indeed made to last. But these products are in a class all their own now with a price tag that is inaccessible to the vast majority of the general public. As the concept of "throw-away" products has invaded the thinking of the American public, the phrase a quality product at a reasonable price has become as obsolete as have our two-year-old toasters and four-year-old computers. In a society that assigns little value to the concept of permanence, newer is always better, old is obsolete and rampant consumerism is guaranteed, even in times of economic downturn. The throw-away society has created a vicious cycle that the American consumer is stuck in. We are caught inside a trap of our own making. If we were to even recognize the extent of our folly, how would we begin to turn the clock back? How does a country, a society, an economy turn back from the planned obsolescence train of thought and once again embrace the virtues of quality, craftsmanship and permanence? Is it even possible? |
| The debate still rages over at David McClain 's place and it's getting good. Check it out. Come on - you know you want to. ============================================================= Quick update on my friend, Debra. Thank you all for your prayers. The doctors have decided she did not have a stroke. All of her symptoms were caused by a severe iron deficiency. She had an iron infusion last night and is scheduled to be released from the hospital today. Yay! |
| I got a text message in the middle of the night last night that my best friend is in the hospital. They suspect a stroke. She is only 41 (I think that's right - Sorry Debra if I added a year), anyway, she's young. Way too young for a stroke. Of course, they are doing test after test to determine if it really was a stroke, and if not, then what was it? Scary. I've spoken with her twice this morning and she sounds perfectly normal, just like regular Deb. Except that she has no memory at all of last night - doesn't remember going out to eat with the man she is seeing, doesn't remember going to Target, coming home, going to the ER, any of that. Debra is the kind of friend who I give cards to that say things like, We will always be friends because you know too much about me. She and I have been to hell and back together. If you are a praying person, please send one up for my friend, Deb.  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Switching gears........ Our dear friend David McClain posted a blog yesterday with some fascinating ponderings. Then he threw it open for discussion - last time I checked, there were about 15 comments, making for a well-reasoned debate. If you haven't done so already, check out Tor's post from yesterday and maybe toss your thoughts in, too. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- An interesting thought..... You've all heard the old saw, I'm sure, that says Familiarity breeds contempt or the verse in the Bible that says A prophet knows no honor in his hometown (Luke 4:24). I can hear you all saying, Okay, but what's your point? Bear with me, I'm getting there. I've spent the last few months trying not to get my feelings hurt because I have this blog that I'm really proud of, something I view as a great accomplishment, but most of my family and close friends never read it. The one exception is my sister, who reads it faithfully. (Thank you Kathy - you rock) If I'm wrong and there are other members of my family or close friends who do read it, at least I'll find out now because they'll read this and send me huffy emails about how insulted they are because they always read my blog. But, I digress. So, I have this blog which is my major focus for at least part of every day and I fill it with witty repartee and clever retorts and beguiling stories of said family and friends. And I patiently wait for someone - anyone - to say, Hey I read your blog today. It was really good, funny, clever, sad, interesting... (take your pick, any of those adjectives will do nicely) Finally, I give in and ask, Did you read my blog today? Or yesterday? Or last month? But I already know the answer. And I wonder why. So, could it be that the answer to that question which plagues me is that familiarity does indeed breed contempt? Or that a prophet knows no honor in his hometown - or to paraphrase - A blogger gets no respect from his own family? And now that I've finally written about this thing that nags at me, will I finally be able to just let it go already? |
HA! I woke up early this morning, made my way to my laptop and started writing a whiny, boo-hoo, the evil witch called me, I feel so rattled blog entry. Then I came to my senses. C-R-R-R-A-A-A-C-C-C-K-K-K!!!! Did you hear that? It was the sound of me getting my backbone back.  BWAHAHAHAHAHA! No more whining and navel-gazing for this girl - Nosirree! Change my telephone number? Screw that! That's my phone number and I'm keeping it. And you know what else? This is my hometown! Just let that evil witch try to make me uncomfortable in my own hometown. No way, no how. Let's give the evil witch a pseudonym, for the sake of brevity and so that I won't be breaking any laws here by slandering the evil witch (although for it to be slander, doesn't it have to be untrue?) Let's call her Evie for short; as in Evil Witch. So here's how it's going to work. 1) I won't be returning Evie's call. She no more wants to know how we're all doing than the man-in-the-moon. She wants something, for sure, but I don't know what and I don't care. She's not getting it from me. 2) If Evie calls again, I'll handle her call the same way I do any other unsolicited caller. I'll answer the phone and as soon as I hear her voice, CLICK - that's me hitting the 'end call' button. No more Evie. As many times as it takes until she stops calling. 3) If she has moved to Houston, too bad for her. She's way out of her element here. All of her good ole boy network is far, far behind in that tiny West Texas town. Boo-hoo. 4) She won't come to my house, because she is neither that brave nor that stupid. But, if she has some off-the-wall stroke of courage and finds her way to my house, 911 it is. And I'll tell them the woman who poisoned my dad is at my door. Please send a squad car to remove her from my premises. 5. I have no intention of interfacing with her in any fashion or for any reason. The probate is finished, that chapter is closed and she doesn't get to have access to me or mine ever again. Bye-bye, Evie. Forever. Ahhhhhh!!! I feel better already. |
| Here we are in the early hours of a lovely Sunday afternoon. I've already been to church, eaten lunch (a late breakfast actually - at I-Hop), unloaded and loaded the dishwasher, checked my email and read a few blogs. Charles is watching boxing and I have nothing to do that requires my immediate attention. This should be the perfect time to sit down and churn out a leisurely Sunday blog entry. Yep. Should be. All the time in the world. Yep. Yep. Hmmmmmmm........ ***drums fingers on keyboard*** ***looks all around - up, down, side to side*****watches a few seconds of boxing**** gets up to get more iced tea***** sits back down****more drumming*****gazes out the window for a while**** Yep. I got nothin'. I could tell you what I had for breakfast; but given the smart-ass post I wrote about blogs that read like a menu, I probably won't do that. Oh wait! Here's something.... Charles and I went to the movies on Friday. I could tell you about that. Okay, here we go: Charles and I went to the movies on Friday. We saw two movies - State of Play and The Soloist. Two  for State of Play and only one for The Soloist. Of course, State of Play did have a distinct advantage from the get-go, as it starred Russell Crowe and Ben Affleck. ***Sigh*** Seriously though, it was a great movie. Oh, and I watched Grey Gardens on HBO. Jessica Lange was magnificent in that movie. Drew Barrymore was no slouch, either. Another 2 movie. Wow - that was some seriously riveting writing, huh? More, you say? You want more? I'm not really sure I can do more. It really took it out of me to write that much.   I think I should go lie down and rest for a while...... BUT WAIT! I just remembered something. At Thomas and my sister's urging, I went ahead with the letter about my mom's nightmare with Odyssey Healthcare (the hospice) and emailed it. windac also weighed in with a vote to write the letter, I got her comment not long after I sent it, and it just kind of felt like confirmation. So, I did it and I feel better having sent it. Thanks Thomas and windac and my sister for your encouragement.  I remembered one more thing. A very bizarre thing and no wonder I forgot it. I'm sure my mind has been trying to suppress it. My home phone rang last night about 6:30. I rarely, if ever, answer my home phone, I just let the machine get it. I could hear the message going on and on and on, so I walked into the den to listen to the message. I picked up the phone and played the message and it was that wicked woman my dad was married to when he died. The one who made my life a living hell for the last 4 years. She left a message for me to call her - "I just want to see how everyone is doing" - and here's the kicker... she was calling from a Houston number! That's some kind of CRAP, isn't it? Don't worry, I have no intention of returning her call. If she keeps calling, I swear I'll change my phone number. Okay, I'm done now. Happy Sunday everybody! |
| Well, well, well. A really cool thing happened yesterday. After I reached deep inside myself and pulled up some of those buried memories about Mom and her journey through hell with hospice, I decided I should probably write a letter to someone - I wasn't sure who - the Attorney General, maybe? - and tell what had happened to her. I typed "hospice fraud" into the search bar on my browser and found that, lo and behold, someone had beat me to the punch. I never mentioned the name of the hospice in my blog yesterday, but it was Odyssey Healthcare. As it turns out, a former regional VP of Odyssey blew the whistle on them for not adhering to the federal guidelines for hospice certifications and recertifications. The Justice Department got involved and Odyssey was ordered to pay $13 million to Medicare for defrauding them with illegal certs and recerts. They were also court-ordered to submit to a Corporate Integrity Agreement which requires them to employ and pay for an outside third-party firm to monitor and sanction their business operations for five years. Oddly enough, this all happened in July of 2006, just 5 short months after my mother's death. Here's the link if anyone is interested: http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2006/July/06_civ_430.html I'm not naive enough to think that what amounts to basically a slap on the hand to one of the largest hospice providers in the country will address all the ills of a huge money-making enterprise, but at least it is a step in the right direction. And maybe it will make some of the other providers think twice when they are tempted to choose greed over the human element. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ On a completely different front...... Charles and Eli and I watched Frost/Nixon last night. I had heard that it didn't get very good reviews, it was boring, blah, blah, blah. But I thought it was well-done, although I thought the actor who played David Frost was a bit over the top. Frank Langella played Nixon and he nailed it. I give it  My youngest daughter and her two boys spent the day with me yesterday. Nothing like grandkids to lift your spirits. ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** |
| ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** My mother loved maple fudge, maple donuts, just anything maple. I can never pass up buying maple-flavored anything, whether it's donuts or candy. As an example, yesterday when Charles and I were driving home from spending the weekend at his company ranch, we stopped at Bucky's (my idea - I wanted to stop for some fudge.) I stood at the fudge counter eyeing all the delicious-looking types of fudge, trying to decide which one(s) I would buy. Then I saw the maple fudge. It was out of the question to NOT buy it. So I did. In honor of Mom. That fudge started me thinking; remembering little things about Mom - her quirks, her wonderful laugh, her favorite things. One of the last times Mom was here to visit, my sister, Kathy, was here, too. The three of us loaded into my car with my two daughters and headed out to Galveston. We shopped for a while on The Strand (a reclaimed part of Old Galveston with lots of trendy stores - a real tourist trap - but lovely, nonetheless) and we found a candy store where they sold homemade fudge. Mom got her favorite, of course. Maple fudge. I can't remember if I paid for it or if she did. I hope I did. Then we all climbed back in the car and drove to the ferry landing. We waited in line for quite a while to take the ferry over to Crystal Beach. It was a weekday, so the beach was empty, only a few stragglers here and there. We parked the car and got out. Kathy and I hauled out our cameras and we all started clowning for the cameras. I don't know how many pictures we took, but it was a lot. We were happy. Mom laughed a lot; we all did. In fact, that was the last time I remember Mom being happy. She seemed so young and vibrant and beautiful. It's one of my favorite memories of Mom. ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** The next time she came to visit, she wasn't the same. Even though it was only a few years later, she seemed to have aged tremendously. She always liked being sick; she liked the attention she got when she was sick. She had been diagnosed with COPD or emphysema - it changed with every conversation. Her doctor had arranged for her to have hospice care. She had been under hospice care for less than a year at that time. She came to my house lugging her oxygen tank and liquid morphine. And a plethora of other medicines. She wasn't frail, but she acted the part. I always said that she would "cry wolf" one too many times and it would come back to bite her. She wasn't happy during that visit. She wanted me to "accept" that she was dying. Her nurses at hospice had prepped her; "tell them this. tell them that." She didn't want me to ask questions about her hospice care. She got nervous when I tried to ask her why she was under hospice care. "I'm dying," she would say, getting more and more agitated. It didn't add up. She went home unhappy that I had not "embraced the truth," forgetting, obviously, that I had watched her play these games all of my life. She remained under hospice care for three more years - a total of four years in hospice care. When I asked her, "Isn't hospice a short-term thing for people who are in the end stages of a fatal disease? You've been on it for four years. How is that possible?" She would explain it to me as if I were a child, "I am dying. I have a fatal disease." Kathy and I began peppering the hospice program where she lived with phone calls. We left messages with our mother for the nurses to call us. Our calls were never answered, messages to call us back were ignored. We paid a visit to Mom and she slept the whole time - a drugged sleep. We were horrified at the number of medications on her bedside table. Every narcotic you can imagine, sleeping pills, morphine pills, liquid morphine - it was staggering. We tried talking to the nurses when they came by. They told us how very sick she was and how brave she was. "Why has she been under hospice care for four years?" my sister pointedly asked. "Is it not possible that the drugs you are giving her are causing her problems?" They were sorry, but they had other patients to see and would not be able to stay any longer. "Please call the director if you have any questions," they tossed back over their shoulder on the way out the door. Kathy and I decided to kidnap Mom to get her away from hospice. Kathy showed up unannounced, packed Mom's bags and practically had to drag her to her car. Mom was scared she would get in trouble. "I can't leave unless they give me permission," she kept insisting. Kathy drove away with her, in spite of Mom's protestations. When Mom was examined at the hospital in Albuquerque, the doctors determined that her health wasn't all that bad; yes she had emphysema, but it wasn't severe, it wasn't the problem. Her drug dependency was. Drugs that the hospice program had put her on and kept her on for four years. She could live for many more years, IF - and it was a big if - IF they could wean her off the morphine, percodan and all the other narcotics I can't recall - there were too many. We had hope. We were sure we had saved her. But my brother, Mike, told us that Mom might not survive detoxing from the morphine. She had been on an incredibly high dosage and we had no idea for how long. It was dangerous, Mike told us. We didn't save her. She never came out of that hospital in Albuquerque. Weaning her from her morphine addiction produced a severe psychosis. She was convinced we were all trying to kill her. There was a rapist roaming the halls of the hospital. Twice she called 911 from her hospital room. She hid behind the door and tried to conk a nurse over the head with a glass flower vase. The nurses found her trying to crawl into bed with another patient in another room. She was scared; there's a rapist, you know, she told them. She was moved to the psych ward. Things went downhill quickly, very quickly. Even though she had been weaned off the oxygen she was on and was able to take walks in the halls without any oxygen; even though the doctors told her she was not dying and that she could easily live another 10-15 years, she didn't believe them. She kept trying to call hospice where she had lived to come and rescue her. One day, she insisted she couldn't breathe, she had a severe panic attack. Her psychosis worsened. Everyone wanted her dead, she screamed. I can't breathe, she gasped. Nothing, no one could calm her. The doctors said they had no choice; they had to intubate her. Would we agree? Yes, yes! Just keep her alive. She was never able to come off the ventilator. She died in that hospital, thinking her daughters wanted her dead. We were all there - Kathy, my brother, Mike, me, her sister and her favorite cousin. We all kept vigil over her for two-and-one-half days. Then she was gone. She was only sixty-six. I miss her. I want to eat maple fudge with her and make her laugh. But I can't. So, I buy maple fudge and think of her while I eat it by myself. |
| Thank you all for your sensitivity and kindness in your comments to my last post. I almost didn't make that post public after struggling through getting it written because I thought it seemed indulgent and that I should quit harping on the hurricane and Bolivar Peninsula. At the last minute, I impulsively changed the access to "make public, allow everyone" and hit save entry. From the very first comment to the last, I felt every last one of your virtual hugs. Thank you all so much. |
| **It has taken me hours (literally) to struggle through this post. Consequently, the time frame I began writing about was much earlier. I offer this explanation because I don't want to change the entry. I'm leaving it as it was written, beginning at about 5:00 this afternoon.** It's storming here - heavy rain, lots of thunder and lightning, the sky is preternaturally dark; not just dark, but a bruised purple color. A deep, rumbling thunder seems to originate in the distance. Ominously, it rolls through the clouds, picking up volume and speed, until finally it explodes into the air, seeming to release bolts of lightning which flash brilliantly--jagged streaks that light up the sky, exposing the full fury of the storm. Heavy rain soaks the ground and pools in the streets. I have been inside the grocery store, shopping, as the storm rolls in. Driving home in the dark, windshield wipers furiously trying to keep up with the rain, I feel a knot of anxiety forming in my stomach as I drive toward home. I grab for my cell phone and, one by one, I call my husband and then, each of my children who live in the Houston area. Everyone is fine and all are surprised to hear from me. It's just a thunderstorm and I'm not a worrier by nature. I find myself wondering where this strange anxiety comes from. Normally I love thunderstorms. As I turn the corner to enter my neighborhood, the sight that greets me is unnerving. The dark skies, the blowing rain, trees whipping furiously in the wind--it's all eerily familiar. As I pull into my driveway, I suddenly understand the origin of my anxiety. In a strange twist of fate, the storm today has evoked a memory of the beginning hours of Hurricane Ike. That memory, coupled with the lingering effects of seeing first-hand the devastation on Bolivar Peninsula seems to have triggered a delayed reaction in me. I wondered, why now?, a full seven months after the hurricane. My reaction to the sights in Bolivar was visceral and I've not been able to shake it. I try to rationally examine my feelings, but I realize they're not rational. What I'm feeling--my reaction to the storm today--all of it is purely emotional on a very basic level. It is instinctual, rather than logical. Then I remember that for almost two weeks after the hurricane, we were without electricity--no television, no internet, no news, no live coverage of storm damage. We were, in effect, isolated from the world around us. I remember now that the only information we got about the damage from the hurricane for those first weeks came from infrequent cell phone contact with my sister in Albuquerque, NM. By the time we were finally able to "connect" with the world again, reports of the damage were old news. The emphasis then was on the clean-up and the restoration of power. It was as if we skipped over the devastating sights of the days immediately after the storm. Then we were busy with the recovery, like everyone else. It's similar to what happened when my daughter, Kristen, had a terrible wreck in front of my office years ago. She left my office and about a minute later, a young man ran inside saying, "That girl who just left here got hit! It's a bad wreck!" I ran outside, saw her car against the curb across the street and made a mad-dash to her. Surely I saw that her car was obliterated on the driver's side when I ran around it to get to her. But it didn't register at the time. All I saw was my daughter, bleeding and crying in the passenger seat where she had been thrown by the impact. Fortunately, she was not seriously hurt, coming out of the wreck with only a broken wrist and some minor cuts and scratches. Two weeks later, I made my husband take me to the salvage yard where her car was stored. We walked together to her car; the passenger side was hardly damaged. I stopped in front of the car and slowly eased around to look at the driver's side. It looked like it had exploded. It looked like there was no way someone could have survived being the driver in that car. I started shaking uncontrollably as tears poured from my eyes. I thought I was going to vomit. I turned to my husband and fell against him, the weakness in my knees overtaking me. Until that moment, I hadn't faced the fate that Kristen had escaped. I was undone. I think that is the same phenomenon I've been experiencing since Wednesday when we got on that ferry and went to Bolivar Peninsula. Until that time, I hadn't allowed myself to recognize the fury and destruction we were spared. Seeing the total devastation in Crystal Beach, I lost the ability to hold it at arm's length. I now know the reason I couldn't get Gail Ettenger's words out of my head. "I think I really screwed up this time," she told her friend on the phone. One decision cost her her life. She gambled and she lost. One decision. Just one. My family gambled and won. How different it could have been. The weight of that realization is almost too heavy to bear. A single decision. No more gambling for me or mine. |
** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** One of the stories from Ike that I've never been able to get out of my mind is the story of a Crystal Beach woman named Gail Ettinger. Here is her story. Gail Ettenger made her last phone call at 10:10 p.m. She was trapped in her Bolivar Peninsula bungalow with her Great Dane, Reba. A drowning cat cried outside. Her Jeep bobbed in the seawater surging around her home. Ettenger, 58, told her friend she was reading old love letters by flashlight. "I think I really screwed up this time," she said, according to Monroe Burks, Ettenger's neighbor who had evacuated to Houston. That was Friday, Sept 12. On Wednesday — 12 days later — her nearly nude body was found face down by a huge debris pile in a remote mosquito-ridden marsh in Chambers County, about 10 miles inland from where her gray beach house once stood. Ettenger, a contract chemist who worked for ExxonMobil in Beaumont, loved living at the beach. She rose before dawn each day to walk with Reba, an aging black and white spotted Great Dane who looked like a Holstein calf. Outside, Ettenger grew towering birds of paradise. Inside, she filled her bungalow with mementos: a wolfskin from New Mexico, a collection of nautical antiques and endless snapshots of Reba and beach sunsets. All is lost now. Even Reba. ******************************************************************************************************* Raul "Roy" Arrambide last heard from his mother, sister and nephew as the three prepared to evacuate by car from Port Bolivar. Just after 6 a.m. Sept. 12, his sister, Magdalena Strickland, 51, called from the house to say they were leaving. The family's 2000 white Ford Taurus and 1993 maroon Ford pickup were loaded and idling in the driveway. It was a quick call, since Strickland was eager to go. His mother, Marion Violet Arrambide, 79, along with Strickland and Arrambide's nephew, Shane Williams, 33, had planned to evacuate to Arrambide's house near Dallas. They had two vehicles but no cell phone. They never arrived. Roy Arrambide fears they were washed off the road. After the storm, he hired an airboat to visit the area, where he saw dozens of submerged cars in the floodwaters and marshes along the peninsula's lone low-lying highway. But neither he nor anyone else has found his relatives or their vehicles. The house they left behind was damaged but intact. ***(Victim stories courtesy of the Houston Chronicle) ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** |
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