Against the Wind

My brother and I had a nice long chat this evening. His latest adventure, other than working to perfect guitar manufacture? He got a letter from Census. They wanted to interview him for the census. No biggie really… toss the letter aside, go on with business.

*The next day the census person came to his door, wishing to be admitted. “What? have you received your letter? We have the right to come in and question you, but I can come back when it is more convenient.”

“Do that, then.” Leaves card and leaves.

Go dig for letter. LONG letter, the effect of which is that his number came up for some “special treatment” having nothing to do with redistricting of congress. He’s to be involved in some statistical study for some other branch of government, contracted out to census. By the way, there’s a $500 fine for each willfully wrong response, a $100 fine for no response.

What ever happened to the 5th amendment? Somewhere near the end of the document in very small print is a statement that participation is voluntary.

Next day, again the same lady shows up for the interview. “Sorry, I don’t care to participate in this.” Lady tries to strong arm him, bro digs out the letter and points to the fine print stating that his participation is voluntary, and again states that he declines to participate. Lady splutters, phones supervisor, leaves card and leaves.

Next day, the supervisor shows up to solicit participation in this fun activity. She also leaves a card asking him to reconsider and call. My suspicious bro. now calls our uncle, the retired country lawyer. He’s flummoxxed, but says, voluntary is voluntary, and by no means volunteer anything, including your home phone number by calling them.

Monday morning a Fed Ex truck pulls up in front of his house with a large sheaf of papers to deliver. No where in this sheaf of materials is the word voluntary used.

Tuesday the supervisor calls when brother is out.

Wednesday, Fex Ex returns with more papers. By now bro is losing sleep wondering what to do about all this harrassment. He has an aha moment while talking with his pillow.

Thursday, he dressed up in his workshop flannels and head to his Congressman’s office.

Receptionist duly tells him about census and its functions. “No,” he says. “We’re not talking short form, long form or any other form. They want to follow me; question me every two months for the next few years.”

“Wait a minute.”

Out comes an aide, a legal type…armed with knowledge of census, explaining that they’d been briefed about long forms and what those entailed. Bro showed the legal type the original letter that said the magic “voluntary” on it, as well as the two sheaves that had been delivered via Fed Ex, along with the highlighted information about $500 and $100 fines for wrong/no answers. Hmm says the guy. Leave me your number, and I’ll research this.

“No, I’m not giving census ammo to harrass me via phone. But here’s my address. You can write me about your findings.”

Next day a letter comes from the congressional office. Turns out participation is indeed “voluntary.” But to opt out, procedure requires you to say NO very emphatically and very often. Bro had not jumped through near enough hoops, but he short cut the whole strong arming routine by bringing in his congressman’s office.

Point of story? Who knows how big the survey sample is, but if you get something other than the short form for the census, be suspicious. They are mandated by law to find out who lives at your address, and not a lot more. Don’t give in to bullying! If you say no, mean no, and back it up. You’ve committed no crime, and the feds don’t have the right to enter your home unless you let them. This isn’t about “nice” or sociability.

Bro got himself off the hook, he thinks. People who are not as determined to unvolunteer may be in for a lot of problems with this.

*Dates and days are approximated here… I didn’t take notes as we were talking.

I’ve devoted yet another week to my own pleasure. Home now and looking forward to seeing my pillow up close and personal. So reading Proverbs, with injunctions to avoid sloth is a bit hard. But I know I’m supposed to be working at something. Just not sure what.

Proverbs 10:26

Like vinegar to the teeth and smoke to the eyes,
so is the sluggard to those who send him.

I think in Poor Richards Almanac is an admonition for the worker to be worth his hire. Similar, but the sluggard who not only doesn’t lean into his task but purposely dallies, must indeed feel like vinegar. I know they do at the DMV.

I’m just back from a trip, and really want to share some photos from the Walter Anderson Museum of Art, but now I’m trying to get back into my groove… so from Christmas

“It’s like this, Dad!” Marianne tries to explain to Carlo the latest moves.

In Biloxi with limited internet access, I’ve tried following some news online and some stocks. I almost wish I’d not done that. I left with 5% trailing stops on all my positions, and BHO no more than scolded us in the SOTU than the bottom fell out of the stock exchange. Some analyst said it was because the iPad presentation was so disappointing. Sell on news, buy on rumor is the old saw for playing the market. I’m nowhere that I’m going to get any worthwhile rumors, so I have to do the best I can on my own intuition and hunches.

I still want an iPad, or something similar to allow me to see video clips and such without having to futz through the wait with my old desktop. Watching television content online seems like a marriage made in heaven to me. I’d pay for a couple channels. But only a couple.

So the disappointment of the iPad doesn’t seem like the cause of market decline nearly as much as the fact that POTUS is gunning for financial institutions, while Fanny and Freddy continue in their profligate ways as wards of the state with no repercussions. POTUS also puts his arrogance on display, swinging at the Supremes, inviting congressional legislation while the justices are sitting there with congress lined up behind them. How classless and clueless is this Chicago pol? There seems to be no bottom to his inane incivility.

I’ve filled my time this week with a vacation close to home. Sara who I play bridge with online about four times a week, came with her husband and her friends to a timeshare in Biloxi. I was lucky enough to be invited, so here I am. There’s a regional bridge tournament here, so I got to play a bit in that, walk on the beach and make some stops at some local restaurants, quilt shops and cultural attractions.

By far my favorite from today was the Walter Anderson Museum of Art in Ocean Springs. Ocean Springs is a beautiful little coastal town, and I wouldn’t object to living there a bit! I should buy a small house near the beach, live there but leave the for rent sign up? I could lease it out by the week for vacationers.

This poor computer is trying to find photos I stored on my camera. Anyway, I may have an example of Walter Anderson’s art for viewing. Walter Anderson is a native son, from a reasonably affluent New Orleans family born in 1921. He was clearly artistic as a child, trained in art, and went about making money from his art with little pottery pieces he and his brother made to sell. That business managed to survive the depression, but Walter, trying to follow his muse, ended up physically ill with malaria, dengue fever and finally a deep depression which sent him so far into mental debility that he spent a time in a sanatorium. He was truly the tormented artist. But he got commissions to paint the inside of the Ocean Springs community center and the auditorium of the local high school in murals. Other buildings in Ocean Springs have his work faded on the exterior as well. He was tortured as vanGogh, prolific as Picasso, and lived as something of an eccentric on Horn Island, a barrier island off the coast of Ocean Springs. His paintings belong in the same artistic pantheon as major impressionistic artists. He’s a voice from the wilderness, and magnificent.

Sigh… I’ve given up on attaching the photo from my phone. I’ve no interest in messing about with it more.

Maybe, just maybe, I’ll be able to post this blog.

Showering, I recalled a college mate telling me how she always ran her friends and boyfriends off because that saved her the pain of them leaving. She at least controlled the going, since they were leaving anyway.

Linda mentioned a little girl living near her with attachment issues after her mother tried to drown her. No kidding, huh?

These images and a third were swirling about in my bean as I’m lathering and doing an auto baptism. The third is the description of the dreadful Mr. Collins in Pride and Prejudice. He was a mix of conceit and humility…

Yup, there I am. Actively driving away any real possibility of intimacy, attachment issues, and oddly over proud, under confident, and ready to look tomorrow in the eye.

Maybe I can become a hermit and quit bathing.

Yesterday’s blog was an attempt to get something, anything down about the frustration of being in the eye of the storm, while journalists yammer, often wrongly, and aid groups hustle most effectively to keep the dollars rolling in, less effectively on the ground when the need is most severe.

The picture of that is the mountain of used clothing that sat in the parking lot of one of our local shopping centers…donations by kind, empathetic people around the country. They sat there, were picked over and eventually moved with a dump truck or two to landfills brimming with the material remains of our lives. Dead clothes from up north mingled with dead drywalling, soggy carpeting, warped flooring, tree debris, and symbolic of the fact that ill directed attempts to help make the giver feel good about having done something, but they are somewhere between mildly ineffective, and downright couterproductive.

However, the churches, now that’s another story. Not the huge church in a box deal so much or maybe they just didn’t have the branding to make their work known… but aid funnelled through Presbyterian disaster assistance, UMICOR, United Methodist something something, Baptist relief… and countless others… they were on the ground providing food, temporary shelter, running crews to help people rebuild, regroup.

So when Ina May sent out a letter from her hectic life yesterday, I asked to pass it on. She’s not yet given permission, so I may have to pull it. But if you’ve not gotten anything to Haiti yet, this is the way to do it. Through your own denominational relief, The Salvation Army or Missions who already have people on the ground ahead of the disaster.

From Ina May, my mother’s sister:

Things have been interesting around here lately. We found out our friends who are missionaries to Haiti were to be at a Mission Conference by Wichita with the Kansas Baptists. They were to be in the KCK area by the middle of the week, so we called them. It turned out they were able to come here Wednesday noon and be here for the Wednesday night church dinner.

The missionaries are Kihomi and Nzunga, originally from the Congo. They have been working in Haiti for about 10 years now. Kihomi is great working with the women in the churches. She has them organized into areas with leaders to watch over the needs of the people in their churches. Another friend of mine in St. Louis has always been close to Kihomi and is forever gathering up stuff to send to Kihomi to distribute in Haiti. Kihomi has been speaker at our region conference a couple times and has been at our church before, so our women especially know her.

They arrived Wednesday noon, and I was able to pull out a bunch of “Sara soup” from the freezer for lunch. Just as we were ready to eat, Kihomi got a call from one of the Baptist women in Haiti who was finally able to get a call through. They had not heard directly from anyone, so they were anxious to get word about them. Several pastors had died, one woman survived but all four of her children were killed (Nzunga’s comment was “She will die, she has nothing to live for now”), on and on. It is TERRIBLE destruction, and when you know the people, it is worse. Both Kihomi and Nzunga had not been able to sleep since the earthquake. Wed night Don gave them a sleeping pill, and they finally got some rest.

Wednesday evening we went to church for the church dinner. Some came from First Baptist and a church in KCK because they knew they would be there. After dinner they spoke and showed a video of their work in Haiti. They work in Limbe where there wasn’t that much damage. Nzunga is administrator of the Haitian Eye Clinic which does great work in that area of Haiti. The good thing about it is that he has direct access to get funds into the Eye Clinic and people there who can get money out. Kihomi’s network of women who are going around to the different churches assessing needs etc can get aid right to the people who need it. We had an offering that night of $830 for them to send right away. Money can also go through International Ministries, but it will be awhile getting there.

Thursday morning they slept late, had a leisurely breakfast, and were on their way by 10:30 toward their next speaking assignment in Louisburg, KS. There was a couple from Chanute driving them around all the time and staying with us too.

Anyway, I don’t think Ina May will mind my extracting from her letter… Give and give generously, but think about how where it’s going how effectively it will be used.

Sara mentions how heart breaking the stories are for Haiti in her letter reporting on Nita’s progress.

The tragedy is horrendous. But it made me think sort of like the writer of this blog. NOLANik tells about how we who did a disaster up close and personally will never thing of a disaster quite the same. Mostly, we’ll never much believe what we read.

…it is unsurprising to see the American media struggle to get the story straight in Haiti, a city that many of the journalists now there were likely completely unfamiliar with a week ago.

I hadn’t quite grasped this reality until I saw competing headlines, one in the New York Times on Sunday and another in the Washington Post on Monday, telling stories about the impact of the storm on the rich in Port-au-Prince that seem completely at odds with one another.

This is as much as anything what some bloggers refer to as a “tab dump” Collected links from the last couple days, and a photo or two.

Betsi I think emailed me the link to this love story.

This is where I’d like to be. But I don’t like a single car that well.

Shrinkwrapped has a wonderful parable at the beginning of his blog, but his point is that “nation building” may continue to be a nonstarter. That seems to be a “meme” that is getting more traction. But nation building is not the whole point. Sounds like an excuse to retreat to isolationism to me. The fact that determined psychopaths want a bomb doesn’t make the strategy of counting on our oceans to act as a big enough buffer…. Meanwhile in Iraq, the old Hebrew temples and monuments to Isiah, Jeremiah and other major prophets are being defaced.

Iraq is the newly minted “democracy” for which so many Americans sacrificed so much. now they are behaving just as Muslims have behaved for a thousand years: Once a majority, they force non-believers into dhimmi status and erase all signs of the hated infidel. This is a story as old as the Temple Mount and the Hagia Sofia and as recent as the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron.

I didn’t note what the video was when I saved the link. So here’s a mystery video!

We’ve had weather too. December saw a rainy spell that has all the rivers high ahead of the spring thaw. (picture below) Mississippi River Floods are a scary thought. After the ground was totally sogged, the freezes followed. A tree on church property fell into the neighborhood behind, so someone’s house was damaged. I am aware of this from being out driving with Rev. Barbara this afternoon. I just called on a whim and said, wanta take an Sunday afternoon drive. She said, come on down, and we had a nice afternoon. A little gray overhead, but we drove through Pearlington, Waveland, Bay St. Louis, Pass Christian, Delisle and then over to spend a few cold minutes at Ft. Pike. She came from Nebraska so hasn’t had a chance to go see a lot of the local scenery.

Pleasant times here.

“What is your line of business?” a new acquaintance might ask my father as he passed through the years from retirement to the grave.
“I’m just a worthless old goat, waiting to die,” was a frequent response the question might elicit. It happened often enough that my brothers, my mother and I took to the short hand of WOGWTD when he started that routine.

One fellow handled him beautifully. “And how long do you expect that to take?” he asked.

Today, pondering my retiredness, I was thinking on what task I would put myself. Mother had to finish her “magnus opus.” But the MO just kept growing, and was never going to be done. It was a massive testimonial to the narrative she wanted to nurture of her loving parents and the perfect home she was raised in… the father as big and mighty as any two year old would have described. My grandmother was indeed a wise woman, and to be emulated. But I’m not so sure about Grandpa. He was successful, and had a good life and family, but his constant grief for Charlesy Boy left Mother a heap of guilt for being the unwanted survivor. Mother was never angry at that fate, she just made Grandpa a saint, and hastened to try to be good enough, smart enough to have lived when she should have been the child that died. Try and imagine how that reverberates through your life and family if you don’t face it down and deal with it. She never did.

In the end I was able to identify a task that needs attending. Writing and working with photography and quilting are all a bit tangential, but may help me to continue to figure out who I am, and who God intends me to be. Most people get this stuff sorted out during adolescence. I didn’t. I knew what Mother wanted me to be and do. But I never had much idea what I wanted, and I certainly had no idea what God would have me be.

The part that I did manage pretty well was the Motherhood thing. And of course there are three other opinions which are not all that positive! But on that front, there is news. Tania is carrying a little girl who will join us in May. We’re all so excited about that I’m thinking about starting some smocking projects. Maybe in size 2 and 4… that way I’ll have them done before the little “D’Loye” outgrows them. (Ok, I’m shamelessly promoting that they should use a really unusual name. Like…) My success with the “Oliver” project was very limited! He used to tell us, “I CAMERON!”

So what is this task? Well, I can’t define it much better than that I need to find out whether a dream I had a few months ago pointed to something that happened to me, a pre verbal trauma, or it was just a good representation of the sort of thing that might have happened to make a lot of my life decisions so perverse. If there’s a monkey on my back (and there is) I’m going to stare that bad boy down… whether I’m a trauma victim, or just a weak and wussy woman. I’ve got to figure out how to get that monkey off my back. I may not have many more years but I prefer to live them than to spend waiting to die, as if my story is completely told already.

So, Quentin starting to learn to scratch out a simple little melody, anchored in our stories, and traditions.

Wello wello wello, how about a mathy blog tonight?

But first…the people of Haiti are hurting. Interesting reflections on a powerful earthquake by Wretchard.

The capital of Haiti, Port-Au-Prince has been heavily damaged by an Intensity 7 quake. The Navy will probably play a pivotal role in relief operations because they can move large numbers of hospital beds at 500 miles per day. The real race against time will be for those who are buried alive. The rickety nature of buildings in Haiti may work in the survivor’s favor. Easier to dig them out. Crowbars, reinforcing bars cut in 4 foot lengths and sharpened at the end — all these need to be pressed into service.

I had the misfortune of being in an 8 storey building about 150 miles from the epicenter of an intensity 7.7 quake and I can tell you for a fact that it taught me a great deal about human nature. I was in an open plan office with about 80 people in it. Three persons fell to the ground in complete hysterical panic. By that I mean kicking their feet in the air and writhing on the ground. Three persons went into a state of enhanced consciousness

.

Now we have pictures and stories of people trying to get in touch with family, and some knowlege of just how bad this is. Donate, pray.

Now a couple of video links. Personally I rarely follow video links because it takes time to watch TV on the internet. But I’m offering these in hopes someone will have the time and inclination.

Bill Whittle has done a 60 minute-ish treatment of the Islamic Infiltration of our government. Worth a listen. I love the first minute of ad for Vodka Pundit’s PJTV content. I laugh every time I see it.

The same topic comes up in Gutfeld’s clip. Mostly the Colonel in the clip is a great interview. I hope Florida elects him.

Now a good bit of Math. Lies, damn lies, and statistics! We have the anthropomorphic global warmiming model (hide the decline), the unemployment statistics (hide the decline) and now a parsing of the study that says that American healthcare is deadly to the uninsured. A large snip follows, but better to read the whole thing.. or skim the snip. How 4 deaths translates to 401,000.

…data allowed the researchers to follow these participants through time to identify variables which affect health. The researchers used the NCHS data through December 31, 2000, allowing for the study of participants for six to twelve years after their initial interview.

A total of 9,005 NHANES III participants were identified as uninsured and included in the Wilper, et al. study. The researchers were able to follow the participants for a total of 80,657 person-years, which equates to an average of 8.96 years per participant.

The study identifies that 17.2% of the 351 deceased were uninsured. This equates (0.172 X 351) to 60.4 uninsured persons having died in the study. Since 16.2% of the population was uninsured, we would have expected 56.9 persons (0.162 X 351) to have died if insurance status had no effect. The researchers should expect 56.9 uninsured persons to have died, but 60.4 uninsured persons actually died (a net increase of 3.5 deaths) during the nearly nine-year study.

From the data, we can obtain specific causes of death, such as participant #122, who died from an accidental fall (ICD-10 code 118, starting in column 25).

Insurance status has little to no impact on participants who die violently, as these persons would get emergency care, which is not dependent on heath insurance. If the four excess deaths we identified were from violent causes, there would be no underlying correlation between insurance status and early death.

We can identify forty persons who died from motor vehicle accidents (ICD-10 code 114) in the NHANES III study (participants #646, #1107, #1475, #2441, #2528, #3384, #3859, #3867, #4111, #5257, #9786, #10504, #12302, #12980, #13419, #13553, #16145, #16862, #18014, #18936, #19288, #19695, #19858, #33112, #33661, #36565, #39275, #40308, #42863, #43194, #43438, #46507, #46882, #47250, #47905, #49168, #49472, #51896, #52206 and #53476). The availability of insurance would have had little impact.

We can also identify eleven persons who died from suicide by firearm (ICD-10 code 125 — participants #3947, #6138, #10655, #14336, #15860, #18222, #37902, #42061, #47057, #48163 and #48495). Health insurance would likely have had little impact on their deaths, either.

Statistical studies are onerous. The researchers of this study used the best available tools in very valid methods. Researchers must take into account that when looking at such small subsets of data (four additional deaths in nine years), claims of “mortal risk” become more difficult to ascertain regarding the population of the U.S. as a whole. Wilper, et al. should discount deaths from violent causes before making claims on the correlation of death and health insurance, especially when the net difference in deaths between the insured and uninsured groups is likely only four deaths during a nine-year study.

The Oaks on Apple Pie Ridge. This is near where I want to buy a fishing camp. But the one I like the location of costs nearly 180K. A little rich for my blood. Maybe I can find something on a river.

To the Muse

RESIGN the rhapsody, the dream,
To men of larger reach;
Be ours the quest of a plain theme,
The piety of speech.

As monkish scribes from morning break
Toiled till the close of light,
Nor thought a day too long to make
One line or letter bright:

We also with an ardent mind,
Time, wealth, and fame forgot,
Our glory in our patience find
And skim, and skim the pot:

Till last, when round the house we hear
The evensong of birds,
One corner of blue heaven appear
In our clear well of words.

Leave, leave it then, muse of my heart!
Sans finish and sans frame,
Leave unadorned by needless art
The picture as it came.

Robert Lewis Stevenson

There’s a picture to share today. I liked it so well that I framed it up for Tara. On day near the end of last semester, I went out on the marsh with the boys and my camera. Point of interest #4 came first from the way we walked the boardwalk, and Quentin thought I should get a picture of “Cameron at Four.” Came out pretty nicely. What was four years ago just beginning to shed the “runt baby” looks, now is a fine little boy who fancies himself Indiana Jones.

By way of Community concerns, Linda’s granddaughter Kayla needs some healing prayers, and Cuz Sara is busy tending her mother Nita, who just had her second knee replaced. The first was plenty painful, but in the end very successful. Now the second she was ready for the same drill, but unfortunately there was a problem with the bone above the knee, and rehab will have to go slowly while trying to heal the femur. So she hopes to be sent to her home at the assisted living in Lawrence and do rehab there instead of in the hospital. Ina May sent word that she was out of surgery today.

One last photo. Don has been digitizing all the old carousels of slides, and now and again he sends along a treasure.

I see this and think, “I lift mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my strength.”
Steve is now a nearly 50 y. o. research chemist and Mark the smaller boy is a doctor. Where did the years go?

This was from one of many trips to Estes Park; 1969 I think.