On preparing a church service

I belong to the Social Justice Committee of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Kent, OH. Several times a year, our committee is called upon to lead a church service, which invariably involves my being a part of it somehow. Today was just such an occasion, and I have spent the better part of the last week or more preparing my part of the service, which was entitled "Creating the Beloved Community: The Path to Active Nonviolence". I was asked to write a sermon explaining the Unitarian and Universalist heritage of active nonviolence, since I am seen around church as something of a history buff. I have spent several weeks doing active research and occasional communication via e-mail to and from the other person with whom I would lead the service. I find this entire process to be partly nerve wracking, partly fascinating, and quite exhausting overall. You must do a great deal of reading, reflection, writing, editing, polishing and timing, to make sure that it all works. When you have more than one reading to do, you must make sure that all the parts fit together. After much consideration, even as late as yesterday, I finally arrived at my final product for the service today. The opening reading was a snippet from Henry David Thoreau's essay, "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience", which served as inspiration for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose work "Pilgrimage to Nonviolence" we would read later in the service. It only seemed fitting that I would open with such a reading, given where we were going with the service theme. After the King reading, I did the first part of the sermon, entitled, "The Heritage of Active Nonviolence" (the other part of the sermon was done by my worship partner, Vivien, on her experiences participating in the Seabrooke, New Hampshire Nuclear plant protests back in the 70's when she was in college). This called on me to do a bit of historical research into the Unitarian and Universalist heritage of nonviolence, and I wanted to highlight both one Unitarian and one Universalist who served as inspiration for the work of Dr. King. The Universalist I chose was Adin Ballou, a little remembered but important 19th century Universalist figure who founded a utopian community called "Hopedale" in order to live in Christian socialism and nonviolence. Of course, the Unitarian figure I chose was Thoreau. I went on to explain how the work of these two men influenced King's nonviolence in the civil rights movement, and then finished with a moving speech by Robert F. Kennedy that he gave in Cleveland the day after King's assassination called "On the Mindless Menace of Violence" that I felt strongly needed to be included somewhere in this service. I was struck by its powerful message and how timely it is for what is going on in the world today, so I knew that this particular speech somehow had to fit into the service. By connecting the dots, from Ballou to Thoreau to King to Kennedy, I was able to accomplish just that. It took a lot of work, but it eventually all fell into place. I was also called on to do the closing reading, and once again, I wanted to turn to a historical Unitarian or Universalist figure who was well known in his or her day for their work in nonviolent activism. After much work, I was able to find an early 20th century Unitarian minister and nonviolence activist named John Haynes Holmes. I did some online research (thank goodness for Google!) and was able to find a sermon given by another UU minister that was all about the life and work of Rev. Holmes. I found what I thought was a most timely quote from Holmes written on the eve of America's entry into the First World War that was in staunch opposition to our involvement in it. I loved the sentiment expressed in this sermon that Holmes wrote: “War is an open and utter violation of Christianity. If war is right, then Christianity is wrong, false, a lie. If Christianity is right then war is wrong, false, a lie. The God revealed by Jesus, and by every great spiritual leader of the race, is no God of battles. He lifts no sword, he asks no sacrifice of blood….His law, as interpreted and promulgated by the Nazarene, is ‘Love one another,’ ‘Resist not evil with evil,’ ‘Overcome evil with good,’ ‘Love your enemies.’ Such a God and such a law others may reconcile with war, if they can. I cannot—and what I cannot do, I will not profess to do…In time of war, as in time of peace…I shall love my country and serve her to the end….And how shall I, a pacifist, serve my country in time of war?....If any man or boy in this church answers the call to arms, I shall bless him as he marches to the front…But I also have a conscience, and that conscience I also must obey….If this means imprisonment, I will serve my term….So long as I am your minister, this pulpit will answer no military summons…. Other parish houses may be turned into drill halls and rifle ranges; ours will not. Other clergymen may pray to God for victory for our arms; I will not….So long as I am priest, this altar shall be consecrated to human brotherhood….In a time of raging hate and brutal passion, I will keep alive that spirit of good will toward men….To discover terms of reconciliation, to work out methods of cooperation, to soften hate and dispel suspicion, to spread abroad sweet influences of confidence and healing….How better can we serve our country than by restoring to her that high mission of peace-making?” Well, I thought that this final sentiment about peacemaking was the perfect way to end the service, both with a question and a statement that could well apply to our situation today. The service went over fabulously. Vivien, my worship partner, and I received high praise from everyone in the greeting line as they left the service. It was so wonderful to know that we moved people and instead of preaching to them about what they should do, we taught them instead from the lessons of the past. Viv and I have done services in the past that have always been very well received by the congregation, and as a worship team, we seem to mesh extraordinarily well together. We both prefer to teach instead of preach, and we both love writing sermons with powerful messages that leave people thinking. We both harbor a great passion and love for history, so we love to draw on historical figures and examples for our services and our sermons. So while the entire process of preparing a church service can be utterly exhausting, still, the effusive response is always worth the sweat that goes into it. And that in itself makes the whole thing worth the effort.

R.I. P., George Carlin

Just when we need him most, George Carlin has left us. He died earlier this week of heart failure at the age of 71. I absolutely loved his brand of comedy. It was always devastatingly honest, sometimes profane, but always hilarious, especially when he talked about his Irish Catholic childhood. Having grown up Catholic myself and remembering the terrors of Catholic school (where we gave the nuns nicknames like "Sister Mary Attilla the Hun", "Sister Mary Adolph Hitler", "Sister Mary Herman Goehring" and other nasty nicknames to describe what we felt was their unique brand of torture), Carlin's description of his experiences truly hit home for me. He also pioneered the "Seven Dirty Words You Cannot Say on Television", which eventually led to a Supreme Court ruling that those words indeed could not be used on TV. I imagine that Carlin must have had some interesting things to say about that. I would guess that he's up there somewhere now, hobnobbing with the likes of Richard Pryor, who was also devastatingly funny. Each of these comedians used brutal honesty in such a funny way that you could not help but laugh out loud. These were the guys whose comedy I grew up on and whose skewed view of the world made me laugh out loud, and their passing has left a real void in the world of comedy. We need their likes now that we have such buffoons in Washington and an increasingly interesting presidential election campaign in full swing that pits the first black candidate against an old war hero who is a product of the VietNam era. I wish Pryor were around right now to make some kind of commentary on Obama's candidacy. We don't really have anyone who practices that kind of raw brand of humor that was so much a part of Pryor's and Carlin's acts. I can honestly say that they are sorely missed and always will be. But we have plenty of recordings and hours of recorded concerts and television appearances to watch to remind us of who they were and what kinds of things they skewered on a regular basis. George Carlin, I miss you already. You still make me laugh even now at the things you were making fun of 30-40 years ago when I was young. We sure could use your unique take on things right now, with an illegal war raging in Iraq, skyrocketing gas prices, a bunch of buffoons and fools running Washington and a presidential campaign raging on after an agonizingly long primary season that probably disenchanted and turned off a lot of potential voters. Well, we can laugh at what you left us. Thank goodness for that.

AS IF SOARING GAS PRICES AREN'T ENOUGH........

I read in the newspaper today (Saturday) that oil has now reached $142 a barrel, and that it can be blamed squarely on the sinking dollar and the fact that investors are grabbing on to oil futures as a hedge against inflation, so it's both the dollar value and speculators that are to blame for the skyrocketing price of oil. Add to that the news that if we attack Iran (more than likely that we will before Bush is done screwing the Middle East), they will use oil as a weapon against us, meaning that oil prices could well hit over $200 a barrel before Bush is done with us. Add to that the fact that I also read today that home heating prices are going to soar this winter by at least 50%, and it has me wondering just how on earth I am going to survive financially. I'm already paying $100 a month on budget billing for my heat and I don't keep my apartment that warm as it is. I lower the thermostat to 58º when I am not home and when I am home, I only set it to 68º. We have vinyl replacement windows and new vinyl siding on the house, underneath of which is exterior insulation. We also have interior insulation and fiberglass upstairs in the attic, so my apartment is snug and warm in the winter months and does not necessitate setting the thermostat very high. I was talking to a friend a few days ago who lives in a five bedroom house who said that her budget billing is much lower than mine and she has a gas dryer, gas water heater and gas heat and doesn't pay as much as me, leaving me to wonder why I am paying so much for heat. I wonder if I've got a leak somewhere but I cannot afford to pay for an energy audit to find out. I wonder how much lower I will have to set the thermostat this winter just to survive. All I can hope for is a mild winter that will offset this past very cold winter. I know that there will be blame on environmentalists if energy prices continue their meteoric soar into the stratosphere. Well, I am convinced that we can have clean and renewable energy if we just put our minds to it. We should have started back when Jimmy Carter told us to lower our thermostats and wear sweaters. Instead, Republicans swept into office and told us that energy prices were cheap and go ahead and splurge. We're paying for that negligence now.

I just wonder what can be done to strengthen the dollar and I begin to wonder if it is being artificially depressed to make a few people betting on oil futures a lot of quick money and to make American goods cheaper to sell overseas. You have to wonder about that. As of today, the dollar is worth 63¢ against the Euro and 50¢ against the British Pound. Pretty sad. The Euro is worth $1.57 and the Pound is worth $1.99, making it cheaper for foreigners to come over here instead of making it more affordable for Americans to travel overseas. Any hopes I ever had of returning to Europe are pretty well gone forever unless the dollar comes back up in value. Part of what is depressing it is our rampant trade deficit, especially with China. As that massive country gains in industrial power (thanks largely in part to US off-shoring of industrial jobs to cheaper labor there), the trade deficit is bound to continue growing out of control unless it is somehow reined in. Not being an economist, I haven't a clue as to how to do that, but I don't even know if a change in administration in Washington will be that successful in turning things around in the short term. I rather doubt it. Once inside the Beltway, people in Washington become more entrenched in a certain kind of mentality. They fall prey to special interests and lobbyists who they see as their best chance to do campaign fundraising, and the fact that it costs so much now just to win a Congressional seat means that they never really stop campaigning, even once they become a Representative or a Senator. In fact, they can't really ever afford to completely step off the campaign bus and just do what we elected them to do. And that it's come to this is very sad. In the meantime, we're headed toward a slow economic collapse the likes of which we haven't seen in almost 80 years, only this time, it's going to be much, much worse. We're already part of the way there as it is, and it scares the hell out of me that money has gotten so tight that I can barely make it through a pay period. Well, come fall when I am hopefully a bit more mended from injuries, it looks as if I'm just going to have to get a second part time job just to make ends meet. I don't see any way around it. I'm not making it on my current income as prices escalate far faster than I can keep up with. Gas, food, health care, heat....it's all rising faster than the rate of inflation and I can't keep up. I'm drowning under these rapidly rising price hikes and sadly, there's absolutely no relief in sight. The news media doesn't make it easier and all they can say is to be prepared for even steeper price hikes in the near future. And all I can ask is, why, and how are we to survive this rampant rate of inflation?

Summer vacations - still holding out hope.....

I keep hoping against hope that I can save up enough money to attend the Augusta Heritage Workshops this summer in Elkins, WV as I have done every year since 1989. Gas and food prices are making it nearly prohibitive to do so, but I still have my uncashed $600 "economic stimulus" check from Uncle Sam that I keep hoping will get me there somehow. I also have a $52 check from an overpayment on a debt that I am saving in hopes of using that as well to get down to Elkins, so I have a total of $652 saved up for the trip, but it will cost $787 total between room, board and tuition, meaning I'd have to come up with an extra $135 on my own. Plus I'd need some spending money plus gas money, so we're probably talking an extra couple hundred dollars right there. I'm not so sure I can come up with that much in a month's time, even though I am now taking the bus to work instead of driving in order to save money. I'm thinking of shopping at dollar stores and at Big Lots from now on to save even more money instead of going to the regular stores at which I have shopped for so long. Even doing that may not succeed in helping me save enough to go on both of my summer vacation trips this year. That I have to live like a poor person from now on rather rankles me. That I have now been reduced to being considered to be in the income level now considered to be "the working poor" is also just a stunning blow. There has been such a dramatic redistribution of wealth in this country in the past 8 years that what we once knew as the Middle Class has now all but vanished into a historical footnote. We now live in a country of haves and have nots, without much in between. And I don't think that there will ever again exist a once mighty middle class like there was when I was growing up, the economic engine of this country's unprecedented post-WWI prosperity. Why there exist people who, for 40+ years, have been hell bent on dismantling the whole idea of a prosperous and comfortable middle class is beyond me, but apparently, this all began with Goldwater and has been building for over 40 years now to our current class of NeoCons, who have been angrily resenting our withdrawal from VietNam ever since it happened. Their answer to the world's problems has been to build a mighty American Empire that would rule through military might and power and would create a ruling class of elites who would accumulate most of the wealth of this country in order to squelch the peon middle class, the root of all evil as far as they are concerned, because it was middle class kids attending college who fomented so much of the protests against the VietNam War. Ah, well, don't even get me started - I could go on at length about my thoughts on the NeoCons and how evil they are.

Another summer vacation that has fallen into doubt is the annual Pennsic War, the major event of the year of the Society for Creative Anachronism, of which I have been a member for 31 years now. This annual event attracts tens of thousands of SCA folks from around the world, and for two weeks every summer, we are the second largest city in Butler County, PA. Like anything else, it's become far more expensive to attend as costs escalate, and I suspect that owing to runaway inflation, attendance will be down sharply this year. Gas prices are doubtless going to be sharply higher the closer we get to Labor Day and the end of summer, so I consider myself lucky that I live a mere 85 miles from the site, making my drive a not very gas consuming affair to get there. It's the other costs that can get tough to shoulder, like food, water, etc. Food prices are up sharply as well, leaving me to wonder if I can make this event this summer. That my normal summer sojourns are in such doubt this year angers me to no end, because it's due mainly to the fact that food and gas prices have doubled in one short year and for what? The media insists that speculation on oil futures is not to blame for high gas prices and that the Iowa floods this year is to blame for the ridiculous food prices we're paying. How flooding in one state can so deeply affect food prices is beyond me, but then, I don't know everything about economic stuff works. All I know is that an income which used to easily sustain me doesn't anymore, and I am being forced to make choices that aren't pleasant to me at all. I feel like a victim of something so much larger than myself that I can do nothing to affect. I can make changes, make sacrifices, etc., but that's not going to do squat to change the situation at large. We're being held hostage by Wall Street and we can do nothing to change what can't be changed, no matter what we do or say. None of the Presidential candidates, should either of them win in November, are going to be able to do a damned thing, either, once they take office. They're largely powerless to do so. There are an elite few who are making all the rules and setting all the prices and we're basically at their mercy. In other words, we don't really live in a democracy at all. We haven't for a very long time now. We basically live under an oligarchy that would set our Founding Fathers rolling in their graves. How it got to this point, I don't know. How we can restore our country to what our Founders wanted, I don't know. All I know is that this isn't the country I signed up to live in. May we use this upcoming Independence Day to declare our independence from the elites who are in power and to begin the restoration of our once democratic country.

Election year gas prices

Has anybody taken notice that in Presidential election years, there is always a run-up of gas prices preceding the election? They then drop right before election day, then go up dramatically right after elections are over, regardless of who wins. Far be it for me to be a conspiracy monger, but I do remember that 4 years ago, during the last Presidential election, there was an exponential rise in gas prices running up to the election, then they dropped, then went right back up again after Election Day. Gas prices have gone up a full dollar a gallon just since the primary season began back in January, and of course, the excuse is supply and demand, but as gas prices have continued their meteoric rise, people are driving less and less and less, meaning that demand here in the US has sharply dropped as people are dumping their gas hog cars in favor of smaller, more fuel sipping vehicles. They are also turning more to mass transit and other alternative sources of transportation, so I find it hard to believe the excuse of supply and demand when so many people are forgoing their usual routines and driving so much less and buying more fuel sipping cars. Sure, China and India are becoming the new industrial powers in the world, and thus demanding far more oil as a result, and the US has only itself to blame for that, as rampant outsourcing of jobs for cheap labor to those two countries for the past 8 years has created that perfect storm. Still, I find it hard to believe the need to raise gas prices so high so quickly in response to supply and demand situations when I think that it's partly an election year ploy of some sort. What the motive here is, I don't know, other than to get McCain elected or something. I don't really know, but I remember this same thing happening four years ago. The price hikes weren't as dramatic as they are now, but there was still a run-up on gas prices before the election that made me begin to wonder why.

There's a definite Wall Street-Washington link that seems to be contributing to squeezing what little life there is left out of the middle class, and what better way than via oil prices? First you get 'em where they live (the bursting of the housing bubble), then you get 'em where it hurts, the pocketbook (oil prices). Conquest complete. What better way to completely disspirit those who would vote Democrat then to depress them so badly that they'll just become too jaded to vote and stay home in November? Mission Accomplished. I smell a rotten fish in all of this, and I know that something's up that is meant to wreak as much damage as possible in as short a time as possible before Bush retreats back to his ranchette in Crawford in January. Fasten your seatbelts, because if you think it's bad now.....just you wait. I think that the worst is yet to come. Unless something changes soon, I foresee a major economic collapse coming that will make the Depression look like child's play. This year's perfect storm of the collapse of the housing bubble, the credit crunch and the creation of an oil bubble are just the beginning. The stock market has been pretty unstable of late, either making huge gains or huge losses, but already this year, it has lost a great deal of its value and may well lose more as nervous investors figure out that something's rotten in Denmark, so to speak. I keep hearing that the bottom hasn't fallen out of the bursting of the housing bubble yet, and this is part and parcel of the run-up on oil prices as well, as investors scramble to make up their huge losses from that fiasco. What's going to happen when the bottom does finally fall out? I think we'll see such a run-up on gas prices as we haven't seen yet. And when that happens, it may well bring things to a screeching halt and spiral us into a Depression the likes of which we haven't seen in almost 80 years. Hang on, folks, it's gonna get ugly. I just hope that I have a Depression-proof job that will see me through to my retirement in five years. For now, though, all we can do is to collectively sit back and wait for the bottom to fall out and hope that we can somehow come through it all and survive as a nation. We did once. I'm sure we can do it again. Time and perseverance will be the judge of that.

Dump the pump, take the bus

And that is exactly what I intend on doing starting next week on days that I don't have to leave work early for an appointment or some other thing. I have discovered that there is a way for me to take the bus to work in Akron. There is an early morning Interurban that stops at the Starbuck's catti-corner from my home that I can take to the new parking lot where old Terrace Hall on the KSU campus used to stand. From there, I can link up with an Akron bound bus that stops catti-corner from work. It stops at the same place after work and will take me back to the Starbuck's near my home, from where I can walk back to my house. Doing this will save me a great deal of money and gas, although it's going to mean having to leave the house ridiculously early in the morning, but I can read my newspaper on the bus instead of having it over coffee and breakfast at home. I'm also a Morning Edition and All Things Considered devotee, which have been my traditional drive time radio listening in the mornings and in the evenings, but I can still take my little Sony Walkman with me to work and listen to NPR on that en route to and from work.

I'm glad that buses are adding routes and times now that the demand for mass transit is growing with the increase in gas prices making it too hard to do a lot of driving. This country still needs to do more work investing in its public transportation infrastructure that was so handily dismantled in the 50's and 60's as cars and suburban developments became more popular. There is virtually no passenger rail service in this part of the country like there once was in the heyday of rubber and steel mills, but there could be again if the willpower existed to make it happen. Oil prices are going nowhere but up, up and away as speculators continue their relentless drive to make more and more money in unregulated markets and transparent trade schemes. Legislators don't have the willpower or the cojones to go after them and there's way too much power anyway with that much money trading hands on Wall Street. And most ordinary folks like me are too jaded, to cynical or just plain out too tired to keep trying to fight Wall Street in favor of Main Street. Candidates make lots of promises that we know darn well they can't keep unless they've got Congress on their side, and most recent Presidencies have been plagued by bitter partisanship between the executive and legislative branches.

At least one good thing about this trend of rapidly escalating gas prices is that it is forcing people to dump their gas hog SUV's, heavy pick-ups and mini-vans in favor of far more gas saving, fuel efficient vehicles. People are also seeking out alternative transportation more, like walking, biking or taking the bus, meaning far fewer cars on the road these days. Probably a good thing for the environment, given the global warming problems we've been having of late. Toyota's problem - and I suppose for them it's a good one, especially for their employees - is that they cannot produce the Prius hybrids fast enough to meet demand. They keep adding shifts to their assembly plants, meaning more good jobs for folks who want to work in manufacturing. They also can't produce their other cars fast enough as well. A co-worker told me today that he was shopping for a Corolla and the dealer had none left on the lot and didn't expect another delivery for a few weeks yet, so Toyota is doing fabulously well right now because they produce extremely reliable and fuel efficient cars, making them easily the Number One car company in the world. If Detroit could take a cue from them and make good American brand cars that could stand up to a Toyota, they wouldn't be in such a deep hole as they've been for years. American car companies are stuck in the 20th century "bigger is better" mentality, and they need to get out of it and promote "smaller is better" if they expect to survive the challenges of the 21st century. There also needs to be some major investment into research and development of alternative and renewable fuels that will free us from the tyranny of foreign oil from countries that have far too good reason to hate us. I'm convinced that with the proper willpower, know-how and the best minds in the country putting their heads together to do so, we can be energy independent in 10 years. We sent a man to the moon and back in less time than that. We can do this again. We must. Our national security depends on it.

The tyranny of high fuel prices

You know it's bad when oil company executives say that with current supply and demand, oil prices ought not to be more than between $50 and $60 a barrel and that at least, if not more, than 50% of current oil prices are being driven by wild speculation. This is what happens when oil companies are put in charge of energy policy making decisions by our current administration, made up largely of oil men. And since nearly everything we consume is made with petrochemicals, in addition to what we put down our gas tanks, the prices of everything have skyrocketed in addition to fueling our cars. It's getting to where I just can't figure out anymore how to make ends meet without taking a second job, which I really can't right now, not with the injuries that I am currently working on healing. So I am left wondering just how on earth I can survive without resorting to living on Ramen noodles and peanut butter. I'm not spending any extra money besides just bills, food, gas and health care. I'm trying to figure out where I can cut further to save more money without depriving myself of those things that give me a quality of life that I want. Sure, I could quit working out with Jason and go someplace else, but it means the world to me to work with someone with whom I have had a long working relationship who knows what physical limitations I have and who can design a workout to get around what I am dealing with at the moment. I've cut back on the number of times per week that I go, which makes me sad, but that's one way that I have made cutbacks in my life. I've also cut back on using my rosacea meds on my face in order to stretch out how long a tube of MetroGel lasts, since it costs $50 a tube. The prescription calls for me to use it twice a day, but I've cut back to once a day to save money on both the MetroGel and face cleanser. I suppose I could cut back on how often I wash my hair as well, but I feel grungy unless I shower frequently. As it is, I'm doing a lot of kitchen sink laundry to save on going to the laundromat. I've cut out all of my periodical subscriptions, memberships to various things and other stuff, but I'm still coming up short each month. I try my best to drive less and walk more in order to save gas, so I am doing what I can do get by, but it's not enough.

My cost of living has skyrocketed and my pay hasn't kept pace. And from all I can tell, there is no relief in sight from all of this. No amount of wailing at pols in Washington can change the current economic climate. This recession is forecasted to be long and deep and even the next President will not be able to change it, from what I am reading. And even though there are calls for additional oil drilling, even if we started tomorrow doing offshore drilling and if the ANWR were opened up for oil exploration and drilling, even if we started tomorrow drilling for more oil, we wouldn't see a drop of it for at least a decade, and in that time, we can pour our resources into alternative and renewable energy sources and get ourselves freed from the tyranny of oil addiction. If we can muster our best and brightest minds to, in less than a decade, get a man to the moon safely and back again, we can certainly figure out a way to create safe, renewable energy sources that would replace oil and would, in the process, create new high paying jobs for the future, but it takes the desire and willpower to do so. I think if enough people call on legislators to do this, to put their minds to strengthening our country by creating a whole new "green collar" economy, it can be done. For now, the only real strategy is to strengthen our mass transit infrastructure by encouraging people to drive less and take mass transit more. We need to dump our oversized SUV's and pick-ups in favor of smaller and more fuel efficient cars. We need to lean on Detroit to wean itself off of its "bigger is better" mentality and to demand higher fuel standards for all of our domestically produced vehicles. Sure, there isn't going to come any immediate relief from the tyranny at the pump, but if we start now with measures to wean ourselves off of oil from countries who don't necessarily have our best interests in mind, then maybe in a few years time, maybe by the time I retire in 2013, things will begin to turn around just a bit.

For now, though, we need to encourage our legislators to crack down on speculators who are driving up energy prices as well as find ways to conserve what we have for the future and campaign for any candidate who stands for a sustainable and renewable future. If we don't demand these things and demand them now, then all we're going to see is the end of the middle class as we once knew it and a two class society, the super rich and the poor and no in between. We're not so far from that now as it stands. And it's only going to get worse before it gets better - if it ever gets better. If not.....well......who knows? All I know is that the pay that once sustained me and kept me solvent isn't doing so anymore. And I don't know where to turn for help. I feel caught between a rock and a hard place with nowhere to turn, and it may just come to having to go to food banks just to get some help being able to get enough food to feed myself without breaking the bank doing so. I never thought it'd come to this in my lifetime, where my pay didn't provide enough to get me through a month. Any hopes of a vacation this summer are pretty well dashed by my struggle just to get through each month and pay bills, eat, and fuel my car. It's terribly disappointing to have to give up something that for years has meant so much to me, but I don't see any way around this. I've tried and tried to figure out ways to afford summer travel, but I just can't seem to make it happen mentally. Nearly every penny I make each month is being consumed by food, gas, health care and bills and there just isn't any more slack in the budget like there used to be in years past. No matter what I do and what I cut from my budget, it's just not enough. My cost of living has doubled in one short year and my pay hasn't, and that's the simple economic reality right now. And for the foreseeable future, nothing is going to change. I'm going to have to make further and deeper cuts to my budget that may just mean needing help from local social service agencies just to survive hard times. Well, if I qualify for help, I'm not too proud to accept it. After all, that's what it's there for.

Hand therapy continues....

Where I go for physical therapy, they always start you off easy with very simple and low resistance exercises. Then, a few weeks into your program, they start really working you hard to get to the real meat 'n' potatoes of your therapy regimen, and that seems to be where I am right now in my hand rehab program. At first they had me doing some simple stretches and hand exercises, most of which I could do at home, but now, they have me doing some really tough theraputty exercises that require some resistance in order to strengthen my surgically repaired finger. It's pretty painful and tough and it always hurts somewhat, even after a good solid warm up on an "arm bike" beforehand. Still, it's what I need to be doing at this juncture, especially since this marks my 6th week since surgery and although the incision is fairly well healed, the pain and stiffness is still very much a part of my life right now and I lack the full function of that finger as yet. I've tried several times to pick up a coffee cup with it and it doesn't work. Too weak, too painful. That is what they're trying to help me with right now in PT - to regain strength as well as fine motor control in that finger. It's amazing how much you take for granted how much you use your index finger, and even though I am right handed, I still require the use of my left index finger a lot more than I often realized until now. I use it for everything from braiding my hair to tying my shoes. So having it tight, stiff and sore and still not fully functional is, at best, frustrating. I know I still have a long road to full recovery ahead, as Jay told me today in PT when I asked him why it was still so stiff and sore this far into things. He said that it's still very much healing and will take a while yet to fully recover, so just be patient. Ha! Not my strong suit, I'm afraid!
One of the more interesting exercises that Jay had me do today was to use something called a "Purdue Pegboard", where you have to take these teeny tiny little tubes and put them into the pegs, and then put a washer on them after you finish putting the pegs in the holes. The whole point of this exercise is to regain lost fine motor control, so I imagine that I will do this again on Wednesday when I return for my next PT session. It was really tough to do this because I am not left handed and my dexterity on my less dominant side has never been great on a good day, but with a stiff and sore finger, to have to pick up these little tubes and put them in a hole and then put a washer on top of that and do that almost all the way down the peg board was extraordinarily challenging! I had no idea that this exercise would be so hard! I had to do it for five minutes, and then I had to do the reverse - first take the washers off and then the little tubes and put them back in their containers, using, again, my left index finger and my left thumb only. I felt clumsy and stupid seeing how poor my dexterity is with a surgically repaired finger, but by the same token, I kind of enjoyed the challenge. Maybe I can find an old cribbage board somewhere and practice this exercise at home. It would be very similar to what we did in therapy and it would continue to help me regain my lost fine motor control until I feel it coming back some more, which I know is going to take some time, but....I must be patient. Like all tough things that life has a way of throwing at us, this, too, shall pass.

Riverfront Irish Festival

Yesterday, I went to the Riverfront Irish Festival, which is held along the Front Street pedestrian mall in downtown Cuyahoga Falls. What's nice about it is that it's free (including parking!) and it's right downtown along the river. There was the usual collection of overpriced, fattening festival food and oversized people noshing on all this stuff, and the usual ticky tacky faux Irish stuff and T-shirts proclaiming stuff like "Irish Attitude", and "Irish Princess", and "T'is Himself" and all that other stereotypical stuff about Irishness that Americans love to gobble up. But oh, well, all in good fun, I suppose. There were also the usual collection of bad faux Irish bands that played anything that vaguely resembled Irish music, along with the usual "pop-Irish" stuff that is oversung, overplayed and has become almost cliché as a result, but when people think of Irish music, this is what they expect to hear. Far be it for them to be exposed to real Irish music - hell, they'd probably get all haughty and say that "that's not Irish!", the subject of a really funny song by Robbie O'Connell, chronicling his early days as an Irish musician in America, trying to sing real Irish songs and all the while being told "That's not Irish music!". People want to hear all that tacky "Tura-lura-lura" and "Black Velvet Band" crap instead of good old Irish ballads, and if they do get the real music played to them, it's usually in an easily digestible "rock 'n' roll" format, like one band who played yesterday. I sat through two of their concerts, admittedly, because they did feature various bagpipes as a part of their instrumentation, but they were more a rock band than a traditional Irish band. Still, they weren't bad, all things considered, but I still would rather have heard real Irish music instead of the filtered down stuff you hear at most Irish festivals nowadays. There are a few more Irish festivals in the area yet to come this summer: The Ohio Irish Festival, which used to be held on the grounds of the West Side Irish American Club, but is now held in the Flats entertainment district near downtown Cleveland, and the Cleveland Irish Cultural Festival, held on the grounds of the Cuyahoga County Fairgrounds. I've been sorely disappointed at the music at the Ohio Irish Festival in recent years since its move to the Flats, but the Cleveland Irish Cultural Festival still has top notch groups like Cherish The Ladies and other more "trad" groups that play there each year, so it's well worth going to. You still get your hokey faux "Irish American" music at that one, but that seems endemic anymore for any kind of Irish Festival. It's what brings in the crowds, so I guess they have to cater to what sells.

FATHER'S DAY

I've always rather dreaded "Father's Day" for the simple reason that I never had a father, at least not one that I could easily remember. Having lost my father just weeks after my 4th birthday, I only have a few shadowy memories of him, at best, and even those have begun to fade with time and distance. But I did make a pilgrimage today out to my father's grave to stand and contemplate what life might have been like had he survived long enough to see us grown into adulthood. I also wanted to say a Happy Father's Day to him in spite of his being gone these 47 years now and to thank him for giving me life and the chance at a college education. I guess his passing is something I will never truly get over, and you don't, not when a parent dies very suddenly and unexpectedly. That is why I always feel bad whenever I hear of anyone who loses a parent too soon. I think of the children who have to live with this loss for the rest of their lives and what it will mean to them. Whenever I hear of someone being killed in the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan who leaves behind young children, I know what this will do to the rest of their lives. Or even in the case of the very untimely and unexpected death on Friday of newsman Tim Russert, who was only 7 years older than me - he leaves behind a son, how old, I don't know - but still, to lose your father so close to Father's Day must be so hard. That is something his family will always remember this time of year, that their father, son and husband died just around Father's Day and it will doubtless make this holiday hard on them from now on. You just have to move on and know that even when someone is taken to soon like that, sure, time will lessen the sorrow, but it never fully heals. You carry it around like an old wound scar for the rest of your days. You cry on occasion, as a way of cleansing the wound from time to time, and you move on until it opens again and you cleanse it anew by the tears each time. I still cry over my father, even though I barely remember him. I guess it's the not knowing how my life might have turned out had he lived that sometimes gets to me. The knowledge that I will never know what it's like to have a two parent nuclear household is also sometimes hard to consider. Not that I mind having come from a single parent household, it's just the constant wondering how having had a father might have changed things in my life, maybe, just maybe, for the better. But that kind of wondering can drive you crazy, so it's best to just content yourself with who you are and what you have in life. Still, there will always be that little voice inside that can never quite quiet itself that forever wonders...."What if....?"

The Lost Art of Civility

It seems like so many people are so busy multi-tasking with their various gadgets anymore that they are becoming increasingly ruder and less civil than before all these things became so commonplace. Add to that the electronic world of e-mail, message boards and such and it leaves people feeling freer to say things that they would never say to someone's face in public. Maybe I'm just getting older, maybe I'm just becoming a curmudgeon of sorts, but it seems to me that we are fast losing the fine art of civility. Even in public, people are less civil to one another than when I was growing up. They seem to feel free to say or do anything they please, regardless of who it offends. And I can't say that I understand this whole cultural change, either, unless it's been brought about by the electronic age in which we live and the increasing disconnectedness that it seems to create. I see people with those new attached-to-the-ear Bluetooth phones who seem to feel as if they need to be connected constantly and it just makes me wonder why. At least those ones don't ring in the middle of a church service or a concert or whatever, so I suppose those folks are being more considerate than those people who, despite being told to shut off their cell phones or put them on vibrate fail to do so and allow them to ring and interrupt a service or concert or whatever. Then they sit there and yack on them anyway in spite of what is going on around them, as if they are the only people in the world who matter or exist. Or they drive down a busy freeway while yacking, oblivious of traffic, either driving too slowly because they are too distracted by talking on their phones, or they drive erratically, weaving in and out of their lane, endangering other drivers in so doing. I don't know, call me old fashioned, but it just seems to me that the very notion of consideration for others has begun to vanish from our landscape. There is a very funny book about this topic called "Talk To The Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door" by Lynne Truss, author of the equally funny "Eats, Shoots and Leaves: Why Commas Really Do Make a Difference", a complaint about the sheer ignorance of grammar in our society and why it matters. The expression "Talk to the hand" is more common than you think. It implies, "I am ignoring you and what you're saying, so.....talk to the hand", accompanied by the gesture of holding your hand up, palm out. I tell you, working in an inner city library will teach you a great deal about social mores and how people behave. For some reason, if you work in customer service, people feel free to walk all over you and treat you like a piece of dirt, not realizing that you're there to make an honest buck, not to make their lives difficult. But again, this is just a part of a larger social problem of manners taking a back seat to people's feelings of self importance mattering more than their behavior. They're always right and the world is always wrong and that's that. Well, all I can say is that I doubt that this sort of thing will change very soon, if ever. So the best thing we who still remember civility can do is to try to set a good example of what it means to be a good and decent soul and teach by example and hope against all hope that it rubs off. Then again, that's the optimist in me. The pessimist knows better.

Happy 200 Years, Portage County!

Last night was the Portage County Bicentennial festival in downtown Ravenna. It was a lot of fun with the usual overpriced food booths, entertainment, contests, various vendors, music, a parade, a living timeline, a keynote speech by County Commissioner Chuck Keiper attended by various local dignitaries, including State Senator Tom Sawyer and State Representatives Stephen Dyer and Kathleen Chandler, and a grand finale of a downright impressive fireworks show from atop the County Courthouse. Some of the events had to be moved up in scheduled time owing to an impending thunderstorm, which moved in just minutes after the completion of the fireworks show and presented its own brand of fireworks accompanied by cooling rains that finally broke a scorching heat wave that we'd been suffering under for several days. It was a very well attended event and people were obviously having a great deal of fun. But I have never seen so many morbidly obese people in my life in one place! And the fattening foods that were being offered by the food vendors certainly did not help things any. Seems that Portage County has one heck of an obesity epidemic going on, and with the glut of fast food restaurants that dot the roadsides around the area, it's no wonder. Anyway, getting back to the festival, the fireworks show was extremely impressive and I can't say that I have ever seen anything quite like it. I've always loved fireworks anyway but you tend to get a bit jaded with age over such things. However, last night was the closest that I have felt to being a kid again, wowing over the brilliant display of lights, streamers and other impressive fireworks, all neatly choreographed to music that was being blared from loud speakers. Admittely, the musical selections were blatantly patriotic in theme, but that's OK. Even I found myself singing along with the song, "God Bless the U.S.A.", a favorite among the pro-Bush, pro-war crowd, as the reds, whites and blues burst in the air above me. I normally regard that song as a bit over-the-top patriotic, especially since it has such a strong identification with pro-war Republicans, but what the heck, the fireworks just brought out something in me that wanted to sing along with the songs as the brilliant colors burst in the sky above me. I just felt, and feel, so proud to be a Portage Countian in this bicentennial year of its existence. Sure, I haven't always agreed with a lot of things that have happened in this county in my lifetime, but to think of those hardy souls who carved out this place from a terrifying wilderness 200 years ago amazes me what they must have gone through to tame the wilderness and make it home. What makes this area special is its being part of the old Connecticut Western Reserve, which makes us a unique little slice of New England in Northeast Ohio. Although a sad amount of that New England heritage has disappeared under overdevelopment and neglect, there are still traces of it left if you drive far enough out into the countryside. So Portage County's heritage isn't all lost. May this Bicentennial year reinforce who and what we were and what we need to preserve so that 200 years from now, people can look back and know that it's not all gone for good. Happy Bicentennial, Portage County!

The case of the disappearing glasses

Friday evening, I was doing some mending, sitting on the sofa while doing so. I had already gotten ready for bed and was in my nightshirt while I was working. I can't remember whether I fell asleep on the sofa or just went to bed after finishing the mending I was doing, but when I awoke yesterday morning to begin my daily ritual of having my coffee and newspaper, I found my glasses case on the arm of the sofa, but my glasses were nowhere to be found. I can be terribly absent minded and have many times misplaced my keys and my glasses. This seems to be symptomatic of a kind of middle aged memory loss that I have been reading about lately that is downright frustrating, because I hate wasting time looking for things that I ought to remember where I put them. So of course, I looked in all the usual places that I have been known to lay down my glasses in every room in this apartment, but no matter how hard I looked, they were nowhere to be found. I probably wasted an hour looking for my glasses while eating my breakfast, unable to read the papers because I cannot see them without them. I hate the fact that I am now so dependent on corrective lenses like this and can't read without them. Although I have been wearing glasses since age 8, it's only been since my mid-20's that my eyesight seems to have steadily worsened to the point of absolutely having to wear my glasses, in particular, to read and to see anything close up. It drives me crazy, then, when I cannot find my glasses and really need them. I continued to turn every room upside down, but alas, it was all in vain, because I had to get going to something I had planned to do for the day, so finishing breakfast and washing up, I dressed and left the house for my planned sojourn for the day, minus my glasses. All day long, I tried to remember what I was doing when I last had them, and at last, I thought I knew where they might be, so when I returned home last night, I looked in the suspected place, only to find they were not there. Continuing my search, I finally, at long last, located my missing glasses in the laundry bin. How they got there, I haven't a clue. I suspect that I have what some of us refer to as "house gnomes". Things have been misplaced before around here and have turned up in very weird and odd spots where I know darn well that I didn't move them to that place, so I am beginning to think that perhaps I am stuck with these "house gnomes" that keep insisting on misplacing my things when I want and need them the most. But at least I have my glasses back, and that's terribly important, because they are my one and only pair and right now, I could in no way afford to replace them! Not to mention, I badly need them to see! Much as I hate that, it's one of those maddening realities of growing older.

HAND REHAB
I returned to physical therapy this week for rehab on my left index finger. What troubles me is that it's still stiff and swollen a month after surgery. Wednesday was mainly just an evaluation to see where things are and what kind of program they will put me through, and Friday began the actual hard work of rehab. Jay, one of the PT assistants who I have worked with many times before, appears to be the one who I will be working with, which is fine because I really like Jay a lot. I usually work with Jason, but since this is a hand thing, Jay will more than likely be the one who I will work with for as long as it takes me to get the finger unstiffened and moving again. I have been doing regular stretching of it on my own and faithfully doing my home regimen every day, but I know that it's just going to take time and patience to get the finger back to full function again. I hope it doesn't take all summer and/or the rest of my allowed PT sessions that my insurance limits me to. I wish that they didn't impose such a strict limit, but that goes into my health care rants that I have all too frequently posted here, so I will refrain from another one of those. Suffice it to say that I just hope that I can get the hand moving again before my insurance limit kicks in and that I can regain full function of my finger before too long. I go back to the surgeon in a few weeks for another post-op follow up and I want very much to be able to have good movement in that finger by the time I see her again. That is something that I am kind of making my goal of being able to do. Until then, I am back in PT again with people I know and feel comfortable working with and who I have had a long standing relationship with, and if there is one thing that I have learned about physical therapy, it's that trusting your therapist is tantamount to your overall success. I'm glad that I was able to go to my usual PT clinic instead of someplace where I don't know people. That is what is making this whole thing bearable for me, to know and trust the people who are caring for me as I undergo this long post-surgical rehab on my left index finger.

Remembering Bobby

Forty years ago, this country lost its heart and soul, and it seems as if we've been spending that entire time wandering in the wilderness like the children of Israel, looking for the promised land that never came. Bobby's death ripped something out of us that we've never quite been able to recapture. I still feel the pangs of sorrow whenever I think of that dark day so long ago when we found out that Bobby was gone, after such a triumphant victory in California that night. The pain of that loss has never subsided, not in four decades of wondering just what might have been had Bobby survived. We might be a different people, a different - and perhaps better - country had he won the Presidency. Certainly his death changed forever the course of history, in ways that we can only now understand. Looking at where we've come and what we've become, it's rapidly apparent that we've very much forgotten what he was trying to tell us about who we are and what we could become, if we just reach down inside ourselves and look for the best. Presidents since then haven't quite been able to capture what he wanted us to become and what kind of country he envisioned, and sadly, our Current Occupant seems to be the furthest thing from what he saw as a future for our country. These words, from a speech entitled "On the Mindless Menace of Violence", delivered in Cleveland upon the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., seem to say it best: "This is a time of shame and sorrow. It is not a day for politics. I have saved this one opportunity, my only event of today, to speak briefly to you about the mindless menace of violence in America which again stains our land and every one of our lives. It is not the concern of any one race. The victims of the violence are black and white, rich and poor, young and old, famous and unknown. They are, most important of all, human beings whom other human beings loved and needed. No one - no matter where he lives or what he does - can be certain who will suffer from some senseless act of bloodshed. And yet it goes on and on and on in this country of ours."

"Why? What has violence ever accomplished? What has it ever created? No martyr's cause has ever been stilled by an assassin's bullet. No wrongs have ever been righted by riots and civil disorders. A sniper is only a coward, not a hero; and an uncontrolled, uncontrollable mob is only the voice of madness, not the voice of reason. Whenever any American's life is taken by another American unnecessarily - whether it is done in the name of the law or in the defiance of the law, by one man or a gang, in cold blood or in passion, in an attack of violence or in response to violence - whenever we tear at the fabric of the life which another man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children, the whole nation is degraded. "Among free men," said Abraham Lincoln, "there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet; and those who take such appeal are sure to lose their cause and pay the costs." Yet we seemingly tolerate a rising level of violence that ignores our common humanity and our claims to civilization alike. We calmly accept newspaper reports of civilian slaughter in far-off lands. We glorify killing on movie and television screens and call it entertainment. We make it easy for men of all shades of sanity to acquire whatever weapons and ammunition they desire. Too often we honor swagger and bluster and wielders of force; too often we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of others. "

"Some Americans who preach non-violence abroad fail to practice it here at home. Some who accuse others of inciting riots have by their own conduct invited them. Some look for scapegoats, others look for conspiracies, but this much is clear: violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation, and only a cleansing of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul. For there is another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions; indifference and inaction and slow decay. This is the violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their skin has different colors. This is the slow destruction of a child by hunger, and schools without books and homes without heat in the winter. This is the breaking of a man's spirit by denying him the chance to stand as a father and as a man among other men. And this too afflicts us all."

"I have not come here to propose a set of specific remedies nor is there a single set. For a broad and adequate outline we know what must be done. When you teach a man to hate and fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color or his beliefs or the policies he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies, to be met not with cooperation but with conquest; to be subjugated and mastered. We learn, at the last, to look at our brothers as aliens, men with whom we share a city, but not a community; men bound to us in common dwelling, but not in common effort. We learn to share only a common fear, only a common desire to retreat from each other, only a common impulse to meet disagreement with force. For all this, there are no final answers. Yet we know what we must do. It is to achieve true justice among our fellow citizens."

"The question is not what programs we should seek to enact. The question is whether we can find in our own midst and in our own hearts that leadership of humane purpose that will recognize the terrible truths of our existence. We must admit the vanity of our false distinctions among men and learn to find our own advancement in the search for the advancement of others. We must admit in ourselves that our own children's future cannot be built on the misfortunes of others. We must recognize that this short life can neither be ennobled or enriched by hatred or revenge. Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in our land. Of course we cannot vanquish it with a program, nor with a resolution. But we can perhaps remember, if only for a time, that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short moment of life; that they seek, as do we, nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and in happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can. Surely, this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely, we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men, and surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our own hearts brothers and countrymen once again. "

I hear these words and I just want to cry. They are so timely, so appropriate to what is happening now, that they ought to be repeated from the highest mountaintops to the lowest valleys, from villages, towns and cities, in ghettos and in upscale neighborhoods, in schools, in coffeehouses, libraries, circulated through the Internet and anywhere that people gather to listen to one another. They ought to be sent to every politician in Washington, to remind them of the meaning of public service as well as to remind them of "the better angels of our nature" that Bobby was trying to tell us to see in ourselves and in other people, regardless of class, race, creed, color or any other way that we find to divide ourselves into separate enclaves. If we have any pride left in ourselves as a country, we will embrace the vision that Bobby laid out for us and take it forward into the 21st century and heal those deep divisions that have rent our country into so many pieces in recent years. That would be the best way to honor Bobby's memory, to live out his words and make them a reality. Forty years is too long to wait. The time for wandering in the wilderness is over. Time to finally arrive in the promised land. Bobby, we miss you. May we have the sense to honor your memory on this, the 40th anniversary of your all too untimely passing.

A new day is here!

A new day has arrived in the United States. A black man has become the Democratic nominee for President of the United States! I never thought that I'd see that happen in my lifetime. I still too painfully remember the days of the civil rights struggle, of Selma, of Birmingham, of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., of Bull Connor and of all the ugliness of the 1960's racial strife. What saddens me is to hear people still say that they still will not vote for a black man for President, period. It makes me wonder how far we've really come after all. It confirms to me that despite the advances of the civil rights struggle, that racism still divides this country and probably always will in some way, shape or form. Still, the fact that Barack Obama has, in effect, sealed the Democratic nomination for President is a remarkable accomplishment for such a young man who has come so far in the past four years. In 2004, none of us knew this man who electrified us with his keynote speech at the Democratic convention, and here it is, four years later, and this man is our nominee for President. I'm elated, excited, thrilled....and just a little uneasy that race will still be a factor in this election. I think that the best move that Obama can make right now is to add Hillary Clinton to the ticket for his running mate. She can bring on board the blue collar and older female voters who have thus far supported her. She has, after all, won the majority of the popular vote, and that is critical to the Democrats winning the White House this fall. And having black man and a woman for the Democratic ticket, in my opinion, can heal the deep rifts that have been exposed in the Democratic Party through this heated primary season. We need that healing so badly right now so that we can unify, be strong and move forward to the general election in November. There is just too much at stake right now to risk losing another election to the Republicans. An unpopular war is raging, the country's infrastructure is crumbling, schools are suffering from lack of funding, the health care system is irretrievably broken and needs a major overhaul, climate change is threatening the entire world and quite frankly, Republicans aren't going to address these issues. So we've got some hard work ahead of us to urge Obama to pick Clinton for his running mate to heal and unify the party so that we can win in November.

BACK TO PT.......

And they thought that they were rid of me in physical therapy! Well, today I go back for the beginning of post-surgical rehab on my left index finger, which is still stiff and swollen even after nearly a month post-op. I finally got my sutures out yesterday because they were still in there and I was concerned that I would heal up too well to get them out comfortably, and as it was, it was plenty painful when they came out. I had my primary care doctor's office do it yesterday and they recommended some rehab on the finger so that scar tissue wouldn't develop that would make it even harder and longer to get it moving again. I've begun to joke with the PT staff that I seem, like a bad penny, to keep returning to them, and they joke that yeah, I provide them with plenty of job security. Hopefully, this won't take but a few short weeks to get things moving again and return function to that finger. I'm dismayed at how painful it still is this long after surgery, but I guess this is normal, given that fingers are often very sensitive, given the proximity of nerves to the surface there. After all, with this surgery, tendons and bone were involved in removing the ganglion, so naturally it's going to take a while and be rather tender during my recovery, so I guess I just need to be patient and keep plugging along until it's healed and moving and no longer painful. In the meantime, I do have to keep pressure bandaging on it, but my surgeon let me choose the color of the bandaging that I wanted, and I chose a lovely royal blue color that is my favorite, so I have this pretty blue bandage on my left index finger that brightens my mood every time I get a little down about how long this seems to be taking just to fully recuperate from. Hopefully, physical therapy will help not only to get my finger moving normally again, but to alleviate some of the pain that I am experiencing. I guess I'll know more this afternoon when I go and find out what kind of regimen I am in for and just how long it's going to take.

The delicate balancing act

I'm caught in a real dilemma here. Today I got my long awaited $600 "economic stimulus" check from the government. I also got an "EOB" (explanation of benefits) from my health care provider detailing some of my recent medical expenses incurred, among them my recent surgery on my left index finger. When you subtract the anesthesia, which I can pay myself separately, the total cost that I will have to pay is $786, not really bad, when you consider that the insurance was billed $1783, of which $997 was denied by the insurance company. However, here's the thing: I could nearly wipe out that entire balance by using my $600 stimulus check...or I could use it instead to go on a much needed and much desired vacation and pay off the surgical bill little by little instead. I'm so torn as to what to do. I want to wipe out this bill and get it over with, but I also want to go on vacation this summer. It's such a tough decision. I know that I should do the right and practical thing and just use it to do what nearly everyone else I know is using theirs for, and that's paying down debt or paying bills or whatever. Hardly anyone I know is using theirs for anything frivolous. Not in these tough economic times. Everyone's feeling the pinch and no one I know is running out and buying some outrageous thing they don't need. And anyway, this money is being borrowed from China, so we as a country will eventually owe all this money back - with interest, meaning we'll all eventually be paying back what we got and then some. Seems kind of foolish if you ask me, but I'm not one to turn down free government money, especially at a tough time like we're going through now.

Still, no one is predicting a huge bump in the economy as a result of these stimulus checks. Until and unless energy costs come down (not likely), we're all going to be hurting something fierce. So anyway, here I am, stuck in this dilemma with a $600 check burning a hole in my pocket and I am at a loss as to what to do about this whole thing. The problem that I have discovered is that the provider to whom I owe the money will not allow you to see one of their doctors if you owe any balance on your account, and I may still need to see a doctor soon and I don't want to be denied access to my physicians just because I owe some kind of balance. I'm sure that they must be used to people owing balances that they cannot pay off right away - at least I hope so, anyway. With health care costs so ridiculous these days, few people can pay off their medical bills in one fell swoop unless they are either independently wealthy or win the lottery. At least I have made my deductible for the year and from here on in, my costs will be covered 100%, but in the meantime, I am going to shop around for supplemental health care insurance to cover those ridiculous costs incurred in my deductibles, since there is no chance that my employer provided health care plan will change anytime soon, and universal health care in Ohio and/or the US is but a pipe dream that will never happen in my lifetime. How very sad that this is the case, especially for the uninsured and for we who find ourselves now among the underinsured.

Cha-CHING! "The New Normal"

I sat down and figured out what my monthly expenses are - groceries, gas, laundry, rent, heat, phone, etc. Nearly every penny I make now goes just for regular, every day living expenses without indulging in extras. In some cases, my cost of living has doubled, tripled, quadrupled, but my pay hasn't kept pace with the rapidly rising costs of living. I'm cutting my expenses wherever I can, including skipping meals to save money. I can't walk as many places as I'd hoped to this summer due to my right leg injury, forcing me to use my car a lot more than I'd like to. I'd seriously considered a second, part-time job for the summer just to make ends meet, but now I can't, since I'm injured and will be cast-bound for the duration of summer, maybe even beyond, depending on how well and quickly I heal up. So a "new normal" is developing of being one of those people forced to live paycheck to paycheck, without much ability to save anything. I feel like I am being squeezed to death and what pisses me off is that there is nothing I can do about it. Oil prices are being driven by rampant specualtion on oil futures by greedy Wall Street investors who are reaping huge fortunes off of our misfortune. I don't like this one bit and I can't say how much worse things are going to get. They certainly won't get better. Gas prices will never again come down below the $3 a gallon mark and are predicted to rise as high as $6 a gallon before year's end, which will effectively mean that I will no longer be able to afford to drive to work. And people silently take it because they know they have to. Oil has us over a barrel and we can't do a thing to change it. We are victims of forces much larger than ourselves that are as far out of our control as anything. So what are we to do if, by 2009, we are paying $6 a gallon for gas? It may just result in the shutting down of our economy. Trucks won't be able to afford to keep running to deliver things places, businesses will be forced to shut down, mass transit will not be able to afford to get people places and frankly, anything involving transportation will stop. Period. No cars, no buses, no trains, no nothing. The Chinese and Saudis will have, in effect, succeeded in doing what they always have wanted to do and that is to bring down the mighty American Empire. And they may well succeed in so doing, too. I made another car payment on Friday on my 2007 Hyundai Accent hatchback, but if things continue unabated, I may just sell my car and try to figure out some way of getting around that is cheaper than owning a car that has, so far, only averaged a disappointing 28 mpg highway and fewer in city driving. I almost wish I could have afforded a 40 mpg Toyota Yaris. But this is what I got, and as much as I dearly love everything about my car, its gas mileage so far has been less than impressive. I just hope that I can afford to keep it. Otherwise, if gas continues going up and up and up the way it has lately, it's going to go up for sale and I'll find another way to get myself around until things change for the better. If they ever change for the better, that is.

MY FINGER IS STILL STIFF, BUT NOT FOR LONG!

My left index finger is still pretty stiff, but it's healing nicely and will need some occupational therapy, which I hope to begin this week. I can't start soon enough because I am more than eager to have it back to full function as soon as humanly possible. It still hurts a bit as well where I had the incision and I suppose that is to be expected. I soaked my finger today in Epsom salts and I will probably continue to do so several times a day from now on until I get full movement and healing back into it. That's one of those old time honored remedies for stiffness and it also promotes healing, so I am going to use that as a kind of "adjunct" therapy in addition to whatever they prescribe in occupational therapy. I was going to try to go where I have always had physical therapy, but my hand surgeon isn't too crazy about the idea of physical vs. occupational therapy. She'd rather I have specalized hand therapy, so I may just end up going to the Summit Hand Center, where my doctor's office is located. I hope that their co-pay isn't to high and that I can get in and out of there in a few short weeks so I don't end up spending a small fortune. I can try to convince my doctor to let me go where I am used to going, but she may not relent. I'll just have to call them tomorrrow because I did set up an appointment at my PT place for this week just in case. The only objection I have to going to Summit Hand Center is that it's way out on the far west side of Akron and it'd be a long drive home and a lot of gas burned as a result, and in these days of high gas prices, I am considering every mile I travel carefully. It'd be better for me to drive home to Kent and then walk downtown to the PT clinic I've always gone to and I may work on convincing my doctor to let me do that instead in the interest of saving gas money. These days, we're all feeling the squeeze from high gas prices, and if I can save a few pennies on gas, so much the better. But if my doctor insists that I must have hand-specialized occupational therapy, well, then I will go ahead and go where she wants me to go. After all, she did the surgery and she doesn't want her handiwork to be messed up, and I can hardly say I blame her a bit.