Entries Tagged 'me & mine' ↓

You walked away for just a minute—maybe to brush the gooey jellybean innards from your teeth, or to get an aspirin to try to ward off that nasty sugar-crash headache you know is coming—and when you walk back into the kitchen or living room, there’s Fifi or Fido happily munching on the scattered contents of an overturned Easter basket full of candy…

Those of you who have dogs and who buy Easter baskets of candy for kids (or spouses who want to re-live their childhoods by pretending they’re kids on Easter morning) know the horrible feeling this scene engenders.

Once you’ve ascertained that the foolish mutt didn’t just sentence himself to a fatal chocolate rush, your next worry is that silly green plastic Easter grass which lines the bottom of the basket. If she’s lucky, the plastic strings will just pass through the intestines and make for some colorful poop the next day. If she’s not lucky, the strands can get tangled up in her digestive tract, snagging on any of the many surface features the same way it grabs onto sweaters and carpets. In particularly bad cases, it can cause a blockage like hair in a drainpipe or it can actually strangle and twist the intestines, restricting blood flow to the tissues. Nasty!

But what’s an Easter basket without the artificial grass? you ask. Truly, there is nothing that quite commemorates this Spring holiday like neon green simulated grass, but we’re willing to forgo that pleasure for the sake and health of our animal companions. Some web sites advocate using real sprouted wheatberry grass as an alternative, but, I’m not so sure I’d like digging in the soil to find the last, reluctant jellybean. So what to do?

I have found the solution: Edible Easter grass! Cheap, soil free, non-toxic, non-polluting and non-hazardous to pets, this rice and/or potato-starch based material is the perfect solution to a problem you probably never thought about before, and which you will likely never remember in time for next Easter. (This article was supposed to come out before Easter, but, as usual, my timing is impeccably poor.) You might still be able to find some in post-holiday sales at Target stores, which is where I found it (although I didn’t see it in their online store.) Or else you can order it through Candy Warehouse  Oriental Trading Company online or in their always-fascinating catalogs of jumbo bags of cheaply-made too-cute Asian junk.

Now I’m waiting to see if they can come up with edible tinsel in time for Christmas.

Technorati Tags: candy, dogs, easter, grass, pets, veterinary

Sander stands about 21″ high at the shoulder. He went out, posed for the photo, then ran back inside as fast as he could.

The patio table I forgot to put inside for the winter.

I think the birds are going to need this filled.

We were just at the new Museum of Modern Art during a post-New Year’s visit to NYC, and—as is mandatory—my wife forced us to spend what seemed like most of our visit in the Museum Shop. Because the MoMA focuses on design as much as it does art, their shop is much more interesting than the usual museum shop. Unlike most other museum stores, Instead of containing nothing but books with images from the collection, postcards with images from the collection, t-shirts with images from the collection, mousepads with images from the collection, neckties with images from the collection… the MoMA shop has for sale many of the actual items in its design collection. There’s serving bowls, clocks, lamps, electronics, games, furniture… and of course books, postcards, posters, etc. But… the prices! Maybe museums are used to paying those prices, but I’m just a poor corporate drone! (Okay, okay, I’m exaggerating just a little: most of my glassware was stolen from bars, so I’m not really sure if US$26 is a lot of money for a pair of tumblers.)

Anyway, in the spirit of DIY which seems to be all the rage on the web these days (honestly, do you think BoingBoing or Engadget can go more than a day or two without linking to Make?) I came across Thwart Design‘s Design Without Reach site with instructions for making your very own MoMA-worthy reproductions. I mean, can you tell the difference between the US$265 Nelson clock from the MoMA store and this replica made from Tootsie Pop lollipops* and the bottom of a salt container? Didn’t think so! Museum-worthy design, here I come!

*Tootsie Pop clocks not recommended for humid climates.

Technorati Tags: moma, museum, reproductions, nelsonclock, thwartdesign

2005 will go down in my history as a particularly sucky year. Among my friends and family we’ve seen cancer, divorce, unemployment, and too many deaths. Yeah, sure there have been some good things, but I’m not gonna be like the mainstream media and pretend that they are equal in importance. And I’m not going to pretend that the events going on around me in my country had no effect on my general mood. I’ve seen, this year, more than any year since the fall of Richard Nixon, an inexorable movement of the US government into autocracy and a fascistic conjunction of big business, the military, religious fanatics and a cult of personality built around an incompetent leader who — if there is anyone left to tell the story truly — will certainly go down in history as the Worst President Ever.

So, tonight, I am going to get totally fucked up with my wife and a couple of close friends. I will not mourn this year at all. I will spit on its grave and hope that all the shit of the past twelve months will fertilize a Happy New Year, full of health and happiness. I wish the same for all of you!

Technorati Tags: newyear, 2005

I grew up in Suffolk County, Long Island, a suburb of New York City. Although they were liberal-minded, my folks moved us there from the city during the ‘white flight’ of the late 60s. A massive welfare housing project opened next-door to our apartment building, and suddenly there was vandalism and grafitti and a huge fence around our building; suddenly, I was the only white kid in my 3rd-grade class and I was mugged several times walking the 2 or 3 blocks home from school. It bothered them to leave the city, but they felt they had to.

So, I grew up in a very white, middle-class neighborhood of wide streets, green lawns, cars, and a complete lack of anything that could be called “culture.” No museums, no galleries, no place to meet people except the mall or the 7-11. There was a black family on our block, but the kids were jocks, and I was a brain and a druggie, and other than saying cordial “Hi”s to each other, there was no real contact. There were no Hispanics in my classes, as far as I can recall, no Asians, no Native Americans; when it came to minorities, I was it… the token Jew.

My family spent many years striving for some inclusion, fighting to have the school system recognize that, at the very least, I shouldn’t be penalized for missing a test given on Rosh Hashana or Yom Kippur (the Jewish High Holy Days), or that maybe the winter choral concert could have one number about Hannukkah — or at least one number without Christ — or that perhaps if history class was going to refer to the religious foundations of the dominant Western civilization, they could refer to it as “Judeo-Christian” heritage, instead of just “Christendom”, or that if the luchroom was going to serve ham that day, they should also have an alternative I could eat: not sausage pizza. And their efforts paid off; there’s now some sensitivity towards other cultures in those schools. (There are also catalogues of the ridiculous extremes to which political correctness can be taken, but…)

Because of my experience, I thought of Long Island as a kind of blandly tolerant place. I moved away from there permanently in 1995, although I visited regularly, since my parents lived there until just a couple of weeks ago, my sister still lives there, and we have a bunch of friends still living on the Island. My image of the place has stayed frozen in that sweet light of childhood.

Suffolk County, alas, has not remained frozen. An article in today’s New York Times details some of the nastiness directed at the recent influx of Hispanic immigrants.

The “this” they claim to be protesting against is what in other areas and other countries is referred to as the continuing and growing problem of illegal immigration. But in Suffolk County, the leading voices in this anti-immigration crusade say:

It’s an “invasion”. These nasty, dirty, smelly people who talk a different language are invading our communities, infesting our houses, congregating on our street-corners, taking the jobs we don’t want, looking at our women… The Greater Farmingdale Community Association (whose leader, Ray Wysolmierski was formerly head of the Sachem Quality of Life Organization, a disgustingly racist group profiled in the recent film “Farmingville”) is not ashamed to wear its racist Ashcroft-ism on its sleeve, saying:

Others are less in-your-face with their racism, hiding it in seemingly-compassionate concerns, which they claim are “necessary, fair and colorblind. They said they are not singling out Hispanic immigrants, but are trying to break up the networks of overcrowded homes, unlicensed contractors and absentee landlords that exploit day laborers.” So, to save them from exploitation, poor working conditions and poverty, these compassionate folks are seeking to deport these hard-working immigrants to places — mainly Mexico and Central America — where there are no jobs, no money and no future.

Steve Levy, the County Executive for Suffolk, recently stirred up the outrage some more by suggesting that the county police department should be “deputized” by the Department of Homeland Security, to expand their jurisdiction to immigration crimes:

“Your papers, please.” Those should be chilling words to anyone who hears them. To their credit, the Suffolk County Police Benevolent Association‘s president, Jeff Frayler, spoke out against the proposal, saying, “the deputization plan is ill-conceived and will serve only to destroy the hard-won goodwill police have built up with Mexican day laborers in Farmingville and other communities.” And faced with the rising tide of criticism of his plan, Levy has decided to back off, although he is still seeking other ways to deal with the problem.

The most disgusting thing about this whole mess is the transparency behind the lack of any given reason for the anti-immigration tide. If the problem truly is poor-quality housing and abusive landlords, then go after the landlords! If the problem is unlicensed contractors, then go after the contractors, or let the shoddy workers shit where they eat and drive themselves out of business. Is the problem jobs? Are the immigrant workers really taking away jobs from the decent white folk? Are the sons and daughters of the decent white folk really clamoring for the right to harvest the potatoes, clean the offices, mow the lawns, slap together the million dollar tract houses for wages small enough to keep everything affordable for the decent white folk?

No, this isn’t about any economic issue. This anti-immigrant sentiment wouldn’t have been out of place in the Deep South 40 years ago. This is racism, pure and simple. This is “bar the doors before the savages ruin our way of life.” This is, “I moved here 30 years ago to get away from those kinds of people.” This is, “I don’t want my daughter to have to sit next to one of them in school.” This is irrational, all-consuming hatred of the Other. And it’s not any place I ever have a desire to call “Home” again.

On Thanksgiving, it’s customary to evaluate your possessions, both spiritual and physical and to take some time to appreciate them. I have a wonderful wife of 22 years and a nice home. We share our home with a dog and 5 cats, all of which we’ve rescued from shelters. My parents are healthy (touch wood) and now happily retired to Florida, my sister is newly freed from the the constraints of a terrible marriage. My brother and his wife have a new daughter — a baby sister for their 2-year-old twins. My wife’s brothers are all in pretty good places financially and family-wise and my 15 nieces and nephews are all doing well. After 2 years of uncertainty about the future of the company I work for, things seem to be looking brighter. I’ve paid off all my credit card debt this year, I’ve lost 60 pounds and I feel much healthier. I am thankful for all of this.

So, of course, I feel strange about having so much when others have so little. While I sit down with my family for a nice Tofurky dinner, what will be the scene in the homes of the 34.6 million people in this country who are living in poverty?

I like the clarity of numbers. At Poverty USA, they have some of the clearest numeric descriptions of what it means to be poor in America today. I took their “Poverty Tour” and saw how the budget breaks down for a family of four living at the government’s “poverty line” pre-tax income of $18,392. I compared that with the $11,128 annual income for a person working at the minimum wage. I took a look at their “Poverty Map” and noted the states — which they depict in red — which are the poorest. Mississippi ranks first in the nation in overall poverty (19.9%), child poverty (26.7%) and senior poverty (18.8%) (Strangely enough, the map lists the rates for Washington, DC, but doesn’t rank the statistics for our government’s back yard. If it did, DC would be 1st in the nation in overall poverty: 20.2%, 1st in child poverty: 31.1%, and 3rd in senior poverty: 16.4%. The presence of all the rich old legislators and government functionaries is probably what bumped DC from 1st place in the senior poverty measure.)

Closer to home, the Maryland Food Bank has an eye-opening Flash interaction called “Hunger 101″. I chose a character and followed his scenario and see who is hungry and how difficult — impossible! — it is to obtain the minimums which EVERYONE in a rich country such as ours should be able to take for granted.

I took on the role of Bryan Jenkins, who is 38 years old. “He was recently laid-off at a high-profile technology company and has applied for unemployment. His wife Katie works as a substitute teacher, earning $1460 a month, but $300 goes to taxes. They have two children in elementary school. The car payment is $350 and the mortgage on the house is $700. His savings is depleted and he is struggling to make ends meet.” After paying the bills, Bryan/I had $15 to spend to provide the 51,800 calories our family needed to survive this month. He/I make too much money to qualify for food stamps, the soup kitchen was closed, the food bank was empty… what do you do? The numbers are TOO clear here.

I can donate* some money, and today, I am most thankful I can do that.

*To find a local food bank where you can donate, check out America’s Second Harvest.

A friend of my wife’s was on BBC 4 last night discussing Borderline Personality Disorder, or BPD, with Dr. Raj Persaud on his show, “All in the Mind”. Joshua Cole is the founder and primary force behind BPDWorld, a UK-based site which is “…committed to raising awareness and reducing the stigma of mental health, but focusing on Borderline Personality Disorder… providing information, advice and support.”

BPD is recognized in the DSM-IV (the standard diagnostic manual of the American Psychiatric Association) as including “…unstable impulse control, interpersonal relationships, moods and self-image. These persistent or recurrent qualities are present in a variety of situations…” A professional will make a diagnosis of BPD when a patient demostrates at least 5 of the following behaviors:

• Frantic attempts to prevent abandonment, whether real or imagined (don’t include self-injurious or suicidal behaviors, covered below)
• Unstable relationships that alternate between idealization and devaluation
• Identity disturbance (severely distorted or unstable self-image or sense of self)
• Potentially self-damaging impulsiveness in at least 2 areas such as binge eating, reckless driving, sex, spending, substance abuse (don’t include suicidal or self-mutilating behaviors)
• Self-mutilation or suicide thoughts, threats or other behavior
• Severe reactivity of mood creates marked instability (mood swings of intense anxiety, depression, irritability last a few hours to a few days)
• Chronic feelings of boredom or emptiness
• Anger that is out of control or inappropriate and intense (demonstrated by frequent temper displays, repeated physical fights or feeling constantly angry)
• Brief paranoid ideas or severe dissociative symptoms related to stress

It’s a pretty scary set of feelings, and its seriousness is not served well by the name “Borderline.” When Adolph Stern first described the symptoms of BPD in 1938 , his choice of terminology was not intended to belittle its severity, but to refer to its position on the borderline between neurosis and psychosis. In Europe, the disorder is referred to as “Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder,” but “Borderline” seems to have stuck here in the US.

Josh was diagnosed with BPD when he was 17 and as he describes, he struggled with its effects for many years. Setting up BPDWorld was supposed to be his final act, before he committed suicde. It wouldn’t have been his first attempt; in the interview, he describes, very matter-of-factly, how, “…There was once where I went into a field and threw petrol over myself and was gonna set myself on fire, and also slit my wrists and took an overdose…”

But, he found, instead, that BPDWorld, instead of being a final act, was going to be something which involved him and gave him purpose and a sense of community. “…I’ve seen how much it helps people and how much they support each other, which I think is great. And that sort of gets me through, because I believe they’re depending on me and I’m depending on them, so it keeps us all going…”

No future is certain, and the future for people with BPD is dangerous, at best. As he states on his site, “1 in 10 Borderline Personalites commit suicide.” Let’s hope that the community he’s created helps to keep him and others strong and healthy for a long, long time.

(I’ve transcribed the portion of the show where Josh was interviewed. You’ll find the transcript by clicking the “Read More” link.)

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As you know, I’ve had strong political opinions for most of my life. While I’ve always been ready to state my opinions and argue them, I’ve never asked you to take action on an issue I believe in. Until now. Because this one affects you, it affects me, and it will affect the lives of your new grandchildren. I urge you to call AARP and call your Congresspeople and tell them to leave Medicare alone.

You’re both members of AARP — Dad loves the discounts his membership entitles him to at the movies — and I’m sure that, like most members, you’ve always assumed that the organization would have your best interests at heart. Well… surprise, surprise… “your” advocate has hung you out to dry.

This week, William D. Novelli, Executive Director and CEO of AARP pledged the organization’s enthusiastic support to the deeply-flawed, Republican-sponsored Medicare bill. But whose interests did Mr. Novelli have in mind when he made this endorsement in your name? Consider these details as outlined by Representative Bernie Sanders:

• The voluntary program would cost you a membership fee each month of approximately $35, or $420 per year
• There will be a $250 deuctible
• After you’ve paid the deductible, the new drug benefit will cover 75% of your costs up to $2200 per year
• Any drug costs greater than $2200 and less than $5000 are NOT COVERED AT ALL
• Costs greater than $5000 are covered 95%

Great deal, huh? There’s a specified “maximum out-of-pocket” limit on the plan of $3600 — with a little bit of fine print which says that you may have to pay more than the “maximum out-of-pocket” since you are still responsible for 5% of everything over $5000. So, if your drug expenses are $5000 per year, under this plan you’ll still have to come up with just about $4000. Now, the $1000 you’ll save is nothing to sneeze at, but it’s also nothing to cheer about.

When you consider all the negatives of the plan, cheering becomes even less appropriate. For instance, coverage for low-income seniors is based on an onerous assets test ($6000 in total assets for individuals and $9000 for couples under 135% of the poverty level), which may leave many of the people who most need the benefit unable to claim it. In addition, there is means testing on the other end, too; seniors who earn more than $80,000 — or couples earning more than $160,000 — will have to pay higher premiums. On the surface that might seem okay, but these higher fees are being assessed on the people who likely paid more into the program over their working lives.

Being that this is a Republican bill, there are plenty of bonuses for the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries. For starters, there’s $12 billion in “incentives” — read “slush fund” — to “encourage” HMOs and PPOs to provide more benefits to seniors. That’s money which is NOT going to seniors themselves. There’s also a continued prohibition against importing drugs from Canada and Europe, where the drugs are often half the price of the same prescritions here.

And get this: Unlike the Veterans Administration and Medicaid, Medicare is prohibited from using its enormous purchasing power to bargain with the pharmaceutical companies for the best prices. Forbidden? Gosh, I wonder who suggested that plan? I’d be willing to bet that it wasn’t seniors.

So, with all these negatives, why does AARP support the bill? Well, you see… AARP gets about 25% of its budget from dues-paying members, but it gets 27-30% from the insurance policies it hawks to its members, and another significant chunk from the pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies which advertise in its magazine, Modern Maturity.

AARP’s leadership, along with members of the Republican Party keep telling us that we have to do this NOW because if we don’t pass this bill NOW the opportunity won’t come around again for many years. And why the hell not? Maybe the idiotic demagogues in the Republican party realize that there’s enough disenchantment with their ham-fisted mismanagement of the economy, the environment, the war on terror, etc… that THEY might not have the opportunity for a few years to ram this horrible bill down the throats of today’s seniors and their grandchildren who will be paying for this boondoggle for the rest of their lives.

But maybe there’s more: maybe it has to do with AARP’s CEO and his incestuous relationship with Newt Gingrich. Newt’s most recent book, Saving Lives & Saving Money carries a foreword from Mr. Novelli, praising Gingrich’s book as “bold, enlightening and provocative”. Gingrich is the man who, in 1995 said that Medicare should “wither on the vine”; do you believe Newt has changed his mind? Do you believe that Mr. Novelli, the man who represents 33 million seniors should be praising the plans of a man who aims to destroy one of the major benefits which have brought seniors out of the dog-food-eating days of the 1960s and 70s.

Congress is rushing into this action with their eyes on the coming political campaigns, rather than on the legislation itself. There is no rush to pass this bad legislation, especially since IT WILL NOT EVEN TAKE EFFECT UNTIL 2006! The sickest seniors who feel time’s pressure on their lives may not live long enough to see this benefit take effect. And yet, as I am writing this, the Senate is about to take up the vote for passage of this bill. Opposition has been bi-partisan and extremely close. The bill passed the Republican-controlled House by 5 votes, only after serious arm-twisting by the President and his attack dog, Mr. Cheney — neither of whom will have to suffer with the effects of this bill.

So, Mom & Dad: take some action. It might be too late to affect the outcome of this debate, but let the AARP know that it does not represent you. Let your Congresspeople know that, although you are senior citizens you will not thank them for this abominable law. Let all of them know that you will be working for the day when this bill will be repealed and a true, fair, comprehensive solution to the prescription drug crisis will become the law of the land.

For such a formal process and status, marriage has a very fuzzy legal definition — other than the oft-repeated comparison to contract law. Although it is recognized as a statutory category, marriages can be performed by religious officials, judges, public officials and (according to urban legend) ship’s captains. There is often a requirement for registration of a marriage license, but unlike other state-issued licenses, it is almost never necessary to produce this license. Legal marriages in any state are recognized in any other state under the “full faith and credit” provision of the US Constitution. Marriages between foreign nationals are recognized in other countries by long-standing international custom.

However, with the possibility of Canada — and Massachusetts — recognizing same-sex marriages, this all may change. If the US and its several states decide to selectively recognize foreign marriages legal in their original country or state, there may be stricter requirements for proof of marriage at borders and offices and anytime a married couple comes into contact with the machinery of government. And that leaves me wondering about my (hardly unique) situation.

Although my wife and I are both American citizens, back when we were poor, we decided to get married in Florence, Italy. It was a romantic notion as well as a practical one: if we could only afford a big party or a honeymoon abroad, we decided we’d rather have the vacation.

It was a complicated process, involving visits to the Italian Consulate in New York, the New York Department of State, and having our birth certificates translated into Italian; then once we were in Italy, we had to visit the US Consulate, purchase official stamps from an apothecary shop, arrange for a translator, and navigate the bureaucracy to permit a waiver of the “posting of the banns” while speaking virtually no Italian. We were married by the Mayor of Florence in the “Sala Rosa” of the Palazzo Vecchio.

Immediately before the ceremony, we signed our names in a red vinyl looseleaf notebook which was then shelved on the wall with all the other notebooks in reverse chronological order; the newest books were like the one we signed, moving back in time to larger buckram-covered books, then back further to folio-sized, red leather-bound books in glass cabinets. The Mayor’s aide, who also served as our translator, told us that the books contained all the names of the people who’d been married in Florence going back to the mid-1400s.

Walking back to our hotel through the streets of Florence, Jenn carried a half-dozen white roses given to us as part of the ceremony. Strangers smiled, and recognizing the roses (obviously a tradition in that city), wished us “Buona Fortuna!” In the 7 years we’d lived together before tying the knot, we always considered ourselves mariied. Walking through the narrow streets of that Old World city, we felt that our marriage was now recognized by everyone else.

Back in the US, we filed away the flimsy little piece of paper which read “Certificato di Matrimonio, Commune di Firenze.” The only time we’ve ever taken it out since then is when we want to show people our honeymoon photo album. (Interestingly, Jenn’s middle name “Anne” was modified by the secretary who typed the certificate to the much more Italian sounding “Anna.”) When we filed our taxes that year, we filed as married, providing no documentation of that fact to the IRS. We’ve had a number of jobs since then, lived in two states and at least five different cities, bought a house, drafted a will, and no one has EVER asked us for proof of our marriage. Will this change?

And, if it won’t change, what’s to stop a same-sex couple from filing their income taxes as married one year? You need to start somewhere.

Where do the days go? Amidst the fear of massive layoffs at work, I’ve been slaving away on a very demanding project, which has kept me going in 14-hour workdays. Leave the house by 6:30 am, back home by 9:30 pm, a short “how was your day?” session with my wife, and then to sleep so I can start it all over again in a few hours. Add to that something weird going on with my brain (which I am in the process of writing up in one of my long, rambling essays), refinancing the house, my wife’s worsening relationships with her staff, and coping with the expanding non-litterbox litterbox range of one of our cats…