This coming Saturday the life of John Stevenson, Coach Stevenson, will be remembered and celebrated.

I grew up in a sleepy little town in Southern California.  A town called El Segundo.  A town sort of lost in time, a regular Mayberry.  The main street through town is called Main Street.  Flanked by the Pacific Ocean on the west, LAX on the north, aerospace industry on the east, and a Chevron refinery on the south, El Segundo is an enclave of relative safety just miles from Los Angeles.  When I lived there the population was somewhere around 12,000.  There is still only one high school and when I attended El Segundo High School it had less than a thousand students.  Not the kind of town that you’d expect would routinely turn out brilliant baseball players and winning baseball teams.  But that’s exactly what has happened there…and it happened for decades.  And that was because of the leadership of one man who loved the game…Coach John Stevenson.

Coach Stevenson dedicated his life to the youth of El Segundo for 50 years.  He was never my coach, but he was my teacher.  I took freshman social studies/history from him.  However, the biggest lesson I learned from him wasn’t learned in the classroom.  Have you ever heard of Scott McGregor?  George Brett?  They are just two of the Gundo boys who went on to play professional baseball.  There have been six of Coach’s players who have gone on to play in the major leagues.  Many more played in the minors.  The lesson I learned because of these players was that if I worked hard, and played well, I could be as successful as anyone else…that being from a small town and not being particularly privileged was not something that should hold me back.  This lesson was one of two great gifts he gave to me.

I’m not gonna lie…Coach kinda scared me.  He was intense out on the field and he wanted his players to play good baseball.  I don’t know if it’s true to say this or not, but it seemed to me that he’d rather his players play good baseball and lose than to play lousy baseball and win.  The game mattered to him.  Sometimes I would cringe when he would yell at the players that made mistakes.  Everyone in the stands knew when Coach wasn’t happy.  But if he felt that his players were on the receiving end of bad baseball, like a bad call from an umpire, he was out there in the face of the offender to make sure that the same standards applied to everyone on the field, not just to his players.  Coach is California’s winningest baseball coach of all time.  A record that is likely to stand for a long time.

The other great gift that Coach gave to me was the gift of baseball itself.  My favorite high school memories revolve around baseball.  I loved going to those Friday night games at rec park.  I still love a really good game of baseball.  I don’t even care who is playing.  To me, the sound of a wooden bat squarely contacting a baseball is one of the most thrilling sounds in sportsdom.  I was privileged to have two brothers play Eagle baseball for Coach.  To this day I am proud of the kind of ball they both played.

Thank you Coach, for investing your life into the lives of other people’s children and for helping them, helping me, learn that in life, as in baseball, you get out of it what you put into it.

El Segundo, and baseball, will miss you…

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There’s something about having been to a place, of having your own pictures of a place, that makes someone else’s tragedy very much your own.  My first overseas experience was the summer I spent in Haiti on a mission trip back in 1981.  The mission where we were working was not too far outside of Port-au-Prince.  While most of my pictures reflect the poverty, the dirt, and grim living that personifies Haiti, I have one picture, a picture of the presidential palace, that does just the opposite.  It has been difficult for me to look at the images that are coming out of Haiti.  To read of the expected death toll and to be a distant witness to the horror is heartbreaking and frustrating.

I remember Franc, who was a delightful and gregarious 12 year old back then.  Look at that face.  Doesn’t it make you smile???

Franc would be in his 40’s now and with a family of his own most likely.  What is his fate?  And there was Marquise.

She was a sad and distant 16 year old when i met her.  What of her?  Life in Haiti for most, at its best, is about survival.  What now?  I find myself searching the pictures for faces I recognize.  But of course, after all these years I wouldn’t know the faces of the people I knew back then now if I saw them.  But buildings don’t change much.  And we know from our own American experiences that buildings have “faces” and evoke emotions when we see images of them being obliterated.

Most of the buildings I saw when I was there were simple, one or two stories, nondescript and not memorable.  Only one building was one that I would even remember if I saw again.  This was the presidential palace.  Even it did not survive.

The presidential palace of Haiti as I saw it in 1981, above.

The presidential palace of Haiti as it is today, below.

Pray for Haiti as the situation evolves.  Pray for Haiti as the days turn in to weeks.  Pray that those who have managed to survive the earthquake will not starve waiting for help…will not die from the diseases that inevitably gain a foothold after these sorts of natural disasters…will not lose whatever hope they might have left.  Pray that somehow, some way, Haiti will rise from the rubble a better place for those who call her home.  Pray that there will be peace in the midst of this chaos.

And, as you hear the stories coming out of Haiti, and learn of the needs that need filling, if it’s within your power, be a part of assisting the Haitian people as they begin the long struggle of recovery from this horrific tragedy.  While Haiti is a world away when you consider how life is lived there, Haiti is only 750 miles from Florida.  Haiti is a closer neighbor to many of us in America than we are to ourselves.  Consider helping this neighbor, like you would your own.

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This could be pretty cool if it works!!!!

This was a spider which hung out by our clothesline, hence the clothespin used to try to show scale…it was so scary we used tongs to hold the clothespin so that our hand didn’t get too close! 

My team was on a mission to Papua New Guinea to build school houses and 5,000 gallon corrugated tin water cisterns with roof collection systems. 

The spiders, the june bugs, the millipedes, and the praying mantises were just insanely huge….

Imagine this thing crawling across you while you sleep….gack…

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For all of you in the States, a Happiest of Thanksgivings to you!

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So I had a few hours to “waste” yesterday.  I dug out my handy dandy ION slide and negative scanner, and starting me some scanning. 

Here’s one from 1982 of one of my besties, Kevin, and me, on the great wall of China…wearing Mao hats so that we could be like a billion Chinese people, cuz back in 1982 pretty much everyone in China wore a Mao hat…

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From here….

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Fall leaves…somewhere in Michigan.

Not a picture that is all that amazing, but there’s something deeply appealing about it for me.

There Dad!  It’s a start anyway!  Hopefully more to follow soon! 

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This past Friday’s assignment for Photo Friday was “Animals”.  Posting late.  Better late than never I guess! 

This past January took me to our local zool.  It’s a beautiful zoo by all accounts, where the animals are extremely well cared for and provided beautiful habitats, but still, zoos make me a more than a little bit uncomfortable.  This big fellow especially made me uncomfortable.  He is clearly contemplative.  He is CLEARLY thinking.  While zoos are better than extinction and are great places for learning, I bet this guy hates it in there.  There’s simply not enough enrichment that can be provided to animal like him to make up for being captive.

Please leave a link to your entry in comments if you are playing so we can check out your work! 

Coming up on Photo Friday:

4th September: Author’s choice: The Wisdom of Age  shown in the Face

11th September: Author’s choice: Photo Art (use any photo gadgets you like)

Then a break as ”Author” (creator extraordinaire of Photo Friday) is having surgery.  We wish her the best for a good outcome and a quick recovery!

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The “highly successful” Cash For Clunkers program is bad for lower income people.

An entire “generation” of good used cars is now lost to the car crusher.  This will drive up the cost of used cars in the near future for people who depend on them because the smaller inventory will lead to higher costs on the cars that do come to the used car market.  Not a good thing for those folks!  But I guess it’ll be a good thing for the sellers of used cars in the future….they’ll get more money for their cars than they would have had the program not existed.

And did you know that those who took advantage of the program will be taxed on the money they got as if it were income?

Yeah, SURPRISE!!!!

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What do you think of this?

Now, while I’m a little nervous about people carrying guns near the president, that’s not the issue here.  Arizona is an “open carry” state when it comes to firearms. 

What bothers me about this brewhaha is that the footage that is shown in this MSNBC clip of a man with an automatic weapon slung over his arm and a handgun strapped to his leg is that they go on and on about white people with guns being a danger to the president, but what they don’t show you is this:

Get the picture?

 Yeah.  That’s the guy in the video.

If you’re gonna show footage of a man open carrying, and then espouse opinions about white people carrying guns and how it’s a danger to the president BECAUSE OF RACE, then you should probably tape a white guy, and not a black one, to use as your shocker video.  Shame on MSNBC for flagrant misreprentation and for lies of ommission.  Exactly WHOSE overtones are racial in this story???

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“The moral progress of a nation and its greatness should be judged by the way it treats its animals.”
- Mahatma Gandhi

While I think that perhaps Gandhi had a point, I wonder if he ever imagined that we in the United States (and other western nations) would squander the amount of resources that we do on our pets.  I am sure he was including food animals in his statement as well, maybe even wild animals, and so I believe that if the United State’s greatness was judged by the way we treat our animals we’d probably not be considered so great.

But I don’t agree so much with Gandhi.  I think a country’s greatness should be measured by the quality and the quantity of its toilet paper.  America is truly the land of toilet paper milk and honey. 

Have you ever traveled internationally?  If you have, depending on where you went, you will probably be nodding your head in agreement with me when I say that the U.S. has the awesomest and most available toilet paper that the world has to offer.  How often in a foreign country is there no T.P. (let ALONE seat covers) in the airport?  Is there EVER T.P. in the bathroom at the gas station (if there IS a bathroom available for public use at the gas station)?  At restaurants where there often IS T.P., isn’t it often rough and oddly colored?  You know what I’m talkin’ about!  Do any of you, like *I* do, always have a roll of T.P. in a ziplock tucked in your backpack when traveling out of the country??  (And wet wipes, too).  The worst toilet paper I ever used was in St. Petersburg, Russia, about 10 years ago.  It was milky grayish purple, unevenly cut, and about a #180 grit.  More like crepe paper.  Pretty much like this, only change the color:

I had to look through most of the stalls to find even that.  And this was at a cultural and performing arts center!  The best non-American T.P. I have ever used was in Malawi, Africa.  Malawi aspires for greatness and realizes that without great T.P., this is a pipe dream.

I recently watched “Sicko” for the first time.  I do not plan on dissecting all of the issues and problems in and about that movie.  Save one smallish little thing.  Michael Moore holds Cuba up as a bastion of excellence in socialized health care.  But what I want to know is, how can a country that runs out of toilet paper even begin to reeeeealllly be considered great in the health care arena???   The Cuban government slashed the amount of imports it’s allowing and has fallen short of the raw materials needed to keep its citizens in T.P.  These beleaguered Cuban citizens may not see it on the shelves of the local CommuMart again until NOVEMBER!!!  The government is encouraging people to use cigar wrappers as an alternative.  How hygienic can that possible be?  Oh, and in case you missed it, that also means they are encouraging smoking.  Just how many cigars do the parents of a family of four need to smoke in order to keep up with the toilet paper needs?  It’s too bad that Michael Moore wasn’t making his film during a T.P. shortage…perhaps his take on things might have been a little bit different.

Can a country who rations and runs out of T.P. really enjoy unlimited access to top-notch health care?  I somehow doubt it.  So let’s just stop comparing our health care to theirs.  And BTW (by the way), most of westernized and socialized europe doesn’t have such great T.P. either.

I’m just saying…

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We Americans are now being encouraged to forward e-mails (and the like) which speak out against Obamacare on to the White House.  That’s right folks, the powers that be want us to turn in our friends and family members who happen to have legitimate concerns, and have dared to voice them, over turning over 1/7th of the United States economy to the control of  “the man”.  The government can’t run education well, or the postal service well.  The healthcare programs that government already runs, namely MEDI-CARE, MEDI-CAID, and the VA, are hopelessly awash in inefficiency and drowning in fraud.  And we want to turn ALL of healthcare over to them?  To people who aren’t even going to read the bill that they are voting on?  Really?  I mean REALLY?????  Is it so subversive to want to SCREAM about what a bad idea this is???? 

And if you think I am making this up….click HERE.  This links you to the White House Blog where the address of where to send “fishy” disinformation found in e-mails or at URLs is provided.  Yeah.  You heard me.  Fishy disinformation.  Orwellian language my friends!

Am I willing to give the WH the benefit of the doubt on what I believe the intention behind this snitchy request is?  Not really.  Do I think that they simply want to see what the “misinformation” is that is out there so that they can work hard to educate us in the “facts”.  Not really.  Am I just crazy enough to think that perhaps they are more interested in taking names of those who dare to exert their First Ammendment right and are speaking freely?  Yeah, I guess I am.  And I suppose  some snitch out there will send them a link to my blog…sneyotch.  It reminds me of Russian school children under Stalin being encouraged to tell teachers of unapproved parental behaviors.  Not that I am calling anyone in power a communist or comparing them to Stalinists.  (Not yet anyway).  Just the spectre of of being “turned in” makes a person halt before opening mouth, or tapping keys.  That ain’t right.  It’s abridgement of free speech.  It’s not even all that subtle.

Welcome home Laura Ling and Euna Lee.  May no one ever abridge your freedom of speech again, abroad…or at home.

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I have added PJTV to my “Worthy Websites” in my sidebar.  You can be a paid subscriber, but there’s great free stuff to be had, and that’s what I go there for.

Joe Hicks is one of my favorite contributors, but there’s gobs of great stuff in there that might help us all get our political heads on straight and see things how they actually are, not how we “HOPE” they are.  There’s pure entertainment too, as the site is a “conservative entertainment” site.

Thanks to the Crack Emcee at The Macho Response for turning me on to the site, and to Panda Bear MD for turning me on to The Macho Response.  (The Macho Response can get a little raw at times-so people who might be offended by language and such, and TMI kids, and Luke should maybe stay out-but he’s a great read.  Panda doesn’t get a link cuz he never posts on his blog!)

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Eighteen years ago today I was at work.  I called to check on my best friend/sister-in-law who was ready to give birth to her first child any day.  She was doing great but was experiencing an uncontrollable urge to, well, to put it as delicately as possible, have a bowel movement.  “DON’T PUSH, and get to the hospital!!” I told her.  Not long after that Richard arrived.  WHAT a cutie.  He was named in honor of his two grandfathers, Richard and Daniel.  A first grandchild and grandson for the both of them.  I was a very excited and proud first-time auntie.

Four years ago today I was working my last, and for the most part, rather uneventful shift in the ER.  I had turned in my resignation and was planning my move from Los Angeles to Colorado which was to take place in just a month.  I was excited about the new life which awaited me and all the adventures I was to have.  And I was thinking of my oldest nephew, Richard, who was on vacation with friends but was turning 14.

Just a couple of hours before my last shift was to end I got the phone call that didn’t change any of that, but changed absolutely everything.

Instead of long and tearful good-byes with my co-workers, I started the longest and most tearful good-bye of my life.  One that, as of today, has lasted four years.

I no longer count the time Connie has been gone in minutes, or hours, or days, or weeks, or even in months, but in years.  It’s still surreal to me.  I miss her every minute.

Congratulations on your 18th birthday Dicky Dan.  Your mother would have loved to see you and the man you have become.

I love you both, to the ends of the earth and to the highest heaven.

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HJ 5 IH

111th CONGRESS

1st Session H. J. RES. 5

Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to repeal the twenty-second article of amendment, thereby removing the limitation on the number of terms an individual may serve as President.

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

January 6, 2009

Mr. SERRANO introduced the following joint resolution; which was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary

————————- JOINT RESOLUTION————————–

Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to repeal the twenty-second article of amendment, thereby removing the limitation on the number of terms an individual may serve as President.

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled (two-thirds of each House concurring therein), That the following article is proposed as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which shall be valid to all intents and purposes as part of the Constitution when ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years after the date of its submission for ratification:

‘Article– ‘The twenty-second article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.’.

The above is legislation that has been introduced that would, as you can read for yourselves, remove the presidential term limits we currently have in place.  Of course the states would still have to ratify any ammendments to the consititution.  This is not the first time such legislation has been introduced.  It’s never gone anywhere before, and chances are it won’t go anywhere this time.  But just the introduction of such legislation begs the asking of so many questions.  Like WHY for instance would we in the United States NEED a president for life?  Too many “presidents for life” have wreaked untold havoc on their nations.  We got RID of that potential after WWII when we saw the destruction that this much power gives a person.  Why on EARTH would we even have the discussion about turning that kind of power over to an American president?

This little bit of legislation could get interesting…but I hope it dies in committee somewhere.

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At five minutes and six seconds after 4 am on the 8th of July this year, the time and date will be

04:05:06 07/08/09

How cool is that?

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Okay, kids, here’s a little medical lesson for the day…

The vast majority of the time the media has no idea what it’s talking about when reporting medical events.  Just assume they are either getting the details wrong or using the wrong terminology.  It was decades ago, when I realized how incorrectly most medical stories were reported, that I figured the media were probably getting a LOT of the news wrong in general and I stopped taking most of what I heard at “face value”.  A doctor I worked for was interviewed for a radio piece because a famous person was having the sort of procedure done that this doctor did.  Not only did they get the doctor’s name wrong, they explained the procedure incorrectly and pronounced the name of the procedure incorrectly.  I shook my head the entire way through the “story” and purposed in my heart to question the media all the time in the future.

That’s the general lesson for the day.  Now for the specific lesson…

1)  When someone tells you that a person died from a)  cardiac arrest, or even more impressively, b)  cardiopulmonary arrest, all this means is that they died because a)   their heart stopped beating effectively enough to support life (or stopped altogether), or, in the case of b)  their heart and lungs stopped working.  EVERYONE who dies, let me repeat that, EVERYONE who dies, suffers from cardiac arrest/cardiopulmonary arrest.  Period.  If your heart is beating you are alive, even if you are “brain dead”.  You can suffer a respiratory arrest, which left uncorrected ALWAYS leads to a cardiac arrest.  Also, if a person is in cardiac arrest they are not breathing, which is a respiratory, or pulmonary, arrest.

2)  Cardiac arrest is not the same as heart failure which is not the same as a heart attack.  These are three separate entities.  They CAN be found in conjunction with one another, but one doesn’t necessarily lead to the other, and because one suffers one it doesn’t mean it was caused by the other.

A cardiac arrest is exactly what it sounds like.  The heart stops, or arrests.  This is incompatible with life.

Heart failure is when part or all of the heart ceases to operate well leading to inadequate pumping which in turn leads to a build up of fluids and decreased oxygenation.  A person with heart failure is sick or compromised to varying degrees.  This can be a chronic condition, or an acute (sudden onset) condition, or a chronic (longstanding) condition with an acute exacerbation.

A heart attack, or myocardial infarction (MI), is when the blood supply to the heart itself is disrupted (by a clot, or occlusion from coronary artery disease or  a spasm) and part of the heart muscle dies.  This is an acute condition.  Depending on the vessel involved and the degree of blood supply disruption it can be mild to severe. 

Angina is a term which basically means chest pain.  It is heart pain caused by a diminished oxygen supply to a part of the heart.   A person can have angina in the absence of a heart attack.  A person can have a heart attack in the absence of angina.

In addition to the above terms, you should know about SCA, or Sudden Cardiac Arrest.  This is when the heart simply stops beating in a manner which supports life.  This is usually attributed to a direct blow to the chest or to an electrical conduction abnormality. 

The treatments/interventions for each of these conditions can vary.  A person with a heart attack does not need CPR until they suffer a cardiac arrest.  A person with a cardiac arrest has not necessarily had a heart attack.  A person with heart failure may go into cardiac arrest.  A person who suffers a heart attack may well go into heart failure.  A person with heart failure may suffer a heart attack.  A person with respiratory arrest needs to have that problem addressed.  Solving the lack of oxygen problem keeps the person from going into cardiac arrest.  A person with a heart attack needs to have blood flow restored to the heart.  The vessels that are affected need to be opened up.  A person in heart failure needs to have fluids removed and have their heart given meds to work stronger and more effectively.  A person in sudden cardiac arrest needs to be shocked/defibrillated immediately.  CPR alone does not bring a person out of sudden cardiac arrest.

It’s probably because I’m a nurse, but it really makes me insane to hear the illumati in the media discuss medical stuff that they clearly haven’t done a picogram of homework on.  They sound stupid and they don’t even know it.

The reason I am posting this is because of the recent death of Michael Jackson.  I grew up on Michael’s music and watched with increasing dismay over the years as he morphed into someone I ceased to recognize.  He must have been a much tormented individual.  He lived a very private life.  The cause of death originally reported and reported and reported by the media was “cardiopulmonary arrest”, which means nothing, except that basically the cause of death was death.  The coroner’s job is to determine what lead to the cardiopulmonary arrest.  In the case of Michael Jackson one can speculate to many causes. 

Did he have coronary artery disease (CAD)?  Did he overdose on medications which caused respiratory depression/arrest which lead to cardiac arrest?  Did he do some sort of drug that caused spasms in his coronary arteries?  Did he have a cardiac arrhythmia (abnormal heart beat) that caused clots which blocked his arteries?  Did he have hypertension, high cholesterol, kidney disease, liver disease, lung disease???  Did he have some sort of inflammatory condition?  Did he have NONE of these issues and did he suffer a sudden cardiac arrest?

I don’t believe that it is important that WE know what happened to him (unless he was given an overdose of meds from a source other than himself or some purposeful crime against him was committed), but it IS important for his children to know in case there is a condition which they might have inherited that they should be screened for and monitored for in the future.

Whatever the report ends up being, listen the words of the coroner’s report, and NOT the interpretation of some media talking head. 

Remember, most of them don’t have a clue what they’re talking about…

This has been a simple overview of basic heart stuff you might want to know.  It is in no way comprehensive.  I hope it helps you be a more informed consumer of the average news story about Michael Jackson and others who suffered “cardipulmonary arrest”.

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