aspasia411's Open Salon Blog

Cheney gets heart; feels odd stirring of compassion

Sat, 24 Mar 2012 21:03:03 -0400

Dick Cheney received a transplanted heart today. Reportedly, he watched the television news from his hospital bed, saw that a puppy had been rescued from a burning house, and felt something odd flutter. "I have this strange warm feeling," he reportedly told his nurse. "I'm glad they saved that little dog."

Several of his neo-con friends have visited the hospital, and huddled later in the reception area. "Do you think he could have gotten a liberal's heart?" one asked nervously.

Reportedly, Cheney asked if Iran had been bombed yet, and said something about the horrors of war. When asked how long he had been out of surgery, and what narcotics he was on, his physician said that he was doing very well and his recovery was on track, although transplant patients need to take a complicated regimen of medications, sometimes up to 40 different prescriptions. "Could that mixture cause delirium?" Rumsfeld was reported to have asked.

Cheney also murmured something about the benefits of health care, and how grateful he was for the skill of of the surgeons. "Are transplants covered for everyone under health care reform? Has the Supreme Court heard the arguments against affordable health care yet?"

"You mean Obamacare?" Wolfowitz asked.

Family and friends have expressed their gratitude to the medical team, and to well-wishers, but have requested that news outlets not request any further information until Mr. Cheney has had the opportunity to fully recover.

Toys 'Rn't Us Reject

Sat, 10 Dec 2011 17:12:03 -0500

A year ago I hit my personal bottom in this cataclysmic recession of too many familiar stories... I went for an interview for a holiday job at Toys 'R Us, nine months into my unemployment, and was summarily dismissed. When I was asked what my salary needs were, I said "$10/hr," which I last earned in 1985. I was told my expectations were too high. I was then asked if I had any schedule limitations, and I said that I liked Sunday mornings off so I could attend a faith community, but other than that I was available. I was told that Sundays are one of the busiest days, and I could leave the interview because it wouldn't work out.

I thought those very dark, down in the morass at the bottom of the chasm thoughts.

Four years ago I had returned to school to get my master's degree in health care administration, after a career in nonprofits was wearing me out, with the increasing pressure for more fundraising. I had studied an extra year to get licensed, attending school at night or on week-ends after a week of work. Then I moved back to my home city; a solid career of management experience behind me, fresh degree and licensure and an unlimited future in front of me. I thought.

There sometimes is no magic to a brilliant second career. I went the traditional route. More education. More credentials. Unceasing job interviews, for any related (or unrelated) foot in the door. I volunteered at a professional association. I wrote compelling cover letters and follow-up thank you letters. I was a finalist for the job at least a dozen times. I volunteered at a homeless shelter, until it started to seem too close, and that within weeks I might move to the other side of the interview desk.

I went on another job interview; I told my friend I didn't have a snowball's chance in hell for this job, but I went to any interview that was offered. I could contribute to the anthology (as could many readers) of What Not to Do As a Job Interviewer. After three more interviews at the Not A Snowball's Chance in Hell job opening, I got the offer.

I am now almost a year back among the employed. I am again a manager, in a health care system, doing important work. I have lost, however, the illusion that I deserve to be here, or know more than the next person. It will take me years to recover financially from the credit card debt I ran up when the savings ran out. And I know I am very, very lucky.

This brilliant second career is of course only the most recent chapter of the zig-zags that are patched together to call a career these days. I hope to be able to influence how we implement health care reform in a small way. I know, that I also was lucky, that in my year without insurance I avoided a health disaster. I get to seem them frequently, now: the person without insurance who didn't come in until the diagnosis was Stage III cancer; the patient we will discharge to a homeless shelter.

I usually like to sum up these little essays with a zinger, or a brilliant insight. I have none for this topic. We are still in the soup, and need each other more than ever: in our work, in our lives, in our community life, and even in our politics, which embraces all of the above whether we would have it that way or not.

How Penn State's Culture of Drinking Is a Set-Up

Sat, 19 Nov 2011 15:11:42 -0500

I am listening to This American Life's replay of an episode from several years ago about Penn State's number one reputation as a party school. I remember hearing it the first time when I was still living in a Wisconsin college town whose economy was based on drinking and students. The local culture was a reason I stayed only a short time; I had volunteered on a local committee formed to look at town/gown relationships, and kept feeling like an alien when I would point out dysfunctional practices that were long-cherished traditions to support binge drinking.

Anyone who has even a fleeting knowledge of alcoholism, treatment, family relationships where alcohol is a central feature, knows that denial is a primary mode of operating. Every family member has a tacit role in the collusion. In the town where I lived, there were annual student deaths related to drinking. Every year. Some fell in the river and drowned, some fell from a height, a second story, down a stair case, and died. Some died from alcohol poisoning. There were crimes related to rape, or robbery (robbery is easy when the victim is falling-down drunk). Drunken driving deaths. A homicide; both perpetrator and victim were drunk.

When the H1N1 flu hit the local area several years ago, and there were a couple deaths reported, the authorities responded on high alert. Binge drinking is predictably more deadly and ignored.

It's just the way it is. You can't change a culture. It's the German heritage. It's a big part of sports celebrations. It's a big part of the community celebrations. Lighten up. Everybody enjoys going out for a drink. The Tavern Owners' Association is a political powerhouse.

Sound familiar? It can't really be that serious. You must be mistaken. I'm sure he didn't mean anything. Everyone engages in horseplay. Football is the lifeblood of this community. You can't fight the alumni support and investment of the football program; they're too politically important.

I'm not suggesting that the reality of the child sexual abuse scandal is not incredibly painful to everyone in that community, or that they are culpable by participating in a local culture that celebrated football and partying as a birthright.

But denial is also woven into any culture that embraces binge drinking to the degree it values that culture above the many real harms experienced by many individuals. As I recall, the actions taken at Penn State were similar to the Wisconsin actions: provide a drunk-ride-home van; encourage students to get drunk at secure party settings. Don't take a from-the-president down leadership position that behavior has to change. Try to minimize the harm by containing where the behavior takes place; don't name the harm and insist on change.

How Penn State's Culture of Drinking Is a Set-Up

Sat, 19 Nov 2011 15:11:33 -0500

When the H1N1 flu hit the local area several years ago, and there were a couple deaths reported, the authorities responded on high alert. Binge drinking is predictably more deadly and ignored.

Evacuation from the Kill Zone

Fri, 18 Mar 2011 16:03:25 -0400

When I started my new job for a large public utility in 1980, my cubicle wasn't built yet and I was given a desk in a makeshift space shared by the agency's new Manager of Disaster Preparedness, who was also awaiting his new office. For two weeks, I listened to his animated telephone conversations while reading through my orientation materials for my low-level community relations job.

The public utility operated two nuclear power plants, along with hydro and coal burning plants in the most heavily populated part of the East Coast. I had been excited about the recruiting conversations about their new efforts in recycling and energy efficiency. Instead, I overheard one side of telephone discussions about potential kill zones, death rates if the wind blew south instead of north, evacuation bottle necks. I guess I knew that disaster planning was part of an organization like this, but I went home from work frightened every day, feeling like I was eavesdropping on critical and highly confidential conversations. We were not very far distant, in time or geography, from the Three Mile Island disaster.

Then I moved into my cubicle, and focused on more mundane tasks, until other aspects of the disaster plan were required to be implemented. The utility needed a large number of employees to volunteer to be responsible for execution of the plan. For example, they asked employees to train to drive school buses, and to get the class driver's license that would qualify them for that role. I remember my manager, an older, adventurous woman with a bold laugh, bragging about driving a school bus around orange cones in her training. I don't even remember what I trained for -- some coordinating or staffing role -- but I still have the badge with picture ID, because it is so impressive, stamped "PREVENTION/MITIGATION/RECOVERY/RESPONSE. This is to certify that the person whose name and picture appears here may have emergency access through military and police control points."

At the time, I thought, that if execution of a disaster plan in the event of a nuclear accident relied on my manager driving a bus for the first time on an expressway and me managing some panicked crowd, we were in trouble.

I do not have a sophisticated understanding of the pro's and con's of nuclear power as part of our energy future. I have been inside the control room of those nuclear power plants, and worked with the dedicated, but very human, staff who ran them. I do know --as does the world-- that worst case scenarios happen. I also know, unless things have changed dramatically in 30 years, that the "mitigation-recovery-response" relies on activation of many marginally trained personnel to respond to impossible situations.