Secure Our Borders

In the on-going discussion of immigration policy, there has been a call to "secure our borders" What, exactly does this mean?

My home is secure. No one can peaceably enter without my consent. I am secure because I have walls and locks (and an alarm system)

So, is that what is meant by a "secure" border? Secure, because no one can enter without the consent of the country? Just how would the US go about securing our borders?

The most common concept appears to be a fence, running the length of the border with sensors and cameras and such to prevent anyone from entering without consent.

There are historic models that can be examined for efficacy. Hadrian’s Wall was built to secure the Romans from the marauding Scots. The Great Wall of China was built to secure the empire from the outside armies. In the 20th Century, the Berlin Wall was built, not to secure East Berlin but to prevent the citizens of East Berlin from emigrating to the West.

All three of these "Border Security" events failed in their purpose.

Why would one here be any better?

The Berlin wall appears to be the closest approximation to what is needed here. Are we willing to pay for a barrier of this magnitude? Are we eager to create "Dead zones" of land mines along our Southern border? Who will we hire, train and ORDER to shoot to kill people attempting to cross into our territory?

What do you REALLY mean by "Border Security" and what are you willing to pay?

It seems a bit disingenuous to call for a delay in discussing an over-haul of immigration until we "secure our borders" when we are not willing to either expend the necessary monies to build a barrier or to engage in the security behavior that would make such a barrier secure.

Let me re-phrase that last remark: Are we absolutely willing to post soldiers with “Shoot to kill” orders along our borders?

Why We Need The Draft

I blogged about it before. Were we opposed to US involvement in Viet Nam, or were we opposed to the draft?

PEW Research Center findings out today. Our "volunteer" army does NOT think that Iraq and Afghanastan are worth it. A large percentage enlisted due to the economy. Nearly 1/3 report PTSD.

Why a draft would be better:

1. If it were my child, my nephew (or niece, let's abolish sexism in military service) who was facing forced military service, I would be demanding clear objectives, clear goals, clear times to wind down our military adventures.

2. SEXISM When I was transferring colleges, before I received my acceptance from my new shcool, I received mail from various military recruiters. Because my name was relatively gender-neutral, they didn't realize that I was female. Of course, when I showed up at the recruiting station with the invitation to become a fly-boy, the recruiters were immediately scrambling as to why I couldn't. After all, they had said I met the basic qualifications. Of course, in 1973, they didn't state that the most basic qual was that I be male. I have read paragraphs describing the conditins that soldiers on the front lines experience with the plea, "No woman should have to serve under those conditions." Frankly, no HUMAN should have to.

3. When the Senator's son (or daughter) is likely to have to serve, the Senator is going to pay a LOT more attention to what is going on.

And those are essentially the very same reasons that absent a direct, identifiable, foreign attack of war on our country, a draft will not exist. We cheered when it was allowed to die. 40 years later, we ought to realize that we may have made a mistake.

FREEDOM!!!

I went to visit my mother. We went clothes shopping. She tried on blouses.

My mother is 94 years old. Roughly 5 years ago, she had a RADICAL masectomy. One breast FULLY removed. Her worry? She was afraid that they would take lymph nodes and that she wouldn't be able to swim her mile per week anymore.

She lost her ability to float in water after her heart procedure when she was 90+. Somehow, she lost her bouyancy. She is sorry she cannot still swim. On her 90th birthday, she swam her usual 1/3 mile.

Anyway, we picked out some blouses, and went into the dressing room.

THAT was when I realised that my mother (in most cases) no longer wears a bra.

HELLO!! She's 94, and only has one breast. Yes, she has a fill-in, but she really doesn't like wearing it.

At first, I was bothered. An old lady with only one boob, not wearing a bra?

OK, other than a slightly uptight daughter (that would be me) WHO is bothered/offended/ or even notices?

My mother is comfortible, society is satisfied by the fact that she is covered, WHO is offended/hurt??

SHE doesn't care how she looks. She's not looking to attract anyone of either sex. WHO CARES??

I need to loosen up. Actially, if I weren't terribly self-conscious about my appearnce, and wanting to still look either desireable or at least socially acceptable, I think doing without a bra would be wonderfully comfortable!!

But I am incredibly vain. I want to think that I look at a minimum acceptable, and (if you're very short-sighted) appealing, so I will continue to wear a bra.

Sorry waistline, you aren't going to share my chest measurement just yet!

Sometimes

There are times when I just want to reach out an hug everyone in my blogmunity. Linda is flying to Germany to watch the women's world cup. Laura is buying a new condo. Cynthia's daughter is getting married. (I last saw her when she was about 10)

I've never met Linda or Michael IRL, and yet they are as much my good friends as anyone I HAVE physically touched.

Tig is celebrating her party's win in Thailand.

I once said that one of the curses of the internet is that we are now subjected to EVERYONE'S opinion.

One of the blessings of the internet is that we now can connect with everyone we have ever met (and liked) and many people we like but have never met.

Pictures of me half-naked

This Tuesday, my girlfriend and I will go to Albuquerque where I will pose for pictures in which I will be half-naked. The positioning of my arms is important. My brests must be thrust forward, my back slightly arched to show a better angle.

Why, you ask, would a 58-year-old woman do such a thing? Who would be interest in seeing such pictures.

I honestly don't know who will be looking at those pictures. But I want them to. I hope they study thos pictures throughly and intently.

And I sincerely believe that most women of my age should be doing the same thing.

So, I'm getting my annual mamogram.

I just thought it would sound more exciting this way.

Do we Suffer from Collective Amnesia?

Two things brought this to mind.

On Memorial day (actually the Sunday before) I was watching a 60-Minutes interview with the (then) only recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor from the mid-East wars who was alive to receive it. He called himself an average if not medicore soldier and said that any other soldier would have done what he did. He made the comment regarding his fellow soldiers, "They all raised their hand and took the oath"

As it was meant to be, the story was touching and mildly thought-provoking -- "How heroic is the average man?" sort of item.

I recently finished reading H.W. Brands "American Dreams" This is a narrative history of the US since WWII. It ends in 2008.

Overally, the book is quite good at exxplaining what was occurring and some of the personalities and politics and facts and actions that influenced US history throughout that period.

I had purchased it because I had read his book "Traitor to his Class" regarding FDR and found it excellent and exciting.

I found, however, one glaring flaw. In discussing the period from 1963 through 1974, he mentions Vietman. He mentions the anti-war protests that almost tore the country apart. He mentions the shootings at Kent State. He discussed in passing how we became involved in Vietnam, the incident at the gulf of Tonkin, and the political corruption that plagued the South Vietnamese state.

What did he omit? What was the REAL explanation for the sometimes violent protests and demonstrations that beset the era? What were we really protesting against? And why is it that there are virtually NO protests today regarding our involvement in foreign countries?

He failed to mention in any sentence: THE DRAFT.

In retrospect, we were not protesting against America's sometimes mis-directed foreign policies. We were not protesting the attempt at "nation-building" We were not protesting the fact that the US was using military force to support a corrupt dictatorship.

We were protesting the fact that young men were being conscripted involuntarily and being sent oversees.

Look at the military 'adventures' the US has engaged in since the end of Vietnam. The protests today are political, and votes are taken in Congress. 500,000 plus do not assemble for three days on the Capital Mall to say "US OUT" Why not?

Today's military is purely volentary. In fact, given the state of employment in this country, the military is being selective about who may enlist. Today's soldiers are all willing to be soldiers.

It didn't used to be that way.

And I have to wonder, if we had a draft today, would we be involved overseas to the extent that we are?

I will not say that today's wars are any more or less moral than Vietnam was. But the fact that young men are not being forced into the military IS a more moral stance than we had previously.

Have we forgotten our outrage over Vietnam? Or is it that today we know that our brothers, our boyfriends, our sons will not be FORCED into the military.

Perhaps a volunteer army makes a voluntary war less morally repugnant.

"One Way Hash"

The following is something I found at FACTCHECK.ORG in September of '09. I copied it and saved it, understanding two things: 1. It is something I would appreciate and want to read again; and 2. It is something I want to share with others. It is a wonderful discussion on why sound bites trump substance, and (underneath it all) why we like our politics and our politicians simple. The stated subject is health care, but the message applies to almost all political discussion.

Browse > Home / The FactCheck Wire / Health Care and the “One Way Hash”
Health Care and the “One Way Hash”
September 1, 2009

Here at FactCheck.org, we like to complicate things.
The statement isn’t meant to be (entirely) a flippant one. It really is true that a lot of what we do here is to take what appear to be pretty simple claims and show that the reality is far more complicated than it might appear at first glance. Quite often we find ourselves saying things like, "That’s true, but it’s misleading…"
Julian Sanchez, now a research fellow at the Cato Institute, has dubbed arguments of this sort "one way hash arguments." The term is a nod to one way hash functions, which are used in cryptography. The basic idea is that certain kinds of mathematical operations are really easy to perform in one direction, but much harder to do in reverse. A simple example: Finding a number’s square is relatively easy; given a pencil and paper, most people could multiply a number, say, 125 times itself. Determining the square root of 15,625 is another story entirely. The same idea applies to a one way hash, only with functions that are complex enough that even the fastest computers need unrealistic amounts of time to reverse the functions.
Sanchez points out that certain arguments have the same basic structure:
Sanchez: The talking point on one side is just complex enough that it’s both intelligible—even somewhat intuitive—to the layman and sounds as though it might qualify as some kind of insight. (If it seems too obvious, perhaps paradoxically, we’ll tend to assume everyone on the other side thought of it themselves and had some good reason to reject it.) The rebuttal, by contrast, may require explaining a whole series of preliminary concepts before it’s really possible to explain why the talking point is wrong. So the setup is “snappy, intuitively appealing argument without obvious problems” vs. “rebuttal I probably don’t have time to read, let alone analyze closely.”
Jess Henig’s Aug. 31 post "Cancer Rates and Unjustified Conclusions" here on the FactCheck Wire provides a couple of sterling examples of one way hash arguments. Critics of health care changes argue that since the U.S. five-year survival rate for many types of cancer is higher than the average European rate, despite the nationalized health care systems common in Europe, U.S. health care is clearly superior to European versions. Supporters counter that these same studies show that insured Americans have higher five-year survival rates than uninsured Americans, which simply goes to show that we ought to have universal health coverage.
Both arguments are a one way hash.
The reality is that an enormous number of different factors affect five-year cancer survival rates. Early detection is an important factor, for a number of reasons. For one, most cancers respond more readily to treatment when they are detected early. But even if two cancers received no treatment at all and developed in exactly the same way, the patient whose tumor was detected earlier would obviously have a better chance of living for five years after detection. The U.S. has a far more aggressive early detection program than the U.K. or most European nations. But other countries, like Australia, Canada, Japan and Cuba, all have five-year survival rates that are comparable to the U.S. and all possess nationalized health care systems. The one exception is prostate cancer, but even there the story is complicated. Since prostate cancer doesn’t always require treatment, aggressive detection means higher survival rates, since many cases that never require treatment will be detected. In other words, aggressive screening of prostate cancer dramatically increases the diagnosis rate by detecting cancer that doesn’t need treatment at all, something that then skews the survival rate.
The argument that health insurance coverage positively affects five-year survival rates is equally oversimplified. After all, the same studies that show different survival rates for the insured versus the uninsured also show that Americans covered by Medicaid have five-year survival rates comparable to uninsured Americans. What’s more, the uninsured often have other complicating factors; because the uninsured are generally poorer than the insured, they might also have different diets or different exposures to tobacco or other drugs, all of which could well affect cancer survival rates. The uninsured are also more likely to have more than one illnesses at a time, which affects survival rates. So simply comparing numbers across diverse populations without controlling for other factors isn’t particularly useful.
But notice that two arguments that took only a sentence each to explain required a dense paragraph each to rebut. And even then, the explanations are abbreviated (go read Jess’ post for the full details).
Keep this in mind the next time you see what looks like a knock-down, one-sentence argument for your favorite public policy option. If it looks like a pretty obvious (but not too obvious) argument, there’s a decent chance that you’ve just found yourself a one way hash.
Posted by Joe Miller on Tuesday, September 1, 2009 at 5:49 pm

Housecleaning

I went looking for some old documents on Word. Since I wrote them, I have replaced my hard drive, lost some things, and added others.

By dint of searching via various lanes of 'documents', I found what I was looking for. I also found quite a few other things I have written over the years. Some are good, some are bad, and some needed to be deleted.

Word being the intuitive, user-friendly program that it is (sarcasm font off) it took me a while to even figure out how to delete the old c**p. I THINK I managed that, although some of the various Word indices still list items I sent to the recycle basket which I then emptied.

We'll see about that at a later date.

Anyway, in the stuff I had written in the past and not taken further, I discovered two or three starts to pieces of fiction that I never re-visited. I may just do that and see if they still have any ability to call me. Maybe someday, I'll finish one.

I also found a few essays that I wrote to express myself before I started this blog. Some of THOSE just might make it here, with a bit of editing. I need to re-read them again, to see if I still agree (or at least feel about) what I wrote then.

I have read that nothing written on a computer is ever truely lost. (Absent taking out the hard drive and destryoing it with a hammer and some battery acid) That appears to be true of what I put in Word. Whether any of it deserves to live forever is another matter. But if it doesn't, why did I start this blog?

Anyway, a word to all of us. Look at your old files. Are any of them something you want your heirs to discover?

Friends are the Families We Have by Choice

Friends are the families we have by choice.

I have some friends for certain emotional situations

I have some friends for certain social situations

I have some friends for certian intellectuial situations.

I have some friends for certain undeterminable situations.

And my family? Those persons who share the same DNA our parents shared at our conception........?

A friend with whom I can share emotional, social, intellectuial, and undeterminatable situations?

THAT is a friend I call family by choice.

Changing focus

I realized that since we got back from our trip, I have been less inclined to post. Somehow, it doesn't seem worth my while to write, or yours to read. I think I fugured out why.

While we were in California, we visited my mother. Mother is in assisted living, and we have hired someone to screen her mail. She had managed to get on EVERYONE's "gimme" list. Every day, she received four or five solicitations for contributions to various charitable causes. Some of them were more charitable to their directors than others. She felt overwhelmed. She couldn't decide which organizations to give money to. She saved much of the mail, inundating her office space. She gave sums to suspect organizations. It was too much for her.

We put an end to the deluge of begging mail, but she complained that it was hardly worth opening her mailbox anymore.

So, I started writing her. I remembered how, all my life when I lived with my parents, my mother would receive a weekly letter from her sister who lived in North Carolina. Aunt Margaret would send a single-spaced, type-written letter (usually typed on both sides of the paper) EVERY WEEK!

I've been trying to do the same. Every Sunday I sit down and recount my week for her. I try to throw in something of local interest, or some cultural reference or something more than a dry recitation of activities. Acautally, it's fun. I enjoy remmebering the highs and lows of my week. When something happens, I'll think, "I have to remember to write that to Mother"

But if there is a downside, it is that I feel less comuplsion to write here. I AM sharing myself, with my mother on a weekly basis.

So, why am I writing this now? I called her today and told her I would not write to her this week. I'm going to visit her in person instead. She forgave me for not writing.

I got over by blog-block

I have an outlet for expressing the mundane in my life now. It's called Mom.

Half-full or Half-empty?

Today, a janitor at a local elementary school was arrested for soliticing sex on-line. His intended partner? A 14-year-old. At some point during the communications, the police became aware of the internet intercourse and monitored it.

My husband's question; "How can these idiots continue to keep trying this? Almost every week, there is a story in the news of one of them being arrested."

My response; "IF the police are only catching one out of ten, then what is the risk"

How many cases are reported and caught, and how many are literally consumated?

It is one of those crime statistics that very likely is highly under-reported. I'm not talking about the 18-year-old with the 17 or 16 year-old. I'm talking about the person 25 or older with a minor.

The internet is so vast, and so annonymous. You may pretend to be any age -- older or younger than you actually are. You can pretend to be interested in actions that you would never actually engage in.

Was there a time when people met as "pen pals" and poured out their souls (or pretende to) to strangers they intended to take advantage of? Of course, the local police could not monitor the Federal mail. Nor could the Feds monitor the contents of communications without Court orders.

Is the explosion in this type of arrest due to the accessability of the internet? Apparently, local police do not need a search warrent or a wire-tap authorization to monitor communications.

I could set up a "sex chat" with any reader of this blog in which we established different e-mail accounts, different ages, genders, likes, identies, and pretend we were persons (at least one of whom was unable to consent) who were plotting to meet and engage in illicit activity.

Would we be caught? Unless one of us tipped off a police agency, we would likely not be caught. If one of us were to tip off a local police agency we might be charged with filing a false report or otherwise wasting their time.

But if I were a 14-year old girl, and if you were a 35-year old man, and if my parents did not monitor my internet usage, what could/would we be able to say and possible accomplish.

Are police actually making a dent in internet child-sex crimes? Or are they merely publishing their occasional successes?

Mom

I lost my "Mom" this week.

Who was she?

Rochelle Kantor was my Jewish Mother. Note that both word are capitalized.

I was a somewhat struggleing tax auditor when Rochelle asked me to come to review and be a stat notice writer. Part of it was out of affection for my husband. Part of it was because she felt that if my husband believed that I was not an incompetent idiot, I wasn't. She knew him. And because she knew him, she believed in me.

I went up on a 90-day detail. I was supervised. I was reviewing "short-90's" Cases that were no-shows, where the notice was based on the initial report. I was quick to pick up the errors. The disallowance of Schedule C expenses without an adjustment to the SE tax. The changes to AGI while ignoring the NOL carryover. My coaches were impressed.

I was put into a position of seeing how many "short-90's" could be issued (signed
and mailed) before the true push of the April 15th statute of limitations would hit.

I reviewed, I signed, I issued some 1,000 or more cases before the statute ran.

Then I was promoted to "long form letters" These were the letters on the cases where the proposed deficiency exceeded the amount that could be petitioned to "S" Court (the Tax Court equlivency to small-claims cout).

This was in the early '80's. There were no computer programs (at least in the IRS) that saved paragraphs of language for disallowance of deductions, credits, expenses or any thing else. EVERYTHING had to be written out in long-hand.

Rochelle (by that time she had become 'MOM') put together a task force to write standard paragraphs of disallowance for the 90% of most common items we encountered.

When we weren't working cases, we were writing "standard paragraphs".

Mom would attend the monthly staff meetings of the managers on her level and above.
She would come back from the meeting and call us into her office. She would explain what upper-level management wanted, and she would ask, "How can we do this?"

She absolutely understood that if EVERYONE, from bottom to top was not involved in the process, there could be no success.

When I was called for Jury duty, and was empanneled on a jury on a murder/kiddnapping trial that was scheduled to last for 6 or more months, she created a job that I could fulfill on the one or less days a week I was in the office. She made me the 'problem slover' (actually, my describtion of it was the 'garbage handler') She woud put aside the things that took more than 30 minutes to resolve, the items that required communication amoungst units, and when I was in the office, I dealt with them.

Mom believed in me. Because she believed I could do things, I could. I owe much of my success in my carrer to her.

She told me I could do things, and because of her words, I could.

Mom once said, "The difference between a child and an adult is that an adult understands AND ACCEPTS the consequences of their actions." Those words have become a template for my life.

MOM, MOM, you're gone!!!!!!! Who will I lean on NOw????!!!!

Remembering Jean

Jean Mitchell, age 92, died today.

Who was Jean? Why should I care? Why should you care?

Jean was a very special lady. Her son, Mike was one of George's best friends in college and after. But Jean (and her surviving husband, Frank) were not "parents" to the group of friends who first met at Fullerton JC. Jean and Frank were part of the group. They were friends, not "Mike's parents" They were our peers, if not in age, in attitude, in mind, in willingness to explore, discuss, examine life and everything around it.

Being around Jean never felt like being around my mother or my mother's friends. Being with Jean was like being with any of my girlfriends.

Jean lived 92 years, but Jean was never old. Jean was always the age of the people she was with.

There is a hole in my heart and in my life tonight.

Jean, I miss you.

Kids

People sometimes ask me why I never had children.

Early on in my marriage, I would reply "No child deserves me as a parent." Later, my response became, "Because I am too selfish." Both comments are equally true.

I never felt that I would make a good parent. Just as I did not acquire a driver's licence until I was 20, because I did not feel that I was capable of assuming control over something as potentially deadly as a car, I did not feel that what I believed about child-rearing would produce a good child/adult.

Our resonsibility to our children is also our responsibility to society as a whole. We owe our children the duty to teach them to easily and properly function in society. We owe society children who will function properly within society.

I honestly did not feel capable of fulfilling those goals.

At one point in our marriage, I offered my husband (who I feel would have made and EXCELLENT father) a divorce so that he could find someone who would give him children.

And I was selfish. I did not want to share my husband with other beings who had equal claim on his time, his attention, his love. Heck, there were times I was jealous of the cat!! If I could not accept his telling the cat "I love you.", how was I ever going to accept a child?? I was selfish. I am selfish.

So, no kids, no carrying on of the family name. This branch on the family tree dies.

Oh, wow. And that is one p*ss poor reason for having kids. "Don't let the family name die." WHY NOT?? My husband's family has plenty of descendents to honor the name (Thanks to great-grandpa and his six or seven wives) And frankly, why honor the past? In China, there was a cult of ancestry. And what of the current generations?

There is nothing wrong with geneology. What is wrong is defining yourself solely by what your ancestors accomplished.

I would rather be known for who I am today than for who I am descended from. My ancestory may matter to me, but it does not define me. I am defined by who I am, what I have done, and what I leave behind me.

And since I have no children, if I want to be remembered, it will be my reputation, for good or for ill that defines me after death.

"Our SOB"

Watching the events in Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan and Yemen, I am reminded of a story that dates back to the Truman administration. In a discussion of a dictator somewhere, an advisor commented that the man in questions was an DOB.. Truman purportedly replied, "Yes, but he's our SOB."

That sums up what is wrong about American Foreign policy. It was wrong during the cold war, and now that the cold war has ended, it is even more wrong.

An SOB is generally considered (as a National leader) to be autocratic, dictatorial, uncaring about human rights or the welfare of his people.

By supporting leaders who can be described in this fashion, the US is setting ourselves up for more trouble with the country in the future. Eventually, events will topple or remove that leader. What then? The bulk of the populace does NOT view the US as a friend. We supported and propped up the leader they have now deposed. As far as the general population of the country is concerned, the US does not care about human rights, education, the rights of women or minorities, or even spurring the democratic process.

Mubarek came to power 30 years ago. For the first ten years, the US could believe his statements that his was a democratic government. But when the same individual wins election after election, the US just might want to start requesting evidence that the country is a democracy.

Oddly enough, the limit of two terms on the president in this country has prevented (since FDR) the rise of a strong-man rule. There have been two-term presidents since FDR who might have been lured into running for a third term.

So, when the US is evaluating the quality of the democratic ideals esposed abroad, one of the issues we need to be aware of is whether there is a limit on the number of terms an executive can serve.

It won't solve the problem, but if ther US were to become a large bit more cautious about our support for the SOBs of this world, in the long run, we would be better preceived by the people they rule.

If You Don't Know How

I work at the local food bank.
Much of the food that we distribute is commodities - surplus foods that we get for free. We never know what we will get, or sometimes even the quantities.
Once, the person who places the order saw an item of "Beef ribs" She wisely only ordered one quantity. If this had been packages of 1 to 5 lbs each of ribs, it is something we would have ordered in quantity. However, in this instance, it was a single, 15 to 20 pound side of beef ribs. Basically, it was the entire 1/2 rib cage of a steer. For a resturant, great. For a food bank, not so great. We were lucky. That day one of the familys we were giving food out to had several teenage males. They were more than happy to take the frozen ribs. Of course, they had to be thawed and cut into at least two sections before they would fit in a home oven or on a home grill. But we never ordered those ribs again.
Today we received a lot of boxes of ground beef. Good, you say? Think about it. What youd YOU do with five pounds of hamburger. FROZEN SOLID. Yes, we gave a lot of it out. But I have to wonder --can you thaw frozen hamburger, re-package it and re-freeze it and still have it be safe?
I've started trying to find easy, simple recipies we can give out with some of the food. So far, I've done three different chicken ones. I try to stick with no more than five ingredients, meat, onions, potatoes, and hopefully anythng else is eighter on hand in most households or costs next to nothing.
My friends know that I love to cook. But finding simple recipies, ones that don't use fancy cheese, exotic spice, heavy cream-- that is more of a challenge.
Think about the simplest thing you might prepare -- let's take a grilled cheese sandwich -- What goes into it? OK, on the most basic level, bread, cheese and butter or margarine. Sometimes at the food bank we have both bread and cheese. Butter or margarine are another and far rarer matter. And here in New Mexico, a grilled cheese sandwich is NOT complete without green chile. That's four ingredients so far. Some people like a bit of mayo on the bread next to the cheese. I like to grill a slice of ham and throw it in too. (of course, that's a grilled hame-and-cheese) But even a simple dish may easily take ingredients that may not be found in the household of someone who is getting food at a food bank.
Trying to simplify recipies and make them fit in the likely household resources is a challenge.
Will I meet the challenge? I don't know. Last week was chicken and rice. I found two or three recipies that might serve. I copied them and we gave them out with the chicken.
Next Monday, I need to figure out what to do with five pounds of frozen ground beef.
I welcome your ideas.

PAY ATTENTION TO ME!!!

I WANT YOUR ATTENTION!! I WANT YOU TO SEE ME, SEE WHAT I AM DOING AND TALK ABOUT ME!!

What am I doing? Nothing. Why should you watch? No reason. What should you talk about? Nothing.

And that is one of the things that lead to the tragedy on Saturday.

A possibly mentally unstable individual decided that they were not getting enough attention from the world around them and determined that shooting up someone of importance was the remedy for their insignificance.

With 500+ TV channels, Facebook, Myspace, Youtube, etc, it is easy to believe that each and every one of us either has or deserves an audience. Why do you suppose I write this blog? I could keep my own, confidential journal if I didn't feel the need for validation from others.

But when you combine the urge for an audience with an unstable personality, sometimes the results are tragic.

And the results are tragic for EVERYONE involved.

Is there an answer? I certainly do not espouse periodic mental health screenings for all. I also do not support making everyone famous for 15 minutes. Yes, Andy Warhol was correct, the media now exists for such fleeting fame.

Perhaps we need to somehow shift the qualities we most publicize and admire. Perhaps we should attempt to make famous the people who run soup kitchens, the people who help the homeless, the teachers who run after-school programs for kids at risk.

How wonderful it would be if coverage of a famous boxer focused as much on his work with inner-city kids as on his triumphs in the ring. Wouldn't it be great if the story on a multi-million dollar contract included the information that 50% of the amount received would be going to charity.

I would love to see a story on a team, one month after winning a National championship showing the members cleaning up vacant lots in their city.

I think I want to try. Instead of saying that someone plays at my golf course, I want to say that they volunteer, that they care, that they give of themselves to others.

And yes, I would like them to say the same about me.