Sunday, September 07, 2014

Politics; Old Age Activity; Pizza is King; Starvation; Plane Fight; Aging Care; Cat Bath; Jehovah's Witnesses; Teddy Bear; Toxins; Tattoos; Germs

Nice 78 degree day with sun and low humidity.


"Some people just don't seem to realize, when they're moaning about not getting prayers answered, that no is the answer."     Nelia Gardner White


01.  Push!


Carroll County Times:  During the 1899's, losers in elections in Westminster, Maryland, would push the winners up Main Street in wheelbarrows.  (Sounds like a good idea to me.)


02.  Get Moving  or Get Old!


Hermine Saunders has a lot to say about aging today in her column.  She wants to make us get off our old butts and volunteer.  Why sit in a rocking chair waiting for the end when you can help make other people's lives worthwhile.  Hermine certainly is an active 75-year old. (Hermine, you should not tell us your age.. we would have thought you were at least 10 years younger.)


My only problem with volunteering is that I can't look forward to a day off.


03.  Pizza World


Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me:  I learned today that there is currently a Pizza Fad.  There are Pizza shaped clothes and Pizza themed clothes for sale.  The clothing industry will do anything to make a buck.


A gentleman called the Pizza Company to complain that all  he got delivered for his money was a circular piece of dough with no topping.  Investigation showed that he had opened the Pizza box upside down.


04.  Where are the skinny people?


Carroll County Times:  Staff writer Jon Kelvey says: "Roughly one in every 8 households in Carroll County has gone hungry in the past year, according to the Maryland Food Bank."  It is very hard for me to believe that almost 30,000 Carroll County people have ever "gone hungry,"  whatever that means.  Perhaps during the Great Depression.


05.  Flight Fight


Carroll County Times Editor Jim Lee makes us aware of an inflight fight between a passenger who wanted her seat to recline and a lady behind her who was using a "knee defender" apparatus to prevent her from doing so.  Both antagonists were kicked off the flight. 


Whose rights were violated?  This raises lots of philosophical questions that will probably never be adequately answered until mankind evolves a bit further. 


06.  Geriatric Care Management


Jill Rosner, RN, has a column today that starts a series of discussions about what to consider when choosing aging care.  Jill is an expert in geriatric care management and can help those lost in the ins and outs  of the subject.  Jill will be speaking to my NARFE (Retired and Active Federal Employees) group this week and possibly also to my Social Security Alumni group next week.  There is a lot to learn about this subject.  


07.  Don't Mess With Me!


WWDTM:  A lady in the United Kingdom made a big mistake and got to spend six days in the hospital.  Her big mistake was trying to give her flea-ridden cat a bath.


08.  Noted Death


New York TimesLillian Gobitas Klose, 90, died this week.  She and her brother, as Jehovah's Witnesses, refused to salute the flag shortly before the outbreak of World War II.  That got her and her brother expelled from school.  Law suits ensued and eventually the case came before the Supreme Court in 1940.  The Supremes voted 8 to 1 against them.  Thereafter, Jehovah's Witnesses were subjected to retaliation from "patriotic folks."  Some of their Kingdom Halls were burned; some of them were beaten, tarred and feathered, and even castrated!


In 1943, a different Supreme Court heard a nearly identical case and voted 6 to 3 to overturn the 1940 ruling.  This resulted in "protection by the Federal government of a minority from majority tyranny."


As a side note, in 1951 Lillian married a German national and fellow Jehovah's Witness, who had defied Hitler by refusing to salute Nazi symbols.  This act got him a long term in a concentration camp.


By the way.. when I started school, the salute to the flag was given with the arm outstretched as though we were saying "Heil Hitler"..  that changed during World War II.


09.  Cute Little Teddy Bear?


TED Radio (appropriately):  I have always been disgusted at stories of big shots getting animals and birds flushed out for them to shoot and kill.  That does not seem sporting to me at all.  Its just target practice.  Once, I read that when one of the King George's was close to death, his attendants took him out of the castle and flushed birds for him to shoot, with his shaking dying hands.  I think that, even though he was very weak, he still managed to shoot and kill hundreds of birds.  I hope that the next day when he died, he was sent to spend time in Bird Heaven, where the souls of the hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent birds that he killed, could flap their wings in his face and irritate him for aeons.


The TED orator spoke about President Theodore Roosevelt, who also had "flushers" who helped him kill the animals and birds he pretended to care about.  On one day, one of the flushers somehow caught an aging and sick bear and tied him to a tree.  He then went to Teddy and told him a bear was ready for him to kill.   Mr. Roosevelt took one look at the sick bear and told the attendant that he couldn't kill such an animal, and told the attendant to do so, at which point, the attendant pulled out a knife and gutted the poor old animal.


However, the Press heard the story from White House Staff in a slightly different way than it occurred.  It was advertised that the President had saved the life of this bear.  This then became "Teddy's Bear".. hence "Teddy Bear" was created and sold by the millions.


 10.  Hey, what'd ya find?


New York Times:  Hey, guess what.. I just found a 100 year old bottle of ricin at NIH.  It was in a box with some interesting samples:  some of the samples could cause botulism, plague, tularemia and melioichosis.  Nearby I found some staphylococcal enterotoxin.. you know, that stuff that can cause food poisoning.    I turned it in to the boss and he assures me that all of the samples were moved to a registered lab and destroyed by the Food and Drug Administration.   (God, I hope so.)


11.  Tattoo Museum?


New York Times:  Some folks feel that tattoo sleeves should be placed in a tattoo museum rather than be buried with the owner.  That might be a good idea because some time in the future grave robbers might hunt for corpses with world-class tattoos and sell them on eBay.  Remember what the Nazis did with tattoos that were inked on prisoners in Auschwitz and Buchenwald.   The tattoos made great lamp shades. 


12.  Germs?


Casual Observations


Men seldom wash their hands after peeing.  They might run a little water over the fingers that they used to aim their penis, but not often. 


Customers use provided wipes to  wipe their cart handles and then use the same wipes to wash around their faces.  I see this done a lot by women shoppers.


So, what hope do we have in the upcoming flu season?  The wise folks seriously soap their hands and take a little time to scrub away the germs after being in a rest room.  They use the provided wipes to clean grocery cart handles and do not use them to then wash their faces.  They also avoid large crowds.  And, most importantly, they  get flu shots!


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