So often at these moments one wants to help, but there's nothing you can do. In this case, you might. Does anyone have a superseded iPod, or failing that a CD player or other musical device they won't mind losing if someone swipes it from his room? For Scraps, music is second only to oxygen, and the only option in the NYM ICU is an obnoxious Top 40 station that plays lots of ads. If we can get that set up, he'll be a lot happier, and people can send him mix tapes. (Okay, I know they aren't tapes anymore.) To get a sense of his musical tastes, see his weblog, Parlando, especially the 99 Albums Project and the Song Project.
Velma is the primary contact person for most purposes, and Patrick and I are the secondary contacts, but if someone wants to help coordinate the music thing, that'd be, well, helpful.
One more thing. Nobody's asked me to say this, but it's not like I haven't been in the same position. There's no such thing as paid sick leave for freelance copyeditors. We should think about this.
Onward. Here's how this started, at least from my POV:
#446 ::: Teresa Nielsen Hayden ::: (view all by) ::: October 06, 2008, 06:43 PM:And don't we all, at moments like that.I regret to tell you that Scraps (Soren) DeSelby is having a hemorrhagic stroke right now. His partner Velma Bowen phoned me earlier this afternoon, saying that Scraps was having an odd tingling and loss of muscle control in one hand and one foot, and did I have Macdonald's phone number?
Jim wasn't at home, but I talked to Doyle, who declared that she was speaking with Jim's voice, and that Scraps should go to the ER. Which was the right answer, of course. I felt stupid. I think I was flustered.
I phoned back and talked to Velma and then to Scraps. He wanted to stay home and rest, and see whether that didn't make it go away. I told him firmly that there aren't many fast-onset lateralized neuromuscular disorders that aren't serious. So Scraps and Velma went to the Lutheran Medical Center, where they decided he was having a stroke, and sent him off to New York Methodist in Park Slope, where they have a stroke center. NYM got him CATscanned pronto, and found he had a hemorrhage on one side. Last we heard, they had a neurosurgeon coming in.
Velma said his blood pressure was 220 over 166. She also said his speech was now affected.
He is a beloved friend. We've known him since he was 17.
I feel stupid and useless and full of dread.
#453 ::: Teresa Nielsen Hayden ::: (view all by) ::: October 06, 2008, 07:59 PM:It took half of forever for them to get him into Intensive Care. Velma was going to come over to our place after she got Scraps settled in, but she wound up going straight home.Scraps is bleeding on the right basal ganglias. It's too deep for surgery. They're admitting him to Intensive Care. He's forty-four.
#483 ::: Velma ::: (view all by) ::: October 07, 2008, 02:45 AM:This morning, when Velma and Patrick and I were there visiting Scraps, she said, "Dear, for our anniversary next year, let's do something really boring."... I am home from the hospital, dehydrated and exhausted, and trying to remedy the former before I fall over. To clarify: Soren called me in mid-afternoon, and said, "I don't want to alarm you, but I have numbness and trouble gripping with my right hand...". He was going to tough it out, and I asked if I should come home immediately. When he said, "Thank you," I hauled ass into the nearest cab.
Once I got home, we had something of a disagreement about going to the hospital (as he has no insurance/health coverage). That was when I called Teresa to get Jim's number. We were going to take a cab to Lutheran Hospital, but Soren couldn't walk down the stairs, and I couldn't carry him. That's when I called 911; the ambulance came within about ten minutes, and they had him in the hospital in another ten or less. He got a room in the ICU at 1am.
Prayers, good wishes, good vibes, what-have-you are all appreciated. And if there's anything that might affect the universe positively in his direction, it would be one of his other great loves: music. So make music, or listen to music.
Today is the eighth anniversary of our first date, which happened, in part, because of Patrick and Teresa playing matchmaker.
#494 ::: elise ::: (view all by) ::: October 07, 2008, 10:50 AM:He slips in and out of sleep every few minutes. His left leg and arm are twitchy and irritable (he keeps trying to turn over on his side, which is how he always sleeps), but his right arm and leg don't move. He can't talk. He can't stick out his tongue. But when I said "Scraps, do you have language?" he made it clear that he did. "Oh, thank god, you're still in there," I said, sitting down. "Let me see if I can remember everybody who sends their love..."OK. I just got a phone call from PNH, who is at the hospital. He says there are some encouraging things.
He said that the top priority right now is to bring Soren's blood pressure down from the scary heights it was at. There is definite progress on this; yesterday it was at two-hundred-mumble over oh-god, and now it's at one-hundred-something over well-that's-better-than-yesterday-at-least. ... Get the blood pressure down and this reduces the risk of further bleeds, and the risk of all sorts of other things. Get him stabilized at a safer level, and then everything else can be addressed.
"Everything else" includes stuff like finding out exactly what the damage is and then working to get back as much function as possible. As Velma and a number of other people said, he doesn't have speech right now, though he's made some words here and there, and PNH reports that Velma said he achieved a couple of phrases during the night. ("Oh, come on!" being the most memorable, apparently; last night Patrick said that Soren's pissed off, which is kind of a good sign, you know?) Patrick says that though Soren's not talking, he is answering questions with eloquent gestures. TNH asked him point-blank, "Do you have language?" and she got a strong affirmative nodding in reply. This is major goodness, because he's in there processing, even if his speaker isn't working at the moment, and he can communicate that he is processing. ...
Updates as they occur. Watch this space.]]>
I don't know what they can be thinking. Obama's past is well documented and as close to squeaky clean as real humans get. McCain's past is the one that doesn't stand close scrutiny. All I can say is, please pass on the following:
The Keating Economics: John McCain and the Making of a Financial Crisis website, which just went live, was paid for by Obama for America. There's nothing underhanded about it. This isn't a bunch of artfully deniable statements about undefined "ties" to undefined "terrorists". It's a mass of research, documentation, and news story reprints about McCain having been in the thick of the Keating 5 scandal and the collapse of the Savings and Loan industry. Short version: it started with respectable-sounding "deregulation", and quickly turned into massive fraud, the collapse of a formerly stable area of the financial services industry, and a bailout that cost taxpayers about $120 billion. IMO, the biggest thing we learn is that between that financial scandal and the current one, McCain professed to have learned his lesson, but actually learned nothing at all.
As of this Monday morning, 06 October 2008, with the global economy severely destabilized and in panic mode, here's the McCain campaign's take on the important issues.
Amy Silverman's Postmodern John McCain: the presidential candidate some Arizonans know--and loathe is a mother lode of local Arizonan coverage of McCain's vile past. It's a big article. Pack a lunch. If you need help sorting out Silverman's article, John McCain Detested in Arizona is a summary of the high points, and Phoenix Reporter Details McCain's Sordid Political Past breaks it out as a timeline.
Make-Believe Maverick, subtitled A closer look at the life and career of John McCain reveals a disturbing record of recklessness and dishonesty, is a long and very solid article from the latest issue of Rolling Stone. Early on, it quotes the nearly legendary Air Force Lieutenant Colonel John A. Dramesi. Not long after McCain and Dramesi were released by the North Vietnamese, they fell to comparing notes about their next career moves:
"I'm going to the Middle East," Dramesi says. "Turkey, Kuwait, Lebanon, Iran."John McCain's Sweet Ride. Sheikhs on a plane! Remember how all flights were grounded after 9/11, only somehow a bunch of highly-placed Saudis managed to get themselves quietly flown out of the country? And remember that blonde lobbyist, Vicky Iseman, who certainly was getting a lot of favors out of McCain for a while there? Watch the discreditable connections stack up in all directions.
"Why are you going to the Middle East?" McCain asks, dismissively.
"It's a place we're probably going to have some problems," Dramesi says.
"Why? Where are you going to, John?"
"Oh, I'm going to Rio."
"What the hell are you going to Rio for?"
McCain, a married father of three, shrugs.
"I got a better chance of getting laid."Dramesi, who went on to serve as chief war planner for U.S. Air Forces in Europe and commander of a wing of the Strategic Air Command, was not surprised. "McCain says his life changed while he was in Vietnam, and he is now a different man," Dramesi says today. "But he's still the undisciplined, spoiled brat that he was when he went in."
Further discreditable connections involving Vicky Iseman, from the Huffington Post.
The U.S. Veteran Dispatch is a somewhat obsessive site, and I certainly don't agree with everything on it, but they have interesting information. (1.) McCain's divorce. Came home from Vietnam, ditched the crippled wife, and married a beer heiress seventeen years his junior. (2.) Not that that kept him from jumping anything that moves. (3.) Did you ever think we'd see a major national politician whose military record would make George W. Bush's look like a string of peccadillos? Try John McCain: Unfit to Serve as Commander-in-Chief.
Meanwhile, we have Governor Palin proclaiming that Barack Obama is a good buddy to terrorists. When the AP Truth Squad reported today that Ms. Palin's attacks on Obama were bogus, she replied that the AP is wrong. Essentially, she's given up all pretense to being a serious politician, and is letting herself be used as a cheap right-wing attack bimbo in the style of Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin. It's an ill-advised long-term move for her. Politicians have established careers and regular salaries, even after they get boring. Attack bimbos are only as good as their most recent numbers. ]]>
You can do the same with apple pie. The trick is to slide the pie into a large brown-paper bag (your basic grocery-store bag), fold over the end until it's tight (paper clips and staples are allowed), then bake it on a cookie sheet at 350-400 degrees F for a about an hour.
Herewith, a recipe:
Brown Bag Apple Pie
Take a metal pie plate (if you're using disposable aluminum pie plates, use two). Put in a layer of your favorite pie crust. Slice up Apples Sufficient to Fill the Pie Plate. (Depending on size of apple, six to eight will probably do the trick.) Mix the apples with 1/4 cup of brown sugar, 1/4 cup of granulated sugar, a half teaspoon of nutmeg, a quarter teaspoon of ground cloves, and a teaspoon of cinnamon. If you used red apples add a couple of teaspoons of lemon juice. Mix the sugar and spices and apples and put them into the pie shell.
Make a topping from 1/2 cup of brown sugar, 1/2 cup flour, and 1/4 cup butter. Blend with a pastry cutter until it's coarse-meal textured. Put on top of the pie.
Slide the pie into a large paper bag. Fold over the end. Put the pie onto a cookie sheet, and put it in the oven, 350 degrees for 60 minutes. Or put it over a charcoal grill for the same time.
Remove from heat, cool until warm (rather than Scalding Hot) and serve with ice cream and/or cheddar cheese.
[UPDATE]
Brown Bag Apple Pie from Cooks.com: Filling is just apples, 2 Tbsp of flour, and a half-teaspoon of cinnamon. Crumb top.
Brown-Bag Apple Pie from Leite's Culinaria. Filling is apples, flour, spices, and lemon juice. Includes an unusual and dramatic way to present the pie.
Apple Pie Baked in a Bag from the Food Network: Uses a top crust rather than a crumb topping. Includes instructions on browning the top.
Jake’s Grandmother’s Brown Bag Apple Pie from the Christmas Place Blog: Uses apples with skins and all. Apple slices are tossed with sugar-and-spice mix.
Brown Bag Apple Pie from applepierecipe.net: Filling includes a quarter-cup of Half-and-Half.]]>
Remember to always wash your hands (the simplest and easiest of the public-health measures you can take).
Now's the time to inventory and restock (as necessary) your Flu Pre-Pack.
Get lots of rest, drink plenty of fluids, and if you're feeling sick, don't go out. Stay safe, happy, and healthy.]]>
Here's another trip: Your best route to I-93, then whip up to the end of the road in St. Johnsbury, Vermont. When you get there, visit the Fairbanks Museum. Miss Teresa visited there, the trip where she saw a moose. The Lovely and Talented Miss Teresa was amazed by the patriotic pictures made from beetle shells. (They also have fossils, a stuffed moose, Jeff Davis's checkerboard, and many other wonders.) The Eye on the Sky weather reports on Vermont Public Radio are broadcast from the Fairbanks Museum. The museum is open all year Tues - Sat 9 AM - 5 PM and Sunday 1 - 5 PM. Closed Mondays.
As long as you're in St. J, drop by Maple Grove Farms to get a factory tour and visit the shop (maple sugar candy seconds, very good, very cheap, and samples of all kinds of grades of maple syrup). No matter what kind of painting of Happy Rural Life in Vermont you see on their catalogs' covers, the actual Maple Grove Farms is a concrete building on a railway siding. It's a farmers' cooperative and this is their central location.
When it isn't maple season they make a wide variety of other foodstuffs in their factory. They're located on US Rt. 2, on your right as you head east out of town.
Speaking of places to go, for dinner there's Angelica's Restaurant in Bethlehem, New Hampshire. Bethlehem (for no obvious reason) bills itself as the Poetry Capital of New Hampshire. But this has nothing to do with Angelica's. It's located in the middle of town, across from the stone horse-watering trough, (2085 Main St Bethlehem, NH 03574 (603) 869-5420) The owner is a gent of Portuguese extraction whose family is in the fish business in New Bedford, MA. He gets fresh fish at family prices by whipping down I-93. Which is why he specializes in fish and other seafood (scallops! yum!).
Other places to eat on your trip: Diners in New England.
If the weather is cloudy (or even rainy) that just makes the autumn colors a bit more glowing. Do pack a sweater. ]]>
Usually it's full of talking points, scrolling slowly by. I note that the McCain ones tend to worse grammar and spelling than the Obama ones, and more often posted from users who haven't even bothered to attach a picture to their profiles*.
The feed also includes a section at the top for "Hot election topics", with the phrases that are appearing most often in the stream at the moment.
The current ones are "Latest Palin, Kathleen Parker, Tina Fey, National Review, Oh Dear God, Couric, Republican, SNL, Bush, House"
I think somebody's in trouble.
* Update: for clarity, what I mean by this is that the people in question had created Twitter accounts with normal-sounding names, but with none of the peripheral details that make the accounts plausible as ordinary ones; the lack of userpics was only one aspect of that. I should also have mentioned that the accounts I was looking at had no apolitical tweets, nor any history before the election. The overall impression of these accounts was that they were astroturf, and very poorly constructed astroturf at that.
I apologize to anyone who felt that my use of this phrase was indicative of my attitude to people who choose not to use userpics.
]]>The Malaysian ship MT Bunga Melati 5 has been released by its Somali pirate captors after the payment of a US$2 million ransom. Another Malaysian ship is still being held.
The luxury yacht Carre d’As, and the retired French couple who own it, were seized by pirates earlier this month, and freed in a surprise raid by French commandos. A larger yacht had been captured earlier this year, and after the ransom was paid and hostages released, the same commandos captured the pirates.
Somali pirates have captured a Ukrainian cargo ship, the Faina, loaded with Russian tanks en route to Kenya, and demand US$20 million ransom. Apparently US dollars are still worth something in certain circles.
The most interesting pirate story, via BoingBoing: Yet another group of Somali pirates has captured an Iranian ship, the MV Iran Deyanat, supposedly carrying “minerals” and “industrial products”. Some of the pirates are coming down with strange symptoms — burns and hair loss — within days of taking the ship. Some have died.
Almost as strange is the group of pirates claiming to be acting in the name of environmentalism.
This BBC story from January 2006 says there had been 35 incidents of piracy off Somalia’s coast in the previous nine months. This story from the Atlantic Council of the US says there have been at least 60 attacks in the area so far this year, at distances from the coast of up to 250 nautical miles.
The Pittsburgh Pirates, on the other hand, have been having a lousy year.
]]>The rules:
I get to start.
While walking in the woods one day, in the hills behind his monastery, my friend and I came upon a single volume of an encyclopedia lying neatly closed on the ground. I opened the front cover and found a map of the United States. As always when I look at maps, I sought and found the tiny spot in Northern California where two rivers join and a small cabin stands among the Douglas firs. I placed my finger on it. “If I could be anywhere in the whole world right now,” I said, “I would be there.”
He took the book from my hands and peered at the map. “If I could be anywhere,” he replied, “I would be right here.” And he placed his finger on the spot where the woods grew thick behind his monastery, on just the sort of hillside where a person might leave a neatly closed encyclopedia.
Tell me a story about monasteries, hiking, encyclopedias, maps, or cabins, or any other matter touched on above.
]]>9:52 PM: Lurking behind every presidential-level discussion of military matters is the unspoken worry about maintaining the self-esteem of our troops. It’s as if the world’s most powerful fighting force were a bunch of sulky grade-schoolers.
9:56 PM: Also, of course, the ridiculous notion that we should be willing to invade any country in the world that fails to take its hat off when we walk into the room.
9:57 PM: McCain really likes to start sentences with “I think Senator Obama fails to understand…”.
10:00 PM: Now they’re talking about their bracelets. Perhaps the debates should include a fashion accessorizing competition?
10:04 PM: John Sidney McCain III, you motherfucker! How dare you invoke the holocaust to justify your goddamn war-loving scare-mongering!
10:06 PM: Obama’s at least got the sense to realize that the Iraq War strengthened Iran. He’s still buying into the nuclear scare-talk.
10:08 PM: When did talking to foreign leaders become such a political football?
10:10 PM: Hey, Obama mentions that Ahmadinejad isn’t actually the leader of Iran!
10:13 PM: Apparently the US president can’t sit at the same table with the president of Iran because the Iranian said something mean about our friend Israel. This really is just high school writ large, isn’t it?
10:19 PM: Russian “aggression” against Georgia. Neither one of them mentions that South Ossetia is nominally independent.
10:24 PM: Nuclear? Obama says we’re going to need to use nuclear energy. That could get interesting.
10:29 PM: Obama says that a suitcase nuke is a more likely threat than a nuclear missile, then turns around and says he supports missile defense.
10:32 PM: Both of them acknowledge that we’re spending too much money. Both of them want to solve our problems by spending more money.
OK, over. My off-the-cuff impression is that McCain probably came off better than Obama, at least from what I saw. I think he did a better job of pushing Obama onto the defensive. I don’t know if this’ll help him in the polls, since he’s already polling as more capable in foreign policy.
]]>His story has been covered before, but you know, I think "saving the world from thermonuclear annihilation, with seconds to spare" merits more than one attaboy.]]>
“The secretary and the administration need to know that what they have sent to us is not acceptable,” says Committee Chairman Chris Dodd, D-Conn. The committee’s top Republican, Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby, says he’s concerned about its cost and whether it will even work.
In fact, some of the most basic details, including the $700 billion figure Treasury would use to buy up bad debt, are fuzzy.
“It’s not based on any particular data point,” a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. “We just wanted to choose a really large number.”
I guess we should be relieved that they didn’t consult any mathematicians or physicists for advice about really large numbers.
]]>1 When Israel went out of Egypt, the house of Jacob from a people of strange language;
2 Judah was his sanctuary, and Israel his dominion.
3 The sea saw it, and fled: Jordan was driven back.
4 The mountains skipped like rams, and the little hills like lambs.
5 What ailed thee, O thou sea, that thou fleddest? thou Jordan, that thou wast driven back?
6 Ye mountains, that ye skipped like rams; and ye little hills, like lambs?
7 Tremble, thou earth, at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of Jacob;
8 Which turned the rock into a standing water, the flint into a fountain of waters.
I would just like to remind all readers of this blog that if the skipping of mountains like rams and hills like lambs is followed by a sudden retreat of the sea, it's time to find some higher ground.
I am not a exegetist. I can neither interpret nor analyze. This post is presented for entertainment purposes only. Nothing here is meant to be advice for your particular translation or denomination.
]]>]]>
WASHINGTON — Colorado Democrats accused a Republican county clerk Wednesday of falsely informing Colorado College that students from outside the state could not register to vote if their parents claimed them as a dependent on their tax returns.
At a news conference in Colorado Springs, Democrats also charged that county clerk Robert Balink took several steps to dampen voter registrations among college students, who are likely to favor Democrat Barack Obama. Balink was a delegate to the Republican National Convention.
"When election officials spread false information about who is eligible to vote and remove, not add, polling places, we need to be concerned that eligible voters will be denied their right to vote," said Pat Waak, chairwoman of the Colorado Democratic Party.
Balink's actions marked the second time in recent weeks that local election officials have sought to discourage college students from voting. Democrats recently have made a series of accusations that Republicans are attempting to suppress the Democratic voter turnout in the November presidential election.
The New York Times reported on Sept. 8 that a local registrar at Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg, Va., issued two releases that incorrectly suggested dire consequences for students who registered to vote, including the possibility they no longer could be claimed as dependents on their parents' tax returns.
Martha Tierney, an attorney for the Colorado Democratic Party, said she obtained emails showing that Balink's office sent to the Colorado College president's office a flier to provide students with voter-registration information.
The flier stated: "What this means is that if your parents still claim you on their income tax returns, and they file that return in a state other than Colorado, you are not eligible to register to vote or vote in Colorado."
Balink didn't immediately return a call for comment.
Last week, Democrats filed a lawsuit in Michigan, seeking a court order barring Republicans from using lists of people facing mortgage foreclosure proceedings as a basis for challenging their voting eligibility. Michigan Republicans denied using foreclosure lists to cast doubt about voters' qualifications.
And in Ohio, a pivotal state that was mired in allegations of voting irregularities in the 2004 presidential election, Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner has taken several steps to safeguard residents' voting rights. On Wednesday, Brunner advised county election boards across the state that the listing of a voter's name on a foreclosure list is insufficient, on its own, to sustain a challenge to his or her residency status.
"Ohioans faced with the pain and turmoil of a home foreclosure should not be targeted by the forces of disenfranchisement on Election Day," Brunner said.
Brunner also recently took action to prevent a tactic known as "vote caging," in which returned mail sent to a voter's home is used to challenge the voter's eligibility. Brunner advised counties that the return of a non-forwardable notice is not enough to sustain a challenge on its own, and she has ordered that all challenged voters have rights to hearings before the election.]]>