WOMAN 98, SUFFOCATES 100 YEAR OLD ROOMMATE

An article on this tragedy reminds us, "It just really points to the issue of mental health with the elderly." The woman who was complaining that her roommate, Mrs Barrows, was having too many visitors, was known to be demented and paranoid, and the nursing home would not allow the family of the murdered woman to get a room change for their mother. The nursing home bares some of the responsibility for the death. Admittedly, hind site is better at predicting what might happen but there seem to have been many signals here which went unheeded. Nor was the 100 year old monitored protected from the constant verbal harassment from the roommate. Death by strangulation, at any age, is unacceptable.

Her defense lawyer, Carl Levin, said, Ms Lunquist, the 98 year old had a "long-standing diagnosis of dementia as well as issues of cognitive impairment". The staff must have been working off their own set of assumptions, ignoring the data before their faces. Why? Probably as this situation is without a clear precedent having been established. Paranoid, cognitively demented people lose judgment and would be totally unpredictable. The staff listened to this woman complaining. apparently, but the erroneous assumption that an old woman wouldn't do anything as violent as that makes one wonder at what kind of other outrageous, though perhaps non-violent, is tolerated by staff. In many nursing homes staff is not well-paid and many foreign speaking staff who have grown up with entirely different standards of care and little education are the caretakers.

The attacker is being evaluated for competency to stand trial. Both families are left to mourn. For the BBC article, click here.

READ THE FEET

Man, on his long quest to find the ONE-SIZE-FITS-ALL unique "Aha!" has felt bumps on the head, read eye movements, lines in the palm of hands, astrological readings, tarot cards, brain waves, and all sorts of things of which I am yet unaware. However, we must not underestimate mankind's innovations and observation abilities.

New research is reputed to show sexual response and lying by observing feet. (Apparently this works more with women than men). For more detail, click here and listen to the researcher explain that which I find inexplicable.

NO OTHER OPTION

Australia has to cull out camels who are threatening human water supplies because in their thirst they are turning over water hydrants and using up all the water, shutting it off to homes. Like the Republicans on HealthCare, animal protection groups such as PETA are making loud noises but offer no better suggestions. Click here for the whole article.

Frequently, in Massachusetts, deer die of starvation since they have few predators and little food near the northeast coast during particularly severe winters. People who care about the cruelty of allowing these animals to starve also cull them out at such times. I have never understood why alleged animal rights people fight that but have not come up with a better solution. They do not come up with either an alternative or the cash to feed the hungry animals,
(or humans either).

When a pregnant woman chooses abortion rather than inadequate medical care or malnutrition for her unborn child we have those intractable thinkers who say 'no to abortion' but offer no alternative. Some think carrying a child for nine months, by an unhealthy, depressed mother is not damaging to a fetus, nor is it damaging to a child to bring them, unwanted, into the world. Adoption is not a guarantee of a better life for a child. We have all seen too many adoption failures by the adoptive parents as well as damaged children, adopted, who destroy families.

For centuries we have often believed there was no other option when someone who thinks out of the box comes out with one. However, until that happens, people must use logic around the whole system of a problem such as, freeing laboratory mice who are not equipped to forage for food for themselves is sentencing them to a cruel death or of being some other animal's dinner, or of starvation.

When will people learn that an immediate solution may not actually solve a problem but create worse problems? If we hadn't learned that before, shouldn't we have learned it by now after 6 years in Iraq at such a cost to our military personnel and their families?

RANDOM RESPONSES TO THE DAY'S NEWS

It shocks me when I hear people say, "I didn't vote because I knew XXX was going to get in." I'm working hard at gaining mastery in guilt tripping them though I obviously have not aced the art yet. It reminds me of friends who voted for someone they didn't want to see in because they wanted to make a statement to their candidate of choice. The statement ended up being the loss of the candidate they thought was such a shoo in.

Hypocrisy is only outdone by stupidity and ignorance. Uganda is making laws to kill homosexuals on the basis of a grown-up cottage industry that has sprung up to sell courses, retreats, books or 'whatevers' to teach people how to cure themselves and others of homosexuality. A naive or sick government is buying it. What sickens me is that it is Americans who are behind it all. To read an article on Where scandal meets spirituality, click here. It boggles my mind that there are enough sick and misguided people to keep these politicians, con artists and non-scientists on the job.

Lastly, where is the rumor coming from that predicts the Republicans will win all the next elections? Does anyone really think that returning to the good old days of GW Bush will be a good campaign slogan? If the majority of the country voted Obama in on the hope of CHANGE, what makes anyone think that spells Republican in any language or delusion?

POST PUBESCENT EMERITUS

I've never liked the terms 'senior citizen' or 'golden ager' because it puts me in a category with people for whom I often feel little affinity. Senior implies I have risen from junior but also, in today's world of political correctness, I prefer being known as a 'post pubescent emeritus'. Emeritus from Merriam Webster: Main Entry: 1 emer·i·tus Pronunciation: \i-ˈmer-ə-təs\ Function: noun Inflected Form(s): plural emer·i·ti \-ə-ˌtī, -ˌtē\ Date: 1750 : one retired from professional life but permitted to retain as an honorary title the rank of the last office held. From Wikipedia: The word originated in the mid-18th century from Latin as the past participle of emereri meaning to "earn one's discharge by service". Emereri itself is a compound of the prefix e- (a variant of ex-) meaning "out of or from" and merēre meaning "earn".

There is no question that before I hit the peak of my life and started on the downward curve, I was living life fully holding onto happiness when and wherever I found it. As with professors, writers, etc who lay claim to the title, senior citizen suggests that I am no longer young, yet I retain qualities of it and am still able to survive and enjoy where I am in life. Though retired from extreme physical exertion and chasing after the opposite sex, I don't feel as though I jumped into a totally new stage of life in a parallel universe but, rather, remain in a slowed-down extension my whole life.

GOLDEN AGE: WHEN THE ANGST OF FUTURE IS BEHIND YOU.

When you are born, your entire future is ahead of you. However, though you may lay a foundation for your future through childhood and adolescence, it is only when you are career planning, job hunting after 'finding yourself' and hunting a life partner, that the pressure of choice determines much of your future.

One of the nice things of old age is that those are not usually choices any longer so one might say your future is behind you at least in a planning sense. The future in old age is 'getting really old' or 'death'. For those who think there is life (as we know) it after death, I suppose it may be felt as their future...but I do not consider it mine. At that point, I see my future as oblivion and if I live to a ripe old age with my brain functioning like a slow CPU and all my senses at least limping along, I will consider that a great future from where I am today. That future that is now behind me turned out pretty well. I'm happy to face 'going forward' and reliving the future behind me in memories.

WHY IS THE US IGNORING THE SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE?

In 1957 I was in the Chicago area and had no choice but to go to a Catholic Hospital. I asked the doctor if there only one of us could be saved, my unborn child or I, who would live. He said, even though it was a Catholic Hospital they had to respect the choice of the patient. He assured me I would live to raise my other, 4 year old, child. Fortunately that was not put to a test.

Ann Neumann, AlterNet. Posted November 3, 2009. It is now 52 years later and Roe versus Wade has been the law of the land for many years. The majority of USA citizens believe it should be respected. We do not all believe in the same religions nor scientific findings but our forefathers tried to make a country where everyone could be safe to believe whatever felt true to them. Why then are we fostering a view that it is okay to kill doctors who are trying to observe the law that allows women, who desperately want them, to obtain abortions?

Neumann's article asks the question: Does the Vatican Have a Say in Your Health Decisions? "In the first months of her pregnancy, Candace Rich informed her doctors that she wanted to have her tubes tied. Tubal ligation is cheaper and easier on the patient's health when done during a Cesarean section, so Rich asked her doctors to perform the procedure if she required one. Two days after her due date, Rich was told that she would need a Cesarean but that the hospital refused to perform the simple operation because St. Luke, formerly a secular facility, now operated under Catholic doctrine.

"The doctor told me that 'because of the Vatican,' St. Luke could no longer do that procedure," said Rich in an affidavit. She was forced to find another hospital in the last few days before her surgery and to pay for the full cost of the operation."

For her complete article, click here .

What is wrong with our political system that it ignores our laws and basic tenets of our Constitution? Are people really afraid if they don't go along with what religious 'leaders' preach that they will really not go to 'Heaven'? What makes it so difficult to see hypocrisy when it is so blatant?