New Year's Day last, I made a solemn resolution that I would do my best to compose a Sarah Palin Shaggy Dog sometime this year.
As everyone west of the Atlantic and east of the Pacific readily knows, a Shaggy Dog is a long, corny joke that leaves one initially groaning, then laughing -- sometimes hysterically.
How humans can generate two distinct reactions in this fashion is inexplicable --that is, go from groan to hysteria in less than 2 seconds. Who the Hell knows! I'm a Metaphysician, not a psychologist.
If you have an interest in discovering the origins of the Shaggy Dog, go back in the VM Archives and dig out the post I wrote concerning the topic last December.
For now, let's just say that an episode of "Seinfeld" or the old classic, "The Jack Benny Show" would qualify as stand-alone Shaggy Dogs, that is, if you catch my drift.
Whatever: my objective is framed by the following criteria:
A Sarah Palin Shaggy Dog must contain her interaction with one or two of the following three elements, to wit: a Kangaroo; a Penguin; and/or a Duck.
As is in the case of virtually every Shaggy Dog, my objective is not to overly disparage nor denigrate the subjects. I'm attempting to find the Comic Boundary Line here, the one that separates humor from poor taste.
I will also state, for the record, that I am making a special attempt not to anger the Kangaroo which, as we all know, can box at a world-class level.
And whether or not I rile Ms. Palin's feathers, however, is of no concern to me. She's the "Momma Grizzly" from Alaska and a former governor who ought to be able to take it -- a pol, I might add, who believes she has the Stuff to be President.
Sean Hannity, Rush, Glenn et. al. and the rest of her Neo-Con -Tea-Bagging supporters claim she has Presidential Timmmmm-buuurrrrrrrrrrrrr!
Ouch!
But I digress...
Herewith are four Sarah Palin Shaggies which I consider works-in-progress, or in other words, exercises undertaken to prepare me for the Big One.
By all means, feel free to send me your "Palin Shaggies" if you're so inspired!
SD #1. Sarah Palin and a kangaroo reach the top of the Denali Glacier. By now, Palin's hands are freezing. So she says to the kangaroo: Do you mind if I stick my hands into your pouch, to warm them up? The kangaroo says OK. To which Sarah says: I feel crazy doing this. And the kangaroo answers: Dig down a bit deeper, and you'll feel nuts!
SD #2. Sarah Palin, a kangaroo and a penguin were climbing Mr. McKinley and Sarah looks at the Kangaroo and says: "Where's your backpack?" The kangaroo looks over at the Penguin and says: "What a silly ass! Doesn't she know I'm equipped with a Front-pack?"
SD #3. Sarah Palin and the Kangaroo are flying 1st lass from Fairbanks to DC. The Kangaroo looks out the window and shouts: "Holy Shit! There's a duck hanging onto the wing for dear life!" To which Sarah responds: "Oh, don't worry about him. He's just my speech writer."
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Entering The Greatest Unknown With Dr. George Sheehan
"We are all an experiment of one."
Those immortal words were written about 30 years ago by Dr. George A. Sheehan, the cardiologist who became one of the iconic Gurus of the running community.
George (I'll continue to use his first name in subsequent reference because he had no pretense for any of that "doctor" stuff) vaulted to the summit of runner-dom through publication of his insightful -- and occasionally inciteful -- articles in Runners' World Magazine.
At first, George's writing counseled the mileage-aching how to alleviate muscle pain by stretching, followed by application of ice, followed by more stretching.
His word-advice to flabby newbies? Start off slowly.
Walk three miles every other day. Then run and walk three miles. Then run three without stopping to walk.
When the body adjusts to running that distance in, say, two or three months, try moving the distance out to five miles -- and take it slowly.
When the five-miler became a piece of cake, George counseled: extend the distance out to 6.2 miles -- the iconic 10-K, the standard benchmark for all serious road runners.
Then, hold the mileage there for a year, allowing the body to adapt and to adjust.
Running, to his estimation, was a long-term investment in oneself. The sport paid cardiovascular dividends in weight loss, lower blood pressure, lower pulse rate, improved diet, more restful sleep patterns, and a greater ability to concentrate.
Yet George's writings also offered more than Guruism on the fitness/orthopedic/cardiovascular fronts.
He moved his words into the realm of philosophy.
Those of us who were "fit" physically were "Good Animals" adhering to millions of years of genetic commands. Running was the modern-day extension of Homo Sapien's Hunter-Gatherer Heritage.
He also wrote that all those aches, injury, fatigue, illness, and ennui were merely challenges to be overcome. All one need do is to listen and to pay close attention to the rhythms of one's own body and one's own pulse rate, and persevere.
By our nature, and if we are in harmony with our bodies, we cannot help to become anything else but Stoics.
The human body is the best teacher. "We are all an experiment of one."
I admired and liked George (more about my employment of the Past Tense in a bit) because he really, really practiced what he preached.
He also wasn't beneath enjoying a cold beer or four after a road race, or offering sage advice ranging from race tactics to the running life-style.
Like just about like every doctor you know (there I go again: another Valley Girl slip) , George could be irascible on occasion. And yet, he was very approachable.
(One, however, would never, ever approach George before a race: one would get his head bitten off for breaking the Good Doctor's pre-race ritual while he focused, like a Zen Master, on internalizing his powers of concentration.)
Throughout his own running career, George seemed to ignore his own advice.
He pushed himself during races -- 10Ks and marathons -- far beyond the point of rational endurance. In exceptionally competitive races, such as those held in Van Courtland Park in The Bronx, he would literally pass out after crossing the finish line.
Dig it: he was an outstanding track star at Manhattan College who went off to medical school, returning to the track on his 45th birthday - a successful, but woefully sedentary medical practitioner seeking his own youth and re-birth.
So he ran around a high school quarter-mile track on that eventful day until he collapsed. Teenaged athletes who witnessed him out there, suffering on the cinders, thought he had lost his mind -- and they came to admire him for his absolute refusal to quit.
And whatever he was looking for, George found it on that day.
The rest of this story, as they say, is history ... almost:
George went on to set an age-group world record in The Mile with a time of 4:47 at age 50!
He also set a few other age-group national records in various other racing distances.
Later in life, he was a highly-sought-after author, celebrity and motivational speaker about the subject of athletic training as it relates to business performance.
And then, fatefully, one evening in the mid-1980s, he detected that something was going drastically wrong within his own body.
It started with night sweats, followed by a precipitous decline in stamina.
The Stoic within him kept him running on the roads -- but with a noticeable sharp pain and increase in his times -- and an agonizingly long increase in the time it took for him to recover his strength from a race.
So he saw his doctor in 1986.
The diagnosis was prostrate cancer.
He continued to run until his legs could no longer carry him.
"Going The Distance" was his last book.
But it wasn't about running: it was about dying.
It was a chronicle about the Ultimate Stoic -- an Experiment Of One.
The processes of dying stimulated his intellectual curiosity.
"Going The Distance" was published shortly after George's death, in 1993.
From my perspective, our Planet is a much-better place because Dr. George A. Sheehan's running shoes had trodden upon it.
![]()
Those immortal words were written about 30 years ago by Dr. George A. Sheehan, the cardiologist who became one of the iconic Gurus of the running community.
George (I'll continue to use his first name in subsequent reference because he had no pretense for any of that "doctor" stuff) vaulted to the summit of runner-dom through publication of his insightful -- and occasionally inciteful -- articles in Runners' World Magazine.
At first, George's writing counseled the mileage-aching how to alleviate muscle pain by stretching, followed by application of ice, followed by more stretching.
His word-advice to flabby newbies? Start off slowly.
Walk three miles every other day. Then run and walk three miles. Then run three without stopping to walk.
When the body adjusts to running that distance in, say, two or three months, try moving the distance out to five miles -- and take it slowly.
When the five-miler became a piece of cake, George counseled: extend the distance out to 6.2 miles -- the iconic 10-K, the standard benchmark for all serious road runners.
Then, hold the mileage there for a year, allowing the body to adapt and to adjust.
Running, to his estimation, was a long-term investment in oneself. The sport paid cardiovascular dividends in weight loss, lower blood pressure, lower pulse rate, improved diet, more restful sleep patterns, and a greater ability to concentrate.
Yet George's writings also offered more than Guruism on the fitness/orthopedic/cardiovascular fronts.
He moved his words into the realm of philosophy.
Those of us who were "fit" physically were "Good Animals" adhering to millions of years of genetic commands. Running was the modern-day extension of Homo Sapien's Hunter-Gatherer Heritage.
He also wrote that all those aches, injury, fatigue, illness, and ennui were merely challenges to be overcome. All one need do is to listen and to pay close attention to the rhythms of one's own body and one's own pulse rate, and persevere.
By our nature, and if we are in harmony with our bodies, we cannot help to become anything else but Stoics.
The human body is the best teacher. "We are all an experiment of one."
I admired and liked George (more about my employment of the Past Tense in a bit) because he really, really practiced what he preached.
He also wasn't beneath enjoying a cold beer or four after a road race, or offering sage advice ranging from race tactics to the running life-style.
Like just about like every doctor you know (there I go again: another Valley Girl slip) , George could be irascible on occasion. And yet, he was very approachable.
(One, however, would never, ever approach George before a race: one would get his head bitten off for breaking the Good Doctor's pre-race ritual while he focused, like a Zen Master, on internalizing his powers of concentration.)
Throughout his own running career, George seemed to ignore his own advice.
He pushed himself during races -- 10Ks and marathons -- far beyond the point of rational endurance. In exceptionally competitive races, such as those held in Van Courtland Park in The Bronx, he would literally pass out after crossing the finish line.
Dig it: he was an outstanding track star at Manhattan College who went off to medical school, returning to the track on his 45th birthday - a successful, but woefully sedentary medical practitioner seeking his own youth and re-birth.
So he ran around a high school quarter-mile track on that eventful day until he collapsed. Teenaged athletes who witnessed him out there, suffering on the cinders, thought he had lost his mind -- and they came to admire him for his absolute refusal to quit.
And whatever he was looking for, George found it on that day.
The rest of this story, as they say, is history ... almost:
George went on to set an age-group world record in The Mile with a time of 4:47 at age 50!
He also set a few other age-group national records in various other racing distances.
Later in life, he was a highly-sought-after author, celebrity and motivational speaker about the subject of athletic training as it relates to business performance.
And then, fatefully, one evening in the mid-1980s, he detected that something was going drastically wrong within his own body.
It started with night sweats, followed by a precipitous decline in stamina.
The Stoic within him kept him running on the roads -- but with a noticeable sharp pain and increase in his times -- and an agonizingly long increase in the time it took for him to recover his strength from a race.
So he saw his doctor in 1986.
The diagnosis was prostrate cancer.
He continued to run until his legs could no longer carry him.
"Going The Distance" was his last book.
But it wasn't about running: it was about dying.
It was a chronicle about the Ultimate Stoic -- an Experiment Of One.
The processes of dying stimulated his intellectual curiosity.
"Going The Distance" was published shortly after George's death, in 1993.
From my perspective, our Planet is a much-better place because Dr. George A. Sheehan's running shoes had trodden upon it.
Dr. George A. Sheehan
1918 - 1989
Friday, June 17, 2011
The United States of Shame
One of the most profoundly-significant studies of the status of health care in America has just been released by the University of Washington's Institute for Health Care Metrics and Evaluation.
Researchers checked death records in each and every county in the United States, between the years 1987 and 2007. What they discovered was a stunning disparity between the lifespans of the wealthy and the poor, especially taking note that African-Americans live much shorter lives than whites.
A plain read of this report will shed no overt light on the matter of National Affordable Health Care for All Americans. But if you carefully read between the lines, its authors make a Screaming Case that those of us who can afford adequate health insurance are virtually certain to make it into our 80s.
Alas, those who don't have health coverage, or who have inadequate coverage, will be lucky if they make it into their early 70s.
In addition to the lifespan gap between blacks and whites, the report also notes that women, generally, will not live as long as men -- especially in the Deep South, Appalachia, and North Texas.
As I said earlier, the authors deftly ducked the ObamaCare Bullet. But as in the case of all quality research, as in the case of all quality applications of the law, their tacit case for comprehensive health care reform is built upon a fact-by-fact examination of all the evidence -- in this instance over-time and national in-scope.
For example, and by way of comparison, the authors assert that people in five rural Mississippi counties experience the shortest life spans: men (67 years) and women (74.5 years). The populations of these counties are overwhelmingly African-American and a vast majority of those who live there lack health insurance.
Meanwhile, the authors found that men and women who live in Montgomery, Maryland generally make it into their early 80s. The population of this Washington, DC suburb is predominantly African-American -- but there, most residents have great-paying jobs and benefits working for government (or jobs related to the government) and, therefore, they have adequate health insurance.
You may deduce whatever conclusion you want from the two examples that I've highlighted above after you've read the entire report, which I have re-printed below this missive.
It's pretty long but it's very interesting and it's substantive -- very, very substantive.
I'm saying it's all Economics -- it's the Haves vs.the Have-Nots.
To further reinforce my "take" on this matter, the authors found that women in Collier County, Florida generally live until they are 86 years old -- tops in the nation. Men fare OK there too: they make it to age 82.
Collier County is the home of Naples, Florida. Naples just happens to be one of the wealthiest -- if not the wealthiest-- towns in the USA and home to more retired and active billionaires and millionaires than any other place in America outside of Manhattan.
Naples Community Hospital owns an outstanding reputation, especially in the fields of health and care of the aging -- but it has a problem: the standard of living is so high in Naples, that not even doctors can afford to live there!
And, in case you're wondering, neither can African-Americans. Naples has the fewest number of Blacks, by percentrage of population, of all the cities and towns in Florida.
The real eye opener of this report: the states most dead-set against National Health Care Reform are home to the people who experience the shortest lifespans in America.
Another eye-opener: this profoundly important story has been ignored in the Mainstream Media.
In my own Quixotic Mission to rectify this revolting development, I herewith present the entire article.
The most current county-level analysis finds large disparities nationwide. Women fare worse than men, and people in Appalachia, the Deep South, and Northern Texas live the shortest lives.
June 15, 2011 - While people in Japan, Canada, and other nations are enjoying significant gains in life expectancy every year, most counties within the United States are falling behind, according to a new study by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington.
Researchers checked death records in each and every county in the United States, between the years 1987 and 2007. What they discovered was a stunning disparity between the lifespans of the wealthy and the poor, especially taking note that African-Americans live much shorter lives than whites.
A plain read of this report will shed no overt light on the matter of National Affordable Health Care for All Americans. But if you carefully read between the lines, its authors make a Screaming Case that those of us who can afford adequate health insurance are virtually certain to make it into our 80s.
Alas, those who don't have health coverage, or who have inadequate coverage, will be lucky if they make it into their early 70s.
In addition to the lifespan gap between blacks and whites, the report also notes that women, generally, will not live as long as men -- especially in the Deep South, Appalachia, and North Texas.
As I said earlier, the authors deftly ducked the ObamaCare Bullet. But as in the case of all quality research, as in the case of all quality applications of the law, their tacit case for comprehensive health care reform is built upon a fact-by-fact examination of all the evidence -- in this instance over-time and national in-scope.
For example, and by way of comparison, the authors assert that people in five rural Mississippi counties experience the shortest life spans: men (67 years) and women (74.5 years). The populations of these counties are overwhelmingly African-American and a vast majority of those who live there lack health insurance.
Meanwhile, the authors found that men and women who live in Montgomery, Maryland generally make it into their early 80s. The population of this Washington, DC suburb is predominantly African-American -- but there, most residents have great-paying jobs and benefits working for government (or jobs related to the government) and, therefore, they have adequate health insurance.
You may deduce whatever conclusion you want from the two examples that I've highlighted above after you've read the entire report, which I have re-printed below this missive.
It's pretty long but it's very interesting and it's substantive -- very, very substantive.
I'm saying it's all Economics -- it's the Haves vs.the Have-Nots.
To further reinforce my "take" on this matter, the authors found that women in Collier County, Florida generally live until they are 86 years old -- tops in the nation. Men fare OK there too: they make it to age 82.
Collier County is the home of Naples, Florida. Naples just happens to be one of the wealthiest -- if not the wealthiest-- towns in the USA and home to more retired and active billionaires and millionaires than any other place in America outside of Manhattan.
Naples Community Hospital owns an outstanding reputation, especially in the fields of health and care of the aging -- but it has a problem: the standard of living is so high in Naples, that not even doctors can afford to live there!
And, in case you're wondering, neither can African-Americans. Naples has the fewest number of Blacks, by percentrage of population, of all the cities and towns in Florida.
The real eye opener of this report: the states most dead-set against National Health Care Reform are home to the people who experience the shortest lifespans in America.
Another eye-opener: this profoundly important story has been ignored in the Mainstream Media.
In my own Quixotic Mission to rectify this revolting development, I herewith present the entire article.
*******
The most current county-level analysis finds large disparities nationwide. Women fare worse than men, and people in Appalachia, the Deep South, and Northern Texas live the shortest lives.
June 15, 2011 - While people in Japan, Canada, and other nations are enjoying significant gains in life expectancy every year, most counties within the United States are falling behind, according to a new study by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington.
IHME researchers, in collaboration with researchers at Imperial College London, found that between 2000 and 2007, more than 80% of counties fell in standing against the average of the 10 nations with the best life expectancies in the world, known as the international frontier.
“We are finally able to answer the question of how the US fares in comparison to its peers globally,” said Dr. Christopher Murray, IHME Director and one of the paper’s co-authors. “Despite the fact that the US spends more per capita than any other nation on health, eight out of every 10 counties are not keeping pace in terms of health outcomes. That’s a staggering statistic.”
The new study, Falling behind: life expectancy in US counties from 2000 to 2007 in an international context, was published June 15, 2011 in BioMed Central’s open-access journal Population Health Metrics. In conjunction with the study, IHME is releasing a complete time series for life expectancy from 1987 to 2007 for all counties, the most up-to-date analysis available.
When compared to the international frontier for life expectancy, US counties range from being 16 calendar years ahead to more than 50 behind for women. For men, the range is from 15 calendar years ahead to more than 50 calendar years behind. This means that some counties have a life expectancy today that nations with the best health outcomes had in 1957.
The researchers suggest that the relatively low life expectancies in the US cannot be explained by the size of the nation, racial diversity, or economics. Instead, the authors point to high rates of obesity, tobacco use, and other preventable risk factors for an early death as the leading drivers of the gap between the US and other nations.
Five counties in Mississippi have the lowest life expectancies for women, all below 74.5 years, putting them behind nations such as Honduras, El Salvador, and Peru. Four of those counties, along with Humphreys County, MS, have the lowest life expectancies for men, all below 67 years, meaning they are behind Brazil, Latvia, and the Philippines.
Women live the longest in Collier, FL, at 86 years on average, better than France, Switzerland, and Spain. Men live the longest in Fairfax County, VA, at 81.1 years, which is higher than life expectancies in Japan and Australia. Women are also living long lives in Teton, Wyoming; San Mateo and Marin, California; and Montgomery, Maryland. For men, long life spans also can be found in Marin, California; Montgomery, Maryland; Santa Clara, California; and Douglas, Colorado.
Nationwide, women fare more poorly than men. The researchers found that women in 1,373 counties – about 40% of US counties – fell more than five years behind the nations with the best life expectancies. Men in about half as many counties – 661 total – fell that far.
Black men and women have lower life expectancies than white men and women in all counties. Life expectancy for black women ranges from 69.6 to 82.6 years, and for black men, from 59.4 to 77.2 years. In both cases, no counties are ahead of the international frontier, and some are more than 50 years behind. The researchers were not able to analyze other race categories because of low population levels in many counties.
Change in life expectancy is so uneven that within some states there is now a decade difference between the counties with the longest lives and those with the shortest. States such as Arizona, Florida, Virginia, and Georgia have seen counties leap forward more than five years from 1987 to 2007 while nearby counties stagnate or even lose years of life expectancy. In Arizona, Yuma County’s average life expectancy for men increased 8.5 years, nearly twice the national average, while neighboring La Paz County lost a full year of life expectancy, the steepest drop nationwide. Nationally, life expectancy increased 4.3 years for men and 2.4 years for women between 1987 and 2007.
“By creating this time series, which has never been available at the county level, we hope states and counties will be able to take targeted action,” Dr. Sandeep Kulkarni, an IHME research fellow and the paper’s lead author, said. “Counties in one part of the state should not be benefiting from big increases in life expectancy while other counties are actually seeing life spans shrink.”
The authors propose that state and local policymakers use the life expectancy data and the county comparisons to tailor strategies that will fit the dynamics of their communities. This resonates with local policymakers, such as Dr. David Fleming, Director of Public Health - Seattle & King County.
“It’s not the health care system that’s having the biggest impact on health; it’s the community,” Dr. Fleming said. “The average person in the US spends one hour annually in a physician’s office unless they are really sick. So until we start moving our interventions out into the communities where people live, we are not going to get ahead of these problems.”
The Seattle & King County health department is collaborating with IHME on an ambitious analysis of health in King County, one of the largest studies of its kind. Called the Monitoring Disparities in Chronic Conditions (MDCC) Study, researchers are integrating data from emergency medical services, hospital discharge databases, pharmacy records, and other sources to identify the biggest health challenges in King County. They are surveying 9,000 people and taking blood samples to analyze for a range of risk factors and diseases.
“We are building the evidence for focused interventions that will make an impact locally,” said Dr. Ali Mokdad, Professor of Global Health at IHME, who is leading the MDCC Study. “If we as a society are going to fund programs to improve health, we must ensure that we are measuring the impact, because these life expectancy numbers show that what we have been doing up until now clearly is not working.”
The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) is an independent global research center at the University of Washington providing sound measurement of population health and the factors that determine health, as well as rigorous evaluation of health system and health program performance. The Institute’s goal is to improve population health by providing the best evidence possible to guide health policy – and by making that evidence easily accessible to decision-makers as they strategically fund, design, and implement programs to improve health outcomes worldwide. IHME was created in 2007 through funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the state of Washington.
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Tuesday, June 14, 2011
State of Existentialism
Sartre, Camus and Kafka were spot-on: to paraphrase and simplify their reasoning, we are constantly in a state of denial despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
What prompts this latest assessment in Great Thinking?
Here's a couple of good ones: there have been a few panther sightings down in Connecticut.
Several folks have reported panthers -- or if you prefer, mountain lions - transiting through the wilds of Greenwich, the bastion of the ultra-wealthy and home of Ivana Trump located about a nine-iron, geographically speaking, from New York City.
Panther sighting reports, primarily from the town's rocky and heavily-forested northern tier, started to trickle in over a week ago to the Greenwich Police Department.
"Whatever," said the cops in their Finest Fairfield County Cool -- that is until a fine, upstanding citizen (no doubt an executive with Goldman Sachs) told the PD that he had seen a panther cross over from property managed by the Audubon Society into the grounds of an exclusive All-Boys Prep School.
That did it!
This particular sighting inspired the Greenwich Police to "lock down" an entire neighborhood. The Town Fathers even got into the act and called in experts from the state Department of Environmental Protection to investigate matters.
Biologists in search of wandering mountain lions usually look for evidence such as paw prints, fur swatches, half-eaten carcasses, and spoor (otherwise known as "Panther "Poop") to determine whether or not these magnificent creatures are in the neighborhood.
During their first go-round, experts found nothing in the neighborhood by way of evidence.
By now, however, the Media was sniffing around for a story.
A PR type from the state DEP issued forth the following proclamation: any panther roaming around any part of Greenwich -- or for that matter, in any part of Connecticut, was an impossibility. Mountain lions have been extinct in the state for more than two centuries.
Besides which, Greenwich and the neighboring communities on either side of the CT/NY Border are heavily urbanized / suburbanized and it makes no sense for a large animal such as a panther, which prides itself in its solitary seclusion, to be wandering around in such places.
And so it came to pass that, less than 12 hours later, a member of the hoi polloi, while tooling along in the wee hours in an SUV at 60 mph along the Merritt Parkway 30 miles northeast of Greenwich, smacked into a mountain lion crossing the parkway.
The big cat, sadly and tragically, suffered fatal injury.
So the State Police awakened the same DEP team which investigated the Greenwich panther sitings. DEP experts drove to Milford to use their arts and skills over a quite Unique- for -Connecticut form of road kill.
The dearly-departed Cat weighed in at 145 pounds. It measured more than seven feet from whiskers to tail-tip. The experts noted the animal appeared to have been well-nourished and that its teeth -- particularly its fang-like incisors -- were in nearly perfect shape.
Best guess: the panther was a three-year old, an Unfortunate Tom when it met its demise.
I don't know whether or not the experts were finished with their first, or their second Cafe Mochas when it must have occurred to them that they had a problem on their hands, to wit:
If mountain lions are extinct in the Land of Steady Habits, where the Hell did this one come from?
They also were presented with a Riddle: the carcass they were just about to place into a Body Bag, and return to their lab for further research, was found a significant distance away from Greenwich.
Was it possible for this particular panther to have wandered about plus/minus 30 miles in 12 hours' time?
By the time the PR person hooked up with them, the DEP experts began to formulate a Theory: the animal had either (a) escaped from a Game Preserve; or (b) it had been abandoned by someone with a pastiche for Exotic Pets.
Then their lives became even more complicated: As the PR Type stood before TV cameras to advance these hypothesises, another panther sighting was being reported back in Greenwich!
Obviously, whoever alerted the Greenwich PD wasn't looking at the same cat!
Given all of the mounting evidence, the DEP clings to its Theories. Meanwhile, a new Wall emerged over on Facebook devoted to the "Connecticut Mountain Lion."
At last check-in, the Wall contained more than 1,600 posts about first-hand panther sighting from folks all over Connecticut -- and the Northeast, and as far away as Iowa and Michigan.
I have my own theories: (a) there are more White Tail Deer in Connecticut, the preferred "food" of the mountain lion, than Registered Voters; and (b) in the absence of predators (other than the "automobile"), panthers are working their way down the Adirondacks and the Berkshires, propagating and therefore re-establishing themselves in their natural, territorial habitats.
If this is the case, we should all rejoice!
The best news is that folks should have nothing to fear. A quick check on this matter shows that there have been no panther attacks on humans in many years. Those that have taken place occurred when humans startled the animals -- especially females with cubs.
We just aren't on their menu, what with the abundance of White Tail Deer throughout the entire Northeast.
Even if one is overly-nervous and will lose sleep that mountain lions will initiate attacks on household pets and livestock, rest assured experts will advise us how to manage these issues.
The re-emergence of the Eastern Mountain Lion, or Panther, or Catamount, or Puma -- take your pick and enjoy! -- into the environment should not be feared.
It should be celebrated.
So the questions become:
What can the states do?
Wildlife experts can -- with Gusto -- undertake a comprehensive study and begin to formulate necessary regulations to protect the Big Cats while they re-establish themselves in more rugged terrains.
To minimize car/mountain lion encounters, highway experts, working in conjunction with the game experts, can designate lower-speed, 40 mph corridors across their highways by posting "Caution-Panther Crossing" signs. Hey kids! How cool is that!
Furthermore, what can we do?
We can encourage aggressive research and development into creating panther habitats. These magnificent animals have been here for millenia -- we drove them to the point of extinction and now bear (no pun intended) a responsibility to help them recover within their natural and traditional habitat.
All humans need do is: stand back, give them space, and enjoy!
So, Connecticut et. al: what more evidence will you require?
Should a Mountain Lion jump into the passenger seat of a state DEP experts' car and order up a Triple Latte?
What prompts this latest assessment in Great Thinking?
Here's a couple of good ones: there have been a few panther sightings down in Connecticut.
Several folks have reported panthers -- or if you prefer, mountain lions - transiting through the wilds of Greenwich, the bastion of the ultra-wealthy and home of Ivana Trump located about a nine-iron, geographically speaking, from New York City.
Panther sighting reports, primarily from the town's rocky and heavily-forested northern tier, started to trickle in over a week ago to the Greenwich Police Department.
"Whatever," said the cops in their Finest Fairfield County Cool -- that is until a fine, upstanding citizen (no doubt an executive with Goldman Sachs) told the PD that he had seen a panther cross over from property managed by the Audubon Society into the grounds of an exclusive All-Boys Prep School.
That did it!
This particular sighting inspired the Greenwich Police to "lock down" an entire neighborhood. The Town Fathers even got into the act and called in experts from the state Department of Environmental Protection to investigate matters.
Biologists in search of wandering mountain lions usually look for evidence such as paw prints, fur swatches, half-eaten carcasses, and spoor (otherwise known as "Panther "Poop") to determine whether or not these magnificent creatures are in the neighborhood.
During their first go-round, experts found nothing in the neighborhood by way of evidence.
By now, however, the Media was sniffing around for a story.
A PR type from the state DEP issued forth the following proclamation: any panther roaming around any part of Greenwich -- or for that matter, in any part of Connecticut, was an impossibility. Mountain lions have been extinct in the state for more than two centuries.
Besides which, Greenwich and the neighboring communities on either side of the CT/NY Border are heavily urbanized / suburbanized and it makes no sense for a large animal such as a panther, which prides itself in its solitary seclusion, to be wandering around in such places.
And so it came to pass that, less than 12 hours later, a member of the hoi polloi, while tooling along in the wee hours in an SUV at 60 mph along the Merritt Parkway 30 miles northeast of Greenwich, smacked into a mountain lion crossing the parkway.
The big cat, sadly and tragically, suffered fatal injury.
So the State Police awakened the same DEP team which investigated the Greenwich panther sitings. DEP experts drove to Milford to use their arts and skills over a quite Unique- for -Connecticut form of road kill.
The dearly-departed Cat weighed in at 145 pounds. It measured more than seven feet from whiskers to tail-tip. The experts noted the animal appeared to have been well-nourished and that its teeth -- particularly its fang-like incisors -- were in nearly perfect shape.
Best guess: the panther was a three-year old, an Unfortunate Tom when it met its demise.
I don't know whether or not the experts were finished with their first, or their second Cafe Mochas when it must have occurred to them that they had a problem on their hands, to wit:
If mountain lions are extinct in the Land of Steady Habits, where the Hell did this one come from?
They also were presented with a Riddle: the carcass they were just about to place into a Body Bag, and return to their lab for further research, was found a significant distance away from Greenwich.
Was it possible for this particular panther to have wandered about plus/minus 30 miles in 12 hours' time?
By the time the PR person hooked up with them, the DEP experts began to formulate a Theory: the animal had either (a) escaped from a Game Preserve; or (b) it had been abandoned by someone with a pastiche for Exotic Pets.
Then their lives became even more complicated: As the PR Type stood before TV cameras to advance these hypothesises, another panther sighting was being reported back in Greenwich!
Obviously, whoever alerted the Greenwich PD wasn't looking at the same cat!
Given all of the mounting evidence, the DEP clings to its Theories. Meanwhile, a new Wall emerged over on Facebook devoted to the "Connecticut Mountain Lion."
At last check-in, the Wall contained more than 1,600 posts about first-hand panther sighting from folks all over Connecticut -- and the Northeast, and as far away as Iowa and Michigan.
I have my own theories: (a) there are more White Tail Deer in Connecticut, the preferred "food" of the mountain lion, than Registered Voters; and (b) in the absence of predators (other than the "automobile"), panthers are working their way down the Adirondacks and the Berkshires, propagating and therefore re-establishing themselves in their natural, territorial habitats.
If this is the case, we should all rejoice!
The best news is that folks should have nothing to fear. A quick check on this matter shows that there have been no panther attacks on humans in many years. Those that have taken place occurred when humans startled the animals -- especially females with cubs.
We just aren't on their menu, what with the abundance of White Tail Deer throughout the entire Northeast.
Even if one is overly-nervous and will lose sleep that mountain lions will initiate attacks on household pets and livestock, rest assured experts will advise us how to manage these issues.
The re-emergence of the Eastern Mountain Lion, or Panther, or Catamount, or Puma -- take your pick and enjoy! -- into the environment should not be feared.
It should be celebrated.
So the questions become:
What can the states do?
Wildlife experts can -- with Gusto -- undertake a comprehensive study and begin to formulate necessary regulations to protect the Big Cats while they re-establish themselves in more rugged terrains.
To minimize car/mountain lion encounters, highway experts, working in conjunction with the game experts, can designate lower-speed, 40 mph corridors across their highways by posting "Caution-Panther Crossing" signs. Hey kids! How cool is that!
Furthermore, what can we do?
We can encourage aggressive research and development into creating panther habitats. These magnificent animals have been here for millenia -- we drove them to the point of extinction and now bear (no pun intended) a responsibility to help them recover within their natural and traditional habitat.
All humans need do is: stand back, give them space, and enjoy!
So, Connecticut et. al: what more evidence will you require?
Should a Mountain Lion jump into the passenger seat of a state DEP experts' car and order up a Triple Latte?
Monday, June 13, 2011
Zen & The Art of Paint-Scraping
Vermont winters take their toll.
The microfilm coat of paint designed to protect my wooden deck from the ravages of ice and snow has given up the ghost.
Like the pathologist who examines the cause of illness, I couldn't help but notice all the paint blisters. Without any form of intervention, the prognosis for the wood laying beneath this sickly coat of paint would be grim, indeed.
And so it happened that I headed off in the direction of the local hardware store to purchase a scraper, paint remover for those invariable persnickety spots, sandpaper, and some wood sealant.
I shall contemplate about two dozen swatches before I make any decisions regarding the re-coloring question, however. If I can rejuvenate the wood, perhaps a nice clear stain will serve best.
I'm motivated to undertake this scrape/paint project due to the fact I'm currently between treatments for non-hotchkins lymphoma: to put it another way, I'm caught between Doctor Mike in Florida and Doctor Liz in New Hampshire.
For about two years running, down in the state we like to call "The Reddest Of The Red," Mike hammered away at my lymphoma with a substance called Rituxan -- which is synthesized Rat Spleen (I am not making that up) plus a few other chemical "cocktails" that were designed to put the disease into remission.
I have my fingers, eyes, knees, elbows and other parts of my Anatomy crossed -- hoping this has worked.
Problem is, the chemotherapy has crashed my body's ability to manufacture platelets, white blood cells, and a host of other stuff which circulates through the veins -- like the stuff which protects the rest of us from minor infections and your garden-variety viruses that can, like, trigger, like, the Common Cold.
(Pardon the Valley Girl Lapse ...and please understand that I am living on Rebel Mountain now.)
Dr. Mike, as we like to say, "Ran The Table" with me. He was (and is) at his wit's end regarding the Blood Count matter.
Which brings this tale to the doorstep of Dr. Liz, one of the World's Leading Experts in Hemotology and Oncology, whose practice is located right across the Connecticut River from Vermont, the state we like to call "The Bluest Of The Blue."
She has agreed to take me on as a new patient.
Dr. Liz practices out of Dartmouth - Hitchcock Medical Center and she is respected, world-wide, for her abilities and skills in reversing issues such as mine.
I have this recurring fantasy: Liz will hang me upside-down like a bat, drain out all of my blood and lymph fluid, reload my veins and arteries and lymph nodes with Rebel Mountain Spring Water, slap me on the Butt, and profess: You're Good To Go!
If that happens, and if that works, I'm going to open a Shrine that will be the envy of Lourdes.
But I hear the Rationalist that dwells within me scream: Liz' protocols will be quite a bit different than my fantasy. And as The Boss once sang: "That's All Right By Me."
As was the case in my relationship with Dr. Mike, I have implicit faith in her wisened judgment and in her vast medical skill. In fact, although we have yet to meet, I like her already.
Dig it: I called her office the other day regarding an insurance matter (the subject of which shall constitute a lengthy, future blog: believe me!) and she answered her own phone by saying: "Hello!"
You see, at times, she takes her own phone calls! Has that ever happened to you when you called your doctor? I don't think so...
Anyway, and until I have my face-time with Dr. Liz, I shall continue to scrape and sand the deck, in preparation for a new coat of either stain or paint. I have the strength and stamina to get this done: the firewood chores can wait for a few more weeks.
And so, as the wood grain reveals itself upon the stripped decking and railposts, I shall enjoy hearing the upland woodland birds sing in the forest, accompanied by the sound of fresh rainwater running through boulders down the hill, in Corporation Brook.
This is just about all I care to do, for the time being.
The microfilm coat of paint designed to protect my wooden deck from the ravages of ice and snow has given up the ghost.
Like the pathologist who examines the cause of illness, I couldn't help but notice all the paint blisters. Without any form of intervention, the prognosis for the wood laying beneath this sickly coat of paint would be grim, indeed.
And so it happened that I headed off in the direction of the local hardware store to purchase a scraper, paint remover for those invariable persnickety spots, sandpaper, and some wood sealant.
I shall contemplate about two dozen swatches before I make any decisions regarding the re-coloring question, however. If I can rejuvenate the wood, perhaps a nice clear stain will serve best.
I'm motivated to undertake this scrape/paint project due to the fact I'm currently between treatments for non-hotchkins lymphoma: to put it another way, I'm caught between Doctor Mike in Florida and Doctor Liz in New Hampshire.
For about two years running, down in the state we like to call "The Reddest Of The Red," Mike hammered away at my lymphoma with a substance called Rituxan -- which is synthesized Rat Spleen (I am not making that up) plus a few other chemical "cocktails" that were designed to put the disease into remission.
I have my fingers, eyes, knees, elbows and other parts of my Anatomy crossed -- hoping this has worked.
Problem is, the chemotherapy has crashed my body's ability to manufacture platelets, white blood cells, and a host of other stuff which circulates through the veins -- like the stuff which protects the rest of us from minor infections and your garden-variety viruses that can, like, trigger, like, the Common Cold.
(Pardon the Valley Girl Lapse ...and please understand that I am living on Rebel Mountain now.)
Dr. Mike, as we like to say, "Ran The Table" with me. He was (and is) at his wit's end regarding the Blood Count matter.
Which brings this tale to the doorstep of Dr. Liz, one of the World's Leading Experts in Hemotology and Oncology, whose practice is located right across the Connecticut River from Vermont, the state we like to call "The Bluest Of The Blue."
She has agreed to take me on as a new patient.
Dr. Liz practices out of Dartmouth - Hitchcock Medical Center and she is respected, world-wide, for her abilities and skills in reversing issues such as mine.
I have this recurring fantasy: Liz will hang me upside-down like a bat, drain out all of my blood and lymph fluid, reload my veins and arteries and lymph nodes with Rebel Mountain Spring Water, slap me on the Butt, and profess: You're Good To Go!
If that happens, and if that works, I'm going to open a Shrine that will be the envy of Lourdes.
But I hear the Rationalist that dwells within me scream: Liz' protocols will be quite a bit different than my fantasy. And as The Boss once sang: "That's All Right By Me."
As was the case in my relationship with Dr. Mike, I have implicit faith in her wisened judgment and in her vast medical skill. In fact, although we have yet to meet, I like her already.
Dig it: I called her office the other day regarding an insurance matter (the subject of which shall constitute a lengthy, future blog: believe me!) and she answered her own phone by saying: "Hello!"
You see, at times, she takes her own phone calls! Has that ever happened to you when you called your doctor? I don't think so...
Anyway, and until I have my face-time with Dr. Liz, I shall continue to scrape and sand the deck, in preparation for a new coat of either stain or paint. I have the strength and stamina to get this done: the firewood chores can wait for a few more weeks.
And so, as the wood grain reveals itself upon the stripped decking and railposts, I shall enjoy hearing the upland woodland birds sing in the forest, accompanied by the sound of fresh rainwater running through boulders down the hill, in Corporation Brook.
This is just about all I care to do, for the time being.
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Jack Kevorkian -- In Retrospect
"The individual is not accountable to society for his actions in so far as these concern the interests of no person but himself." John Stuart Mill.
This much-cited and oft-studied quote, from one of the truly Great Thinkers, was the furthest thing on my mind when I heard about Dr. Jack Kevorkian's passing during a recent NPR news summary.
I was tooling northward, somewhere along I-95 in the never-ending bowels of South Carolina, when news of his demise broke.
My initial reaction was rather simplistic: the Mass Media is going to have a Field Day with this story.
After all, Jack Kevorkian was tailor-made for large-print headlines. He came across as a buffoon, the personification of Icabod Crane, wearing his wrinkled suit and gravy-stained, thin tie.
He was also controversial in the extreme -- so controversial that his life and times were a daily flag in the Associated Press' Daily News Digest in the late 1970s.
60-Minutes stalked him for exclusives. The New York Times tagged him for their Top-Ten Interview List.
Whenever and wherever Kevorkian turned up, the press followed him -- on motorcycles rigged with sidecars.
Everyone knew Kevorkian by his nickname: Doctor Death. If Jack was in-town, someone locally was going to punch the Big Check-Out Button.
Kevorkian even went so far as to invent a Rube Goldberg-type apparatus designed to facilitate one's own demise.
Kevorkian even went so far as to invent a Rube Goldberg-type apparatus designed to facilitate one's own demise.
This eccentric iconoclast, who defied Statutory Law, Judeo-Christian Ethics, and -- ultimately -- the Conventional Covenants of his day, became headline news because he dared to preach one profoundly existential message:
If and when one suffers from a terminal, pain-wracking illness, one should have the sole and exclusive option to decide whether to take one's own life.
Kevorkian called it "Physician's Assisted Suicide" -- a label that rankled 99.995% of the medical profession.
I can hear the AMA membership even now: "After all, Jack, did you forget that we doctors have invested years of our collective brilliance and learning into ways by which we can cure diseases and restore the ill to health? Aren't we all colleagues in the Noblest Profession Known to Mankind?"
Thus, Kevorkian -- by virtue of his advocacy of the ultimate extistential freedom -- became the American Medical Association's worst Pariah, and Public Relations Nightmare.
We tend to overlook one very important fact -- one even which the mainstream Media chose to ignore: Jack Kevorkian was a pathologist by training. By the nature of who they are and what they do, pathologists dwell in the professional examination of fatality.
They are trained to identify diseased cells within the body. When their expertise is required, they can determine what causes death.
A typical work day for your average pathologist involves studying biopsies under the a microscope, to see whether or not they can find cancer cells within human tissue. Pathologists also study cadavers, organ by sliced organ, to ascertain the exact cause of death.
The nature of their work compels pathologists to labor in the deep recesses of the health care industry -- in hospital labs and morgues. They are very well-compensated for the important work they perform -- but you'll never find them listed in the Yellow Pages.
While his AMA colleagues plied their skills on behalf of the living, Kevorkian dwelled among the recently-dead. I can only imagine what went through his mind while he performed autopsies and encountered massive, cancer tumors engulfing nerve tissue.
He undoubted developed a few opinions about the agony and pain suffered by the Recently-Departed.
Keep in-mind that Kevorkian made Big News more than 30 years ago. Back in those days, and concurrent with Kevorkian's surge in the headlines, virtually every medical school trained its students in the maxim that pain, in and of itself, was a necessary and important component part of the healing process.
But a back-channel issue was embodied in this question: what can medicine do for that classification of patients who suffer through the final, debilitating, painful, and humiliating stages of terminal illness?
At least Jack Kevorkian had an answer -- but in the opinion of his professional colleagues, and most of America, it wasn't a very good one for its times.
Then, like magic, something happened: The Kevorkian Media Circus ultimately cast a spotlight on the issue.
Medical schools -- and the profession in-general -- began an intensive examiniation regarding the best methods of pain management.
End-of-life matters became a part of the curriculum and the AMA's DNA.
Medical schools -- and the profession in-general -- began an intensive examiniation regarding the best methods of pain management.
End-of-life matters became a part of the curriculum and the AMA's DNA.
Kevorkian's noteriety also triggered a national legislative debate concerning a terminal patient's "Right To Die," or if you prefer a cleaner term: "Death With Dignity."
Legislators started to tackle new laws regarding Living Wills, advance directives, health surrogates, do-not-resusitate orders, and a host of other legally-binding avenues one can execute in one's dealings with end-of-life matters.
Legislators started to tackle new laws regarding Living Wills, advance directives, health surrogates, do-not-resusitate orders, and a host of other legally-binding avenues one can execute in one's dealings with end-of-life matters.
Today, pain management is a crucial component of cancer treatment, to cite just one disease. Many of our finest medical schools have set up an entire curriculum devoted to the topic.
And if the pain becomes untreatable, and by definition unbearable, one can decide to end life -- ironically, if two or more physicians (depending upon the state) concur that one is beyond hope.
The penultimate irony of this tale?
Jack Kevorkian sat in prison while most of these matters became law.
The ultimate irony?
Jack Kevorkian died of "natural causes" at the age of 83.
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FOOTNOTE to SD #1. My apologies to Red Skelton...