Monthly Archives: August 2009

the right tool

I did it again. I went over to the care center to help with BINGO.

I have fun, actually, and people who have disabilities benefit from the efforts of all of us volunteers who come over to hear, see, or place markers for them. Most of the people there are friends by now anyway, so I benefit from the social interaction. I mean, I can’t watch Japanese kitty videos all day, now, can I?!

Umm. Well, I could, but love of the people, my mother and father’s generation, keeps bringing me back!

Doris gave me a beautiful coffee mug with flowers- I love flowers!- and a little message for me: “A Friend is a person with whom you can be yourself.” Doris is in a wheelchair so hugs and kisses are a bit harder to give, but I said, “Doris, Thank you very much! The least I can do is give you a kiss.” Which I did!

The gift of the cup is only part of what I gain from volunteering. Just as the title hints, the rest of this story is the insight I gained about the application of Henry Ford’s principle of the right tool.

I jabber, and jabber, and jabber in the video (sorry!) yet the importance of having and using the right tool comes out.

Henry Ford’s observation was that “If you need a tool and don’t buy it, you pay for it anyway.”

From a practical standpoint, it may not seem that that principle means much in a non-industrial context.

Yet think about it. The story of the foam bats (in the video) illustrates the principle very well. Without the foam bats (the right tool), the people most in need of exercise are unable to hit the balloon. Consequently, they lose more and more flexibility and range of motion. They pay for the lack of the right tool.

With the right tool, they are able to participate more in the business of batting the balloon around the circle, they gain range of motion and flexibility, they have fun because they are actually playing with those of us who are in better shape, and the whole circle gains by seeing these improvements in their friends.

All because they have the right tool!

Ted

Americans with chronic illness know that the first concern of hospitals is less for you than “Do you have insurance?”

Doctors, nurses, food service, maintenace staff: All great in every hospital I’ve been in (five hospitals total).

In nearly every hospital I’ve been in, in every hospitalization, there is a moment when someone from the billing department asks you: “How do you plan to pay for this, do you have insurance?

Usually the question comes while you, bound to a gurney, are gasping for air or bleeding all over the floor.

I don’t exaggerate that much.

I learned fast, though, that you have to be aggressive with the money people. They, more significantly the system that created them and the focus on payment over patient, is what’s broke with the American health care system.

The system is broke.

August 27, 2009, a decades long champion of national health care died.

His public life, his true legacy, is that he stood up for the people least able to stand up for themselves. To people like me, with chronic illness, there is hope that the Obama administration, without him on the President’s side, will be able to create a humane and just health care act that works.

The politics of it are above me. I was touched by his death. I feel the loss.

If you feel the loss, too, please meditate, prayerfully, while listening to the video above.

Soli Deo gloria!

Ted Kennedy, Requiescat In Pace.

    • taste

    I love Baroque, Classical, and Early Romantic music. They are a major part of my CD depository. (It’s huge! To call it a collection is insufficient to describe the size and scope of this thing, this passion, these racks and stacks that dominate the decor of my home!)

    I spend a large amount of time on YouTube searching out music of the kind I like, reasonably enough.

    Recently, I listened to this video posted on the “thebarroque channel”, brilliantly sung by Roberta Invernizzi, an aria from Franz Joseph Haydn’s opera “Il ritorno di Tobia“.


    My initial reaction was enthusiatic, though a bit brutal. (I am “phainopepla95” as “weggieboy” was claimed before me for purposes of YouTubing. See “wedgie boy vs. weggieboy”, posted 07/29/09, below.)

    phainopepla95 (2 weeks ago)
    a bit screechy on high notes, but otherwise good!

    thebarroque (2 weeks ago)
    :O!!! No insults for Roberta Invernizzi in my channel!!!! :@

    phainopepla95 (2 weeks ago)
    sorry- perhaps it was my speakers…. (:{

    Wow! I did check out my speakers, but I didn’t find anything remarkable or in need of repair.

    The exchange between “thebarroque” and “phainopepla95” stuck in my mind, like a piece of glass embedded in my skin, but just beyond the reach of tweezers: to get the glass out, you’re going to have to dig, it’s going to hurt, and you will bleed!

    Did Roberta Invernizzi actually screech on the high notes? What sense did the comment make when I gave the video five out of five stars? Was the reaction from “thebarroque” just some crazy hyper-fan’s response (been there, done that!), or had I committed an injustice to Roberta Invernizzi?


    (Here’s a short video showing Roberta Invernizzi singing from A. Scarlatti’s oratorio “La Santissima Trinita”)

    I had to find the video again and give it a proper re-listen. After two hours or more of music videos that day, aural fatigue might have set in….

    I know you! After all of those Japanese cat videos, the horrid business about wedgies and weggies, now you want to hear me scream in pain while I dig out the sliver of glass. More importantly, you want to see me bleed!Bloody damn hell! You betcha!

    So here goes:

    Dear “thebarroque”,

    Today I listened once again to Roberta Invernizzi sing “Anna, m’ascolta!” Not only did I make an unforgiveable mistake when I suggested she “screeched” on the high notes, I upset you. I’ve come to respect the quality of your channel, and your effort producing videos that are a step above the others for the virtuosity of the selected singers and the works they sing. I’m sorry I trivialized that effort, too!

    I apologise, profoundly, deeply for my hasty remark about this brilliant singer, and note that not only have I removed the unjust remark, I’ve added one that more honorably characterizes her skill, and, perhaps better reflects my taste.

    In harmony,
    phainopepla95 aka weggieboy

    p.s. So much did I enjoy Roberta Invernizzi’s singing, I posted this video on my blog to expose another audience to the joys of a truly brilliant singer!

    Taste comes in many shades between good and bad. Two weeks ago, I erred on the side of “bad”.

    things are looking up…

    I don’t know. After yesterday’s post, I felt a need to create something fun.

    There are several places one can get t-shirt designs printed up. I created this t-shirt as a variation of a weggieboy’s blog postage stamp, a mousepad, and the heading of this blog. I guess the design makes it my official weggieboy’s blog t-shirt.

    If it brings people to this blog, great! The statistics indicate people actually do come to it, and I hope they are entertained, amused, informed, and find it worth their time.

    The symptoms I was concerned about seem to be clearing up, but caution is my word. Once a weggieboy, always a weggieboy.

    “new normal”

    FACT: I’ve been in remission since April-May 2005.

    Life can take on teeth: I’ve had a few symptoms the past few days. They bear watching. This is the world of the weggie. “Symptoms” may suggest Wegener’s granulomatosis, but it mimics many other diseases, making it a difficult disease to diagnose or live with.

    A symptom can result from nothing more than over-doing a turn in the garden; many ordinary, non-threatening things such as colds or flu; or a full-blown Wegener’s granulomatosis flare.

    I’m hesitant to mention specifics, as if that can put the “hoodoo” on me, assuring a flare.

    (I found this on “Stumble”. I don’t know who to attribute it to other than “Russelljo”. The little guy starts down the hill on his own. This is how I feel today!)

    http://studenthome.nku.edu/~russelljo/flash/dudefalling.swf

    Yes, if symptoms persist, I will make an appointment with my pulmonologist to review symptoms, to give blood and urine samples for analyses, to establish which direction my immune system is headed.

    If it a flare, there’s the “Duo from Hell”, Cytoxan and Prednisone: there may be less toxic therapies available now, but they still seem to be the old reliable combo, the one recommended by most rheumatologists.

    Yet, I’ve had these symptoms before, and they turned out to be a false alarm. I’m counting on that again.

    In the end, hope and faith are what every weggie needs. That and an understanding that there will always be a “new normal” down the road, where you take pause, assess what body parts are still attached (just joking, sorta), and come to grips with what the next medical plateau in your life will be.

    I love history!

    I am a history buff. I am a life member of the Nebraska State Historical Society. I like to read everything I can about how things were, why people took certain paths in reaction to (always “in reaction to” it seems) events that were as ordinary as a pope authorizing indulgences, for example.

    As a Presbyterian, I recognize sale of indulgences as one of Martin Luther’s issues with the Roman Catholic Church of his time, and understand that “Protestant” comes from one who protests those issues and attempts to reform (“Reformation”- there we are again!) the only church in town. I don’t intend this blog as a platform to proselytize, so I’ll stop there.

    The Norman invasion of England in 1066, where Norman influences on language, for just one aspect of change, reshaped the language you and I speak and write today. Normans wrote the history of the Battle of Hastings, as is the prerogative of the winner of any battle or war.

    Try to read a paragraph written in French. Unless you studied it in school, you may be surprised that many words look oddly familiar. The Battle of Hastings affects our lives over 940 years later! Amazing! The Battle of Hastings is another historical event you can study your whole life, gathering degrees left and right, and still never exhaust the topic! 

    The Battle of Midway in World War II was pivotal. Up to this battle, America didn’t look like it was on the winning side.  Luck- American!- won the battle, even though the it started out disastrously for the United States, with heavy loss of men and fighting capacity. In this video, you hear a curious fact: the Japanese painted the decks of its carriers yellow, and painted the Rising Sun on the deckside of the elevators that took planes below deck, making their carriers perfect targets for American planes coming in to bomb them!

    Those of us who weren’t alive during World War II often don’t realize that Germany had a long-range bomber capable of bombing New York, but Hitler decided against its use. The German atomic bomb efforts are a bit more familiar, but the Nazis had a jet in 1939 that wasn’t produced because Herman Goering, a World War I ace no less, apparently didn’t see the strategic value of the technology until too late in the war.

    Big events and small decisions won a war in which 50 million people lost their lives. Big events and small decisions determined everything from the language we speak to our form of government. 

    History is familiar, it is yesterday’s news cleaned up. Sometimes it presents a particular point of view. Sometimes it presents a point of view you like- or not! Sometimes you don’t recognize it as history because it goes against everything you learned in school. That’s what reading about familiar historical events through the point of view of the other guy can do. The video above tells of an American loss in the War of 1812, through a Canadian history familiar to all Canadians, but totally alien to Americans.

    I like the 20/20 hindsight of historians, who re-evaluate events, try to understand how ordinary and extraordinary people worked through the large and small crises of their lives.

    War has to be worse that even the worst natural disaster because other people- probably just as nice as you under the right circumstances- want to destroy you and your family, your way of life, your home, and anything else that stands between them and you. Compare war with natural disasters. One often displays the worst of human nature. The other often brings out the best of human nature. Yet each changes us in its own way. That’s where history becomes important and interesting. History’s where we learn not only who we are but why we are what we are.

    Whew!