Category: Burningbird

Categories
Just Shelley

In France Now

I drove over to see my Dad in the hospital yesterday. When I entered the room he looked at me without recognition for a moment, before going “Michelle? What are you doing over here?”

Though the trip is four hours each way, that’s not outside of reason for visiting one’s father. I said, “I though I would drive over and see how you’re doing, Dad.”

“You can’t drive to France”, he answered.

My Dad can become disoriented in the hospital, or whenever he’s very stressed. When this happens he reverts back to two significant events in his life: the first was when he was in the 82nd Airborne during WWII, and he was in France; the second was when he worked for the CIA in Vietnam. Obviously it was going to be a French moment in the hospital during this trip.

He was still receiving units of whole blood when I was there, which surprised me so long after the operation. When I held his hand, I noticed how white it was, and how he had no strength in the grip. Later a nurse came with a shot of insulin as his blood sugar levels were off, and that seemed to help him focus. And he got his favorite meal yesterday – meatloaf and mashed potatoes and gravy. Especially the mashed potatoes and gravy. My Dad loves mashed potatoes and gravy.

Two young ladies from Dad’s assisted living home came out that afternoon to say hi and bring a get well card signed by Dad’s dinner table companions. Dad didn’t recognize them at first, but they were pretty young things and it brought out the Irish charm and blue-eyed twinkle. When he said things that confused them, I quietly mentioned that Dad becomes disoriented in hospitals, but not to worry overmuch.

While they were there, the hospital dietician came up to see what Dad liked for his meals. He mentioned mashed potatoes and gravy. I mentioned applesauce, and Dad’s eyes lit up – he also loves applesauce. And oatmeal and orange juice, and the dietician mentioned he would have a nice breakfast the next morning to look forward to.

I had lunch with my brother as we talked about the decisions that need to be made. The options are that Dad could go into a nursing home for the next month or so to begin recuperation, or return to his apartment, but we’d have to hire special help. Medicare would cover the one but not the other. Dad’s savings are rapidly disappearing but even with the special care he’ll need, he has enough for at least a year and we decided we’d give him a good year. At his apartment, he’ll recover more quickly surrounded by the familiar. And he’ll be happier.

Back at the hospital, I noticed with approval that they had put surgery socks on Dad, and that he was receiving type A blood, donated by a voluteer – thank you whoever you are. Dad’s chart was marked with the letters of “DNR” or Do Not Resuscitate, which means if his heart failed or he stopped breathing the hospital was not to use extraordinary means to revive him. This is a long standing item we have had on request, and the hospital knows this, as does the paramedics who have been out to my brother’s house, and even know where the secret key is stashed so they could let themselves in.

Dad is the one who said to me a few years back that he’d lived too long, and you can see it in his body, as he slowly dies by inches. But he just won’t let go of that spark of life.

Categories
Just Shelley

Stubborn old farts run in my family

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

My Dad is a remarkably stubborn old fart. His surgery yesterday was I guess rather harrowing for all involved, but as my brother said, my Dad came out looking better than the surgical team who had to fight to keep Dad alive. Dad always did like to make trouble for the doctors.

Mike said he doesn’t look bad today all things considered. He now has a one foot long metal rod in his leg to provide stability. It’s a good thing he can’t fly anyway, because wouldn’t he set off the alarms now. Frankly, though, if he were questioned for being a possible terrorist, I think he’d be rather flattered about the whole thing. At his age and all.

He’s still in intensive care until tomorrow, as I guess the danger time for surgeries, especially for older people, is 1 1/2 to 2 days.

My roommate will be home today, and I’m heading over tomorrow to see Dad, have lunch with my brother.

I sometimes forget, sitting in the isolation of my room or out on my solitary hikes, that I have connections with people: family and friends. Tenuous threads that have a habit of getting caught up on life now and again, providing a good, swift yank as you march blithely along.

Categories
Writing

Do not lose your desire to walk

On the bathroom wall at Shaw Nature Reserve, I saw a sign with these words:

“Above all, do not lose your desire to walk: every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness; I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it. . .but by sitting still, and the more one sits still, the closer one comes to feeling ill. . . Thus if one just keeps on walking, everything will be alright.”

Søren Kierkegaard, letter to Jette (1847)

One forgets at times how insightful Kierkegaard was, until reading the above. Or the following:

The essence of pleasure does not lie in the thing enjoyed, but in the accompanying consciousness. If I had a humble spirit in my service, who, when I asked for a glass of water, brought me the world’s costliest wines blended in a chalice, I should dismiss him, in order to teach him that pleasure consists not in what I enjoy, but in having my own way.

Or my favorite:

People hardly ever make use of the freedom which they have, for example, freedom of thought; instead they demand freedom of speech as compensation.

“His earliest published essay, for example, was a polemic against women’s liberation.” (Quote from this site.)

Well, even great thinkers screw up from time to time.

Yours in freedom.

Categories
Writing

Truth and authority

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Joi Ito points to an article by a reporter talking about the untrustworthy nature of Wikipedia. It would seem that a school librarian wrote to this reporter saying, that Wikipedia is …not an authoritative source. The librarian, Susan Stagnitta then continues:

“Anyone can change the content of an article in the Wikipedia, and there is no editorial review of the content. I use this Web site as a learning experience for my students. Many of them have used it in the past for research and were very surprised when we investigated the authority of the site.”

Phil Ringnalda also wrote on this (a post that did not show up in Bloglines–is it real, then?), and I gather that Morbus Iff has been mixing it up with the reporter, a gentleman by the name of Al Fasoldt.

(I liked Morbus’ question at the end: “Tell me dear readers, is Morbus Iff anonymous?” We could extend this already complex topic to include the concept of authenticity, as well as authority and truth, but my head would implode messily from the effort.)

What makes this even more interesting is that it would seem Fasoldt wrote the article warning of the dangers of Wikipedia under his name, Fasoldt, but wrote in support of the wiki, previously, under a pseudonym, Dr. Gizmo:

In a column published a few weeks ago by my companion Dr. Gizmo, readers were urged to go to the Wikipedia Web site at www.wikipedia. org/wiki/Main Page , an online encyclopedia, for more information on computer history. The doctor and I had figured Wikipedia was a good independent source.

Leaving aside the ramifications of refuting one’s own story, and doing so in the third person, the topic of trust, truth, and authority is a compelling one.

For instance, I do find the Wikipedia to be a good resource. Do I trust the information written there? Let’s say that I trust it to be ‘a’ good source of information, but not the only one. It makes a good start when one is investigating a topic because the material at the wiki usually contains new perspectives, new avenues to explore on a specific topic. So yes, I do trust it to be a good resource…just not the only one.

A case in point of what the wiki can provide can be found in the recent discussions on the Japanese Internment camps. The Wikipedia entry on this topic provides facts that can be verified, such as the name of the camps, bills passed, and major participants in the internment process; or photos taken during this time, such those from this collection of photos of Manzanar by Ansel Adams.

(Though I personally found Adams formal style and obsession with creating ‘beautiful works’ resulted in photos that border on characterization at times.)

The site also reflects opinions, including those categorized as ‘dissenting’, mixed in with the facts. It is the opinion that usually reflects the changes the most, and I imagine it is this that caused much of the consternation with the librarian. But it is this that makes the Wikipedia just such a valuable resource.

The material in the articles can be fascinating, but no more so than that found behind the scenes. You only have to look at thediscussion or view the change log associated with the article to not only see how the topic has evolved, but the justifications for evolving the topic given by those who have made edits. You can learn as much for the reasons changes were made as you can by the changes themselves.

As for the more traditional works on the Japanese Internment, people have discarded the more researched and scholarly writings as the work of fusty out of touch historians with only a partial understanding of what was really happening. Even when a the work was considered ‘authoritative’, and annotated with thousands of pages of documents and the testimony of many who participated in the camps, the work is rejected.

The reason, according to those with more modern views, is though the authors could be considered ‘authorities’ on the topic, they don’t have the ‘truth’ because the truth, in this instance, is held by those who have new, and fresh insight into the existing material–they have reached an epiphany the others, weighed down by the mass of research material and outdated ideas, can’t hope to achieve.

According to these blessed with such insight, they have truth without authority, while the historians have authority, but can’t possibly understand the truth. Who you trust then, depends less on authority or even truth than it does on who you want to believe–literally whose interpretation rings your bell the most.

So much for authority and truth.

That poor librarian’s students would have a difficult time with this topic, as they discover that finding a source that can be trusted isn’t a simple matter of finding an authority who has the truth’; but they couldn’tcould do worse than to start at the Wikipedia, which at least promises to be interesting, if neither truthful nor authoritative.

Categories
Burningbird

About this entry

I added an entry to the top of the sidebar for my individual entry pages that lists information about the post, including: author, date and time of post creation, categories, a link to syndicate the comments for that post, post comment status, and other information.

I didn’t like the PREV_POST and NEXT_POST line at the top of the page. No reason why, just personal preference. But once I moved the entry navigation over to the sidebar, I started thinking of other bits of information that would go nicely with the individual post navigation links.

To populate this information, I’m using several WordPress functions that normally only work in what is known at The Loop — the opening and closing code to process the post(s) for a specific query. However, you don’t have to use these functions within The Loop as the data is global to the page — the last data set should persist throughout the rest of the page. Once you’ve processed the post in a page, the data should be available from that point.

Since I process my posts before my sidebar contents in my layout, to make the page more accessible to those using speech browsers, the data last set is still available to my sidebar. It’s just a matter of adding the function calls. Now, I can print out any type of information about the post in the side without having to re-create The Loop.

Of course, the results won’t be effective in pages that process several posts, but works nicely with individual pages.