I Hate Civil Wars!!

I hate civil wars. They are so messy and chaotic and nobody ever follows the rules.

It’s like..if company comes..in the form of some foreign aggressor or some foreign country that just happens to be irritating, people pull out the rule book and at least pretend to abide by a few rules like..not to shoot babies until they learn to crawl and not to burn down old peoples’ homes until you wake them up and unhook their oxygen and that sort of stuff.

But civil wars are all in the family. And you know we’re never polite to our families!

I remember our first civil war..well not actually, as I am not reeaaly that old, but I’ve read about it. Most people call it the Revolutionary War but if ever a war was misnamed that one was. It was Civil War sure enough.

Brother against brother, father against son and wife’s family against husband..well you get my drift. Not much different from a lot of Thanksgiving celebrations except a lot of stuff got burned up ..or down..and a lot of people got crippled up or killed off. After the dust settled, the losers, them being the “Tories” who couldn’t quit thinking of themselves as Englishmen, were set on the road A.S.A.P. or sooner! They either shipped quick as scat back to England or tramped off to Canada.

Their “holdings”, which meant their homes, land, and anything but the clothes on their backs lose enough to stick in a tow sack, were confiscated by the winners.

The reason this ever came to my attention was because almost all of my ancestors were there at the time. Several Lewis’s, a Lamb, several McDonalds and a few Allens lived to draw government money or get free land in Kentucky.

The Lewis’s for the most part, having at the time been here for a more than a hundred years already, had enough smart to pick the winning side right off the bat. I don’t know of any specific Tory Lamb’s or Allens but I know for sure the McDonalds tried to hedge their bets by some going one way and some another.

It’s just a trick of fateful geneology that I wound up here in the U.S. and not freezing my bum off in Ontario or some other Canadian city. Not to say I’m not freezing my bum off here in North Missouri, but I have hopes that the weather will turn by April whereas Toronto and Ontario and those other places stay cold a lot longer.

That in itself would set me to hollering “Give me Liberty or Give Me Death” up and down the road.

Congratulations to All Independents!!

It seems the Independents are now in the drivers seat when it comes to directing our government. Good luck to them.

To me Independents are really not for much of anything..neither fish nor fowl; flying or swimming, as the case may be, with whatever wind or tide that passes their door on any given day.

It's hard to have a high regard for them. In conversation I have found them to pour out the latest radio talk show format and opinion or that of their favorite TV Evangelist or whatever the neighbor told them or whatever their particular industry house organ published that week. Often with radio listeners it is really funny to listen to because their indignation..and there is always a LOT of indignation..rises at the precise point of the subject that was voiced in the latest radio thingy.

It's like they wake up every four years or so and say "I'm agin it!!". How can we ever get anywhere this way?

Health Care

On a health care cost comparison per person annually of six of the developed nations, Canada at $3,895, France at $3601, Germany at $3,588, Switzerland at $4,417, United Kingdom at $2,992 and the United States at $7,290, our cost is about twice or more that of the four of the five countries and more than half again as much as The United Kingdom, even though their systems cover ALL their people.

And it might come as a surprise to you to know that the people of Canada, France, The United Kingdom and Switzerland like their health care better than we like ours.

A survey by The Deloitte Center for Health Solutions of 14,000 people in these six countries records our percent of satisfaction as fifth. Only the Germans had more negative experiences than we did.

I imagine you are absolutely and totally convinced that our health care service is superior to those of other countries. Well the figures for infant mortality and longevity, the two primary indicators of a nations health, just don’t support that. According to the CIA World Fact Book the U.S. is 48th in longevity. That means there are 48 countries where people live longer lives. There are 21 countries that have fewer infant deaths per thousand than we do. That means that more of our babies die.

However, if you are thrilled and happy with the current health care you receive and don’t want to see it changed you are surely blessed by the God’s and I salute you!

If you are already on a government health care program such as Medicare, Medicaid, VA or as a Government Employee you are risk free!! Why worry about all those pesky other people even if some of them ARE your grandchildren and great-grandchildren? Only you can answer that.

If your health care is not guaranteed by any of the above programs your satisfaction indicates that you are supremely confident that you will never lose your job and therefore your healthcare, that your spouse or any child of yours will never develop an expensive-to-treat condition and be expunged from your policy, that your health will never falter or you will never be left permanently altered by an accident, causing your policy to be canceled or at the very least, turn you into the proverbial pauper when you reach the “maximum” of your coverage.

You are confident that if any of these situations occur, usually in your thirty’s, forties or fifties, you can as easily get additional coverage as you did fifteen years ago when you were younger and less encumbered with a medical record, a spouse with a medical record and children with a medical record. You have no doubt that employment will be renewed elsewhere. Oh that it were so!

Employers seeking new employees have this ghastly little habit of seeking the most profitable employee and medical backgrounds are crucial to the cost of any given employee. And they can and do check!!

Your satisfaction also indicates that you are absolutely and positively certain that your marriage, and the insurance benefits attached, will never end. Ooookaaaay!

Health care reform is going to cost a bundle. Nobody ever mentions how much NO health care reform is going to cost. I am happy that you are not particularly disturbed by projections of your premiums expanding another 150% this next ten years as they have the past ten.

Those committed to destroying this administrations efforts on any subject with any objective have really done a number on any hope we have for health care reform. Now it looks like we may not achieve any bill at all.

We will live to regret this. Well, not all of us. According to several studies, most recently the 2009 Harvard Medical School study, 45,000 uninsured or under-insured people will die this year for lack of medical attention.

Too bad about them I guess.

Professional Knitting for the Advanced Knitter

I have taken up knitting! And I am really, really good at it! I just finished a pair of mittens for Ainsley, my 16-month-old granddaughter. They became hers when I realized that I didn't yet grasp the "thumb" segment of the instructions. Babies don't need thumbs on their mittens do they? I now have three mittens. The first one came out great with only a few lumpy spots. The second one looked better..almost professional if I do say so, but it was somewhat smaller than the first one. Well actually quite a bit smaller. I tried stretching and pulling on the smaller one and scrunching up the bigger one but in no time they were back to "too big" and "too little".

So I made a third mitten thinking that whichever one it matched most closely would become its partner and I would have a pair. Well that worked out pretty well so now I am in the process of trying to make the fourth to match the one that has no partner.

Yes, I can see the possibility of a problem here so you don't have to point it out to me. It's possible that this can go on forever without attaining the miraculous even number of relatively similar sized mittens. But surely the odds of that happening are no more than fifty-fifty! And fifty-fifty is good when your dealing in mitten pairs isn't it?

A Few Last Winters

A Few Last Winters

This winter weather has really been hard for livestock and wildlife in our part of the world. I guess almost every place in the country is in the same boat..or on the same ice floe.

I think my old Maggie has just about given up. Her frolic efforts are pretty feeble and send her into coughing fits. She no longer goes to the smoke house. I don't know why. Evidently it is colder there than out in what bitter, thin sunlight she can find. She was trembling so bad at feeding time this morning she could hardly walk. I think last night was about the end of her and tonight will be twice as bad with 19 below being called for in our part of the county.

This last series of storms is the first that she hasn't met with the joie de vivre of a happy fool, warmed by her great heart and insulated with two-inch underwear of fleece and an overcoat of heavy hair. But no amount of hay or windbreak cuts this kind of cold from 18-year-old dog bones after ten days of subzero to ten degree temperatures.

I couldn't stand it anymore so, even knowing that she may die sooner than later, I brought her in this morning for the duration.

She hates it inside and it took some coaxing to get her into the back entry way but there she is. She drank a good quart of hot milk replacer and after the shaking stopped she ate well. She does not like to be in and I imagine as soon as she warms up she will fight to get back out. But she WILL stay in tonight and as long as she will stay for that matter.

She has outlasted so many winters ...

The Christmas Grinch

The Christmas Grinch

My day job is selling smokes. Not just any smokes like your Grampa used to dreamily inhale at the end of a hard day but about 25 different brands in six or seven different forms. Premiums like the old standbys; Camel, Kool, Marlboro, Winston etc. and “discounted” brands with cute names like GPC, Ace, Doral and so forth. Every brand has Full Flavor, Light, Ultra Light, Menthol, Menthol Light, Menthol Ultra Light and each of these comes in King Size or “100” except in the case of Camels who are “99s” for who knows what reason and Marlboro, who really likes to mix it up with Marlboro “27s” and Marlboro “72”s. I don’t know why so don’t ask. We also have the old “non-filtered’ for the really tenacious old timers. Evidently it is a lot more costly to NOT put a filter on them as they are a lot more expensive.

All this tends to cause me to spend a good part of my working day looking blank, which seems to fit my personality these days.

We can no longer, according to the recent tobacco laws, sell the delicious peach, blackberry, cherry and grape flavored cigarettes so now we just put them in new packages and call them cigars. The recent tobacco laws also caused a tremendous hike in the prices we get for our smokes. The new taxes were significant and of course there is the tobacco companies’ own little fee for “pain and suffering” endured from the inconvenience of having to change the packages.

This increase does not seem to have cut down on the traffic at our store much, thank heaven, as I really need and appreciate my job. We have, however, lost most of the customers who paid for their smokes from worn zip-lock sandwich bags each week but seem to have retained the higher class of our clientele. The Christmas Grinch falls into that category I guess. He doesn’t pay for his cigs from a zip-lock bag and he smokes premiums.

Even so he took the time to complain about how he hated the Christmas season and how sick and tired he was of Christmas music and how he didn’t think it was right that he, an older man, (well he was a LOT older but I didn’t bring this to his attention) should have to run from store to store and buy stuff for grown people. I didn’t think he was the type to be “running from store to store to buy” anything as he always takes all the pennies out of the penny tray when he pays for his smokes but I didn’t mention that either. I told him he sounded like the true, number one, original Christmas Grinch and jollied him around a little bit and he left smiling so maybe he was just blowing smoke anyway. I like to think so.

I thought of the people I don’t see anymore, the zip-lock sandwich bag ones, and wondered how many stores they were running to to “buy stuff”. And I wondered how their Christmas season was going. I hope they are warm. I hope they have a Christmas dinner. I hope they do not feel ashamed for not being up to the fight this old world requires. I hope their zip-lock bags are never empty.

November Ends on a High

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Well, I forgot the two best things happen in November.

#1: My daughter was born on a slick and icy North Missouri November night and she was, and is, so beautiful. Of course she only did it once but we still get to remember it every year.

And #2: Thanksgiving. I have to admit Thanksgiving is a real plus. This year had little girls around and that was fun. The baby, who now walks, shows a regrettable tendency to have inherited her grandmother's disposition but definitely her mother's charm and her father's strength and determination. She will either become an accomplished interior re-decorator or the world's most efficient female Commando. The next few years should be interesting.

My thoughts go to those who could not, for one reason or another, share Turkey Day and giving thanks with those they care about. Another day..another time..to end all separations.

Give Thanks for each other, present and absent.