Notes from the Cafe Fiasco

Spriggs' Weekly - Week 8, Feb 2019

February

Not a good month for the aged, or so it seems. News from two friends about losing parents over the past week. And remembrances of losing my father during February years ago.

As I get older (not that I am actually “old” at this point) it seems that one of the toughest things to deal with is the decline and loss of parents (biological and adopted).  Having been adopted by multiple families as I grew up, I’ve gone through this loss more than once and it’s never easy.

There’s always the regrets about the things that you meant to say, the wounds that you always meant to try to heal, the appreciation that was never fully expressed. I’ve been lucky. Most of this business has been taken care of in my life.  But even then, there’s always the small things that you could have done or said that come to you at odd times during the day or night.

 If one needed evidence that life is imperfect, these facts would be a prime candidate. For most of us, it seems that we can never adequately express the gratitude for what our parents tried to do for us, even if they failed in the attempt. And then the opportunity to do so is gone much too soon.

February is a hard time in New England.  If you are still lucky enough to have them, give mom or dad a call. The month is a very short one.

Kraftwerk

Looks like Bob got caught in the place where Global Human Trafficking and the National Security State come together.  Not a good place.  At least we won’t have to endure the moralizing about the “Patriot Way” for a good while.

GND and $

The largest objections to the Green New Deal (GND) that I’ve heard is that 1) It will cost too much, and 2) It’s unrealistic.

1)  In terms of costs, what our wonderful conservative pundits don’t take into account is the amount that we will have to spend if we do nothing. The California wildfires alone will cost $3 billion dollars to clean up and insurance claims are expected to top $12 billion. Hurricane Florence in North Carolina will cost over $1 billion. And that’s just the beginning of what is going to happen when we lose Miami.

So is the Green New Deal going to cost money? You bet it will. Will it cost more in treasure and lives than the total cost of most of the seacoast cities being partially under water? Probably not.

2)  In terms of it being “realistic,” the Deniers clearly don’t have a clear concept of goals versus policy implementation. The GND is about deciding where we want to go, not specifically how we’re going to get there. That’s for later. Kennedy gave us the goal to go to the moon, then NASA figured out how to get there.

Of course, the Deniers don’t want us to go anywhere that’s not a Disney version of the 1950’s that they’ve peddled to the American public. They can’t (won’t) see that they can’t actually stop time and reverse it, and climate change is coming no matter how much they want to stick their heads in the sand.

Spriggs' Weekly - Week 7, Feb 2019

How Far?

One of the questions that has come to my mind over the past two years is “how far will Trump go?” It was pretty clear from the beginning that he would do things to break Presidential norms that no one previously would even approach or even think of, some of them very petty (reversing anything that Obama did that he could get his hands on regardless of whether it was good policy to reverse these initiatives or not) and some could be very damaging to people (putting children in cages). But this week we actually saw how far he would go to impose his will on the country - he’s willing to attempt to subvert the Constitution in order not to look bad to the Radical Right Wing of the Republican Party which he identifies as “his base.”

Article 1 of the document that he solemnly committed “ to preserve, protect, and defend” states that Congress, and only Congress has the power of the purse. I quote;  “The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States.”

And I thought that putting kids in cages to make a political point was as low as he would go.  Wrong again. He’s willing to break the Constitution, so that his pet project will “go faster.” Whata guy.

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GM - Mark of Excellence

Could it be that the collapsing GM has finally gotten the idea that the headquarters that they were going to build in the Boston Seaport could be under water in about 20 years?

Nah.  It’s about the money.

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Bohemian Rhapsody

Saw the Freddie Mercury bio-pic this weekend.  Quite good.  But my favorite Queen song is still this:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uVb7Ju8VQk&index=2&list=RDtgbNymZ7vqY

Spriggs’ Weekly - Week 6, February 2019

Moniker

Howard Schultz doesn’t seem to like being called a “Billionaire”  even though he is.  He wants to be called “Someone of Means.”

I suggest that he should be called “Someone of Enhanced Finances.” Spin is everything.

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Band

Name for a Band:  No Cash Option

The band would either not ever do any Johnny Cash or Roseanne Cash music.  Or it would only do Johnny Cash and/or Roseanne Cash music with no option to do anything else.

Thanks to the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority for the inspiration.

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Grammies

Who are all these people?  What is their projected half-life?

 

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Spriggs’ Weekly - Week 5, January 2019

Troika

I’m not much of a collector (except for books, but they just seem to be attracted to me, not really collected) but, as I’ve gotten older, I seem to be collecting medical specialists. Where just a few years ago I had just a Primary Care Doc (who changed with such a regularity that it meant that sometimes I didn’t actually get to see them) but now in recent years I find that I have now collected a Urologist, a Radiation Oncologist (on permanent retirement, we hope), a new Primary Care doctor, a relatively new Dentist, an Orthopedic Surgeon, a Cardiologist, an Endocrinologist, a Neurologist, and several Physical Therapists. 

Last week was a veritable bumper crop of medicine, even for me.

Wednesday - Neurologist Dr. Kaplan:  For the past couple of months, I’ve had a slight tic in my lower lip when I meditate. This a new wrinkle and only happens very infrequently.  I mentioned it to my meditation teacher and she said to mention it to my primary care physician.  I did this and she gave me a cursory exam and then sent me to a full-blown neurologist when she couldn’t find anything wrong. He then gave me the once over last week (pull my hand, push your leg against my hand, can you hear this?…). I then explained that I pretty much just considered this fallout from the unconscious from the meditation and I wasn’t worried about it. He got a funny look on his face and I got the feeling that Dr. Kaplan doesn’t work with too many experienced meditators and my clinical evaluation freaked him out a little. I keep forgetting that neurologists are not psychologists. Anyway, he determined that I don’t have any other symptoms of Parkinson’s so I’m pretty much “normal” and I shouldn’t worry about this thing unless it gets bad. Which is good, though I don’t know exactly how I feel about being “normal.”

Thursday - Dentist Millen:  My teeth have been threatening to fall out of my mouth for decades now. English/Scottish teeth mean bad genes in the gene lottery. The strategy for the past 40 years through three dentists (I keep being passed down) has been “defense” — better known as keeping the teeth in my head for as long as possible. The latest chapter in this strategy was refilling a tooth that already had been filled years ago (patching the patch) before things get so bad with it that we’re talking replacement of this part of my mouth. My dentist’s last words:  “Things are fragile, don’t bite down hard.” Given the on-going state of my teeth, I haven’t done this in years, but it does make one wonder what I should be using these teeth for if I can’t bite down.

Friday - Cardiologist Shrivastava:  I have high blood pressure as the result of a situation where the left ventricle of my heart works harder than it should. The result is a physical beefing up of this portion of my heart muscle and it is less flexible than it should be (my heart is partially muscle bound - the only part of my body that it like this, as far as I can determine). Where the last time that I saw Dr. S, he was painting doom scenarios of a pacemaker in my future, this time he was all optimistic about my ability to lose the 20 pounds of fat that need to go for me to have a more healthy heart. This seems to be the result that of the fact that he has now realized that I used to weigh 15 pounds more than I do now when he first saw me. This makes me wonder how much of the diagnosis biz here in the medical gray zone that I inhabit has to do with how the doctor feels from day to day.

Despite all this “care” that I receive, I feel relatively good. You would think that I would be ready to be cast in the Walking Dead given all the medical resources that I consume. But this just seems to be the new “normal” as I head into my 70’s (should I make it). If anything is going to kill me, it’s probably the co-pays.