That Only a Mother . . .

In the past year or two, the Zits comics in the Sunday paper have begun to make sense in a frightening sort of way; as if the authors actually have a video of what goes on in our house.

I am sure it has something to do with Prefrontal Cortex . . .
. . .But there is something strange about my 15 year old boy and his friends:
They are like baby bears or bulls in a china shop.
They have a restless, uncoordinated energy.
They run into the chairs as if the dining room was very small instead of large as it is.
They have a permanent shadow above their upper lips, that makes the mother in me want to get them to wash their faces.
Whatever they touch seems to get dirty or broken, or both.
Their conversational skills often devolve to monosyllables spoken in deepening voices.
They want to sleep 'til noon, and they literally grow overnight.
They are at that stage that only a mother could love. And that's a stretch sometimes.

And they have put on what I call the Queen Night at the Opera attitude: "Nothing really matters . . ."

Until something does.

And then my 15 year gets into the car after school and says, "Mom, you'll never guess what we learned in Humanities today." Ah. I've got my Boychick back from wherever the alien teenager stored him.

This spring, the Boychick seems to have gotten it that we are not taking him to Machon to torture him. He comes home to tell us about what it would be like to celebrate Shabbat like the orthodox do. Or that he learned about empathy in his Leadership class because the teacher taped two fingers together on the strumming hand and he had to try to play that way . . .

Now that he's gotten over imitating what he thinks is 'cool', he is actually permitting himself to get excited about what he's learning.
And it's all very experiential.

And the sea change in attitude started with that strumming I mentioned.

This spring, when we arranged his schedule according to his Aspie needs, the Boychick insisted on keeping a Guitar and Music Theory class on his schedule. I thought: "Why not? It's something physical. And his grandmother was a concert violinist, after all. Maybe this will turn into something good for him."

And so it has.
He practices every spare moment.
Hours of video games have been replaced with hours of strumming.
He is learning to read music.
He is working to earn the use of my Guild.

Another passion has been unveiled.
Now, with some more motherly work and worry, perhaps his several passions will build together into something good for his future.


This is the faith that only a mother can summon up, when the Boychick looks like this at 11:00 AM on a Sunday morning.

Yikes! I am glad you can't see the rest of his room in the picture.

Of Comments, Congress and Tea Parties

Although I moderate comments, I generally post most of them unless they are spam or unless the commenter continues to refuse to read plain English. This latter characteristic is the one that caused me to decide to moderate my comments in the first place. I wrote some blog entries last spring (Don't Call It Science, The Annointed and the Benighted, All Those Wasted Years, Feeding the Trolls) that received comments from several people who 1) refused to comprehend what I wrote and 2) continued to make assertions based on what they wanted to think I wrote. It was all quite entertaining for a few go-rounds, but quickly became wearisome to the point of . . . well, moderation.

Sometimes, a commenter has something to say that I believe warrants a more thoughtful discussion, and sometimes one will say something that needs a wider refutation. And sometimes, I just want to be snarky.

The other day, in the middle of my mourning for Zoey (she was such a good dog), I got a comment that fulfills (at least) the last two aforementioned criteria. It was in response to this post about the disgraceful machinations used to pass the so-called stimulus bill. Anonymous wrote:

'If you guys knew anything about politics you would know that the bill was read by congress and many committees, and the presidents administration was present when the bill was made."

First, the snark. Notice how this person did not want to put his name or link on the comment? It's a sort of drive-by insult, as evidenced by the the snotty "if you guys knew anything about politics . . ." Of course we have no way of knowing whether or not Anonymous knows anything about politics, but we do know that he knows nothing about the limitations on human reading speed.

FYI, the upper reading speed limit in humans is approximately 900 words per minute. Speeds higher than that would require super-human eye-tracking speeds. Then there are limitations on comprehension speed that are set by the speed at which electrical signals travel along axons, and are transduced into chemical signals at the synapses. All of these things take time. Although in the normal course of events, these processes are speedy enough that we do not even notice them, microseconds and milliseconds do add up over the course of a long document.

And then there's the attention factor. According to Levin's Law, the ability to pay attention to a text is directly proportional to the number of words in plain English and inversely proportional to the number of terms presented in legalese. This text was therefore likely to be in the red zone for sleep-inducing boredom.

Anonymous has clearly not done his homework about the neuropsychology of reading. Nor has he taken into account the fact that the attention factor was enhanced by the time of day (after midnight) that the Congress was supposed to read the final form of the bill.

The fact is that no person was likely to be able to read the final form of the bill, including wording changes hand-written in the margins, between the time it was accessible and the time Nancy Pelosi's plane for Rome took off that evening. And that is assuming that the person is simply decoding English and Legalese (these are two different languages); real comprehension--which includes establishing an internal dialogue with the text--of a bill this fat would have taken days.

So Anonymous, you should do your homework. It is likely that those "many committees" contributed more words and more pork to an already wordy bill. But I doubt that they read the whole and complete bill. Of course, this begs the question: Can a committee read? Especially one made up of pols? If Chicago pols can't walk and chew gum at the same time, and since at least one member of Congress is a Chicago pol, as are several members of the Executive Branch (including POTUS), one could convincingly argue that such committees do not have the physical coordination necessary to read.

That the presidents administration (sic) was present when the bill was written is also likely an unfounded assertion. Perhaps certain members of the adminstration were present during the writing of certain portions of the bill, but again, a bill this fat is likely an unredacted hodge-podge from different authors. The time factor alone would be good evidence that this is the likely case.

So much for Anonymous' argument.

Going beyond the argument, however, I can't help but wonder about Anonymous' purpose in making this comment. If he knows more about politics than we "guys" do, then why would he defend such a shoddy and ineffective process? Why would he want Congress to pass bills that are so large that they cannot even be read before a vote, let alone actually (gasp!) debated?

From my perspective, the machinations of the party-in-power were made precisely to prevent anyone from knowing what was in the bill and to prevent any reasonable debate.

By way of contrast, let us consider The Declaration of Independence. When placed in a word program with 12 point font, it covers ~3.25 pages; it is comprised of 1,328 words, including the title, but excluding signatures. It took the Continental Congress from June 28th to July 4, 1776 to discuss and debate the document and to make text revisions. (Although Congress declared American independence on July 2, 1776, as the British fleet under Admiral Howe was sailing into New York Harbor, it did not adopt the Declaration of Independence until July 4). The discussion and debate was substantive and dealt with important implications of what was stated in the document. The debate was heated and partisan (the southern colonies actually walked out at one point), and no attempt was made to stifle opposition. This is a real-world example of how Congress ought to proceed in doing the work of our Republic.

However, this Congress did no such thing. This bill was nearly a thousand pages long, and was seven inches thick. No one person or even one committee could have possibly known all that was in the Bill. When the final form came before the house, they were given 90 minutes for debate on it. The opposition, though not stifled, was accused of being partisan (as if this were a bad thing) when some members protested about the way in which the bill was brought to the floor, and the lack of time for substantive debate. This is a real-world example of how not to do the work of our Republic.

I do not know if Anonymous is trying to make my protest into a partisan issue, however, I am not a member of either major party. I made the same kinds of arguments against the Patriot Act as I have against this bill. Although I do not like the provisions in either of these two bills, my protest is directed against the way that Congress works. No bill needs to be that long. And no bill should be passed without substantive debate.

The hurry to get the bill passed was irresponsible, even if the bill itself had been about "stimulating the economy." This phrase begs another question: Can government stimulate an economy? When considered empirically, by testing what happens to the stock market whenever an administration official makes an economic pronouncement, it is likely that the answer is yes. The government can stimulate the economy by keeping the pie-hole shut. What we need is "mouth shut" economics. Hmmm. How does one say that in French?

But this bill was not really about stimulating the economy. It was about spending money the government doesn't have on the agendas of politicians at the taxpayer's expense. And that is why it was passed in the way it was. Why debate the issues and possibly lose, when you can just hide them in an emergency spending bill? That this is taxation without effective representation doesn't appear to bother the pols of either party.

Which is why we need a party of our own. America's Tea Party.

Welcoming Shayna

Shayna Sunshine

Maybe it's too soon. At least, it is according to all of the experts.

New dogs come into your life in the most interesting way.

Zoey, my first dog with my kids, came via a neighbor girl who was visiting a Pet Adoption event to get a cat the day that someone abandoned Zoey there. The girl came home with a dog rather than a cat, but her family already had five dogs, so they gave her 24 hours to find a home. We we walking in Sneed Park in Rio Rancho, talking about getting a dog; the girl was walking Zoey in the park and came up and said, "Do you want this dog?"

Lily came because someone had Pet Harbor send me her Shelter listing. I got the listing every day for two weeks, before I decided that it must be fate, and went down to see her. I took the family (big mistake) and came home with the adoption papers but sans dog. She needed to be spayed, and it was Easter weekend, something that I had completely missed. I was cognizant of the fact that it was March Madness, though. The kids say she's a Lily because of the white lily on the back of her neck. I think the Lilies in all the stores were subliminally in their minds!

Shayna came as a Pet Harbor picture e-mailed to me by a friend who thought she looked like a dog for us. She was listed as a Dalmation mix, but it looks to me like she has more Lab than Dalmation in her.

On Friday afternoon, I went down the ABQ Eastside Shelter to see her. I went through the buildings looking for her, and saw any number of really nice dogs, and I thought that maybe she had been adopted. And that this was probably good. It had only been a few days, after all. But before I left, I stopped at the desk and asked about her number. No one had assigned her a name. It turned out that she had been sequestered, so a staff member met me and took me to see her. She is very quiet and very shy. She is also beautiful. I was not sure about her temperment, so I called the Chem Geek Princess and asked her to stop by and see her that evening after work. The CGP is nothing if not forthright:

"Okay, I will, but Mom, you know what the experts say. It's only been since Tuesday and now you want a dog that looks like Zoey. I think it's too soon."

As I was waiting to drop the Boychick off for a Scout camping weekend, the CGP called again. She couldn't find the dog. I talked her through to the place, and she was able to see her. "Oh, Mom, she's beautiful. And she's different than Zoey. She seems pretty shy, though."

In our pre-Shabbat bath, though, the EG expressed interest in seeing her, and then yesterday morning, the CGP called to arrange to go with us. When we first saw her that morning, she seemed to recognize the CGP and I, but she was really shy about getting close to the gate. Then a Vet Tech came up and said, "Sorry, but you guys can't be in here."

I mentioned that the dog was released to be adopted on 2/16, and she said (actually, the area was loud with barking dogs, so this was a shouted conversation), "This dog is being treated and will not be released for three days. Why don't you go to the front desk?" I apologized for being in a restricted area and we followed her advice.

At the front desk, they said that the dog was finishing up meds for kennel cough and was released for adoption. The helpful clerk called back to the veterinary office to find out for us what was going on. We were invited to visit with the dog at the Vet center, and we were able to take her outside and walk her in that area, closely supervised by a volunteer. The Engineering Geek walked her, and she kept stopping and hugging his leg, nervous at the wide openess of being outside. The EG said, "Honey, I think she is scared of her own shadow." But at the end of the walk, she was on heel, and refused to leave the EG's side. For his part, the EG was already calling her "Sunshine."

Back in the Vet Center, we had a serious conversation about whether we should take this girl home. Dr. K., the Vet on duty explained that kennel cough is like a cold for dogs, and that in the outside world, it is seldom treated. "It will run its course in 7-10 days whether we treat it or not," she said. "But shelter dogs are so stressed, and come to us traumatized, malnourished and sometimes abused, so we treat it. It is contagious to other dogs, and there is a small chance that your dog at home will get it."

The Engineering Geek asked if we could pick her up after the three day hold.

The Vet explained that it was not a three day hold, just that they had decided to continue her meds for three more days, and keep her sequestered. However, she said, "We only have 10 open kennels right now, and very few spaces in isolation, so we cannot hold and treat her if you adopt her today."

The EG was undecided, although he clearly thought we should have this dog. But he also did not want to put Lily at risk. I broke the stalemate by suggesting that we call our vet in Tijeras about it. I explained the situation to the receptionist there, and she talked to the vet. "Dr. C. says that you should not worry," she told me. "Lily is strong and healthy, and the chances are very small that she will get ill because the new dog has already been on meds for seven days. And if she does, it is like a cold in humans. We can easily treat it, but it will run its course with no problems." I, in turn, relayed the information to the EG and CGP, and then we were on our way back up to the front.

"Let's go get the shayna maidleh ( Yiddish: beautiful girl)," said the EG. We had previously talked about names. The CGP was partial to Bellah, and the EG had been calling her Sunshine. I was not particularly partial to either.

"That's her name," I replied. "She's a Shayna, a Shayna Sunshine."

And that's how Shayna joined our pack.

It's probably too early.

But she's here now. The experts will just have to deal with it.

And you, gentle reader, must deal with one more post about dogs!

Mourning and Thanksgiving

I want to begin my thanking all of you who sent condolences for our family's loss.
They are more comforting and helpful than you may realize, and I am grateful to all of you!

Zoey died peacefully on my lap under the cottonwood trees in the garden of the animal hospital in Tijeras. Her pain is ended, and we knew when her body relaxed that we had done the right thing.

On Monday, she had a difficult day and that evening, I had to hand feed her and force the pain meds on her. Tuesday morning, I called the vet and made the appointment for that afternoon. The Boychick stayed home from school and the Chem Geek Princess came up mid-morning to spend time with Zoey. When the Engineering Geek came home at noon, we took her for the longest walk she'd had in the month. She perked up out in the meadow, sniffing at the rodent holes, and lifting her nose to the breeze. Then she rested on the front porch, where the Engineering Geek fed her a whole Hershey Milk Chocolate Bar.

You see, Zoey loved chocolate. And after we were married in 2002, she once stole a very large Hershey Bar from the dresser. Bruce discovered it, called the vet, and spent several worried hours with her. She did not get sick. Her liver function was fine until the day she died. But we learned to keep chocolate away from our girl. So Tuesday, during the last hour of her life, she got a whole chocolate bar to herself. And I must say, it was the only thing she had shown interest in eating in a long time.

The trip to the vet was unreal, short as it was. When we walked in the door, I broke down, and the EG had to handle the paperwork and arrangements. He was the one who asked if we could take Zoey outside to the garden, where she would not be nervous about any medical procedures. She died with all of us around her, talking to her, telling her what a good life we'd had with her and what a good dog she was.
When it was all over, and she lay still on my lap, I felt a great sense of peace about it all. We had done what we could for her medically, but it was clearly time for her to go the Happy Hunting Grounds. Zoey, I hope there are rabbits there that can be caught, just for you!

In the past few days, our house has felt very empty. Zoey was a big, big presence. Bigger than we had realized while she was with us. Poor Lily wakes up each morning, and goes looking for her, and she waits by the door, puzzled at night. But she is gradually taking her place as the dog in the family.

On Wednesday, I cried as I washed out Zoey's food container, picked up her dishes, and her placemat. I put out food for the birds, so that they could carry the message of Zoey's death into the forest and the sky.

But we do a lot of smiling through our tears, as we remember Zoey and count the blessings of her life with us. She was a confident dog, a princess and a queen. She loved chocolate and standing out in the driveway, just out of reach, looking for all the world as if she were saying, "No, I don't want to come closer just now, but you are allowed to come pet me." She raised our two cats, and she taught Lily how to be a dog in a human world. She loved us, plain and simple, and greeted us with a happy dance every time we came in the door. She followed me around the house, and I am told that when I left, she'd stand at the window looking sad for a while. She was always at the window again, upon my return.

So we are sad, we feel the empty spaces in our hearts, and yet we are thankful for the true love and loyalty that Zoey gave us, every day that she lived with us. Zoey came to us by serendipity, under cottonwood trees in a park in January 2000, on a warm, sunny winter's day. And she left us in a garden under the cottonwood trees, on a warm, sunny winter's day. And every day of her life with us, she taught us to rise in the morning asking the Eternal to make us the people that she, our dog, thought we were.

Now, she is gone, but her legacy lives, and already friends are looking for another dog, one that needs a home, one that could benefit from what Zoey taught us about the bonds between a dog and her humans.

When Winter Comes Without a Spring . . .

NEARLY WORDLESS WEDNESDAY

Zoey

Winter 1997 - Winter 2009

"I sit beside the fire and think

of how the world will be,

when winter comes without a spring

that I shall ever see. . ."

--J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

A Few Good Days: A Zoey Update

Since Wednesday, Zoey has had a few good days.
On Thursday morning, I took Lily to the local vet for her shots, and when I came home, Zoey actually got up and hobbled out to greet us.
She not only ate the treat the vet sent home for her, but then proceeded to wolf down a half-can of chicken chunks in broth, courtesy of Nutro.

On Friday, just before Shabbat, the Vetinary Surgeon from the emergency hospital called to discuss the reports from the CT scan by the radiologist and that of the pathologist on the biopsy. The radiologist report stated that they did not think the cancer was actually in the ribs, but certainly went between them, and that the tumor is very big, meaning that although surgery can be attempted, the surgeon is unlikely to resect the whole tumor and that clean 3 centimeter margins are not possible. In fact, it is possible that the in an attempt to get as much as possible, the chest cavity would be breached, requiring more days in hospital and a chest tube and increased risk of infection.

The pathologist report agreed with the best hypothesis of the on-site oncologist: this is most likely hemangiosarcoma, less likely a soft-tissue sarcoma (it is not acting like one) and least likely an atypical bone cancer. The prognosis with surgery and chemotherapy (since they would be unable to get clean margins), is an average survival time of six months to a year, and in Zoey's case the smaller number is the more likely because of it being a Stage 3 (very malignant and fast growing) cancer.

The surgeon laid out three options:

• surgery with chemotherapy (we'd be facing this again in about six months)
• make her comfortable with pain management (prognosis of two weeks to a month in her best clinical judgement)
• euthanasia

We told her that we are leaning towards the second option, knowing full well that at the end of that road is the third option, but that we would contact her on Monday with any other questions and a decision.

As we sat in our pre-Shabbat bath, we discussed some more, and reluctantly concluded that we cannot put Zoey through risky surgery only to face this again in six months. We also concluded that we would not go through multiple regimes of pain medications. She came home from the hospital on three meds, which had given her two good days. When they cease to be effective, it will be time to put Zoey down, hard as that will be.

Shabbat dinner Friday night was a roast, with mashed potatoes and gravy. One of the Engineering Geek's express wishes was that Zoey should come put her muzzle in his lap, asking for a treat. And she obliged him. (I tell you that she can read your mind. Or at least smell the beef!) She hobbled out and ate quite a lot of the juicy bits, complete with Challah dipped in the clear gravy.

On Shabbat morning, the Chem Geek Princess brought the Granddog Ruby out, and the Engineering Geek and the Boychick took Ruby and Lily for a walk as part of our scheme to socialize Ruby to Lily (both are nervous about other dogs, unlike our beautiful Zoey).

Zoey was so upset that she could not hobble fast enought to go that I brought her outside to sit with me on the porch while I prayed the morning service. Here is Zoey smiling in the warm sunshine.
Our porch faces southeast, and so the morning sun is reflected off of the stucco wall of the house, warming the porch nicely, even on cold days. Yesterday was a warm day for February and the porch was quite toasty-warm. It felt good for both man and canine!



Later, when her people and other dogs came home, Zoey got positively motivated, spending a few minutes watching Ruby jump over the low door-garden wall, and then she decided to dig up a chew she had buried on some long ago summer's day.

Here she is digging, a favorite pasttime that has been absent during the last six weeks.
We watched with a bittersweet sense of impending loss; the digging was a sweet reminder of better days, but Zoey's poor shorn body, the grapefruit-size of the tumor, the trembling left leg, and the arched, painful way she holds her back, all reminded us that this normal Zoey behavior was a temporary respite from the weary toll of her illness.

And indeed, last night, worn out from the days adventures with Lily and the Granddog, Zoey had to be hand-fed, she paced in pain a full hour before she was due for her evening meds, she could not settle.

She did sleep, finally, at the foot of our bed, where she seems to find comfort in our nearness when she awakens in the night. She got up twice for two painful trips outside, and then to the kitchen for a drink (she refuses to take food and water from anywhere else).

This morning, she had great difficulty getting up. When we got up, she took over the center of the bed for a few minutes--another fleeting reminder of the Zoey normal--but today she has slept and slept, although she did eat some yogurt for breakfast, and some dogfood with cheese for an afternoon snack.

Today was at best a mediocre day. And the tumor is growing still.

Although I cannot imagine our house without my Zoey, I do confess that I looked at the pictures of adoptable dogs from the local shelters on-line. But I kept thinking that this one or that one had ears like Zoey's, and that this one or that one would do well with Zoey as a mentor.

And then I'd remember. Zoey won't be there when we add another dog to the family. And then I cry. And Lily, that needy love-hound, would come up and lick my tears as I sat, stroking Zoey's velvet soft fur.

For Shame, President Obama!

In 2001, just a week before the September 11th attacks, then Secretary of State Colin Powell withdrew the US delegation from the U.N. World Conference on Racism & Etc. (the whole title is entirely too politically correct for this blog) held in Durban, South Africa.
The Bush adminstration withdrew the delegation because the conference became a demonstration of Holocaust denial and virulent antisemitism, largely controlled by avowed enemies of the West.

A personal note: it was the twin shocks of the progressive reactions to Durban and then the 9-11 attacks that convinced me once and for all of the moral bankruptcy of the left, and made me understand that the left may use naive Jews, but that ultimately they will stab us in the back. Alas, I am a slow learner.

On Saturday morning, February 14, the Obama Administration announced that it was sending a delegation to Geneva, Switzerland, to help plan Durban II, the Durban Review Conference, which is intended (in the UN's own words) "to reaffirm the Durban Declaration." You know, the one that denies the Holocaust and reaffirms the old UN canard that Israel is a racist state.

This conference is chaired by Libya, Cuba, Iran and Pakistan. These are countries that not only demonize the US, but also hideously oppress their own people. As you can see below, they would also like to see your freedom of speech and expression removed.

For shame, President Obama! First, to announce this on Valentine's Day, early in the morning like that, means that the adminstration knows this is a shameful action. Secondly, for the US to participate in the planning of the reaffirmation of the Durban Declaration is to associate ourselves with the enemies of our Western values. The purposes of the conference is described thus by The Wall Street Journal:

As for what this Review Conference is supposed to achieve, some clues are provided in the latest draft of the so-called Outcome Document. Israel's "racial policies" are a major theme, as is "the plight of Palestinian refugees and other inhabitants of the Arab occupied territories," meaning Israel itself. Under debate, however, is whether to include a line that the Holocaust "resulted in the murder of one third of the Jewish people." Presumably Iran objects.

The draft also calls "on states to develop, and where appropriate to incorporate, permissible limitations on the exercise of the right to freedom of expression into national legislation." Yes, you read that right. The transparent purpose is to criminalize all criticism of Islam, a.k.a. "Islamophobia." There is also a not-so-sly effort to extract reparations for the long-banned trans-Atlantic slave trade: States that "have not yet condemned, apologized and paid reparations" for the trade are urged "to do so at the earliest." (Does an anti-Semitic conference deserve US participation of any kind? The Wall Street Journal, February 20, 2009).

According to the WSJ, as well as the Jerusalem Post, the Obama Adminstration is well aware of the purpose of the conference, and is not committed to participating in April, but is sending a delegation to the planning meetings in order to "try to change the direction in which the review conference is heading." This is disigenuous at best. How does participating in the planning of a Conference whose express purpose is to reaffirm the goals of the previous conference going to mitigate anything. The amoral underpinnings of the Obama adminstration's pragmatism is showing clearly in this action. To paraphrase my grandmother, may she rest in peace, show me who an adminstration hangs out with, and I'll show you its character.

This action on the part of the Obama adminstration is not only a slap in the face to Israel, it is a profoundly anti-Western act of appeasement to the worst sort of characters. It also betrays a profound misunderstanding of what sort of people one may compromise with and with what sort one may not. What compromise can be reached between an enemy's desire to destroy you and your own desire to live?

For a scathing review of this policy decision from one of the members of the Oslo negotiating team, see Obama's Durban Gambit at CAROLINEGLICK.com