Sheepville

Terri Schiavo died in 1990, not today. Anyone who believes otherwise should do some research or talk to any medical doctor. I read a handout that’s a Q&A written for caregivers of patients with brain injuries from the Swedish hospital here Seattle. One of the things it noted was there were no confirmed reports of someone fully recovering from a permanent vegetative state after more than a few months. Terri was in that state for 15 years. She has had no improvement, and would never have had any improvement. Maybe years from now we will have the medical ability to restore brain function to people like Terri, but not anytime in the next couple of decades. Ironically the one thing that would probably lead us to that medical possibility, stem cell research, is the same thing the people and politicians that were so adamant about keeping Terri alive are against. Terri’s parents, lawyers, and politicians, have not won a single legal proceeding in this whole hoopla. The only thing they have done this whole time is abuse, circumvent, and violate the courts to try and push their agenda that had no legal merit to actually win a case. The media has done their part to create this circus from their emphasis on reporting the side of the parent’s claims rather than just the plain truth being about Terri’s condition. Do people really believe that the doctors and courts would conspire with her husband to murder her?

There is a medical condition called Locked-In Syndrome where the person has only the ability to move their eyes and nothing else. Stephen Hawking has MLS has come close if not now progressed to this point. I read his biography years ago and he even noted that he may owe much of his brilliance to the fact that his body failed him. The thing is even with a condition as severe as his, he is still able to do one important thing even though it is with his eyes only; communicate. Let’s assume Terri was still alive inside that brain and was living this past 15 years without even being able to use her eyes to communicate but could only see whatever they were looking at that she had no control over. (She has never shown awareness by focusing on the people around her, the video showing her following the movement of something over her is an automatic response that can happen with people in a vegetative state) This would seem to me to be the worst, most inhumane prison possible for someone. I would suspect that someone who had lived that way for 15 years would have lost their sanity some time ago.

Yes, there are medical conditions that bear strong similarities to a permanent vegetative state. One movie starring Robin Williams, Awakenings, was based loosely on a real life doctor and his experiments in the 1960s. Those patients however had suffered encephalitis and not the death of so much brain tissue from the lack of oxygen that Terri Schiavo did. Her parents were holding on to a corpse kept alive artificially that hadn’t been their daughter for 15 years, and would have never been their daughter again.

Sorry Lynn, I really should read my notes (and post) more often. I just noticed. :)

Music Survey

1. Total amount of music files on your computer: 213 Megs, I have Musicmatch. I used to have much more but a while back my PC went belly up and wouldn’t boot to windows. Couldn’t think of anything on it that needed saving, so formatted and reinstalled Windows XP. When installing the software I got to Musicmatch and THEN remembered all of my music files I had paid for to download at a buck each. Unfortunately I hadn’t burned very many to CDs.

2. The last CD you bought was: Lee Ann Rimes Greatest Hits and a Cher’s Greatest Hits. Like Lynn posted, I usually like to buy those types of albums because so few regular ones I really like all the music. Gloria Estefan is one of the exceptions that I tend to like most all of the songs on her albums.

3. What is the song you last listened to before reading this message? Dragostea Din Tei – This is the recent popular web thing with the guy bouncing around lip sinking to a song, this is the song, so shoot me, I like this song. The girl at work mentioned she couldn’t find the MP3 of this song, which I immediately piped up and said I had downloaded three versions of it at home. This was immediately followed by me hanging my head in shame over ADMITTING I had three versions. She’s laughing and says, “So, you don’t think you’re a geek, huh?” I am not a geek, I just have eclectic tastes in music.

4. Write down 5 songs you often listen to or that mean a lot to you:

It would be easy to note songs I like listening too, and the likes are really eclectic. I don’t like rap, but love listening to Gangsta’s Paradise. Some comedy like Ray Stevens Haircut Song or Mississippi Squirrel Revival. Manheim Steamroller or Trans-Siberian Orchestra. The Macarena to Save A Horse Ride A Cowboy. When I listen to music I do it simply because I like the songs, not because it’s a specific type of music or from a certain singer or band. I can’t do anything that comes close to dancing, but have Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now) by C&C Music Factory downloaded. There would be so many it would be impossible to just pick 5 of them as special over any other.

Means a lot to me is a tough one, so would leave a lot less to choose from. There are a lot songs that the moment I hear them immediately remind me of someone in my past. Escape (The Pina Colada Song) reminds me of Brenda Polotta and Freddie Aloi who noted that her name and that song rhymed and it always made him think of her. I Just Wanna Stop begins with “When I think about those nights in Montreal” which will immediately remind me of a girl from 7th grade who was born in Canada and the dark haired really sweet girl that also sat beside me in the same class, and I have no clue what their names were. So I guess meaningful would have to be those that remind me of a person that meant something to me.

One: Still – The Commodores: First girl I really dated. The words do seem to portray a screwed up relationship, which I guess ours was, especially after I started dating her best friend at the same time. It was okay, they both knew. Of course she eventually got tired of that, dumped me, then I dumped her friend who I really didn’t like anyway (and who’s name I don’t even remember today).

Two: Running With The Night – Lionel Richie: The first girl I really loved. I never told her that and always regretted it.

Three: It’s All Coming Back To Me Now – Celine Dion: The ex-wife.

Four: My Heart Will Go On – Celine Dion / Weekend In New England – Barry Manilow: Tracy. Anyone that knows the words would figure why they would fit. Ironically, sadly, our relationship will end the same way it began, living far apart.

Five: Saturday Night – Bay City Rollers: My roller skating days. Mid to late 70s was the peak of the roller skating craze and I was there on Saturday afternoons with the hundreds of other kids. Hundreds of kids slamming their skates against the floor to the beat of that song, especially the points that they spell Saturday night. Brings a warm fuzzy feeling about the happiness of my mid-teen years. I was actually quite social then, what the hell happened?

There is only one song that ever directly impacted my life. Second Home By The Sea – Genesis. This is a six minute song that is almost entirely an instrumental. At the very end of the song however is the following:

Images of sorrow, pictures of delight
things that go to make up a life
endless days of summer longer nights of gloom
just waiting for the morning light
scenes of unimportance like photos in a frame
things that go to make up a life

As we relive our lives in what we tell you

For whatever reason those words inspired me to write poetry. Over the next 12 years or so I wrote hundreds maybe, don’t really know. Most everything I wrote was personal, or was about or to someone close to me. I stopped a long time ago, though I know I did do something recently that was short in this blog. I long ago tossed everything I had, everything I’ve ever written or drawn. I wrote one thing to my mom that she kept in her pocketbook for a long time that my brother might have. Toni told me recently she kept a picture I drew for her years ago. Maybe the painting I did that hung in my GM room is still in GemStone, Tracy once told me when she saw that she realized I had a heart after all, or something to that affect. There was one short thing I wrote sometime in the late 80s that oddly wasn’t about anyone, but after all this time I still remember it.

Dark mysterious eyes haunt me, from them I cannot hide
And though on the verge of recognition, the answer stays locked inside
How can they seem so familiar, if I’ve never seen them before
Unless it’s not the past I see, but what the future holds in store

What three people am I passing this baton to and why? Three? The only people that I even know that read my blog are Tracy, Lynn, and Dickie. Since the other two have already done this, I guess that leaves my brother. Dickie (he prefers to be called Richard now, but I never will since he called me Bubba as a kid) this gives you an excuse to post again.

Some lady that writes for MSN, something like Marsha Quakenbush out of Seattle, recently wrote a snippet for “women’s history month”, which March evidently is but probably not many have actually noticed. Though if this is the best she can set forth as examples, that would explain why no one has noticed.

The good eggs

AgnodiceIn the 4th century BC it was illegal for women to practice medicine in Greece. But the 1st-century-AD author Hyginus wrote that one Greek woman, Agnodice, disguised herself as a man, studied medicine, and set up a bustling practice in Athens. Scholars debate whether Hyginus's tale is true, but I wonder if one reason we can't find corroborating evidence is that she was a woman. According to Hyginus, Agnodice was so successful that other doctors got jealous and accused her of "corrupting" aristocratic women. So, Agnodice revealed that she was a woman herself--and was promptly arrested and sentenced to death. Her devoted patients came to her rescue. All noblewomen, they threatened to kill themselves if she was executed. It worked, and thereafter, all free women could become doctors--as long as they treated women only.

When her first example seems at best to be based on rumor, that’s definitely not getting off on a good foot for the article. Maybe you can’t find corroborating evidence simply because it’s not true?

The Trung sisters and Phung Thi ChinhTrung Trac and Trung Nhi, sisters and widows of Vietnamese aristocrats, led a major uprising against Chinese invaders in AD 39. Trung Trac ruled for four years before the Chinese conquered Vietnam again, but resistance continued for the next 1,000 years. Many women figured in the resistance, notably Phung Thi Chinh, who fought while pregnant, paused to give birth, and rejoined the fight with her baby on her back.

Two thousand years from now they’ll probably write the Queen Mum was ruling England too. Same thing 2,000 years ago as today, the Trung sisters as noted were widows, and just assumed the title and were really nothing but figureheads. Phung is a shining example of motherhood, isn’t she? Today the child welfare authorities would move in and take the baby for child endangerment. One good point though, women today are obviously making a mountain out of a mole hill over the child birth thing just to make men feel bad.

Deborah SampsonDuring the Revolutionary War Sampson put on a man's uniform and fought under the alias Robert Shurtleff. Hit in the leg during the Battle of Tarrytown, Sampson removed the musket balls herself so that no one would guess her identity. She later took a shot in the shoulder at the Battle of Yorktown and came down with brain fever (an old-timey term for inflammation of the brain). It was only then that a doctor figured out her secret. Accounts differ over what happened next, but Sampson was eventually given an honorable discharge. Paul Revere later helped her get a soldier's pension, and she went on to give lectures about her experience.

Not quite accurate, but historically significant for being the first, though unwitting, sex change operation. The musket balls didn’t exactly lodge themselves in his leg, just close. Out of embarrassment he removed them himself, with rather severe consequences. Same as men today, we just seem to be so squeamish about seeing a doctor over something like a musket shot to the groin.

Nellie Bly and Ida Wells-BarnettElizabeth Cochrane Seaman--using the pen name Nellie Bly, helped invent an important kind of journalism, even if it did get an ugly name: muckraking. Writing for Pittsburgh and New York newspapers, Bly exposed corruption, horrible prison conditions, slums, and factory abuses. Her most famous exploit, however, was probably the ten days she spent disguised as a patient in a mental hospital in 1888. Her book, 10 Days in a Madhouse (1888), became a bestseller. Bly didn't stop there. In 1889 and 1890, she circled the globe in 72 days, 6 hours, and 11 minutes, beating Jules Verne's fictional 80-day mark. The story of that adventure, Nellie Bly's Book: Around the World in Seventy-two Days (1890), also became a bestseller.

Today she would easily get a job at the National Enquirer, back then she was institutionalized for writing bizarre stories. After getting out she just exploited that story too. As far as her round the world trip, I read the story, seems she spent most of the sea parts heaving over the railing. She also had a MALE escort that she even admits she couldn’t have done without, so it was really a man that went around the world in 72 days, she just tagged along.

Ida B. Wells-Barnett was Bly's equally remarkable contemporary. Wells-Barnett is kind of a precursor to Rosa Parks. In 1884 Wells-Barnett, the daughter of former slaves, was traveling on a first-class train ticket to Memphis. White passengers complained that she should leave the first-class car, but Wells-Barnett refused to move to the smoking section, which was reserved for blacks. She was eventually kicked off the train. Wells-Barnett sued the railroad and won a $500 judgment, but the Tennessee Supreme Court later overruled her victory. She told her story in a newspaper--launching her career as an activist journalist.

I was suspicious when the race card was brought into this so did some research and found it had nothing to do with her being black, it was overturned because she was smoking and it was requested for her to move to the smoking section.

Valentina V. Tereshkova: You hear a lot about Sally Ride, who in 1983 became the first American woman in space. But Soviet cosmonaut Valentina V Tereshkova beat her into orbit by 20 years. In 1963 Tereshkova rode the Vostok 6 spacecraft into orbit and circled the Earth a whopping 48 times during her three-day mission. To put this in perspective, Tereshkova spent more time in orbit than all the U.S. Mercury astronauts combined. (Too bad she didn't write a book, Around the World 48 Times in Three Days: Neener, Neener, Nellie Bly.)



Valentina – Need I say more? I think she should have done a little more research for her article, like maybe photos.

The bad apples

Countess Nadasdy This Hungarian countess, also known as Elizabeth Bathory, had a disturbing beauty regimen. She believed that soaking in human blood would keep her forever young, giving a new and hideous meaning to the term bloodbath. It didn't work. But before she died in 1614, she had stolen the lives of hundreds of female servants. (The Web site Bathory.org says her diary documented 612 killings, but other sources offer slightly different figures.)

But we vilify poor Vlad for what was much less selfish than what she did.

Mary Reade and Anne BonneyPirates are bad, but women pirates could be especially dastardly. In the early 1700s, Mary Reade and Anne Bonney donned menswear and terrorized the West Indies. (This is after Reade had served in both the British army and navy, but decided, evidently, that her survival depended on plundering instead of public service.) The pirating pair was captured in 1720 and sentenced to hang for their crimes. But, choosing an escape route not available to their male colleagues, they claimed to be pregnant--and after they were released, they fled (according to one version of the story). Another version claims that Mary Reade later died of fever and that no one knows what happened to Anne Bonney, other than the fact that she wasn't executed.

Same as today, women get off much easier after being busted for a crime than a man would be under the same circumstances.

Mary Mallon"Typhoid" Mary Mallon worked as a cook in New York, and after an outbreak of the disease in 1904, she was recognized as a carrier. But this didn't stop her from handling food. She went from job to job, infecting the innocent until she was caught in 1907 and committed to an institution until 1910. She wasn't supposed to work in food service again but did--spreading more disease in her wake. In all, authorities attributed 51 cases and three deaths to "Typhoid" Mary, who was institutionalized again in 1914. She died in 1938 but not from typhoid. She was immune to the disease.

More proof men make better cooks that women.

Ilse KochLast but not least is Ilse Koch, who committed atrocities in Nazi concentration camps (for which she got life in prison). But this wasn't the extent of her crimes: She also collected lampshades and other ornaments made from human flesh.

And I thought that was a guy in Silence of the Lambs.