For some reason recently, whenever I watch a DVD and then try to go back to just watching my television, the remote for the TV doesn’t work. Once it was thought to be due to the fact that the DVD player was still on but subsequent investigation proved that wrong. The first time it happened, a young lady fixed it for me and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what she’d done to make it work. This time when it happened, I hit every damn button on all three remotes that I have… the one for the TV, the one for the DVD player and the one for the cable box. And yes, I am aware that some genius could actually hit buttons that would make them all work together but as sure as god made little green apples, if someone did that for me, I’d hit the wrong button on the wrong remote and screw the entire system up so that my TV would never work again. So I live with three remotes.
So anyway, I hit every button on every remote. I turn the TV on and off using the buttons on the side of the set. I turn the cable box on and off. I turn the DVD/VCR player on and off. I turn them all on and off together. Then I turn them on and off in alternating patterns. (Hmmml.... even as I write this I realize it tells the world I have WAY too much unoccupied time on my hands) I finally give up, put the remotes down, resign myself to getting up to turn the TV on or change the volume, and accept I will have to wait for the young man who hooked it all together to come home for Christmas and make it work again for me.
And then a friend named David stopped by. He took a seat in my living room and, since I was obsessing over the remote’s inability to do the one job it was bred to do - i.e. turn my TV on and off -
I immediately brought the subject up. To point out the futile life my remote had chosen to live, I picked it up, pointed it at the TV and hit the Power button. And that damned TV came on as though nothing had ever been the problem. And I looked at David and thought, “There’s a guy in the room. Maybe the remote sensed his master was nearby and that further resistance was useless. Because no man would ever sit by idly if his remote refused to work. And my remote knew that and reacted accordingly.
Damn!

So there is a picture in the paper of Sarah Palin on her book tour with her little daughter Piper. Piper is carrying Trigg.  And I can’t help but wonder if all of Sarah’s adoring conservative fans would be quite so adoring if a liberal politician was traveling the country using her two children for photo ops while one should be in school and the other should not be carried by the one who should be in school. I wonder how those conservatives would react and my answer is they would excoriate any liberal female politician who did what Palin was doing. They would call her anti-family and say she should not be exposing her kids to such media attention and should be home caring for her family and shouldn’t be letting her little daughter seem to be carrying the responsibility for her little son.
But since this is their darling Sarah, all this is somehow ok and part of their family values agenda. 
Really?
All I can say is that I’d better never hear Palin complaining again about the media exploiting her kids. She seems to be doing that quite well all by herself.

Is this not a face that would make your heart melt or what?

OK, I’ve had my regular flu shot and my H1N1 flu shot so I am fortified. Come on, germs! Do your best! I’m ready for you now.

Here’s what I’m grateful for on this Thanksgiving. I’m grateful that two of my friends, both in their fifties, did not wait two years to get their next mammogram. Because if they had, both would have had well advanced tumors that may or may not have been treatable. And if the tumors had still been treatable, the treatment would have been much harsher and horrifying than it was.

Talking in abstracts about how many more lives are saved or not saved through an annual mammogram is one thing. Walking with a friend who stands a good chance of being around for a long time to come because she got one annually makes that statistic a concrete reality. Faced with that reality, I don’t know how anyone can claim that you shouldn’t bother to get a mammogram before fifty and, even after fifty, you should only get it every other year.
I think what scares most women about this latest pronouncement is not that it will stop them from getting a mammogram. Any woman with an ounce of common sense knows that the few minutes of discomfort caused by the test is well worth the chance to avoid the horror of radiation and chemotherapy. So most women will roll their eyes, put on those silly little gowns, grin and bear it.
The problem is that this pronouncement has given insurance companies an easy out for refusing to pay for an annual mammogram. Since being treated for metastatic cancer is very expensive, financially it seems to make sense for your insurance to continue to cover an annual test. Unfortunately, it seems most insurance companies will go for the short-term profit whenever possible.
If I sound a tad cynical about insurance companies, you’ll have to forgive me. I’m still trying to figure out how my insurance coverage has a rule that says if you’re a woman who has had a hysterectomy, thereby negating the need for an annual PAP smear, they won’t cover an annual breast exam. I can find no literature anywhere that links the existence of a womb in a woman with increasing her probability of getting cancer. So it would seem to stand to reason that the removal of said womb would not decrease her chance of getting breast cancer. Yet the rule stands.
It’s funny that a woman can’t get an annual breast exam for such an inane reason but a man can get all the male enhancement drugs he wants by just telling his doc he isn’t getting it on as often as he used to in his youth.  No awkward tests there. No need for the man to demonstrate the truth of his claim. Just a quickly written prescription that is just as quickly filled and paid for by most health insurance plans.
But an annual mammogram for a woman… well, we need to question those costs and the amount of unnecessary tests they create based on false positives. I personally would like to see a program that questions all the sex men get to have while on their male enhancement drugs. At a minimum they should have to bring a note from their partner indicating a willingness to participate in the program before their insurance coverage kicks in.
I watched a friend’s mother die because she didn’t get to a doctor quickly enough to have her breast cancer treated. It’s not a pretty way to go. Unlike some gushingly sentimental movies that periodically arrive on screens showing a person dying of cancer on a pristine white bed uttering some last pithy words of wisdom to mate or child, the reality of a cancer death is horrible. The patient is in pain. There are smells no movie can ever replicate. There are indignities to the body of someone well loved that cause you to just want to cry out for them. Dying of cancer is long, painful, smelly and ugly. It’s why Hospice is the best idea to ever come out of the turmoil of the sixties.
Even if a mammogram only saves ten women a year from that fate, it’s worth it. Especially when that woman is someone you know and love who still has so much to offer to her family, her friends and her world.

Here is a statement you can take to the bank for the level of truth it contains. You will never confuse being in a room full of Democrats with being in a room full of Republicans. The Dems seem to have a tent that includes EVERYONE… and I do mean EVERYONE.  Some of the people I have seen in gatherings of Democrats wouldn’t be allowed to bus tables at most Republican events.
The Republicans are going to have to buy a whole new tent if they want to start being even slightly as inclusive as the Dems are.

Sarah Palin keeps exclaiming how happy she is to be once again among real, patriotic Americans.  I have to wonder where the hell she’s been spending her time… in an Al Qaida training camp?

Let’s see… two redneck crackers in the Valley decide that the way to toughen up a five year old boy is to make a blow torch out of a lighter, call him and when he comes to the door, light it. And they are shocked, shocked I tell you, that the boy got burned. But, all things considered, they really didn’t want to run up bills for something as irrelevant as the five year olds’ burnt head, so they didn’t bother going to the hospital. They were apparently so blase about it that they sent the kid to school after the weekend on the assumption, I suppose, that the school would see nothing out of the ordinary about a five year old with untreated burns and no hair on one side of his head.
Where was mom you ask? Well, mom had a restraining order out against one of these genetic misfits so she thought it was ok for that person to live on her property and take care of the kid while she was away.
Is there any better argument anywhere for forced sterilization?

If you live here in the Anchorage area and do not use the turkey neck that comes with your holiday bird, toss it in a plastic bag into your freezer and drop it off at Bird TLC when you get a chance. Our eagles love to rip and gnaw on the neck. It helps keep their beaks trimmed and gives them something to occupy their time. It’s a way better idea than just throwing the neck out, isn’t it?
Check out our website at http://www.birdtlc.net for more info and some great pictures.

True panic is realizing the speech you were planning to write this weekend to give next weekend is, in fact, due to be given tonight.

If you haven’t officially started your fasting count down to Thanksgiving, you’ll never be able to consume all the food required to make Thanksgiving truly American. So drop that pastry tart and start starving.

A judge recently ruled that the state had to provide braces for children in state custody if, in fact, a dentist determined they were needed. A small victory but one of great importance to children being raised by the state because their parents can’t quite find the time to do it.

A few years back, there was a young girl on my GAL caseload who had dental needs. She was one of those kids that just worm their way right into your heart. She was bright, pretty, charming and should have been having a wonderful childhood. But instead, she was being raised by the state.
This young lady had what I call “fangs”. She had her upper canine teeth and then she had another canine tooth growing right on top of each of them. It was glaringly evident when she smiled.
When I spoke to the state about getting her teeth fixed, I was told that she would need to have a much more severe problem before they would pay for the extraction and braces she needed.  That just really ticked me off.
Kids in foster care already have so many strikes against them. They often come from violent homes. They have usually been victims of abuse and neglect. They are the new kids in school so often they should form a band with that name. Their clothes come from a state clothing allowance that does not usually provide for the latest of anything. To put it mildly, they often feel pretty bad about themselves.
All I could think was that, on top of all this other stuff, this little girl was never going to be able to look in the mirror without seeing a pair of fang like teeth staring back out at her.
So I got pushy – all the way to Juneau pushy. Eventually, probably just to shut me up, the state authorized her dental care. And in all the rest of the time this child remained in state custody, which was until she turned 18, no matter what else was happening in her life, she never missed her dental appointments or failed to notify her new caretakers of the need to get her an appointment if her living arrangement had changed since the last one.
Once she got out of custody, I lost touch with her. That’s not unusual. When you’ve had a less than fun childhood being raised by the state and a superior court judge, you don’t often have warm, fuzzy memories of those times and tend to lose contact. But before she aged out of the system, she had her braces taken off. Her foster mom got us together so I could see the results. They were dazzling. When this child smiled, her smile lit up the room.
I’m telling this story not to say how wonderful I am. Lots of people fought right along side me to get this kid her braces. I’m telling this story to try and help people understand how important it is that we give these kids every chance we can to form a healthy self-image. And sometimes that includes paying for braces.
When these kids enter the system, they are already traumatized by their families. Most feel pretty badly about themselves and their lives.
Entering the system and being introduced to judges and social workers and foster parents and counselors – all of whom seem to have access to every horrible thing that every happened to them – adds to their trauma.  They never know what tomorrow will hold because they never know when someone is going to decide to send them somewhere else. All these things just add to the extreme difficulties kids face in foster care – not because foster care is inherently bad but because for most, it will never replace the family they lost… or in some cases, never really had.
So if giving these kids proper dental care results in a pretty smile, in giving them a reason to feel good about themselves, to feel they might have some self-worth… well, to me that alone justifies whatever those braces may cost.
I think of that young girl’s smile and know that we did at least one thing right by her.

For those of you interested, I’ll be a guest on KSKA public radio today from 2 to 3 on a show entitled, “Hometown Alaska”. It will be a call in show about Temporary Sal’s new book and book tour. Tune in at 91.1 FM.

This is what a friend recently wrote to me about taking his sons to play video games - names have been changed to protect the (not-so) innocent kids:

When the family got home from church, my son Barry reminded me that I had promised to take him to “Friendlly Fire” the video game parlor down the street.  I agreed, and Larry, Barry and I walked down there.  It was very clean and neat inside with a late teen running the counter.  $5 for one hour was the minimum.  I got Larry and Barry both an hour.  The only thing appropriate for Barry was Spiderman and Ratotuille.  All the rest of the games, and there were many, were shoot em ups, also know as “fantasy violence”.  This is what the dozen or so other kids were playing with headphones on and all sitting in recliners that react to the game with shaking and vibrating!  I sat at a table in the middle and watched over my boys’ shoulders.  Barry was soon leaping and swinging down the canyons of a city while Larry was splattering blood all over the place including on the screen from his fantasy violence.  I looked around and all the other teenagers were doing the same thing.  I called up one of my friends and was describing it to him and he told me to relax, remember when we did real violence with rock fights!! I wasn’t feeling any better about it.  At least with rock fights we felt the consequences.  This fantasy violence has none of the repercussions like the misery that real violence begats.  I really am concerned what this is doing to our young peoples minds.  God help us. 

Seems as though he has a point there. I’ve always wondered how you could play those games, especially as they become more and more realistic, yet still remember that in real life, real people die.

With the headlines screaming at us here in Anchorage about the repeat drunk driving offender who killed a young man near Potter’s Marsh and almost killed his companion as well - potentially leaving two children orphans - the great hue and cry over drunk driving has resumed. How do we stop repeat offenders short of sentencing them to life after the first offense (effective but some civil libertarian will probably have problems with that concept) or chopping off their arms so they can’t actually steer a car or even open the door without help (also something I imagine a civil libertarian will have problems with).
So how about this. All cars get retrofitted with a computer chip. Before you can drive, you have to breathe into the car radio or somewhere like that. If your breath is ok, the car will turn on. If not, the computer will disconnect the ignition… and then chop both your arms off.