Breaking news from 1935

I found the following valentine to Obamacare above the fold in the Delaware newspaper:

Health woes just part of history

Popular federal programs were target for early criticism, too

Although multiple problems have snarled the rollout of President Barack Obama's signature health care law, it's hardly the first time a new, sprawling government program has been beset by early technical glitches, political hostility and gloom-and-doom denouncements. President Franklin D. Roosevelt faced heavy skepticism with his launch of Social Security in 1935-37. Turbulence also rocked subsequent key presidential initiatives, including Lyndon Johnson's rollout of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965, Richard Nixon's Supplemental Security Income program in 1974 and George W. Bush's Medicare prescription drugs program in 2006. Yet these programs today are enormously popular with recipients. ... After FDR kicked off Social Security in 1937, Washington's pre-computer age bureaucrats faced enormous hurdles enrolling people for the old-age benefits. Many had the same or similar names. Not all employers kept detailed records on employees and how much they were paid, further complicating the process.

The online version of the News Journal has scrubbed the story, undoubtedly feeling embarrassed, and they ought to be. If readers don't know what happened in 1935, this is not the place to learn it today. I found it on Newsbusters. It was written by some clapped-out AP hack called Tom Raum. And appeared above the fold! Words fail me.Even this failing, unreadable rag has exceeded my expectations.

Still more about Hannibal

Did you know Hannibal practiced diversity? No kidding. His troops included Carthaginians (Semites), Numidians (black, I think), Gauls, and various Italians he picked up during the course of his long rampage, and God knows what else. This multicultural gang enjoyed pillaging, raping and enslaving their enemies in perfect harmony, without a cross word. And they killed them in large numbers. Of course, their enemies would have done it to them if they could. So that makes it all right.

Anyway, that's the way business was conducted in the ancient world.

I just finished reading about the Battle of Cannae. What a bloodbath! And to think the Romans came back after that. But Hannibal certainly gave them something to think about.

My apologies to those of my readers to whom this is all old stuff.

More about Hannibal

By chance I acquired an atlas of the ancient world. I was particularly interested in tracing Hannibal's route to Rome. I didn't even know exactly where Carthage was. What a brilliant feat of logistics! I know, everyone else knew all about this and I am just catching up. But what a military genius he was! It was not all about the elephants, of whom there were 37. It was about finding enemies and allies along the route. And crossing rivers with the aforementioned elephants. And don't forget the Alps. And deceiving the enemy about his route. Don't tell me how it turns out; I haven't finished reading the book yet. I know he spent 17 years away from home.

I'm only reading this in short bits, because I am concurrently reading a book about the Pope and Leonardo da Vinci and the Sistine Chapel.

My dad's painting

 

Euphemism

Words are used in such a namby pamby way nowadays! I was looking up a nursing home today which provides memory care. They don't care for your memories, or restore them. They take care of those who have lost their wits and cannot care for themselves. What they do is laudable and worth doing, so why hide behind a euphemism?

Why are personnel departments human resources? Is working in a personnel office something to be ashamed of?

What about school resource officers, known in the real world as cops?

My father's paintings--and mine

My father took up painting in his latter years, and he was pretty good, too. He liked to paint urban scenes. But when he died in 1911, only a few of his paintings went to family members. For one reason, most of them were very large. So dozens were left, and his wife had no room for them in her new apartment. So she proposed to put them in her daughter's attic. It is amazing how many people think paintings, furniture, and musical instruments don't need special care, such as climate control. Someone donated a piano to our library, which gussied up the place no end, but was almost unplayable because the sounding board was warped. But I digress.

I took a few of dad's paintings, gave one or two to my kids, and hung two in my house, where looking at them gives me great pleasure. But the disposition of the rest made me think about my own paintings.

Not all my paintings are great successes, although I work hard on them. Some are boring or banal. Those I either put aside for further work or discard. Some I paint over. One or two I have managed to sell, or give to friends.But the vast majority, the ones that came out well, are mostly hanging on my walls. And my walls are full. Adding a room is not an option--I already have 8.

I often see paintings by unknowns, like me, in my favorite retail outlet, the Good Will. Some of them are very good and are worthy of more that the $20-50 that they fetch, mainly for the frames.

So, except for a treasured few, I would like to sell or give away my paintings.

Hannibal

I buy lots of books at the Good Will, my favorite hangout. In fact, I buy better books at the Good Will than I often get at the local public library, and I don't have to return them, either. Sometimes I find something really good, or something which I like to read, which is not necessarily the same thing at all.

Here are a couple of books I found recently at the Good Will: War of the Worlds, by H G Wells, which looks interesting at the very least, and a biography of Hannibal. I thought it might be interesting to know something about Hannibal, in case he comes up in conversation some time, which is very likely, don't you think? I don't know anything about Hannibal, but then I don't know anything about the people I read about in People Magazine, except those named Kardashian.

I would be ashamed to pass myself off as an educated person without knowing anything about Hannibal, who I understand came over the Alps with elephants to attack the Romans. Or maybe not. All my knowledge of Ancient Rome comes from novels by Stephen Saylor, Robert Harris, or John Maddox Roberts, except for a furtive look into Everyday Life in Ancient Rome while at the reference desk, and somehow I failed to obtain the facts about Hannibal from these sources.

So onward and upward with Hannibal, in case there is a quiz.

Memorial statue in Brandywine Park

 

Brandywine Park, Wilmington DE March 17, 2009

The last full measure of devotion

African American War Memorial, Brandywine Park

 

I heart the Civil War

When I have nothing better to do, (which is often) I read about the Civil War. Mr Charm was a devotee of this conflict, and collected lots of books about it. If you can pry your mind off the fact that it was a bloodbath which destroyed a large number of the country's youngest and bravest men, it's fun to read about. I have read the memoirs of Grant and Sherman and now am reading those of Phil Sheridan.

Writing your memoirs is a great way to set the record straight and to settle old scores, and Sheridan takes full advantage of this. If you want to know who the blockheads and incompetents were on the government side, in Sheridan's view, you will find out here. Like many Irishmen, he was a good hater.

He was also very smart, a superb leader of men, and a hothead. He got in trouble at West Point for his bellicose attitude and graduated in the bottom third of his class. However, he seems to have learned some useful things there.

Thank heaven November is here

Every day during October, Turner Classic Movies featured scary films. I don't like scary films, or scary stories. I consider real life scary enough

.

I've been scared all my life. I was the kid who was scared to ride on the merry-go-round without an armed guard, or at least a parent. The Saturday serials featured at my local movie house found me cowering under the seat until someone told me it was over. If I ever attended a movie that was a bit frightening I couldn't sleep and kept pestering mom and dad to explain that Dracula was not on the front lawn and Frankenstein was not planning to descend from the chimney. But how did they know?

And then there was the fear that Hitler would win World War II and come to Columbus OH to kill me. That one was not so far-fetched.

I was scared of everyone in my high school who was older than me, which was everyone, since my parents thought I was old enough to go to high school at the age of eleven. It wasn't until my third year of college that I was able to relax because some of the students were younger than me.

I get scared every time the mailman, Deliverer of Doom, brings me a letter from the IRS. Or my insurance carrier.

Most inappropriate holiday gift of the season--so far

I probably would have considered this funnier a few years ago.  But two years' visiting a nursing home regularly have kind of taken the fun out of it.

It's probably funnier to see someone in a power chair or a walker if that someone isn't you.

Newly engaged--Medicare and Aetna Insurance

The happy couple are living together for the present.

Aetna is my secondary insurance company, after Medicare. They keep sending me these warm, caring computer-generated letters advising me that a nurse practitioner is available to handle my queries or that maybe I need my blood sugar checked. I wish they would forgo these communiques and apply the postage saved to lowering my premiums, which are $475 a month.

They have a new dodge now. They are certifying which Medicare customers are allowed to get the free flu shots mandated by the government, by mailing the worthy ones a blue plastic card.

No cardee, no shirtee.

A person who has Medicare without a supplement can get a flu shot by reporting to a site which offers the shots. Usually a drugstore. A person who has Medicare and Aetna needs a blue card. This is because Medicare and Aetna have an agreement; Aetna pays for the shot and Medicare reimburses them. So Aetna is in a position to allow or prevent me from getting a flu shot.

Why?

Since when do I need the permission of an insurance company to receive a government-funded service to which all are entitled?

Just wait until Obamacare kicks in.

Happy Halloween

 

Special pleading

The truly egregious Philadelphia Inquirer suggests people smoke because they are hungry:

Many people smoke after they've eaten. Lindell Harvey smokes because he hasn't.

"You smoke out of anxiety because you don't have the food you need," said Harvey, 54, who lives alone in Crum Lynne, Delaware County. He receives disability checks from the Navy that keep him $2,000 below the poverty line.

Harvey relies on his Newports to see him through his hard days. "In my mind, the smoking becomes a comfort as I try to create ways to get food."

In lives where people endure a dearth of nearly everything important - food, jobs, medical care, a safe place to live - the poor suffer an abundance of one thing:

Nicotine.

This is deplorable in so many ways: 1) He get $2,000 less than the poverty rate. This is poorly worded, but I think it means his income is below the federally defined poverty rate for one individual, so that he is eligible for SNAP, the federal food stamp program. 2) a pack of cigarettes costs $5-6, an amount which will buy you a meal at McDonalds or Burger King, a meal laden with calories but cheap, tasty, and filling. 3)No-one is forcing this man to smoke, he has free will just like the rest of us. Let's just skirt the issue of why a 54-year-old man is on disability, I will concede that his disability is valid, although everyone I know who is in their fifties has at least one job. .

Unsubscribe me!

D

on't Get me started about unwanted e-mail offers. I keep trying to unsubscribe from their solicitation. Though sorry to see me go, they will respect my wishes and unsubscribe me. But it will take 10 days.

Why? Isn't this done by a computer? Why 10 days,when amazon.com will deliver a new house, fully assembled and furnished, in 5?

Well maybe they won't, but still...it's the principle of the thing.

I keep picturing the headquarters of these sleazy outfits as being old and rackety like the newsroom pictured in the Front Page, circa 1955. People are sitting at typewriters, smoking cigars.

There's only one computer, a Wang original. Only one person understands the arcane computer system-a middle aged woman named Flo,*and she only comes in on Tuesday, every other week. When she shows up she opens her Starbucks cup and wearily unsubscribes the 11,974 accounts that have come in since her last visit, but never is able to get the list up to date, because she is only there for 5 hours. Picture the back-up on the VA claim system and you get the idea.

* On the other hand, she might be called Mildred or Bessie.

So good luck, flo, or Mildred or Bessie, and remind your bosses that i have no need for more insurance, or for my credit score and I sure don't need those penis extenders

Reading dr Johnson

I was looking for a quote I've heard repeated numberless times. It goes something like this: "No one but a blockhead ever writes for anything but money"--no, no, that's not it "Only a fool would write except for money"--also wrong, wrong, wrong. But anyway you want to put it, it does not sound right. Dr Johnson put it much better--, If he did, I can't find it. And I'm not going to go through his books, or read Boswell from cover to cover. The Internet exists to answer questions like that. Or else why did Al Gore bother to invent it? I found a few other quotes which are just as good if not better.The quotation, recorded by Boswell in his book, A Tour to the Hebrides, and again in the great biography, goes on: “. . . for being in a ship is being in jail, with the chance of being drowned . . . a man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company.” This is what I tell my cousin who wants me to go on a cruise, anyway. All this is leading up to an apology, or justification, for the many faults of my blogging. I don't revise much, because I'm not getting paid. When I write for publication, I spend more time revising or searching for the mot juste, because someone is paying me. When I am blogging, I try to avoid egregious mistakes and to use correct spelling and punctuation, but that's all. This stuff is ephemeral, after all. My greatest hits are about English towns with silly names or Mercedes Benz being the car favored by dictators. How important could that be?

Light hearted

Some of my neighbors really go overboard decorating their houses for the season--any season. Already two of them have charming Halloween decorations up, and it's not even October. I envy people who go to so much trouble and expense to celebrate these events. Clearly they are light hearted, joyful folks who enjoy every occasion to the max. I wish I were more like that.

Halloween was the holiday Mr Charm liked best, involving as it did candy and little kids, both of which he enjoyed. But dressing up or carving a pumpkin--certainly not.

I looked forward to Christmas when I first got married and wanted to decorate something---- but Mr Charm would have none of it. He loathed Christmas so intensely that the Grinch could have profited by taking his tutorial on the subject. He hated Christmas trees, lights, decorations, angels, Christmas carols on the radio, and all the rest of the collateral damage. Since Christmas is ubiquitous everywhere from Halloween on--stores decorated, feeble-minded songs about Mommy kissing Santa Claus, this was the time of year he hated more. He is the only person I know who longed for the bleak days of January.

About those charter schools...

New York City parents of school children have to choose between deteriorating public schools and charter schools. Once upon a time, parents had another choice. Catholic schools in urban areas served lower class and middle class children, doing a more than adequate job of educating them to be citizens and even to aspire higher. Lately the Catholic Church in its wisdom has closed many of those schools, particularly in urban areas. My impression, which is based on nothing but gut feeling, is that Catholic schools remain only in affluent areas. Urban kids are shit out of luck. Of course, we can all still sent our kids to Sidwell Friends School, where the presidents' children are enrolled. Can't we? Actually no. The Democrats in Congress eliminated a program whereby a few fortunate Washington DC poor kids were allowed to attend private schools on the government dime, even though these programs were popular, with hundreds of parents applying to the program, although only a small number were actually able to participate. Teddy Roosevelt sent his children to Washington DC public schools, back in the day when public school was for everyone. Nowadays they are for the desperate and the choiceless.

How to tell if someone is getting a divorce without actually asking them

Now that I have so many friends on Facebook, some of whom I have actually met in the flesh, I am seeing more of a trend among divorcees. I first noticed this trend when I was still in the library biz, because so many librarians are women. But I notice it more now that I have so many friends all over the country.

No-one wants to flat out inform their friends, one by one, that a marriage is over. But there is a tell which shrewd observer will pick up on 90 percent of the time. Say a woman's birth name was Susan Smith, and she married a man called Andrews a long time ago. She got tired of Mr Andrews, threw him out, and is getting a divorce. But she doesn't want to give up the Andrews surname right away, maybe because they have children. So she calls herself Susan Smith Andrews, or Susan Smith-Andrews.

After a while she doesn't want to be called Andrews any more. She wants a whole new life. Maybe she wants to date, or to meet new people. So she reverts to Susan Smith.

Usually, about this time, she buys a new car.