Family Stuff

So, I'm curious - given some kind of time-travel technology, what would you like to witness from the past? Let's say that something about the technology prohibits you from interacting with the past - all you can do is passively watch/listen.

And note I said "from the past", not "from history", because while I would want to see some of the famous events, I think I would actually more like to see little things that seldom show up in history books. Like the building of our house (go down to the "Hurst John" house second from the bottom). Or maybe something from my childhood, since I remember so little of it. Sure, everyone would want to resolve some of the mysteries from history, and to witness specific events, but it's more interesting to hear what personal moments of the time would attract your attention.

When would you go?

Jim Downey

(Cross posted to Communion of Dreams.)

A few weeks ago my brother invited us to come out and see him play at a popular country & western steakhouse called "San Tan Flat". San Tan Flat is a fun, family place. There is a large outdoor area where you can sit and have dinner, and where the band plays. There's also a small, circular dance floor in front of the stage.

Now, Mrs. Inscrutable and I like to cut a rug now and then, and I was excited to be able to dance with her this time. "Man," I said to my brother, "It's been a while since we've been able to come out and see you play! It'll be fun to dance!"

"You can't dance there," said Mike. "It's against the law."

More below the fold...

It's a serious question. Many of us who are non-believers nonetheless are in family or other situations where some kind of participation or observation of this most important of Christian holidays.

Many times, even after I had left my Catholic faith far behind, I would attend Easter sunrise services with friends, or spend the day with family. My maternal grandmother always put out a big spread of food, and throughout the day the family would come by and try to avoid eating it (she was an OK cook, but her safe-food-handling skills were notoriously bad, and almost always someone in the family would get hit with a mild case of food poisoning).

Lots of atheists will still decorate eggs, or give the kids candy for Easter, because it is so much a part of the culture.

For me and my wife, it is just a routine day - since my mother-in-law passed on last month, we no longer need to even pretend to observe the holiday. But this is perhaps the first time in several years when I'm not doing *anything* in connection with the day.

So, what are you doing today?

Jim Downey

In following the news of the new Pew Research survey of religious belief in the US, I enjoyed the discussion over at PZ's place. But this passage in particular got me to wondering:

It's not all good news, though, and this one point here is something we must address.

What I've been up to recently, and perhaps why I haven't been as vocal.

Jim D.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Lisa, our regular hospice nurse, arrived while we were getting my MIL dressed this morning. She sat and watched, observing my MIL, seeing how she interacted with us, how she moved, how she looked. Then she went through her usual examination, checking vital signs, listening to heart, lungs, intestines, asking the usual questions about sleep, and appetite, and signs of pain. She sat back, looked at my MIL, and said pleasantly to her: "you always have such a beautiful smile."

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

There is light snow falling, but the winter storm which had been predicted has missed us for the most part. The grey fits my mood.

Possummomma needs our help! Her Lupus-related light sensitivity has gotten worse, and she needs to light-proof her home. Even a couple of bucks, from each of us baby-eating evil atheist scum-sucking lowlifes will help.

Berlzebub is organizing the donations at his blog.

Hang in there P-Momma!

I wrote this personal item for my blog this morning, but then realized that it was in many ways a perfect summation of how I see the world. Feel free to ignore.

Jim D.

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I commented via email to a close friend yesterday about the persistent fever my MIL has been running, 2 to 2.5 degrees above her normal. We'd seen fevers come and go for the last several months, but this one seems to have settled in for a while. I got back this:

Any particular reason for it, or is she just being like a star that's going into its final flameout?

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

*This post previously ran last year. And while some of the personal details mentioned in it have changed - I did indeed keep that promise to tweak my manuscript - the sentiment is the same.

Jim D.

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This has been a hell of a day. Not as bad as some, perhaps, but as far as routine days go, not the sort you want to pop up often in the queue. It started with my mother-in-law being ill. Now, most adults know how a young child (either their own or one they've babysat) can be when sick. Think intestinal bug. Think explosive diarrhea, of the toxic/caustic variety. Poor kid doesn't understand what's going on, or how to best cope with their misbehaving body (if they are capable of that on their own yet). Then picture that not in a toddler, but in a 95-pound woman well into dementia before the effects of dehydration and fever kick in. Took my wife and I two full hours to get her and the bedroom cleaned up.

I wrote up this story from my adolescence a couple years back, thought since it was Hallowe'en I'd dig it out to share...

* * * * * * *

We stood there on the corner, looking up at The House. Max, Marty, and me. It sat back from the street on a high corner lot, a classic Midwestern Victorian two-story, with a large porch that ran along two sides. The lot itself was landscaped in such a way that there was a steep hill of perhaps six feet, rising up from where we stood on the sidewalk on the downhill side. A set of concrete stairs cut up through the grass, a sidewalk leading from there to the front door.

"So, um, it's haunted, right?" asked Max. He was tall and thin, as I was, but he had an athlete's natural grace. I hated him for that since, at the same age of 14, I was nothing but clumsy. Max played basketball and ran cross-country. I think he still holds some of the school records to this day.

"Yeah, that's what they say."

I just lost my temper. I just had a full-fledged screaming fit, eyes bulging, veins throbbing, face beet red. At a 90 year old woman who knows no better, who is confused by the world around her due to Alzheimer's, who is likely dying.

Why did I just do this reprehensible thing, and why on earth am I admitting to it in a public forum?

The first part of that question is the more difficult one to answer. I did it out of frustration, exhaustion, and fear. Frustration because she (my MIL) has been exhibiting compulsive behaviours all morning which drive me nuts (tearing things out of magazines, wanting to write on the back of photos in the little album she has, 'cleaning' up some lunch mess with a kleenex and in the process smearing stuff all over the table top and making more work for me.) This sort of thing rapidly gets under my skin - it's like some small kid pestering you with a behaviour that they know will drive you nuts. Except, of course, that in this case she doesn't really know what the hell she is doing.

President Bush has appointed Susan Orr to lead what is basically the “Acting Deputy Asst. Secretary for Population Affairs” at the HHS Department, where she be responsible for U.S. contraception programs. The White House calls her “highly qualified”, they mean sufficiently religious. A look at Orr’s record shows that her strongest qualifications appear to be her rightwing credentials and endorsement of the Bush administration’s failed abstinence-only policies.

In a 2001 article in The Washington Post, Orr applauded a Bush proposal to stop requiring all health insurance plans for federal employees to cover a broad range of birth control. "We're quite pleased, because fertility is not a disease," said Orr, then an official with the Family Research Council.

If you are squeamish about killing things, don't read this. I warned you. Heh.

It was a half hour before lunch yesterday. I checked in on my mother-in-law (MIL), who was sitting in the front room, reading. Doing this regularly helps her feel less anxious, gives her a chance to ask questions or if she needs something, since she doesn't always remember that she can just call for me.

"How're you doing?"

"I'd like to get up and look out that window."

This is unusual. "Um, why?"

"Because I want to see what's so interesting out there."

"???"

"There was a man here a few minutes ago, and he was looking out that window at something."

No, there wasn't - we'd been alone since my wife left for her office 90 minutes earlier. "A man?"

"Yes. There was a man there, looking out. He seemed to be very interested in something."

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

I was on-call last night. It's a lot easier to do this now that it's only a couple times a week. My MIL had been restless early on, so I went to check on her about 11:00.

"You OK?"

"Yes. But I need to get up."

"Do you need to use the toilet?"

"No. I need to make room for the other people."

"???"

"All the people who are here. I need to let them use the room."

As a counter-point to the doom and gloom of my other post this morning, I thought I'd share this - the paper I wrote a column for until the first of this year did a feature piece on an Alzheimer's presentation by a local researcher, and wanted to tie it with the experience my wife and I have had in caring for my mother-in-law. The result is this article, titled "Unwavering love."

I wrote about the 'every 15 minutes' incident last week on my blog, and there is a bit of a discussion thread on the Trib's forum as well.

Jim Downey

"When does this plane land?"

"Mom, this is your home. Not an airplane."

"Well, I don't want to lose my glasses. I'll need them."

"I'll make sure you have them."

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

My wife and I have both noticed a lot more "journeying" reference from my MIL in the past few days. From such things as above, to stories of people waiting for her to return, to news that she is going "on a trip".

Yeah, that's probably right.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

There's a phenomenon familiar to those who deal with Alzheimer's. It's called "sundowning". There are a lot of theories about why it happens, my own pet one is that someone with this disease works damned hard all day long to try and make sense of the world around them (which is scrambled to their perceptions and understanding), and by late in the afternoon or early evening, they're just worn out. You know how you feel at the end of a long day at work? Same thing.

So we usually don't worry about it when my MIL gets hit by this. Still, it'll catch you completely off guard if you let it.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

This isn't really pertinent to the usual UTI stuff, but I thought I would post it here anyway so folks may understand why I will sometimes be absent in the coming weeks. It is a follow-up to this post on my blog yesterday.

Jim

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A friend sent me a link to this CBS News item this morning:

Atheists Make A Case Against God

Except that the article really isn't about that. It's more about where atheism fits in within our society, as seen through the vehicle of former Saturday Night Live actress Julia Sweeney, who discusses her own journey away from belief, and how it was received by her family:

Even more confusing for Sweeney personally was religion. She comes from a large Irish-Catholic family. But in her 30s, Sweeney says she began a spiritual quest. It led her away from any notion of God — a conversion she turned into a monologue, soon to be released as a film called "Letting Go of God."

But of course, many people would disagree with Sweeney, especially her mother, Geri. She said it was a great shock that her daughter decided that there wasn't enough evidence for her to believe in God.

"Uncle" Leonard has lived on my mother in law's street for more than 40 years. My mother and father-in-law have known him for 30 of those years, and my wife, Mrs. Inscrutable, has known him since she was a little girl. She always called him "Uncle Leonard" or "Uncle Len". I met Len when I married into the family and immediately liked the old coot.

Len is 80 years old and strong as an ox. His eyes are clear, his brain works great, and he's deeply intelligent with a childlike sense of humor that infuses all that he says and does. He knows everything that is to know about big and small game hunting here in Arizona. He's our "hunting buddy", and we go hunting with him 3 or 4 times a year at least - more if we can get the time off. Working for 40 years of his early life as an electrical engineer erecting power poles and stringing high-power electrical lines through some of the most desolate desert and high-country wilderness in the state of Arizona means that he also knows every trail, track, and road. In many cases he created the trail or road when he and his crew were wiring-up the state in the 40's and 50's.

He is a crack shot. I have seen him take down two javelina from more than 400 yards, one right after the other, with perfect behind-the-ear shots. This is in the desert, and a javelina is about the size of a medium-sized dog - and they are sand-colored. It wasn't luck - he shoots like this *every time*.

My point is that Uncle Leonard isn't a wild-eyed, deluded fruit-loop new agey weirdo. He's one of the most down-to-earth, hard-nosed materialists I've ever met.

However, he dowses for water. Successfully.

More after the fold...

Darned if I ever thought about THIS before.

An article titled "10 Things Your Grocery Store Doesn't Want You to Know" by Sally Wadyka for MSN Health & Fitness says, in part:

1. The shopping carts have cooties.

According to studies done on shopping carts, more than 60 percent of them are harboring coliform bacteria (the sort more often associated with public toilet seats). “These bacteria may be coming from raw foods or from children who sit in the carts,” says Chuck Gerba, Ph.D., a microbiologist at University of Arizona. “Just think about the fact that a few minutes ago, some kid’s bottom was where you are now putting your broccoli.” According to studies done by Gerba and his colleagues at University of Arizona, shopping carts had more bacteria than other surfaces they tested—even more than escalators, public phones and public bathrooms.

Damn. Never thought about it. Shitty-diapered kids sit WHERE MY GROCERIES GO.

Argh.

You may, or may not, have been wondering why I've been so quiet lately. One of the main reasons is that I've been on vacation in Italy. If you're interested, I've uploaded some of the pictures we took here.

We visited Lago Maggiore, Venice and Milan during our time there.

Some of the many tourist attractions in Italy are the churches there and the wife and I did visit some of them. The pictures on the inside of a church come from Piazza Duomo, the 3rd largest Christian church in the world.

One of the questions atheists often hear is, "What harm does it do to believe?"

Visiting these churches showed me some of the harm. The churches are magnificent, awe inspiring and opulent. They represent, to me, wasted human effort and that is one of the things that is harmful about religion. We (as humans)pour, and have poured, huge amounts time and resources into something that atheist's regard as false. How can we help but see that as harmful?

If you have any questions about the pictures linked, feel free to ask in the comments and I'll do my best to address them.