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A perfect trip

(26 May 2006 6:16)

I just got back last night from a trip up the Pacific Coast Highway to Monterey. On the way up, I stopped in Mussel Shoals, Santa Barbara, Piedras Blancas, and Big Sur, and Salinas.
While in Monterey I visited my sister, saw the Aquarium and Cannery Row, and had a great dinner in Pacific Grove with my sister. Before dinner we had drinks at the Sardine Factory restaurant where the Clint Eastwood movie "Play Misty for Me" was made.
I also visited the Laguna Seca racetrack, the Monterey Fairgrounds where Jimi Hendrix performed, drove the 17 mile drive on the Monterey Peninsula with its gorgeous views of Monterey Bay, the famous cypresses and the Pebble Beach golf courses. Coming back inland, the ranchlands and vineyards of Central California were gorgeous as well and wildflowers were in bloom everywhere. Absolutely wonderful!. Pictures to come, one up now.

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Apheresis, a very special gift

(15 May 2006 19:40)

For the last ten years, every few weeks, I go down the street to the local Red Cross, lie down on a comfy recliner, put some headphones on and watch a DVD of a movie I�ve been wanting to see. A free movie, free snack of juice and cookies and a couple of hours later I�m done, feeling fine and somewhere, one or two people dealing with a bone marrow transplant, cancer, leukemia or newborn babies with infections have another chance to live. I am an apheresis donor.
This means that instead of donating whole blood, I go through a longer process in which platelets are removed from the blood that is taken out of my arm. The rest of my blood comes back through a second needle into my other arm. As in a whole blood donation, the only pain I feel is when the IV needles are inserted into my arms�a brief momentary thing definitely worth putting up with considering the amount of good such a small effort on my part will do.
I have been a regular blood donor since I was 17, but once I learned about apheresis I began doing that. If more people understood how important it was, I think more people would do it and more people would have a chance to live. As it mentions here, sometimes they match you to a specific patient who needs as close a match as possible; I did that a few years ago. A specific patient in another state needed help and I was a match for her so I donated several times in a space of a few weeks for her. Most of the time, like today, I do not know who I am helping.

I�ve taken this information from a couple of different pages on the Red Cross website:

In an apheresis (ay-fur-ee-sis) donation, from the Greek "to take away," donors give only select blood components � platelets, plasma, red cells, infection-fighting white cells called granulocytes, or a combination of these, depending on the donors' blood type and the needs of the community. Apheresis is most commonly used to collect platelets and plasma. With just a five-day storage life, platelet donations are delivered quickly to the patients who need them. Platelet donors have the satisfaction of knowing that their donation will be saving a life within just a few days.

Apheresis donors' donations go through additional typing called Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA) typing to ensure that the match between donor and recipient is as close as possible. Donors are then matched with specific patients in hospitals. Apheresis donors may receive emergency requests to donate for a patient to whom they are matched. Many apheresis donors find the knowledge that they are helping a specific individual in need particularly rewarding.

Blood is made of four components: platelets, plasma, red blood cells and white blood cells. The platelet component is necessary to control bleeding. Patients undergoing chemotherapy and radiation treatments, for example, are unable to produce enough platelets. Without platelet transfusion, life-threatening hemorrhages could result. A single apheresis donation of platelets can provide as many platelets as 5 whole blood donations. In addition, a platelet transfusion from a single donor greatly reduces the chances of an immune system reaction to the transfusion. Bone marrow transplant, cancer and leukemia patients whose immune systems are already compromised, benefit particularly from single donor platelet transfusions.

Similar to a whole blood donation, an aphersis donation consists of four steps: registration, health history and mini-physical, donation, and refreshments. From registration to refreshments, the process lasts 1� -2� hours. During the actual donation, you will sit in a comfortable recliner, and a carefully monitored machine will draw blood from one arm through sterile tubing into a cell separator centrifuge. The blood stays inside the self-contained sterile tubing and never comes in contact with the machine. After the blood component(s) have been collected, the rest of the blood is returned to the donor through the same arm or the other arm. It's a safe process � the collection sets and needles are sterile, used once for each donor and then discarded. Donors usually relax, read, or enjoy a movie during the donation.

Red Cross website: [ link ]

Apheresis donations are by appointment only � call 1-800-GIVE LIFE

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What you don't know about Mother's Day

(13 May 2006 10:30)

In this weekend of Mother's Day commemorations, it is easy to get very caught up in the Hallmark sentimentality of the occasion. As a mother myself, I'm not saying we do not love the flowers and all the appreciation for the things we do... I'm very much a romantic who loves those things. But especially in these times, when the political and social climate has been dominated by those who would turn back the clock on efforts to seriously protect our freedoms and equality, that very sentimentality about who we should be as mothers is used as a tool to keep us in line.
If you are like most people, the only history of Mother's day you have heard makes it sound like it has always been purely a sentimental day to honor the traditional home and hearth type of mother values. I�m not saying someone doesn�t need to love children and take care of them, but sorry people, that love is something men and women should be doing if they have children and all you have to do is look at the cards in the stores or the gifts to see what our society is really reinforcing here. For Mother�s day you get cards with pictures of flowers, softness, women hugging children and all sorts of �moms should stay close to home and tend the hearth� messages. For Father�s day we see boats and golf and all sorts of other suggestions that �being a dad means you can go out and have fun� messages.
The real origin of Mother�s Day in the US is much more radical. The post Civil War 1800s was a period of great leadership and powerful statements by the rapidly growing women�s rights movement. This interest in changing the world for the better went beyond merely working for equality for women, but had people looking at society in general and how it could be improved for all people. The country had just been through all of the horrors of the Civil War� a war with causes rooted in the very assumptions its society had been based on. The idea that it was ok for certain groups in this society to have control over the rights of others�it is not hard to see why the abolitionists and the women�s rights groups were so closely allied. We have too many cases even now where one partner or another in a marriage thinks they can control all of the money, all of the decisions and tell the other one what they can and cannot do and think. It doesn�t matter that now sometimes that partner is the woman, it�s that same untenable belief that it is ok for one human being to control another and that the words love or fairness can ever truly be applied to such a relationship. The women and men of the post civil war period were a lot like those of the generation that came after World War II. They had heard a whole lot of talk about the ideals of freedom and equality they were fighting for. Women and people of color were needed to work and contribute to the effort and therefore allowed to cross barriers they had not been allowed before. Once the war was over, the white men came home and wanted everything to go back to how it had been before. In both eras there was a strong backlash initially but progress in the long run, because of the efforts of leaders who continued to bravely speak out for change.
Julia Ward Howe, who had been very directly involved in the abolitionist movement, became one of the leaders of the women�s suffrage movement after the Civil War.

�In 1870, Julia Ward Howe took on a new issue and a new cause. Distressed by her experience of the realities of war, determined that peace was one of the two most important causes of the world (the other being equality in its many forms) and seeing war arise again in the world in the Franco-Prussian War, she called in 1870 for women to rise up and oppose war in all its forms. She wanted women to come together across national lines, to recognize what we hold in common above what divides us, and commit to finding peaceful resolutions to conflicts. She issued a Declaration, hoping to gather together women in a congress of action.

She failed in her attempt to get formal recognition of a Mother's Day for Peace. Her idea was influenced by Anna Jarvis, a young Appalachian homemaker who had attempted starting in 1858 to improve sanitation through what she called Mothers' Work Days. She organized women throughout the Civil War to work for better sanitary conditions for both sides, and in 1868 she began work to reconcile Union and Confederate neighbors.

Anna Jarvis' daughter, also named Anna Jarvis, would of course have known of her mother's work, and the work of Julia Ward Howe. Much later, when her mother died, this second Anna Jarvis started her own crusade to found a memorial day for women. The first such Mother's Day was celebrated in West Virginia in 1907 in the church where the elder Anna Jarvis had taught Sunday School. And from there the custom caught on � spreading eventually to 45 states. Finally the holiday was declared officially by states beginning in 1912, and in 1914 the President, Woodrow Wilson, declared the first national Mother's Day.� (this article
[ link ] is very good)

Julia Ward Howe's Mother's Day Proclamation - 1870

Arise then...women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

From the bosom of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe out dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace...
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God -
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace

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I should have stayed home today.

(12 May 2006 17:47)

Some days you don't get paid enough to go to work. As a substitute teacher I only get paid for the days they need me and lately, that has not been often enough. Back in the winter, a lot of teachers were out and so they were calling me every day. Now there are too many days when they don't call or they only need me a half day so I was very happy they needed me all day today.
Since I've continued to lose more weight, I was feeling very self conscious about how loose my skirt was and how much I'd had to tighten the belt just to keep it on, so decided to stop at the Goodwill store and splurge on a better fitting one. So I parked my car, went in and was happy with my little $4 purchase... till I got out and found that my car had been towed.
They have way too many signs on that street and despite my best efforts to decipher the rules, they had managed to catch me with my car parked a whole ten minutes after the witching hour of 4 p.m. So, after a lengthy walk to the police station I found out where my car was. (Calling the number on the street sign was useless, as I got a message that this number was no longer in service.) Naturally, my car was a considerable distance in the other direction and beyond walking distance. So I had to call a friend to take me there.
For having failed despite my best efforts to decipher the parking rules, I had to pay $177.00 just to get my car back from these people and have a parking ticket of $65.00 that I have three weeks to pay. Major ouch! I really should have stayed home today.

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wow it stinks in here

(10 May 2006 15:54)

The maintenance people from my apartment repainted my bathtub and tile with some kind of sealant paint stuff today. The good news is it looks beautiful and is going to be so much nicer now since it was peeling off the bottom of the tub before. The bad news is that I've been here all day with everything open and fans running and it wasn't so bad while they were working but now that they're gone and the plastic is off the doorway I'm realizing just how strong that stuff is. I can't even go near my bathroom right now. At least we have a gym here and I can use that bathroom. but I'm very tired and would like to lie down and sleep but there's no way I can do that with everything open. I can't go out and leave all my stuff alone with the place open either but I can't imagine closing it up - it might just kill me when I came back inside! I'm hoping the smell will subside as it dries, because this is awful right now. I keep going outside and sitting on the porch but I'm bored and sleepy. If I didn't have to worry about leaving my stuff alone I'd at least go for a swim. It's so warm and everyone is down at the pool.

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aargh!

(08 May 2006 18:38)

Don't you just love dealing with government bureaucracies? I suppose my problem could be worse but geez I am not looking forward to getting this one resolved. If there weren't a time element involved... but naturally there is. My mom gave me my birth certificate years and years ago... which I promptly filed away with my important papers and have never needed since then. Well, now I do because I need to get a passport. It seems I may be going with her to Slovakia later this summer to see my cousins, which is very cool. What is not cool, is that I discover 43 years after the fact, that someone at the LA County registrar's office misspelled my middle name on my birth certificate. It is spelled correctly on everything else in my life-- my driver's license, my school records, my college degree and teaching credential, my social security number. But now I have to send this misspelled document to Washington with my passport application and hope that some doofus doesn't hang the whole thing up because of that. I am worried about what kind of effort and time it would take to get the County to give me a properly spelled birth certificate-- and if I don't go through the whole ringamarole about getting that changed, is Washington DC going to give me trouble about it? Or will they issue me a passport with a misspelled middle name and then have some cretin at an airport have a conniption over the fact that my driver's license and my passport names won't match? I already have enough trouble with my driver's license as it is because my legal first and middle names are so long that they put my last name on a second line. So they always think my middle name is my last name. Look--- just call me Josi and be done with it. Nothing else. One name. It would be a lot simpler. :)

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LA River a lot cleaner today!

(06 May 2006 13:09)

Thanks to great volunteers from all over the Los Angeles area, 15 different locations along the LA River are a whole lot cleaner today. The Friends of the LA River and volunteer organizations from all over the county worked hard at the 17th annual Great LA River cleanup this morning. Check out my pictures! [ link ]

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lol how true!

(05 May 2006 1:06)

Time sneaks up on you like a windshield on a bug.
John Lithgow

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Friends of the LA River- 17th annual River Cleanup day coming up May 6th

(02 May 2006 11:05)

The Great Los Angeles River Cleanup

� La Gran Limpieza
One of FoLAR's longest running programs is La Gran Limpieza, the Great Los Angeles River Clean Up. This (last) year's Clean Up (2005) mobilized over 3000 volunteers along the Los Angeles River: removing over 25 tons of garbage from the banks of the River and recycling almost half of what would have gone directly into landfills. In 2004, FoLAR's La Gran Limpieza became the largest urban river clean up the country and the largest multi-cultural, multi-ethnic volunteer effort in California. The two day event currently encompasses 15 sites along the 52-mile length of the River, including: the Sepulveda Basin and Tujunga Wash in the San Fernando Valley; Los Angeles sites in Griffith Park, Los Feliz, Silverlake, and two in Elysian Valley; sites in the City of Bell and Compton; and Willow Street and Golden Shores in Long Beach.

� The 17th Annual La Gran Limpieza, the Great Los Angeles River Cleanup is scheduled for May 5th and 6th 2006:

Friday, May 5th 2006 River School Day:
We focus on environmental education by cleaning a site at Fletcher with over 300 elementary, middle and high school students. If you know a school group that might be interested in joining, please e-mail us at mail@FoLAR.org

May 6th 2006:
Join us at any one of 14 sites along the River. Remember to wear comfortable clothes, sturdy shoes, a hat, sunscreen and work gloves. Come show your support: bring your kids, union buddies, co-workers, neighbors, scout troop, church group, rock band, former classmates, fellow actors, reality show co-stars, and best friends. If you know anyone who fits that bill, please call (323) 223-0585 and arrange to have your group represented at La Gran Limpieza.
Help us reach our goal of 3500 volunteers!

FOLAR
[ link ]

LA river tour
[ link ]

The Los Angeles River:
Reshaping the Urban Landscape
[ link ]

LA river connection
[ link ]

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sigh

(02 May 2006 7:48)

�A loving relationship is one in which the loved one is free to be himself -- to laugh with me, but never at me; to cry with me, but never because of me; to love life, to love himself, to love being loved. Such a relationship is based upon freedom and can never grow in a jealous heart.�

Leo F. Buscaglia
(American guru, tireless advocate of the power of love, 1924-1998)

�I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.�
Maya Angelou (American Poet, b.1928)

�Over the years your bodies become walking autobiographies, telling friends and strangers alike of the minor and major stresses of your lives.�

Marilyn Ferguson

So much suffering is so needless. Where are our priorites when we'll give our time and money to things and let the humans in our lives reach such painful depths of suffering? People are resilient but stress of not getting what they need over many years takes its toll. Eventually our bodies tell everyone the truth. My asthma developed after years of trying to live a life that was suffocating me. It went away once I was free of it. Not every effect of suffering is reversible. It's so sad how permanent some of them are. And how needless.

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