Wednesday Reads: Sundowning, yeah!
Posted: August 17, 2016 Filed under: open thread, U.S. Politics | Tags: Civil Rights era, Depression, pre-dementia 45 Comments
I wonder, if you ever wonder…if Trump read stories like the one described up top? Circus Dan: A Mystery Story For Boys Nah, I doubt it. What kind of childhood turns a person into the beast we see today? Obviously there has to be some nature or “bad seed” affect at work here, the dude was born with this pathology. We all can pretty much agree, Trump is fucked up.
Anyway, I just was thinking of that when I saw the illustration above. I don’t know why exactly…
Maybe the first link will give y’all a hint.
Here is an article, thanks for the link BB, I think y’all will find it more than interesting. (I know I did….in pathetically more ways than I’d had wanted to.)
Behavior changes trump memory lapses as signs dementia may be brewing | The Japan Times
Memory loss may not always be the first warning sign that dementia is brewing — changes in behavior or personality might be an early clue.
Researchers on Sunday outlined a syndrome called “mild behavioral impairment” that may be a harbinger of Alzheimer’s or other dementias, and proposed a checklist of symptoms to alert doctors and families.
Losing interest in favorite activities? Getting unusually anxious, aggressive or suspicious? Suddenly making crude comments in public?
“Historically those symptoms have been written off as a psychiatric issue, or as just part of aging,” said Dr. Zahinoor Ismail of the University of Calgary, who presented the checklist at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in Toronto.
Now, “when it comes to early detection, memory symptoms don’t have the corner on the market anymore,” he said.
Alzheimer’s, the most common form of dementia, affects more than 5 million people in the U.S., a number growing as the population ages. It gradually strips people of their memory and the ability to think and reason.
But it creeps up, quietly ravaging the brain a decade or two before the first symptoms become noticeable. Early memory problems called “mild cognitive impairment,” or MCI, can raise the risk of later developing dementia, and worsening memory often is the trigger for potential patients or their loved ones to seek medical help.
It’s not uncommon for people with dementia to experience neuropsychiatric symptoms, too — problems such as depression or “sundowning,” agitation that occurs at the end of the day — as the degeneration spreads into brain regions responsible for more than memory. And previous studies have found that people with mild cognitive impairment are at greater risk of decline if they also suffer more subtle behavioral symptoms.
What’s new: The concept of pre-dementia “mild behavioral impairment,” or MBI, a term that describes specific changes in someone’s prior behavior that might signal degeneration is starting in brain regions not as crucial for memory, he said.
The Alzheimer Association has drawn up a new checklist of symptoms. If the checklist does become accepted it will help doctors determine who may be more prone to develop Alzheimers.
…new problems that linger at least six months, not temporary symptoms or ones explained by a clear mental health diagnosis or other issues such as bereavement, he stressed. They include apathy, anxiety about once routine events, loss of impulse control, flaunting social norms, loss of interest in food.
[…]
“It’s important for us to recognize that not everything’s forgetfulness,” said Dr. Ron Petersen, the Mayo Clinic’s Alzheimer’s research chief. He wasn’t involved in developing the behavior checklist but said it could raise awareness of the neuropsychiatric link with dementia.
Technology specialist Mike Belleville of Douglas, Massachusetts, thought stress was to blame when he found himself getting easily frustrated and angry. Normally patient, he began snapping at co-workers and rolling down his window to yell at other drivers, “things I’d never done before,” Belleville said.
The final red flag was a heated argument with his wife, Cheryl, who found herself wondering, “Who is this person?” When Mike Belleville didn’t remember the strong words the next morning, the two headed straight for a doctor. Physicians tested for depression and a list of other suspects. Eventually Belleville, now 55, was diagnosed with an early-onset form of dementia — and with medication no longer gets angry so easily, allowing him to volunteer his computer expertise.
“If you see changes, don’t take it lightly and assume it’s stress,” Cheryl Belleville advised.
The article goes on to discuss the benefit of cognitive training.
The team tested 284 adults in late middle-age whose brain scans showed changes that have been linked to an increased risk of Alzheimer’s. Comparing their cognitive ability and their careers, the researchers found those who worked primarily with people, rather than objects or data, functioned better even if brain scans showed more of that quiet damage.
— Preliminary results from a study of “brain training” suggested one type might help delay cognitive impairment.
Researchers examined records from 2,785 older adults who’d participated in a previous trial that compared three cognitive training strategies — to improve memory, reasoning or reaction times —with no intervention. A decade later, that reaction-time training suggested benefit: 12 percent of people who’d completed up to 10 hours had evidence of cognitive decline or dementia compared with 14 percent in the control group, said Dr. Jerri Edwards of the University of South Florida. The figure was lower — 8 percent — for people who got some extra booster training.
More study is needed of course, but it makes you think. It certainly scares me. I do know that sundowning thing makes complete sense to me.
Sundowning, gaslighting…wtf is it with the phrases?
(I think that is the main reason most assholes are being assholes about Hillary…because she is a woman. Because this is, “A man’s world.” And because of the, “Axis of Dick” as Veep puts it.)
What about the grope? I mean, come on.
– Thank you.
– That is an attack on America.
All right? That’s like a sexual 9/11 in my opinion.
Or a sexual Cuban Missile Crisis at the least.
It’s not like we can go public about the grope.
– It would define you.
– Right.
Your tit being fondled by a Finn would be all you’re remembered for.
– Yeah.
– You can’t build a statue on that.
That’s right.
Nobody can know about this.
– All right? Especially Kent.
– Oh, yeah.
And why is that? Because he’s gonna use it against me.
– A grope matrix.
– Right.
Because he’s a man.
Because this is a man’s world that we live in.
Because of the axis of dick.
This at Mother Jones: Is Trump Even Aware of Where He’s Speaking? | Mother Jones
After discussing manufacturing in the DC exurbs and wine in coal country, he’s delivering an address on ISIS in a hard-hit Rust Belt city.
I guess when you have a well known professional dictator’s PR guru as your campaign manager, what he says doesn’t matter for shit.
Have you seen this? #IllWalkWithYou: People Offer To Walk Muslims To Mosques After Imam Killed
The fatal shooting of a New York City imam and his associate in Queens has prompted people around the country to offer to accompany Muslim worshippers to and from mosques so that they won’t have to fear for their safety.
[…]
In response to the killings, many non-Muslims posted tweets with the hashtag #IllWalkWithYou to offer to physically accompany Muslims to their houses of worship.
Muslim Twitter users expressed appreciation, while also urging allies to vote against candidates who espouse Islamophobia.
A similar hashtag, #IllRideWithYou, sprang up in Australia in 2014 after a Muslim gunman held people hostage at a Sydney café. Australians offered to ride the train with Muslim commuters who feared an Islamophobic backlash to the incident.
Allies Offer To Walk Muslims To Mosque After New York Shooting
You can read many of the tweets at the links above.
Next up, an article about depression: Is depression in parents, grandparents linked to grandchildren’s depression? — ScienceDaily
Having both parents and grandparents with major depressive disorder (MDD) was associated with higher risk of MDD for grandchildren, which could help identify those who may benefit from early intervention, according to a study published online by JAMA Psychiatry.
It is well known that having depressed parents increases children’s risk of psychiatric disorders. There are no published studies of depression examining three generations with grandchildren in the age of risk for depression and with direct interviews of all family members.
Myrna M. Weissman, Ph.D., of Columbia University and New York State Psychiatric Institute, New York, studied 251 grandchildren (average age 18) interviewed an average of two times and their biological parents, who were interviewed an average of nearly five times, and grandparents interviewed up to 30 years.
Sounds good doesn’t it? Go and read the article in full. You can find the JAMA entry here:
Because large segments of the populace–particularly African-Americans, women, and men without property–have not always been accorded full citizenship rights in the American Republic, civil rights movements, or “freedom struggles,” have been a frequent feature of the nation’s history.
In particular, movements to obtain civil rights for black Americans have had special historical significance. Such movements have not only secured citizenship rights for blacks but have also redefined prevailing conceptions of the nature of civil rights and the role of government in protecting these rights.
The most important achievements of African-American civil rights movements have been the post-Civil War constitutional amendments that abolished slavery and established the citizenship status of blacks and the judicial decisions and legislation based on these amendments, notably the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision of 1954, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Moreover, these legal changes greatly affected the opportunities available to women, nonblack minorities, disabled individuals, and other victims of discrimination.A sign on a restaurant in Lancaster, Ohio, August 1938. (Photo by Reuters/Library of Congress)A high school student being educated via television during the period that schools in Little Rock, Arkansas, were closed to avoid integration, September 1958. (Photo by Reuters/Library of Congress)
Sunday Reads: Time Lapses
Posted: August 17, 2014 Filed under: 2016 elections, American Gun Fetish, Barack Obama, corporate greed, domestic military/police exercises, Free Press, Free Speech, fundamentalist Christians, Hillary Clinton, History, morning reads, public corruption, racism, Republican politics, Revisionism, science, U.S. Politics | Tags: childhood brain development, Depression, Ferguson MO, militarization of police, preterm labor, time lapse photography 28 Comments
Good Morning
Time lapse photography is something that fascinates me, I think we can look at a picture of a time lapse image and see a metaphor for life. Movement, continuous and repetitive.
There are a couple of types of time lapse photography….the short exposure kind which 
takes a normal exposure of sequential pictures over many hours or even days and edit them into one photograph.
<——————————–
(Like the sunset images you see by artist, Matt Molloy. )
Time lapse of moths in the porchlight – photographed by Steve Irvine for National Geographic
Or the long exposure method, where the camera shutter remains open for a long period of time and exposes the film to the image it is photographing.
——————————->
These particular long exposed photos are blurred in appearance. Creating a glowing, disoriented, disturbed, ghostlike, or drugged feeling when you look at them.
It seems as if we are living in a time lapsed state of mind, as you have been reading the Boston Boomer’s and Dak’s coverage of late, the mess in Missouri is just the result of what has been building over time. Like the images you will see below throughout the post…the same scenarios have been played out all over the US. The actual persons involved may be different, but the general characteristics are the same. When we see the reports of racial violence play out on the news, we feel that repetition. Like the time lapsed images, the scenes become blurred. Yet we know what happens at the end of the shot. There is a good example of the differences in media treatment of violence here by the way: When The Media Treats White Suspects And Killers Better Than Black Victims be sure to look at that….No need to belabor the point, I will just let this op/ed by Farai Chideya from the Guardian do that for me.
Waiting in Grand Central Station by James Maher, time-lapse picture. Prints available on his website.
(One note however, it makes a uncomfortable point when Rand Paul gets a pat on the back from a black woman…considering the neocon racist misogynistic shit he usually spews…but you’ll get the point the author is making.) On race, America has far to go. Ferguson won’t be the last flash point
I spent my very early years in New York, living a very multiracial Sesame Street life, a big swinging bellbottom of a childhood. And then our family moved to Baltimore and the iron curtain of the “colour line” fell. I felt that I had moved from the 1970s through a time warp where black and white were the only two colours and never the twain shall socially meet.
I grew to understand what the 50s were actually like in Baltimore, when my mother, for example, was permitted to buy clothes from the major department store but not try them on. (Heaven forfend some black lady should be in the dressing room, right? You know they leave a residue of blackness on the clothes.)
America has never had one racial reality, but a series of them strung together from San Antonio to Pittsburgh to Appalachia. What we are seeing in Ferguson, Missouri, is the result of life in a specific type of heavily racialised zone. Yes, a city such as New York, where a black man was recently choked to death by police officers, has its own very clear forms of racialisation and it’s a national issue. But the police killing, last week, of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teen in Ferguson has sparked national protests because it represents a specific type of racialisation. This is of the majority black city, big or small, with a white economic and political power structure.
Read the whole opinion piece. This is the part about Rand Paul though, it comes in comparison to Obama’s reactions to Ferguson’s Police Departments militarization:
After the killing of another black youth, Trayvon Martin, Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote a seminal piece for Atlantic magazine called “Fear of a Black President”, describing President Obama as “conservative… in the very sphere where he holds singular gravity – race.”
Two years later, with Ferguson, the president still holds tight to that caution about addressing racial inequality. In terms of day-to-day Washington governance, there is no fear of a black president. Congress fears him not, certainly not the Republicans and not even some members of his own party. And now, with a particularly tepid and circular statement on Ferguson, the president has gone even further.
He seems obsessed with convincing white Americans he is not some goblin come to take their privilege away, rather than recognising that, pragmatically, America still has enough deeply held racial biases that he will be perceived as a race man by some, no matter what he does. (Black Americans learned his political strategy on race early in his first term, as a group of leaders of African American organisations came to ask for more White House focus on jobs in black communities and were rebuffed. They held their televised press conference outside the White House in a snowstorm, a nature-made bathetic fallacy.)
L
ast week, the president delivered a speech that seemed to weigh police intimidation and harassment of protesters and press with acts of vandalism almost equally. “Put simply, we all need to hold ourselves to a high standard, particularly those of us in positions of authority,” he said. “Let’s remember that we’re all part of one American family.”
In this diffuse speech, the president could have spoken out more forcefully against the militarisation of local police forces, as Republican Rand Paul has done. He could have tackled the unacceptable level and variety of unwarranted stops, searches and frisking of black men in particular. For bonus points, he could have gotten into black incarceration rates or, as author Michelle Alexander puts it, the “New Jim Crow”.
You can read the rest at the link. That is something…when an asshole like Rand gets kudos from a black woman who has the phrase “New Jim Crow” in the same paragraph. But I think I get her point….yes? I don’t know. Don’t get me wrong, I agree with her, but she could have pick a different politician to highlight…am I right? Let’s not forget that Paul is the dude who didn’t support the Civil Rights Act…no matter what shit he says now: Wash. Post Recasts Rand Paul As Civil Rights Ally, Forgetting Their Own Reporting | Blog | Media Matters for America
Anyway…I need to move on.
In another Op/Ed, this one from the Sprinfield News-Leader, which is quoted as, “This editorial is the view of the News-Leader Editorial Board, Linda Ramey-Greiwe, President and Publisher, Paul Berry, Executive Director, Cheryl Whitsitt, Managing Editor.” Our Voice: Rights lost in Ferguson riots
It is very good, and I feel it is too important not to quote the entire thing:
On Aug. 9, unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot and killed by police officer Darren Wilson at 12:01 p.m. in Ferguson. A vigil on Aug. 10 turned violent.
The situation deteriorated from there.
Riots and arrests. Tear gas and rubber bullets. Real bullets, riot gear and military-grade displays of force. Injuries to both protesters and police. Looting and needless destruction of property. For four straight nights, the clashes escalated, the national media descended, and still, no clear information was put forth about the death of a young, unarmed black man. After a day of relative calm gave hope that the situation was beginning to defuse, tempers flared again Friday.
As unrest continues, the blame game is already underway. At this point, it would be easy to join in on the finger-pointing based on half-truths.
It would be easy join the chorus of voices calling out our elected leaders, Gov. Nixon, U.S. Sens. McCaskill and Blunt and President Obama, for waiting so long to intervene.
It would be easy to place blame on the protesters for turning violent and rioting, citing the need for peaceful assembly.
It would be easy to hoist the burden of responsibility onto local authorities in Ferguson for their poor handling of the situation, inciting protesters to riot rather than bringing calm.
It would be easy to join in blaming the media for stirring up the situation by giving attention to it.
It would be easy to, as some are now doing, blame the young man himself for allegedly participating in a theft prior to his altercation with the police.
But there is nothing easy about the situation in Ferguson. A solution for the community will take doing the hard work.
Capt. Ron Johnson of the Missouri State Highway Patrol is doing the hard work. Rather than waging a battle, Johnson is working to open the lines of communication and erase the artificial boundaries between authorities and protesters.
State Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal and St. Louis alderman Antonio French are doing the hard work. Providing on-the-ground leadership, standing up to rioters, calling for peaceful protests and documenting events on Twitter, their work is reason to hope that the community will make it through this crisis.
There is no shortage of people being thrust forward to take the blame for what has happened in Ferguson. But at this moment, as the nation watches a community teetering on the edge of chaos, we must take the time to examine exactly what we are losing.
An unarmed young man was shot and killed by police. His right to due process was violated, which demands an explanation. With an investigation underway, it is our duty as citizens to care as much about the process and outcome of the investigations by the FBI and Department of Justice as we do the riots.
As the black community in Ferguson protested, it was met with aggression, intimidation and eventual force from authorities. Some people rioted, which cannot be condoned in our society and should be dealt with. But many assembled peacefully, and were met with the same treatment. Peacefully assembled crowds had their rights violated as well. We must seek answers as to why.
Two reporters, Wesley Lowery of the Washington Post and Ryan Reilly of the Huffington Post, were taken into custody as they tried to follow police orders to leave a McDonald’s restaurant, where they were working. Other journalists were specifically told to stop reporting what was happening. Again, rights were violated, this time in an attempt to silence the press that is promised to remain free.
Blame is as easy to assign as it is to dodge. At some point, someone will “take responsibility” for what happened. Over the past several years, this has come to mean little more than an acceptance that people will think poorly of the person for a few weeks.
Or until the next big outrage comes along to distract us.
As Americans and Missourians thankful for the rights afforded to us by our Constitution, we must not lose interest in these events because the spectacle stops. Now is the time to wade through the rhetoric in order to hold our government and society accountable for what is happening in Ferguson.
It’s the only way we’ll manage to restore those rights.
Good for the Springfield News-Leader! Damn glad there is a press out there near the heart of the situation that is keeping check on things. The News-Leader is a Gannett newspaper…
As I was getting ready to shut down the laptop, these headlines caught my attention:
It’s around 4:00 AM btw.
Ferguson On Edge On First Night With Curfew Huffington Post
Clusters of Protesters Defy Night Curfew in Ferguson – NYTimes.com
Police enforce curfew against protesters in Ferguson, Missouri | Reuters
Police deploy tear gas to impose Ferguson curfew – Nation – Boston.com
Okay. Next up, another op/ed, a link from last week: Rekha Basu: Iowa summit serves reminder of why religion, politics don’t mix | Opinion | McClatchy DC
Of everything coming out of this year’s Iowa Family Leadership Summit, the fear factor is what stayed with me.
It was a constant, discomfiting undercurrent, like a loose nail poking up in your shoe. It was organization President Bob Vander Plaats declaring this a time of “spiritual warfare,” and speaker Joel Rosenberg announcing America is “on the road to collapse” and “implosion,” and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, warning grimly, “We are living in some very dangerous times.”
The third year of the event sponsored by the self-described Christ-centered organization that seeks to influence policy and elections, brought big name politicians Bobby Jindal, Rick Santorum, Ted Cruz and Rick Perry to Ames, Iowa, this past weekend. They were there to rally the Republican base in the lead-off caucus state. But the upbeat, love-God-and-country tone of previous events appeared at times to have been replaced by a somber, calamitous note of foreboding. Even Satan got a few mentions.
Projected onto a giant screen to punctuate Vander Plaats’ remarks was a video filled with haunting images of Osama bin Laden, Adam Lanza and the Boston marathon bombings. It depicted a rising national debt, marijuana, Boys Scouts, gay rainbow flag and a woman holding up a “Keep abortion legal” sign. It ended with someone yelling, “God is dead. Hail Satan!”
Sponsors and speakers still exalted matrimony and procreation in heterosexual relationships, called for putting God back in the classroom and government, and called abortion murder. But this year’s message was: The nation is in moral decline. Ignore it at your own peril. That was even carried into foreign policy.
I am telling you all, I live in the bible belt. I see these assholes everyday. They are powerful. And they vote.
Rosenberg, an evangelical Christian born to a Jewish father, said the United States must not support a two-state solution in Israel because a sovereign Palestinian state “defies the biblical mandate.” Interesting that a Christian American would presume to tell Palestinian Muslims they don’t deserve a homeland because of what the Bible says. This follows an evangelical belief that Jews from around the world will gather in Israel, where the second coming of Christ will occur and – though Rosenberg didn’t spell this out – be converted to Christianity.
“God loves you but if we don’t receive Christ, there are consequences,” Rosenberg warned.
Is fear a new strategy for the Family Leader and its affiliated Family Research Council and Focus on the Family? Is it a response to flagging interest and political losses? Organizers said there were 1,200 attendees, and that there has been steady growth in three years. But many seats were empty. Is it a concession they’re losing the battle over abortion and gay rights? Abortion has not been completely outlawed, even under a conservative U.S. Supreme Court majority. Having succeeded in getting three justices of the Iowa Supreme Court voted out over same-sex marriage, a few years ago, the Family Leader failed in its more recent campaign against a fourth. Same-sex couples are celebrating wedding anniversaries with children and grandchildren, and the planet has survived.
What the planet might not ultimately survive – global warming – wasn’t on the agenda. In fact, if this were a true gathering of faith leaders, one might have expected some commitment to keeping the environment healthy, some compassion for the poor and immigrants. There were calls for abolishing the entire tax system that sustains the poor in times of need. There were calls for boosting border patrols to turn back young asylum seekers before their cases are heard. Iowa’s governor, Terry Branstad, boasted of having cut 1,400 state employees and cut property taxes, which fund education, more than ever in Iowa history.
But if it were a political forum to vet candidates, a Jewish, Muslim, agnostic or atheist one would have had no place there. In one video, Billy Graham’s daughter, Anne Graham Lotz, said, “The only place you get right with God is at the foot of the cross of Jesus Christ.”
As with the other links, I urge you to read it all. That blurred scene that distorts and disturbs….you can feel it!
On the ridiculous notion, I must say this could have been me: South Carolina Mom Arrested For Cursing In Front Of Her Kids
Parents, it looks like it’s time to be ever-vigilant about your choice of words. Dropping an F-bomb in front of your kids can land you in jail.
Mom Danielle Wolf was grocery shopping at a Kroger store in North Augusta, South Carolina when she was arrested for disorderly conduct after cursing in the presence of her two daughters, WJBF News Channel 6 reports.
According to the incident report from the North Augusta Department Of Public Safety, Wolf yelled at her children, told them to “stop squishing the f*cking bread,” and used “similar phrases multiple times.” Another woman at the store then approached the mother and asked her to stop using that language with her children.
But Wolf insists this is not what happened. “She’s like, ‘you told that they were smashing the bread’, and I said ‘no’ I said that to my husband, that he was smashing the bread by throwing the frozen pizzas on top of it,” she told WJBF.
But the woman, who was referred to “Ms. Smith” in the police report and later identified as “Michelle” by NBC affiliate WAGT, reported Wolf to the authorities, leading to the mother’s arrest for disorderly conduct.
“He was like, ‘You’re under arrest’… right in front of kids, in front of my husband, in front of customers,” Wolf told WJBF of the officer who approached her in the store. She added, “I didn’t harm nobody. I didn’t hurt nobody. The lady said she was having a bad day. So, because you’re having a bad day you’re going to ruin somebody’s life.”
Well, fuckadoodledoo!
Perhaps arresting the mother in front of her kids was more traumatic than telling the dumbass husband to stop “squishing the fucking bread.”
In the world of Amazon and the Washington Post, a buck is a buck: Bezos-owned Washington Post now inserting gross Amazon affiliate links into news articles | PandoDaily
Six paragraphs into the story, we find this…
…a “buy it now” button, wedged into editorial copy and linked to an affiliate account of Amazon.
A quick skim around the WaPost site suggests this is something the Post is doing with all of its book reviews now, as well as on news items and even letters to the editor. The link to the Roald Dahl book links to the Amazon affiliate ID “slatmaga-20″ (presumably short for Slate Magazine, per the Post’s ties with that publication). That ID can also be found in a link within this letter to the editor. Meanwhile, this music book review links to the Amazon affiliate ID “thewaspost-03″.
Despite the various IDs being used, one thing is very clear: The Washington Post now sees reviews of books, and even news reports about books, as fair game for selling those same to readers, editorial independence be dammed.
Shit. What do you think will come next? Brought to you by Carl’s Jr.
(Hope you get that commercial reference.)
This post is getting real…real…real long so let’s just link dump for a bit. After the jump.
Saturday Reads: Snow Rage!
Posted: February 15, 2014 Filed under: morning reads | Tags: "long wave" weather systems, #SnowRage, Depression, guns, overwhelmed, parking spaces, snow plows, Snow Rage, snowstorms, violence 48 Comments
Good Morning!!
A few days ago, I posted a link to an article about a phenomenon brought on by the horrible winter of 2013-14–“Snow Rage.” I’m going to post the story again here, because this shocking behavior seems to be spreading. People who are disgusted and overwhelmed by endless snowstorms followed by shoveling have begun taking their anger out on snowplow drivers.
CBS Pittsburgh: ‘Snow Rage’ Pits Storm-Weary Residents Against Plow Drivers Just Trying To Do Jobs.
Eric Ramirez, a snow plow driver on Long Island, said an irate man went so far as to rack a shotgun Sunday and threaten to shoot him because he was piling snow in front of the man’s Manorhaven home.
“I see the guy is coming across the street; is coming to me. I say, ‘Hi.’ He talked to me,” Ramirez said, adding the man responded by saying he was coming to shoot him.
Raymond Hounigringer, 48, was charged with menacing in the incident.
In another example, “in Norwalk, Conn., Tony Thompson, also 48, was charged with assault for allegedly attacking a plow driver with a shovel.”
“They yell. They curse at you. They do all kind of stupidness,” said driver Zaheer Hussain. “They make snowballs and throw them at you.” ….
“It started with snowballs, and worked its way to branches; lids, anything they can find and now it’s to weaponry,” said Aero Snow Removal supervisor Sergio Vasquez.
Snowdrifts in North Dakota
CBS Pittsburgh also reported on a snow rage incident in Lawrence County, Pennsylvania: Man Puts Gun To Snow Plow Driver’s Head Over Snow Removal Dispute. According to the police report, Richard Eckert, 64, was arrested after he threatened a snowplow driver with two guns.
Police say Eckert became angry when the self-employed driver, John Abraham, accidentally pushed some snow into his yard while cleaning a neighbor’s driveway.
“I went like this to put it in park and there was a gun right here in my face,” Abraham said.
Eckert is then accused of taking a .22-calibur pistol out of his coat, and pressing it against Abraham’s cheek, telling him to remove the snow.
“He said, ‘what the (expletive) are you doing?’” said Abraham. “And I said, ‘what do you mean?’ He said, ‘you’re going to get a shovel and you’re shoveling that snow out of my yard and putting it back in the street.’”
Abraham says Eckert grabbed his arm and tried to pull him out of his truck when he says Eckert put the gun in his face when he refused to get out.
As I’m sure you know, Boston is a very old city with many neighborhood that predate cars. People who live in the older parts of Boston, Cambridge, and Somerville, for example, have to park their cars on the street–there are no driveways or garages. Where I live now, everyone has driveways, but when I lived in Somerville in the 1970s and ’80s, parking spots were hard to come by after a snowstorm. It’s still that way today. Once people dig out a spot, they are understandably very protective of it. They leave old folding chairs, trash cans, and other large objects in the space to let people know not to park there; If I went to do laundry https://www.odorklenz.com/laundry/ I left a warm body in that spot and if you dare to take the spot anyway, you’re likely to get a tire slashed or worse.
I had friend back then who was living in East Cambridge. One day she moved someone’s chairs out of a shoveled parking spot and proceeded to leave her car there for several days. I warned her when she first park there that she was asking for trouble, but she didn’t believe me. Even after the “owner” of the space left a not on her windshield telling her to move her car, she did nothing. When she finally wanted to drive her car, she found it with four slashed tires. She had to hire a flatbed truck to haul it away. I guess people do the same thing in other places.
Snowdrift in Minnesota
From the Lehigh Valley News: Tires slashed in Allentown snow rage incident.
Following the recent surge of wintry weather, some Allentown residents have started using household items, like trashcans and chairs, to reserve parking spots they shoveled clean. An Allentown woman, who lives in the 400 block of North 10th Street, said she parked in one of those spots this week.
“I parked right next to the chair, I moved it and placed it on the sidewalk and parked there and went inside the home,” she said.
Really bad idea.
When she returned to her car the following day, she learned someone had taken it too far. “I jump in my car and start driving. Within four blocks from my house I feel that my car is driving funny,” she said. Her tires had been slashed. She said it was revenge for parking in a spot that she believes was fair game.
Sorry, lady. Shovel your own spot. Just read the comments on that story. That’s Snow Rage. There’s even a #SnowRage hashtag on Twitter now, and at the Boston Globe there is a Snow Rage Gauge to measure your level of anger.
At the Christian Science Monitor, Patrick Jonsson wrote about the #SnowRage phenomenon and attempted to explain why this winter has been so awful: While Atlanta adjusts to snow, Northerners shake fists at another winter storm.
At issue is a systematic barrage of so-called long-wave weather systems sweeping more deeply into the South than usual, creating a seemingly interminable run of weather across massive swaths of the land to the east of the Mississippi.
If Southerners – at least Southern schoolchildren – are growing used to this strange thing called snow, many Northerners are fed up. “Snow rage” is beginning to appear in tabloid headlines, amid news of shotguns being pulled on snowplow drivers. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio complained after shoveling three times during last week’s storm that “the snow is getting really obnoxious.” ….
“Another week, another major winter storm. Literally that’s been the case in 2014, a year that is exactly six weeks old,” writes WPIX-TV reporter James Ford in New York. “The storm offers a chance to challenge some long established winter weather records. That’s small solace, however, for a metro area that’s grown weary of getting battered again and again by weather that’s severe, even for this season that’s supposed to be cold and snowy.” ….
The core engine of this storm pattern is a constant pumping of “long wave” weather systems pouring down out of Alaska every three to five days, pushing along cloudy low-pressure systems.
The trouble in particular has been a once-in-a-decade “statistical improbability” of cold and wet air that’s common in the snowy Midwest pressing more deeply than usual into the South, says National Weather Service meteorologist Mike Leary in Peachtree City, Ga.
As those storms move up and berate the North, the cycle continues. Rinse and repeat.
“These long waves are about three days apart, just a little more, and when that long wave moves down, there’s a pretty good jet of winds associated with it that push it along, and that’s when you get the weather,” Mr. Leary says.
Polar vortex of 2014
The article also notes that many cities and states are running out of money to pay for snow removal. In addition, supplies of road salt are running out in a number of places.
That every three days thing is definitely happening here in Massachusetts. We had a huge storm on Thurs. Feb. 6, and another big on on on Thurs. Feb. 13. In between we’ve had smaller snowfalls every couple of days that are still enough that you have to shovel. Another storm is scheduled for this afternoon and overnight, and another is predicted for Tuesday. I don’t know how much more I can take.
It really hit me yesterday, because I had paid some guys $50 to shovel me out the night before. When they finished, I asked them to pile up the snow a bit more at the end of the driveway because I knew the snowplow would be coming during the night and would push a big pile of snow that blocked my car from getting out. This guy argued with me about it and they wouldn’t finish the job. I just didn’t have the strength to stand up to them.
Sure enough, I woke up yesterday morning and there was a foot of wet, packed snow at the end of my driveway. Not only that, more snow was coming down! I actually started to cry. I’m never hiring those guys again. I really hate being bullied; I’d rather shovel the damn snow myself.
Snowdrift in Antarctica
I felt really down all day yesterday, and that’s when I started thinking about Snow Rage. It’s a real thing, and I’m going to have to deal with. I worked out some of my anger by shoveling most of the pile at the end of the drive way–enough so I can back over it. But I really need to be aware that this kind of weather creates a lot of stress. If you’re aware of it, you can work on your self-talk and counteract the depression and overwhelmed feelings.
Of course Snow Rage is not new. I found a Canadian article from 2008 that described incidents similar to those we are seeing this year.
Quebec City police say they received more than a dozen calls this winter from warring neighbors upset that snow was being shoveled onto their driveway or sidewalk by the folks next door.
The city was buried this winter in a record 460 centimeters (183 inches) of snow, and is running out of places to put the fluffy white powder until spring arrives and it melts.
In nearby Montreal, where residents are recovering from a ninth major snowstorm this season, a man was charged this week with threatening a fellow motorist with a toy gun over a rare parking spot on a snow-clogged street.
And in likely the worst case, an elderly Quebec City man pulled a 12-gauge shotgun on a female snowplow operator on Sunday for blowing snow onto his property, after warning her.
Even a psychologist weighed in:
“I’m seeing so much white that I’m seeing red,” echoed psychologist Luc Tremblay. “At some point, people feel overwhelmed, crushed. It’s playing on their morale and their nerves,” he told the Globe and Mail.
Yup, that’s the feeling: “overwhelmed, crushed,” and beaten down.
That’s all the news I have for you this morning, folks; snow has taken over my world. I’m depending you you to let me know if anything else is happening out there. Please post your links on any topic in the comment thread; and if there’s snow in your future I hope you stay safe and warm.
Christmas Eve Reads
Posted: December 24, 2013 Filed under: just because, morning reads | Tags: anxiety disorders, Christmas traditions, Depression, Pagan origins of Christmas, Sage Stossel, Scott Stossel 58 Comments
Christmas tree on Boston Common, 2013
Good Morning!!
I have mixed feelings about Christmas. I’m not religious, so I can’t see the day as anything more than a secular holiday tradition when families get together. I do have happy childhood memories of the holiday; but like many other Americans, I find the excessive commercialization of the holiday season from Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day terribly annoying and depressing. I wouldn’t even mind if we could just celebrate the each holiday for a day or two, but instead we’re inundated with “the holidays” for more than a month.
At one time I liked listening to Christmas carols, and watch Christmas movies, but these days I try to avoid them–they’ve both been done to death by the media and corporations intent on grabbing as much of our money as they possibly can at the end of each year. I’ll be very glad when this week is over and we can get back to “normal.”
So . . . I’ve dug up some articles on the pagan origins of Christmas–I know you guys are aware of the history of the holiday, but it’s still fun to look at how our current traditions developed.
From TheStar.com (Canada) — Christmas traditions unwrapped: What do candy canes have to do with Christmas? Why do we kiss under the mistletoe? We get to the bottom of these yuletide customs. This article gathers together brief explanations for many of the common Christmas traditions and symbols. For example:
Why is the candy cane a symbol of Christmas? Legend has it that in the 1670s, the choirmaster of a cathedral in Cologne, Germany distributed candies shaped like a shepherd’s staff to children during the Christmas season. The idea was that the kids would make less noise if they were eating the large sweets. Their shape also enabled the candies to be hung from Christmas trees. SOURCE: The World Encyclopedia of Christmas
Why do we sing carols at Christmas? In the 13th century, Francis of Assisi, (who became the saint of animals and the environment after his death), wanted ordinary people to joyfully celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, so he added religious lyrics to popular tunes of the time. These energetic tunes were in sharp contrast to the solemn hymns sung by the priests at Christmas services. The word “carol” itself reflects uninhibited expression, deriving from the French word “caroler,” which means “dancing around in a circle.” SOURCE: How Stuff Works
Why do we kiss under the mistletoe? Mistletoe is a symbol of virility, but the tradition of kissing underneath it is believed to have its roots in a Scandinavian myth. Jealous of Baldur the Beautiful, the god of light and spring, Loki, god of mischief, used a dart poisoned with mistletoe to kill the unsuspecting Baldur. Distraught by the death of her son, Frigga, the goddess of love, decreed that mistletoe would never again be used as weapon and that she would place a kiss on anyone who passed under it. But it wasn’t until the 19th century that the British started hanging mistletoe at Christmas, hoping to bring Frigga’s good luck to anyone who kissed underneath it. SOURCE: Mental Floss
Next, a very cynical and snarky article from 2007 from Cracked.com — Pagan Orgies to Human Sacrifice: The Bizarre Origins of Christmas. Just a sample:
The Bible doesn’t give a lot of clues as to what time of the year the birth of Jesus happened (i.e., “… they met many travelers along the way, for it was just three days before the final game of the NFL Season…”) So, why December 25th? No one knows for sure.
One likely explanation is that early church leaders needed a holiday to distract Christians from the many pagan revelries occurring in late December. One of the revelries was The Saturnalia, a week-long festival celebrating the Romans’ favorite agricultural god, Saturn. From December 17 until December 23, tomfoolery and pagan hijinks ensued, and by hijinks we mean gluttonous feasting, drunkenness, gambling and public nudity….
Our favorite morbidly obese, undiagnosed diabetic trespasser is actually a bastardization of the Dutch Sinterklaas, which was actually a bastardization of Saint Nikolas, the holier-than-thou Turkish bishop for whom the icon was named.
The actual saint was not, in fact, famous for making dispirited public appearances at shopping malls. Rather, he was known for throwing purses of gold into a man’s home in the cover of night so that the man wouldn’t have to sell his daughters into prostitution.
That should help you decide if you want to read the whole thing.
Finally, a short piece at Guardian Media on some individuals who have “opted out of Christmas.”
Television producer and writer Paolo Kernahan said life in the media forever ruined Christmas for him. He said: “Working as a journalist, I often had to work many Christmas days. It was very difficult to see other people and all of their merry-making while I was stuck in an office or, worse, forced to do stories about how people celebrate the season.” Kernahan, who is Catholic but “not particularly devout,” has nothing to do with it any more. “Now I cannot bear to hear any Christmas music and typically change the radio stations playing any sort of seasonal music. I don’t put up Christmas trees nor any other decorations. I certainly don’t do any shopping. A life in the media unfortunately ruined this time of year for me.” Before feeling this way, Kernahan said Christmas was a time to lime with loved ones.“Christmas for me was principally about spending time with friends and family. There is something very unique about the way in which Trinidadians celebrate Christmas. It is difficult to describe but the sort of vibe you get when you are mixing with friends and family is very special.”
I can identify with that. The weird thing is that, even though I find Christmas irritating, I’m also capable of getting sentimental and weepy this time of year because of the many memories I’ve stored in my subconscious over the years.
I’ve probably mentioned in the past that anxiety and depression run in my family. I was very anxious as a child and through much of my adulthood. Now, after years of therapy, I don’t experience a lot of free-floating anxiety, but I can still get anxious over problems and when anticipating social situation. I recall being depressed and having thoughs of suicide as early as 12-13. I was really depressed as a teenager and battled depression for many years. Frankly, Prozac saved my life.
That’s why I was fascinated by this article in the latest Atlantic by Scott Stossel, Surviving Anxiety: I’ve tried therapy, drugs, and booze. Here’s how I came to terms with the nation’s most common mental illness. It’s a long read, but here’s just a short excerpt:
I wish I could say that my anxiety is a recent development, or that it is limited to public speaking. It’s not. My wedding was accompanied by sweating so torrential that it soaked through my clothes and by shakes so severe that I had to lean on my bride at the altar, so as not to collapse. At the birth of our first child, the nurses had to briefly stop ministering to my wife, who was in the throes of labor, to attend to me as I turned pale and keeled over. I’ve abandoned dates; walked out of exams; and had breakdowns during job interviews, plane flights, train trips, and car rides, and simply walking down the street. On ordinary days, doing ordinary things—reading a book, lying in bed, talking on the phone, sitting in a meeting, playing tennis—I have thousands of times been stricken by a pervasive sense of existential dread and been beset by nausea, vertigo, shaking, and a panoply of other physical symptoms. In these instances, I have sometimes been convinced that death, or something somehow worse, was imminent.
Even when not actively afflicted by such acute episodes, I am buffeted by worry: about my health and my family members’ health; about finances and other things can find on the internet; about work; about the rattle in my car and the dripping in my basement; about the encroachment of old age and the inevitability of death; about everything and nothing. Sometimes this worry gets transmuted into low-grade physical discomfort—stomachaches, headaches, dizziness, pains in my arms and legs—or a general malaise, as though I have mononucleosis or the flu. At various times, I have developed anxiety-induced difficulties breathing, swallowing, even walking; these difficulties then become obsessions, consuming all of my thinking.
I also suffer from a number of specific fears and phobias, in addition to my public-speaking phobia. To name a few: enclosed spaces (claustrophobia); heights (acrophobia); fainting (asthenophobia); being trapped far from home (a species of agoraphobia); germs (bacillophobia); cheese (turophobia); flying (aerophobia); vomiting (emetophobia); and, naturally, vomiting while flying (aeronausiphobia).
Anxiety has afflicted me all my life. When I was a child and my mother was attending law school at night, I spent evenings at home with a babysitter, abjectly terrified that my parents had died in a car crash or had abandoned me (the clinical term for this is separation anxiety); by age 7 I had worn grooves in the carpet of my bedroom with my relentless pacing, trying to will my parents to come home. During first grade, I spent nearly every afternoon for months in the school nurse’s office, sick with psychosomatic headaches, begging to go home; by third grade, stomachaches had replaced the headaches, but my daily trudge to the infirmary remained the same. During high school, I would purposely lose tennis and squash matches to escape the agony of anxiety that competitive situations would provoke in me. On the one—the only—date I had in high school, when the young lady leaned in for a kiss during a romantic moment (we were outside, gazing at constellations through her telescope), I was overcome by anxiety and had to pull away for fear that I would vomit. My embarrassment was such that I stopped returning her phone calls.
Now that’s a serious anxiety disorder! The Atlantic article is an excerpt from Stossel’s new book My Age of Anxiety: Fear, Hope, Dread, and the Search for Peace of Mind. Coincidentally, Scott’s sister Sage, a cartoonist for The Atlantic, also has a new book, a graphic novel called Starling. Here’s the description of the book from Amazon.
For Amy Sturgess, life in the big city comes with trouble. Her marketing career is being derailed by a conniving coworker stealing her accounts. Her family crises range from her down-and-out brother running afoul of the law to her mother’s growing affections for the house cats. And Amy’s love life just flatlined thanks to an unexpected reunion with the one that got away–who’s now engaged.
When Xanax and therapy fail to relieve her stress, Amy does what any young woman in her position would do: She uses her superstrength, speed, flight, and ability to generate 750 volts from her hands to fight crime as the mysterious masked vigilante Starling. But while Starling is hailed as a superhero, will Amy remain a super-zero?
Apparently Sage also has psychological issues, according to The New York Times. They have a long family history of psychological disorders:
Scott’s book, published by Knopf, is a mix of memoir, medical history and modern manual of anxiety disorders. It traces six generations of family history brimming with nervous stomachs, depression, alcoholism and possible Oedipal complexes. His great-grandfather Chester Hanford, once the dean at Harvard College, was admitted to a mental institution in the late 1940s after experiencing acute anxiety. Twenty years later, his wife died from an overdose of scotch and sleeping pills.
Scott Stossel’s mother suffered from panic attacks and is afraid of heights, public speaking and vomiting. (His wife, Susanna, is an elementary-school teacher who is not prone to anxiety.)
Sage Stossel, who is 42 and married, said that, as a child, she was shy and socially anxious. She recalls becoming “utterly fixated” on a classmate’s criticism of her for being quiet.
And as if that weren’t bad enough, Scott and Sage’s uncle (their father’s brother) is the infamous right wing nut and Fox contributor John Stossel.
I’m out of space, but I’ll post some headlines in the comment thread. I hope you’ll do the same if you happen to stop by today. Have a wonderful holiday, no matter how you choose to celebrate (or not celebrate).
Lazy Saturday Afternoon News Reads
Posted: February 9, 2013 Filed under: Barack Obama, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics | Tags: assassination policy, Christopher Dorner, Climate change, Depression, drones, DSM V, extreme weather, sequester 34 Comments
Good Afternoon!!
It’s a perfect day to curl up with a great detective novel. As you can see, Michael Caine up there is deeply engrossed in Raymond Chandler’s Farewell My Lovely. Chandler is terrific for those of us who are connoisseurs of the hard-boiled school of mystery writers; I think his masterpiece was The Long Goodbye. I’ve read it multiple times. Here are a few great one-liners from the book:
“I was as hollow and empty as the spaces between stars.”
“The girl gave him a look which ought to have stuck at least four inches out of his back.”
“I belonged in Idle Valley like a pearl onion on a banana split.”
“A man who drinks too much on occasion is still the same man as he was sober. An alcoholic, a real alcoholic, is not the same man at all. You can’t predict anything about him for sure except that he will be someone you never met before.”
“The French have a phrase for it. The bastards have a phrase for everything and they are always right. To say goodbye is to die a little.”
Years later, another hard-boiled detective novelist, Ross MacDonald, wrote a kind of paeon to The Long Goodbye called The Goodbye Look, which I also enjoyed and have read more than once.
These days I tend to prefer female detectives and women writers, but I still prefer the hard-boiled types over the “cozy” ones.
There’s not a whole lot of exciting news out there, but I have a variety of recent reads for you to delve into today if you choose.
I wish John Boehner and Mitch McConnell would read this article in today’s New York Times, although it probably wouldn’t begin to melt their cold cold hearts: Restored Payroll Tax Pinches Those Who Earn the Least.
Jack Andrews and his wife no longer enjoy what they call date night, their once-a-month outing to the movies and a steak dinner at Logan’s Roadhouse in Augusta, Ga. In Harlem, Eddie Phillips’s life insurance payment will have to wait a few more weeks. And Jessica Price is buying cheaper food near her home in Orlando, Fla., even though she worries it may not be as healthy.
Like millions of other Americans, they are feeling the bite from the sharp increase in payroll taxes that took effect at the beginning of January. There are growing signs that the broader economy is suffering, too.
Chain-store sales have weakened over the course of the month. And two surveys released last week suggested that consumer confidence was eroding, especially among lower-income Americans.
While these data points are preliminary — more detailed statistics on retail sales and other trends will not be available until later this month — at street level, the pain from the expiration of a two-percentage-point break in Social Security taxes in 2011 and 2012 is plain to see.
“You got to stretch what you got,” said Mr. Phillips, 51, a front-desk clerk and maintenance man for a nonprofit housing group who earned $22,000 last year. “That little $20 or $30 affects you, especially if you’re just making enough money to stay above water.” So he has taken to juggling bills, skipping a payment on one this month and another next month.
Don’t I know it!
President Obama used his Saturday radio address to once again poke Congress to deal with the upcoming “sequester” cuts.
“If the sequester is allowed to go forward, thousands of Americans who work in fields like national security, education or energy are likely to be laid off,” he said. “All our economic progress could be put at risk.”
Mr. Obama’s remarks echoed a statement issued by the White House Friday that warned the sequester would “threaten thousands of jobs and the economic security of the middle class.”
But, as usual, Republicans are blaming Obama for the problem.
“We know the President’s sequester will have consequences,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said in a statement this week. “What we don’t know is when the President will propose a plan to replace the sequester with smarter spending cuts and reforms.”
Sigh…
I hope President Obama reads this op-ed in The Washington Post by Georgetown constitutional law professor David Cole. Cole is the author of the recent book The Torture Memos: Rationalizing the Unthinkable.
There are plenty of problems with President Obama’s targeted killings in the war against terrorism: The policy remains secret in most aspects, involves no judicial review, has resulted in the deaths of innocent civilians, has been employed far from any battlefield and has sparked deep anti-American resentment in countries where we can ill afford it.
But when it comes to the particular legal issue raised in a recently leaked “white paper” from the Justice Department — namely, whether it is legal to kill Americans with drones — one problem looms largest: The policy permits the government to kill its citizens in secret while refusing to acknowledge, even after the fact, that it has done so.
There may be extraordinary occasions when killing a citizen is permissible, but it should never be acceptable for the government to refuse to acknowledge the act. How can we be free if our government has the power to kill us in secret? And how can a sovereign authority be accountable to the people if the sovereign can refuse to own up to its actions?
Cole likens Obama’s assassination policy to the “disappearances” in Argentina in the 1970s.
When Argentina’s military junta secretly abducted and killed its citizens during that country’s “dirty war” in the 1970s, the world labeled these acts “disappearances” and condemned them as violations of human rights. A disappearance is not just an abduction or killing, but an unacknowledged abduction or killing. To “disappear” citizens not only deprives them of their liberty or life without fair process but is deeply corrosive of democratic politics, casting a shadow of fear over all.
Please read the whole thing if you can.
I liked this piece by Gary Gutting at The New York Times, despite my initial hesitation to read anything by a professor at Notre Dame. I finally decided I shouldn’t condemn him by association over the ND football team scandals. Headlined “Depression and the Limits of Psychiatry,” it’s a philosophical discussion of the upcoming changes in the definition of depression in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. Read the rest of this entry »
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