A Cruel, Unwelcome Stranger in My Family

My intentions when I started this blog were multi-fold: to express my opinions on topics I am interested in whether anyone read them or not; to hone my writing skills, since I haven't done any writing for many years; to be able to converse with those who see things as I do, and to enter into healthy debates with those whose opinions differed from mine; to learn from the postings of others, and to work out my own thoughts and ideas through expression and debate; and to post at least biweekly on the blogs I have started. Things haven't exactly worked out as I'd planned, as is common in life. Even in this slow economy, time is still at a premium because of work (thank God), and the classes I am taking take up a lot more time this semester than I thought they would. Also, even after many years of marriage, the lovely lady that puts up with me still wants to spend as much time with me as she can ( I don't know why she does, but for her I am most thankful). My mother will be 81 this year, and I like to spend as much time as I can with her. She has always been very small and fragile seeming to me, but so far her health is good, and her mind clear as crystal (again, thank God). All this takes up a great deal of time, as I'm sure everyone can relate. But even as stressful as all these things may be at times, they are still positive, things that I am grateful for. I am not grateful for the new interloper into my family and home.
My mother-in-law has just this summer returned to us from an extended adventure in Egypt. She spent the last 10 years there, and really enjoyed herself. She was also able, during this time to travel in Europe, Hong Kong, Australia, and New Zealand. Not only was she able to see the sights of these places, and experience the cultures, tastes, and aromas of each, but she was actually able to live amongst the Egyptians, to see how the real Egyptians lived, learn the language (somewhat), and experience the culture of the street markets and bazaars, the religion, and witness their day to day lives, as no tourist in a guided group would ever be able to do. But even as she enjoyed all these wonderful things, my wife and I still worried about her. She was, after all, an aging woman alone in a very unstable and violent part of the world, even though Egypt may be the most stable and safe of the middle eastern countries. We implored her for years to return home, and finally this past summer she relented. My wife found her an apartment close to our home, and she bought herself a new car, a convertible, that she has wanted all her adult life. She was home, safe, settled, and secure. She was able to shop, run around in her new car, and poke about in her favorite antique shops. All seemed good. Then we started noticing the stranger. Alzheimer's!
The first symptoms we noticed were around Thanksgiving. Oh, there had been little things for some time. She talked for years about being a little forgetful, and she was becoming somewhat frail, but nothing that raised any real red-flags. But around Thanksgiving her behavior became very erratic, and progress to sometimes downright violent. She began to stumble and stagger when she walked, and her speech slurred at times. All the usual tests were done, medications adjusted and changed, and at first nothing showed up. My wife had gotten her an appointment with a neurologist at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta. The day before her appointment, she arose at about two a.m., dressed, drove to Atlanta and ate breakfast, and went to her appointment. Alone! A day early! The staff saw that something wasn't right, immediately got her some attention, and they hospitalized he on the spot.
She was diagnosed with Alzheimer's within a week. Her progression has been very fast. She does have good days and bad, but her doctors wouldn't release her to go home, nor even to come home with us. Two weeks after the initial diagnosis, she requires someone to be with her at all times, and as my wife and I are not wealthy, and both have to work to make ends meet, we had to get her into assisted living. The facility is nice, and on her more lucid days she seems to be happy. She says that even if we had been in financial shape to take her in, she would rather be where she is, with people her own age, and with staff around to take care of her. Still, the stress of seeing this happen to someone so vibrant and active only a few weeks before, that you love, is terrible. Breaking up her home that we moved her into only a few short months ago, taking her new car away from her, and having to take charge of every aspect of the life of a very independent and proud woman is heartbreaking. Seeing the effect of all this on my wife is heartbreaking as well.
All of this is minuscule in the happenings of the larger world, but it is now a huge part of our world.This puts politics, world events, and everything else into a new perspective. I still hope to be able to maintain this journal, and to read the thoughts and musings of others during this time, as well as be able to read a book now and again, and to spend time in the shop, and hopefully to post some of the goings-on in there. Reading, woodworking, and blogging has just become a greater source of therapy than ever.

A

Perhaps the best change of all

Tomorrows inauguration of Barak Obama as the 44th President of the United States of America is one of the most important inaugurations that has taken place in this country's history. Not because he will be our first African-American president. That in itself is indeed a milestone, but more importantly, Barak Obama is inheriting some of the biggest problems any president has ever faced. George Washington's task was great. As the first president he would be setting precedents for every president to follow him. The responsibility was daunting, and he met that responsibility as no other could or would have. He realized the importance of his presidency to the future of this country, and he had the confidence in himself, and the character, to do it right. Abraham Lincoln was to have probably the greatest burden of them all. Revolt and civil war threatened this country as nothing else could. Again, as with George Washington, the right man was elected. Only a man of Lincoln's temperment and intellect could have held this country together. It was closer to being lost than we like to think, but thanks to Lincoln we made it through. Woodrow Wilson was called upon to lead the country through the WWI. A peace loving intellectual, again the nation had a man of the moral fiber, courage, and leadership to pull us through. The onerous task that FDR was saddled with would have broken a healthy man, but even with his infirmary, he was up to the task of facing the Great Depression and WWII. In the end it destroyed his health and killed him, but thank God he survived long enough to lead the country to victory. I believe that FDR was the last truly great president we had. Truman had his moments, with the A-bomb and the ending of both the European and Asian wars. Eisenhower was a capable but uninspiring president, no matter how great a general he was. Kennedy met the Russian Bear head on, and won the stare down, but had failure in the Bay of Pigs fiasco. We will never really know how great he may have been. Johnson proved no match for the challenges of a complicated war such as the Vietnam war. Nixon! Need I say more? Jimmy Carter was clearly a good man, ad might have been remembered as a good president but for events that happened over which he truly had no control. Good, but I don't think great. For all the brouhaha over Ronald Reagan, I was never impressed. He was known as "the Great Communicator", and to me that was all. He was a good speaker, I don't even think a great one. He did come up with some zingers against Jimmy Carter in the presidential debates, but the rest of his speeches were just slogans, and slogans do not equal greatness. This same sloganism carried over onto Bush Sr. His speeches were full of catch phrases and propaganda, but he offered no substance. To me, of all the "not  great" presidents, though, I think he actually did the least harm, except for the cover-up of Iran-Contra. Otherwise, to me, his effect was neutral. (To be fair , I did vote for Reagan for his second term, just couldn't see Mondale as president, and I voted for Bush sr. in his first, same reason-Dukakis?) Bill Clinton could nearly have been one of the great ones, save three things: himself and Newt Gingrich and the consistent attacks by the right wing nuts. Clinton's lack of discipline with the ladies ultimately was his downfall, as I believe without the sex scandals he could have brushed aside Whitewater. He entrapped himself. Next, there is Bush jr. (shrub) I cold give him the same amount of attention as I did Nixon, except that Nixon was not nearly as harmful for the country and the unity of the country as Bush has been. The country has seen many divisions due to partisan politics since its birth, but I don't think anyone else ever used the idea of dividing the country to gain political control, and to try to destroy the other party, as ruthlessly or as effectively, as Bush, through the diabolical genius that Karl Rove was. Rove set out to divide the country, and of all the people in the Bush club, he is the one that should face a jury. His tactics split the country terribly. Others have done so before, but I believe that most did not use division on purpose as policy, but Rove made no secret of it. To my mind he is as guilty of treason as Benedict Arnold ever was.

The only other president that I believe was a great one was Thomas Jefferson, but the country faced no true threat during his two terms. Some of his policies laid the groundwork for future growth, but he lacked vision in some ways. He failed to recognize the importance of industry and manufacture, instead thinking that agriculture was all that would insure our well being. His contributions to the advancement of science,  the Louisiana Purchase, and some of his banking policies nearly put him on the pedestal of greatness, but I believe he fell just short.

On Tuesday, January 20, 2009 Barak Obama will be inaugurated as our 44th president. He will succeed the man that many, including myself, believe to be the worst president in our history, including Herbert Hoover. George W. Bush has left this country in shambles. He accomplished nearly nothing of the agenda he laid out in his 2000 campaign, even though his party had control of Congress, and most Democrats in Congress at the time were so weak and spineless they could not and would not oppose him( They are nearly as responsible as Bush and the GOP in many ways for the wreck that our economy is, our military is, and for the disasters that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are ).  Even though I disagreed with most of what he laid out, the things he proposed publicly (except for Social Security Reform) would not have been as disastrous as his hidden agenda was, which was to allow Big Business to run amok, with little or no oversight, to wreck our banking system, pollute our air and water, and to start a war in Iraq that was illegal, unnecessary, and unwinnable in the way he undertook it. 

Herbert Hoover left office when our financial systems were nearly in ruin. He also ignored the apparent, and chose to allow business to police itself. His successor was up to the task and willing to do whatever it took to save the ship from sinking. He didn't do it alone. FDR was able to get public opinion on his side. And the public believed in him, and was patient for years. Is Obama going to be up to the task? I believe he has the intelligence and the will to do it. but it will also require public support. Do we have the patience to trust and support him long enough to get the job done? We had better be. We just can't  start expecting things to start getting better Wednesday.  Our leaders have to be held accountable, but we have to allow them enough time to get some real results, and we may have to swallow some medicine we won't like before healing begins. Let's hope the general population is smart enough to allow Obama and his team to get some positive results before they start calling for his head.

Getting Back on Track

It's been a while since I've had time to get anything on here, and somehow My only poston the woodworking blog got deleted. with my computer expertise, I'd say that there is no chance it happened because of something I did. Yeah, right! 

School has started back, and work is still going on (I consider myself lucky in htis economy), and all this coupled with a death in my wife's family has put me behind in both my school work and my blogging ambitions. But I do see a light at the end of the tunnel. By the end of the day today I will be caught up with school work, and  I also have a little time to catch up here.

As you can see, we had a little snow in the North Georgia mountains this morning. Clockwise from the top are (1) a spruce viewed from in front of our house, (2) the pond about halfway up our driveway, (3) my wife and our dog, Zoe, walking back toward our house from the entrance to our driveway, (4) the front of our house as seen from the driveway, and (5) the view up our driveway from the house. 

Snow excites us. We usually take our vacations in the winter, and our destinations are usually to snowy places. We like the beach, but snow and winter are our favorite travel goals. My favorite trip was a loop we made around northern New Mexico up through central Colorado a few years back. We drove up to Mesa Verde, to take in another one of my favorite things, history, and the cliff dwellings and surrounding high desert landscapes were stunning in the snow. The vistas off the mesa toward the snow covered mountains were awesome, and the cold, clean air so refreshing.  The American west has some of the most beautiful scenery in the world, and the snow adds to the beauty. If you haven't been there, go; if you have been there, but not in the snow, go back!

As much as I love the west, I have to say that my favorite region of the country is the New England area. The countryside is beautiful, the Appalachian Mountains not as grand as the rockies, but in their own way, with all the vegatation and greenery, as beautiful. The neat farms  and rolling fields inspire some sort of nostalgia in me, for something that I have neve really experienced, but feels so familiar. And there is so much history in our northeast, from colonial times through the revolution, on up to the present. 

Of all the places i"ve been in hte United States, there is still no place like home, these northeast Georgia mountains. I was born here, and my family on both sides has roots in Rabun County, Towns County, western North Carolina, and Virginia going back to pre-Revolutionary times. My ancestors on both sides came into Rabun County in the first years of the nineteenth century, before 1810, my father's side moving into the county from Buncombe County, North Carolina, and my mothers side from Virginia, making their way through homesteading in Pickens County, South Carolina. So the southern Applachians are in my blood, and no matter where I go, I always feel a sense of relief when I get back into north Georgia. 

Ok, Its time to go back to work

Well, the holidays are over and its time to rejoin the real world. I always get two weeks off for Christmas and New Years, but every year it seems like the days disappear. There is so much I want to do, in the shop, books to read, or just loaf around with the wife and enjoy ourselves. But between the things I want to do and the things that need to be done, such as clean off the garden and prepare it for spring, taxes, and other chores, I don't know where to start, so I don't get any of it done. so its back to work tomorrow, but it doesn't seem like we even had a vacation. This year that means double trouble, as the wife and I are both back in school, and classes start tomorrow as well. I turn 49 tomorrow, and between thinking about work, school, and everything else, man I sure feel tired.
With everything else going on, I did decide to start this blog. It may seem like I'm taking on more to do, and then complaining about it, but I'm not complaining. I think having this blog will give me the opportunity to unload my mind without dumping it all off on the "better half", thereby easing some stress in the house. Politics and the economy have us all pretty worried right now, I guess, and having an outlet that gets it off our chests without ranting to or at our loved ones is a positive thing. So I will use this area to blow off some steam about politics, the economy, work, sports, or whatever else comes to mind. I hope someone reads it, as I would like to open up honest discussions about the happenings in our country and world, and welcoming opinions from all sides. I may disagree with you, but I respect your right to believe what you believe. So please feel free to state an opposing opinion at any time.
As I'm going back to the old grind, it seems the politicians are as well. Gov. Richardson of New Mexico has pulled out of the Obama administration due to the investigation into his campaign donations and alleged "pay to play" actvities involving some contractors that donated money to his gubanatorial campaign. All the details aren't out, but usually where there's smoke there's fire, and I'm sure he wouldn't have withdrawn if there wasn't something there. Or, perhaps Obama didn't want to be tainted by something like this so early on. At any rate, it just seems that no one at this level has any integrity anymore. I voted for Obama, and I hope that he is as decent as he seems to be so far. That would be a breath of fresh air, for sure. I'm prayingfor him, and we need him to be straight. We are in very choppy seas right now, and we need a leader that can unify us and get us through these hard times. As divided as the country is right now politically and ideologically, no single politician is going to bring us together on issues, but if our leaders exhibit good character, high ideals, an strength under adversity, they may unify us through good faith. So not only do we need the President to be strong on policy, but he must be of good character and integrity as well.