Cancer sucks

We got totally shitty news Saturday. The 6-year old son of some friends at church, whom we haven't unfortunately seen in a while, discovered he has cancer. Not some pansy-ass whimpy thing like leukemia. The name is 2" long and ends with -carcinoma. It's highly aggressive & highly malignant.

Something so rare in kids that the docs at the Mayo Clinic [just down the road from here] initially said, "that can't be right", go get another opinion. 4 opinions later ...

There's only 2 cases reported in the literature about kids. Which translates to "we're sort of clueless about what to do".

He started chemo over the weekend. A whirlwind saga of options on chemo, surgery, and lots of medical terminology.

They aren't telling him the extent of the extremely poor prognosis. It hadn't occurred to me that there would be a psych specialist for the parents. Managing the information flow to their child, to help him stay informed enough about what's being done to him without nuking his still-positive outlook.

I'm not sure if Jr.Gopher#1 remembers the boy - right after we started going to St. Albert's, there were four boys all the same age who really enjoyed playing together.

A friend of the family is in the home stretch dealing with pancreatic cancer. Did I mention cancer sucks? He's 78. As unhappy as I will be, and likely contemplating the age of my parents, it will not be a life cut tragically short. 6 years, though ...?

Explaining to Jr.#1 that Don is sick and probably won't live much longer seemed a beneficial situation. After all, he intellectually knows that old people die. I am assuming [?] that Don's death won't be emotionally traumatic. Raven the Cat dying will probably be more emotional.

We told the boys that Mr.Gopher's uncle died - but this was 2 years ago. We could have said any other stranger died, for all it mattered to them. They had never even heard of this man.

So, thankfully at least, their first exposure to Death will be the death of someone they actually know, and it won't be their grandparents. But this boy? Even if Michael doesn't remember him all that well, trying to explain that a 6-year old boy probably won't live through the Summer...? God. No wonder people want to be atheists.

I was the Lector yesterday at Mass, and read the Prayers of Intercession.

These are the prayers that include:
lector: "For the healing of the sick, we pray."
Response: "Lord hear our prayer"

I was sooooo close to simply adding the boy's name to the list of the sick and realized I didn't know if the parent would want me to ... it made me feel so sad to refrain from asking people to pray for him.

So,
For the healing of Will Newll and the courage of his parent, we pray.
Lord, hear our prayers.

If anyone can, please say a prayer - or whatever intervention method you want - for Will Newell.

I'm usually one who cries at the drop of a hat. This ...? Mr.Gopher told me on Saturday night. It was this afternoon before it hit me. I'm sitting in the StPl library, trying to finish my thesis, and I can't stop crying and don't have any kleenex.

Fr. Tom

Fr. Tom McDevitt was the first priest for the St. John's Student Parish at Michigan State University. He served as pastor there for over 30 years. He was the pastor there from 1987, when I moved to Michigan, until 2000. He performed my first marriage there in 1990. You could hear his strong influence in many ways. If you missed him in person, you could hear his style in Fr. Mark's homilies. In many ways he reminded me of my Aunt Alice. He passed away Monday after a very brief illness. I won't cry as much as I did when she died, but I certainly have cried.

Techological generosity

From the American Red Cross:

In addition, several hundred thousand people have chosen to make a mobile donation. Donors can text "Haiti" to 90999 on their cell phone to send a $10 donation to support Red Cross relief efforts in Haiti. The mobile giving effort raised more than $3 million by Thursday morning, and all money raised goes to support Red Cross relief efforts in Haiti.

An interview this afternoon mentioned this. They were really pleased by the ability to raise so much money in so little time by taking advantage of the marvels of modern technology. Telephones are nothing compared to this.


That said,

I strongly urge anyone who can to donate blood. Go find someone to do it for you, if you can't. The lines outside the Red Cross office in Lansing stretched around the block on the evening of September 11, 2001. I was there for 5 hours (well, first donating & then helping). This is a much, much, much greater disaster.

And, sure, donate money. Directions are above. This is assuredly the most pressing item. But, if the ARC is going to send blood & blood products to Haiti, they need to replace them here.

The president of Haiti is homeless; I can't imagine anyone ever saying that here. Here there's always a few more miles to go before getting out of a disaster zone. Haiti is about the size of New Jersey.

The sheer poverty of the country beggars the imagination. And that was before Tuesday. I'm left wondering how much money will be dedicated to relief efforts. I am then left wondering why it couldn't have been sent there some time over the past 20 years. No different than the bottom of New Orleans: sure, we can spend a billion dollars to do a half-assed repair job after a hurricane, but we sure couldn't possibly be bothered to have spent anything before Katrina, to have minimized the disaster.

It's so soul crushing to look at the sheer waste of human life resulting from humanity's unwillingness to engage in anything preventative.

The immediate disaster is going to be horrible, yes. But there's no water; and certainly no clean water. After the acute care, disease is going to set in. TB is rampant in the country already; so is AIDS. They can soon expect everything else water borne to set in - typhoid, malaria, dysentery, etc.

The bill in the long run is going to be in the trillions. Jee, if the GDCSMF bankers hadn't tanked our economy, maybe we could have spent a few billion dollars on our neighbors rather than even further padding the GDCSMF's self-righteous nest eggs.

&

Pat Robertson is evil.

Funerals & Death

This I Believe essay this week is moving, "you should always go to the funeral". I concur. We must have people to usher us in, godparents and such; we must have people to usher us out. Someone. Anyone.

Funerals are educational experiences. We learn about our relatives: sometimes the dead ones, sometimes the living.

I never asked, I always assume I went to my Grandfather Sullivan's funeral. I was a year and a half. I learned much later that it must have been utterly horrible - he died at my aunt's wedding.

The next one I remember attending was for my Grandmother Smith; I think I was in college. I discovered a younger cousin I hadn't seen since I was 7 is a total ass.

Then Aunt Alice's; I discovered she was called Sister Leonardine when she first took her vows.

Quite a few years later, Grandmother Sullivan: it was the 2nd time I ever saw my mother cry.

The Petitions in a Catholic Mass include some standard prayers: for the sick, for the prayers we hold in our hearts, and for the dead. During the last of these, I silently remember those people whom I personally know who have died. Not my grandparents, not that I don't care about them. I do specifically remember them on the big Masses involving death: Feast of All Souls and Good Friday.

The ones I recall are Danny Ferguson (hunting accident, high school classmate), Steve Councilman (thrombosis, SCA), Fred Spencer (power tool accident, SCA), Pete Wakeman (drug overdose, coworker), Earl Davis (motorcycle accident, coworker), Mimi Fusco (cancer, coworker). Hopefully it will be a while before the list gets longer. I personally went to Steve, Fred & Pete's funerals. They were all huge. Steve & Fred were both very popular. All 3 were in their 30s.

Fred's was the first (partially) military funeral I attended. He was the CO of a Mich. Nat'l Guard unit. He was also a rather large figure within the SCA. The pall bearers on the way into the Funeral Mass were family & friends. On the way out of the church it was the SCA dressed in their medieval military finest. The National Guard took over at the cemetery. I spent the previous day at the wake sewing things onto Army uniforms: their Guard unit never wears its dress uniforms & quite a few of the guys had out-of-date stuff. The soldiers flat out refused to wear the wrong insignia. (This would be more moving, in my opinion, if they hadn't waited till the last minute to do something about it; at least they all said thank you.)

Steve's funeral was a non-denominational agnostic affair, unlike Fred's gung-ho Italian Catholic Mass. There was a little wooden chalice-looking affair in a place of honor. We all assumed it was a place-holder in lieu of a casket. We knew he was going to be cremated & buried. Since it was there, we took it with us to have a private wake: we went to Moriarity's for a drink between the memorial and paying our respects to his wife. RoseAnn had been our friend far longer than Steve. We bought an extra beer, Steve's favorite kind, placing it next to the little chalice-looking thing in the center of the tables. Dave returned it to the funeral parlor later that afternoon. Two years later I was at RoseAnn's and noticed it on her mantle piece. Uhhhh.... We apparently took Steve's ashes to the pub with us. There is absolutely no question that Steve would have found this not only appropriate but funnier than hell.

Co-workers are different in some respects. We only know them through that narrow facet we see on the job. Some times their death is ordinary. Some times it makes us re-think our perceptions. Earl was 72, still working, and got killed while enjoying a motorcycle ride on a beautiful Summer weekend afternoon. Dick died of some ordinary cause, but his spouse blamed it on occupational exposure; the internal investigation was a first for me. Pete died of an OD, which made me wonder how he managed to hide it; then I wondered if he even did hide it from his close co-workers. Mimi struggled to keep working through chemo because she had an obsession about not being dependent upon anyone else.

Some times the deceased is not human. I remember Bismark being put to sleep when I was a kid. Fricka died of old age in the warm Summer sun in her sleep. Shiro died unexpectedly of a blood clot one morning. I learned what it means to make a decision to end a life. He was the first pet who was really "mine", rather than a collective family pet.

We expect death. It requires quite a bit of planning to avoid Death: daily diet, exercise, check-ups, etc. It requires even more planning, if less effort, to plan for Death. Mr.Gopher & I have recently been discussing funeral arrangements and wills. What do we want done with our mortal remains? Where should we be buried? What should I do with his assets which aren't quite Joint? What if we both die at the same time? Who should be designated as the boys' guardians.

We teach our children about death. I am perhaps thankful that the first relative to die since our children were born is an uncle they never met (living on different continents is challenging to maintaining that family tree). We could explain that Uncle Josef died & is in heaven with God. All 3 concepts are rather abstract at this point in their lives. We visited a cemetery in town, for a physical experience to see what happens after you die. We figured it would provide a non-emotional introduction to Death; because one of these days - God let it be long off - someone the boys know will die and it will be emotionally devastating.

Educational as well is observing how people respond to death. I am constitutionally incapable of attending a funeral and not crying. Doesn't matter whether or not I know the person. I cry. Always. I used to be embarrassed about this. Being in the choir at St. John's relieved me of that idiocy. (the embarrassment, that is; I still cry)

The church always provided a piano player and one vocalist for funerals. Some of the choir offered its services to supplement this; I went whenever I was able. I cried every time. One day it was a funeral for an 18-month old baby. I knew ahead it was a baby; I burst into tears when I saw the casket enter the church. The casket was so tiny, so very, very tiny. I cannot understand how the cantor could make it without crying. The baby's mother was beyond distraught & had to be helped to walk down the aisle. It was somehow an obscene reversal of walking down the same aisle with one's new husband in anticipation of life.

My studies have include much in the way of mortality. Public Health runs from neo-natal to post mortem. Epidemiology addresses many different ways of analyzing death and illness. Numbers make it easier to learn about the public's health while remaining totally dissociated from Death itself.

-->
note: a reduced & slightly modified version of this was sent to This I Believe. I assure you I'll post it, if the publish it. Not likely, but what the hell...? Is that something one would include on one's CV with the list of publications?

.

You can go home

[written a week ago ...]

"you can never go home" is a rather overly-sentimental statement. You can. Just don't expect it to still be there.

I'm in Lansing for the weekend to try to get some house-related stuff taken care of. Want to do property management for me? Taking bids until 10 p.m. Sunday night.

The house is not exactly left in idea condition. Ignoring the fact the yard crew didn't remove the clipping from 2 months' growth, there's stuff that I'm annoyed the last tenants didn't ask me to fix. Or rather, that they didn't fix themselves. Like some serious pruning on the shrubs. I stood looking at the back of the side yard and wondering where the forest came from. That is the result of four years of unfettered growth? Mankind's traces will disappear from the Earth pretty damn quick, apparently.

Most of my closest friends aren't here any more. The Speths moved to MO, Diane is in MA, the Denommes are somewhere else in MI, the Bradys are just out of town. And, apparently no one bothered to return my email that I was coming into town. I'll probably stop by St. Johns and find the choir on vacation.

I've never tried to hire a professional firm for a long-term contracted relationship before. Other than the yard service fellow who conveniently lived down the street. Mowing my lawn just doesn't seem quite as important as handing someone the keys to my house and telling her to find tennants and rent it for me. Apparently these firms either
a) refuse to modify their standard contract because they are lazy
b) refuse to modify their standard contract because they're really out to screw you
c) have never had anyone suggest modifying their standard contract
or
d) have no idea that you could do it and don't want to anyway


There's even more sprawl on the north side of Lake Lansing Road. What in the world for? Even four years ago, it wasn't like Lansing's economy was rosy. Firms were already threatening to pack up. The state bent over to keep GM from moving some of its operations elsewhere.

The GM plant at the intersection of MLK and 496 is a total wasteland. I practically expected to see dust dervishes and tumbleweeds coming across the empty acres of parking lots. And, yes, I really do mean acres, probably 2.

Construction hasn't changed - it's just moved.

It was 10 hr 6 min of driving time (not total, just behind-the-wheel) to get to Lansing. Apparently everyone in Indiana saw the sign I-80 and thought it was the speed limit. It made the trip much shorter to be able to set the cruise control at 80 and not be the fastest car on the highway. And, afterall, doing 80 in a 70 zone in Michigan is not a remarkable event.

People here [in Michigan] really don't use their turn signals. Maybe American models don't have them? I've only ever owned one American car, and it was a '53 model. In the first 50 miles into Michigan, only one car used its signals ... and it had Indiana plates.

Don't even vaguely get me going about the Right-Wing Retards in Indiana, whose response to the Loony Leftists objecting to public display on public property of the 10 Commandments-We-Selectively-Obey: putting In God We Trust on their friggin' license plates.

Pictures of Death

Dover AFB open to reality again.
The DoD/USAF are again allowing photography at Dover for returning soldiers' caskets.

Gobsmacked, pt. 2

M&Me: Puppy mill? There was one around here last month. However, yesterday's news was a bit worse:

The Animal Humane Society doesn't want people to get their hopes up about adopting any of about 120 cats removed from a St. Anthony mobile home Tuesday.

Of course, "Not adoptable" is just a euphemism for "kill them all".

... three hours for about 15 masked workers and police officers to remove 118 cats from a couple's reeking home ... yet ... In 2002 workers removed 72 cats from the same couple's residence ... the tenants' group for the park has a rule limiting residents to one cat.

Just funerals

The topic of funerals came up today; several have been mentioned in the local news recently. It made me stop and think of the ones I've attended. A few for co-workers; a couple of good friends; a couple grandmothers; a dozen or so total strangers.

Steve Councilman's funeral was a relatively sedate non-denominational 'memorial service' held at a funeral home. If you attended our wedding, his wife was my Best Woman; he unfortunately didn't make it there. In fact, one of the last things he heard the night he died was of our engagement. RoseAnn was understandably distraught. The little kernel of my/her friends in Lansing wanted to give her a break between the memorial and the Mourners' Decent Upon Her Home. There was a little wooden chalice-like object sitting on a table at the head of the room where the memorial was held. Since it had been present for the funeral service, and since we were going to go out for beer as a fitting wake, we took the chalice with us. It was just a solid wood cup - like a cup, but solid. Pity, we said, if it had been a real chalice, we would have filled it with beer for our fallen comrade.

There were at least 2 dozen of us at Moriarity's on Michigan Avenue. As with Weddings, Funerals tend to bring people together who otherwise wouldn't do so voluntarily. There was a bit of silent, unacknowledged tension as seating was worked out - who could sit next to whom, without saying "Get the hell away from me Foul Creature of Adultery's Abyss". The waitress comes, we all order beer, with an extra one for Steve. The pint of Guinness was set next to the little wooden thing in the center of our table. More than an hour later, after stories of our friend, catching up on the stories of our own lives, we decide to head over to RoseAnn's and pay our respects. Considering the sorrow of the whole thing, it was a fairly good day.

... about 2 years later ...

I am over at RoseAnn's house for a hockey game, or some thing. I notice on the fireplace mantle the little wooden cup-thing. I said, 'I remember this from Steve's funeral', and chuckled at the memory of the beer. RoseAnn glanced at me, looked sort of regretful, and said, "well, I buried most of his ashes, and decided to keep a bit for myself."

So ... I told the Gang we had quite literally taken Steve's ashes with us to have our wake. Steve was no doubt looking down upon us and laughing his ass off.


Fred Spencer was a leading light in the medieval re-enactment group I belonged to; he was the commanding officer for a Michigan National Guard company. I knew quite a few people in both groups. His family is a very traditional Italian-American group. The funeral was a totally gung-ho Roman Catholic Funeral Mass. His male relatives provided the pall bearers into the church, the medieval reenactors carried the casket out of the church, and the National Guard provided the military funeral honors at the grave side. The night before his funeral, I was swiftly sewing patches and decorations onto Army uniforms for the previous resident of my house and all of our friends who were likewise Heraldic-ly impaired. The Guard/Reserves don't wear dress uniforms very often, or at least the MP & Armor units don't. Most of the fellows hadn't bothered to change patches/rank insignia etc. in years. I sat & sewed more insignia at the funeral home when the other soldiers realized I would. Fred would have loved the panoply that was his funeral.

At Grammy's funeral, Mr.Gopher couldn't make it out to Jersey, so Jr.Gopher#1 and I went. He was 11 months old at the time. It was a pretty short, straightforward service. It's not as if there were enough people to have a 'panoply'. The priest at one point asked all of Gert's grandchildren to come up for a prayer, inviting us to each put our hand on the casket for a blessing. All 10 of us were there, along with 6 (7?) great-grandchildren. Jr.Gopher#1 and I were standing at the priest's left hand. Jr. watches everyone else, leans forward out of my arms, and slaps his hand right down on the casket with the rest of us. I saw a real smile on the priest's face. Julie had found miniature spearmint jelly candies & was distributing them at the wake. I'm not sure if Grammy would have approved of her funeral. I'm pretty sure she would have enjoyed getting to see us, though I imagine that after a 30 year delay, getting to see Grandpa again probably trumped us kids.

Yes, I've been to the funeral of a total stranger.

St. John's Student Parish had music for all of its (very infrequent) funerals. Depending on our schedules, some of the choir would show up just to help provide music. I've never managed to get through a funeral without crying. One young woman drowned in one of Michigan's lakes, due to having a seizure while swimming; she had epilepsy. She was still living at home, and likely would always have, due to other health issues. Listening to the various eulogies, I was struck by how full her life sounded. Handicaps apparently didn't handicap her ability and willingness to simply live and enjoy life. It brought me to wonder if it is better to live for only 25 years, having a wonderful life, or stretch it out to 90 and be miserable? On the other hand ...

The most emotionally draining funeral I ever attended was at St. John's. I got the message: Funeral tomorrow, come if you can. Upon being told the deceased was a child, it was a bit harder to focus, thinking if a child is 18 years old when she dies it's bad enough, but this child was 18 months old. Myself and the other 2 or 3 people tried to emotionally brace ourselves. As I mentioned, I always cry at funerals. (Lots of other times, too.) The opening song started and I was fine - until the casket was brought in. The tiny, tiny, oh so tiny container for such a little life. Tears started right then. Her mother was beyond distraught, sobbing great shuddering cries of despair and loss, hanging on the edge of the tiny white box. I never want to do that again. Never.

On the other end of the scale, the choir (we were a busy lot) went to the St. Lawrence Hospital hospice one Sunday per month after Mass. The small entry area there had an upright piano and was large enough for a dozen or so of us to gather. We sang songs for the people staying there: happy songs, quiet songs, new songs, old songs. One woman asked to be brought out of her room to see us. The acoustics down the hall toward the rooms was good, but she wanted to actually see us sing. Occasionally we'd get a request from one of the people. We would always do them. Occasionally someone would say "that's my father's favorite song", or "could you sing that again for my sister?" One afternoon, the request was from a woman who couldn't get up. About 5 minutes later, the nurse came out and told us the woman had passed away very quietly and peacefully. I would happily do that again.

We didn't get a chance to attend Mr.Gopher's Uncle Josef's funeral. Big trans-Atlantic flights put a damper on family unity in the face of grief. We tried to explain death in general terms to Jr.Gopher #1. He knows we used to have another cat; he's never met Josef ... it's all an intellectual exercise trying to explain that Uncle Josef is with God now.

I remember one of our dogs dying when I was very young; it's my first recollection of any death. I remember being incredibly disturbed and confused when someone tried to explain to me that dogs don't go to Heaven. I just cried and cried over the thought that our pet might not go to heaven, a state which I assumed was the natural conclusion of life. Despite the technicalities of theology explained to me, I didn't care if dogs had souls or not. How could someone say Bismark had no soul? 'Cause I gotta tell you, 30+ years later, I firmly believe that my cat Shiro had a soul. The ability to love is a consequence of having a soul. All cats? No. My cat? Yes.

Ah, it's 11:58 p.m. Death of another sort - the daily release of consciousness - is upon me.

Most Wanted ... by EPA

No, these folks haven't robbed banks or committed arson or tax fraud. It's amazing what the EPA is charging them with. Now, these you can certainly understand EPA's interest:

Conspiracy to violate hazardous waste laws
Illegal asbestos removal
Aiding and Abetting false entries into an Oil Record Book
Illegal discharge of pollutants into the waters of the United States

It's the other charges that pop up along with messing with Mother Nature:
Mail Fraud
Tampering with a Witnesses
Foreign Corrupt Practices Act

Now, how many times have you stood in line at the airport and thought, "all these damn 3 oz. bottles" or "why can't I put that in my luggage"? Being charged with transporting hazardous materials on an airplane without proper labelling - you think, who cares if it had a damn label or not? Remember that ValuJet that crashed in the Everglades?

Valenzuela was a mechanic for SabreTech. He certified that all cabin oxygen generators had been properly removed and replaced on a ValuJet plane. Valenzuela caused these generators to be delivered and loaded on VALUJET flight 592 without proper markings, capping, packaging and other safety measures. The flight crashed into the Everglades shortly after take-off from Miami International Airport killing all 110 passengers and crew onboard.

The 3 oz. bottles are still stupid. After all, leaving the material in the original container will at least assure TSA that it's labeled right.

Quiet Minnesota

Minneapolis recorded its first homicide of the year Sunday afternoon when a 48-year-old man was shot to death in the Jordan neighborhood.

Out little town of 372,833 just can't compete with the big cities like Detroit.

What do you learn at university, mama?

The LD-50 for sucrose (table sugar) is 29,700 mg/kg. This amount of material is expected to kill 50% of people who ingest it. For the metrically challenged people:

A 175 pound person who eats 5.2 pounds of table sugar will probably die.

To put this in perspective, the next time you go through the baking aisle at the grocery store, look for the sugar. It's normally sold in 5-pound bags.

Normal Coca-Cola has 39 grams of sugar in a 12-oz can.
It would take 60,161.5 cans of Coke to do you in.
Or 5,640 Gallons of it.
If that were gasoline, it would be $18,330. (Mpls prices)
Although, it would be $4,230 just to by the Coke (U of M prices).

So, the next time you want to persuade your kids that they shouldn't drink soda pop, you can simply tell them that it's toxic.

Time of Mourning

I need to sit and cry.

My hard drive suffered, died, and was buried. Unfortunately, there will be no 3rd day resurrection.

I'm not sure if I'm more devastated about losing 9 months of academic work or 9 months of family photos
or 9 months of
financial records;
writing that long story;
poetry I copied;
a few novels I bought electronically;
several downloaded music albums

Great - so Apple fixed the cracked cover on my keyboard, cleaned my screen, generally cleaned the dust bunnies out, and I've got the new wiz-bang ops. sys. Great, whoppitity-do. Where's my shopping list? Where's that list of legislators I was going to write? That stupendous photo from Earth Day 1970? The 2 months worth of work for my term paper? Countless hours of organizing things for class and home?

If there was anything I was going to send you ... I won't. That great photo of the boys? Not that either.

Might as well cry.

Professional Rant

Research scientist commits suicide and is now being tried in popular media obviously this might hold no interest to you, and you're free to ignore it.

I was eagerly anticipating what the media was going to report about this ... I was perfectly willing to believe they had the wrong person. After all, other innocent people have gone to jail. Is this the epitome of "trial by the media" or what? After reading this, I find it even more ludicrous that the gov't claimed "there was no evidence that anyone else was involved." That is simply, patently false. What do they call the other two people who were splashed across the media, as being under serious suspicion? How about Steven Hathill, whom the gov't is paying $6 million for damages after John the Fuckhead Ashcroft blabbed his name as a suspect? Or the other fellow who wasn't an American citizen?

I dealt with people from USAMRIID. I've even visited it, and seen their gung-ho biological containment labs. [pretty cool, considering they're retrofitted into a 1950s building]. I dealt with anthrax at my job.

Okay, to put this all in perspective: at my last (unspecified) place of employment, where we had lots and lots of anthrax, I was the person responsible for all transfers of the material to any other agency. I got questioned by the FBI about this, in the aftermath of the anthrax letters. I had to cope with a consultant (of an unspecified agency) who showed up at work, and informed me that he had taken a couple of vials of viable anthrax bacteria with him, on a plane, from our labs to his employer in another state. This happened *after* the bioterrorism attacks. I don't think anything in my entire professional career has struck me so totally dumb. I spent the rest of the week straightening out this farce with the relevant federal authorities, who are supposed to be notified prior to a shipment, which is supposed to only happen with other licensed labs. Which he wasn't. All through this, and the total wrath of God never fell on him. I called and strongly suggested to the relevant federal authorities that they ought to do so. Nope. On a plane!! And he was so "I'm macho, look what I did" about it. The look on his face after I suggested he accompany me to the company president's office was no quite so macho. A rare point of walking up to the Big Man's door, and simply announcing to his secretary 'I needed to see him right now and I'll wait'.

So, you can bank on it: any total idiot could get away with stealing the stuff. It wouldn't require a highly educated scientist.

Just in case you are fond of reading conspiracy theory websites/blogs, feel free to go there, rather than my professional irritation. In the AP & Reuters' articles, the following statements were made. Unfortunately, my personal opinions weren't. :)

a) vaccinated for anthrax & yellow fever
He was required to get this simply because of his job requirements. I'm not guessing here; the gov't has the same requirements my employer did. I got vaccinated for it (anthrax), too, for the same reasons as Ivins.

vaccinations were "several weeks before the first anthrax-laced envelope"
Annual booster shots are required for this; and for someone who's never gotten vaccinated, it would take a lot longer for the immunization to fully take effect (18 months, actually). Not to mention, Ivins would have had to been growing the stuff for much longer than "early September". Ivins would also have been getting vaccinated for anthrax for years. As no one has accused him of stupidity, it's safe to conclude that he knew this. This is one point which is completely, 100% total fear-mongering. Anyone working with virulent B. anthracis who has the opportunity would get vaccinated against it.

If this vaccination is so suspicious, why aren't they looking for yellow fever organisms, as well?

b) "adequate explanation for his late laboratory work hours around the time of the attacks"
Can you seriously provide "adequate" information about what you were doing 7 years ago at work?

c) "sought to frame unnamed co-workers" -
does this mean he simply stated who else had access to the material, and could have been guilty?
FBI: Who else might have done this?
Answer: Jane Doe

... sounds quite a bit different than

FBI: "Good Morning"
Answer: "pssst, hey, you should go look at her, she's here late all the time and hates Bush".


d) "the genetic parent to the powder involved" - to me, this does not mean "same as" or "identical to"

e) "sole custodian of" doesn't sound like "only person who could had access to"

f) "taking 22 swabs of vacuum filters and radiators and seizing dozens of items" - no where do the words which tested positive for B. anthracis appear in this sentence.

g) Items seized: "among them were video cassettes, family photos, information about guns and a copy of The Plague by Albert Camus"
Yeah, cause sure as shit, owning a gun makes you a bioterrorist (like all those lunatics in Idaho, where anthrax is easily found in ordinary soil, while they're out shooting shit). And the Ivins family photos are certainly critical to establishing whether or not he was growing this crap in his basement.

h) The Plague?
Some 1940s novel set in Africa?
How about Preston's The Hot Zone, a non-fiction book, set in his own place of work?
How about Miller's The Coming Plauge, about epidemic possibilities across the globe today?
But most particuarly, I'm curious to know if he had a copy of Alibek's Biohazard, yet another non-fiction description about the development of Soviet anthrax warfare projects in the 1990s? Especially since I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that Ivins knew Alibek personally.
[ ... all 3 are, by the way, great books ... maybe I'd better get rid of all of the books on bioterrorism in the house. And, yes, I have several, but not Camus ...]

i) "affidavit filed by Charles B. Wickersham, a postal inspector, the scientist told an unnamed co-worker" - and just how does a postal inspector come into any knowledge about what some other dude at USAMRIID thinks about the deceased? If it is such credible information, why don't they have an affidavit from the co-worker?

j) "The FBI's investigation had dragged on for years, tarnishing the reputation of the agency in the process." Well, no shit, Sherlock.

k) "tracing back to Ivins' lab the type of envelopes used"
tracking back to his lab
= Government purchase order for the office supplies
= no one else at Ft. Detrick with access to the laboratories could possibly have had the same envelopes
= it was the cheapest thing the gov't could buy
= I could probably buy it at some dime store.


as an editorial note, having just cleaned up the grammar/spelling & applied my Professional Appropriateness Language Function (apologies to all, if you read this earlier and were put off). I don't mind using crass language for effect, but I do avoid it at work or in professional endeavors. This blog isn't my professional work, and the "turn off coarse language" option didn't get selected.

Never Forgotten

The black & white bumper stickers w/ the POW/MIA logo & inscription: Not Forgotten are commonplace. A far more concrete commitment is an effort to fulfill this promise. There's a funeral for a US soldier next week at Fort Snelling National Cemetery (like Arlington, but in Minnesota). He was MIA in 1950 in Korea.

A while ago the identification was made of the Vietnam soldier buried at the Tomb of the Unknown at Arlington. It was questioned whether or not we could have such a monument in the future, due to the marvel of DNA identification testing. I suppose we would be better off being able to de-commission it. Ideally, because we weren't killing our fellow citizens; but at a minimum, because no one was left in the limbo of anonymity.

Gabelstaplerfahrer Klaus

Upon request:
Forklift Driver Klaus

Dangerous Stuff

Listening to the news is dangerous when sitting behind the wheel of one's car. I tend towards the road rage behavior.

God Almighty, why have you visited this plague of locuts upon my homeland? This plague of incompetent, self-serving, pencil-dicked rat-bastards suckling at the teat of Democracy while giving totalitarian dictatorships a financial blow job with my money? Oh god of mercy, make them explode with the retained bilious hatred in their souls. Make the shit in their cranial cavities ooze out of their tear ducts. May the IRS and GAO be struck by the lightning of courage (or intelligence) and bare these sticking leechs' souls for all to righteously judge. God of Justice, reveal the craven cowardice of these petty worms who cower behind the pile of American dead and the mountain of Iraqi corpses, all of whom were your children, created in your image. Hurl down the fire of fear upon those who are sucking the cock of Petroleum gods. Basically, blast into oblivion these cock-sucking mother-fuckers, these American Terrorizers who are fucking up the world. If you want to forgive them, God of Mercy, you're better than I am.

News from Baghdad: 32-ish Iraqis dead from confrontation with American soldiers. Hospital reports 1 woman and 2 children in the rolls of the dead. - gasp! shock! righteous indignation!

So, for the past 100 years women in the western world have been bitching and moaning about being treated like 2nd class citizens. For the past 20 years or so, American woman have incessantly and finally successfully battered at the doors of the Pentagon, demanding to be able to serve in the military without regard to their ovaries. But let a female be killed in a war zone, side by side with men and the media expects us to scream our protests about -gasp!- killing innocent women. Because, sure as shit, she couldn't possibly have been with the men attacking our people. She couldn't possibly have been another suicide bomber. She couldn't have been planting IEDs. She couldn't possibly have enough patriotism to defend her homeland from an invading army. Women don't do anything that, only evil, oppressive, politically deluded men!

It is so hard to keep from hating people.

I was watching a documentary on PBS last night while folding my laundry. It was about two photo albums which had been been taken in Auschwitz. The only photographic record of it's kind. One is 200+ pictures of about 6,000 Jews being off-loaded from trains, most of whom were - according to written records - all killed later that day. The other one is a personal album of one of the SS officers of just the perfectly ordinary things one puts in a photo album: picnics, co-workers, playing with your dog. Creepy seeing the 2 together. That said, the following program was on Nazi politicians and the occult. The voice-over comment mentioned 'the darkest hour of mankind' or something similar. I have heard this just too damn many times. Branding Hitler and the Nazi government as "the penultimate in evil" is just too pat; too convenient; too self-righteous. We want to believe this, because then we get to be the knight in shining armor because we helped destroy their government. Americans can then ignore how long the English and French were fighting before we jumped into it. Americans can especially forget how many Russians (and Germans) died on the Eastern Front. We don't want to mention that the Red Army rolled across eastern Europe. I've never heard any ordinary text book mention this; somehow the Russians just wind up dividing Berlin with us, without any mention as to how they got there.

If Hitler was the 'darkest hour of mankind', then who the fuck was Joseph Stalin?

Stalin? He killed more of his own people than the Jews under the Nazis.
1.7 million died in gulags;
0.8 million 'politically bad people' killed out of convenience and political expediency
6 million from a politically manifested famine;
7.5 million deported;
etc. A lot of etc.
basically between 3 and 20 million people (and 20 isn't the highest estimate) died. Even if you take out the famine, estimates also seem to range around 14 million or so. Some how I don't think killing 3 million of your own people is 'just a bad regime' - Saddam Hussein killing Kurds pales, just pales in comparison. Of course, Stalin didn't bother to keep track of them, or count them, like the Nazis. And Stalin dawdled around and did it over 20 years or so, rather than 2 or 3.

The USSR just doesn't rate any attention from the good old genocide-hating USA. They're bad. The Jews were good. And European. They deserve the attention of society. But not the bad Soviets.

And all of this is without leaving the 20th century.

God, wipe out our educational system and the media. We'd be better off as totally ignorant proles with no way of transmitting our own stupidity.

What the Fuck are We doing there???

Really, what the fuck are we doing there??



En route home, for the last time. Hidden in the statistics section of the paper; hidden in a C-130 on the way home; hidden from the view of those who would honor them here as they are whisked away across the tarmac in secrecy; only to be hidden in the warm embrace of Mother Earth, since their own mothers' can't comfort them anymore.






Imagine your child here.
Imagine mine.





Nothing, absolutely nothing in my experience with the US Military has so deeply moved me as standing in the middle of Arlington National Cemetery. The wind chill was -45F and the tears froze on my cheeks.

What the fuck are we doing there?