One Way to Do It 

     A man in Mississippi had his drug paraphernalia stolen. He wanted to file a complaint, but for some reason didn’t think the police would take him seriously. So, to get their attention he crashed his truck into the courthouse. 
    That did get the attention of the police, enough so that they’ve arrested him and charged him with malicious mischief and, oh, here we go, driving while intoxicated. That explains a lot. 
    But even so, you’d think that self-preservation would keep a person from doing something this drastic. 
    The reporter did not deem it necessary to let us know if this man ever found his paraphernalia or if the police were a help with that.

Thank God for First Responders

    Recently I’ve been in a position to observe members of the local city police force from two different cities, fire and rescue personnel from these same areas, plus several smaller outlying communities, and members of the local sheriff’s department deliver people to a medical institution for care and observation. These are usually people who have harmed themselves and/or threatened to harm themselves or others. 
    Some of these people are docile, but others are anywhere from mildly upset to violently opposed to being placed somewhere not of their choosing. These people are acting out their unhappiness with both verbal and physical abuse toward those people listed above plus the medical staff people who are receiving them. 
     The one thing that continually amazes me is the compassion and tenderness shown toward the people being admitted for medical care and observation. The ones being admitted are sometimes doing their utmost to be uncooperative and abusive, but they are handled in the same calm and compassionate way as those who are willing or even happy to be admitted. 
     My hat goes off to these public servants.

Then I Became One of Them

   You’ve probably seen it happen. Several older people get together and the first thing you know they’re talking about their aches and pains. Comparing what their doctors are telling them. Discussing what pharmaceuticals they’re taking, and the grisly details of their latest surgeries, etc., etc. It’s like they don’t have anything else going on in their lives to talk about. 
    When I was younger and witnessed this happening I thought, My goodness, are their lives really that boring, or lacking in anything interesting? 
    Then I became one of them (I know, it surprised me too)- - - not that I spend much time discussing my physical condition with anyone, but my level of empathy with those that do, has risen considerably. 
   As I get older, I’ve come to the realization that the human body gradually wears out. Muscles weaken, cartilage gets thin or in some cases becomes nonexistent. Arthritis shows up in the most unwelcome places, and bursitis tends to develop in joints and muscles. This leads to the loss of comfort. Keep in mind that the above is from a non-medical person. The only thing I know is that the body gets crotchety. That diagnosis may not be in any of your medical journals. 
    The things I’ve listed above are just the uncomfortable things that happen to the body. I’m not even talking about the really serious life threatening or terminal things that happen to our bodies as they age. 
    Now, back to why older people talk about their aches and pains, and most other personal medical things. I believe that people like to talk about what they know, and believe me older people know about their bodies and what’s happening. The discomfort/pain has a way of focusing the attention. Also, I believe that knowing that we’re not alone in having a body that is betraying us is some comfort in itself. 
    So, young people, (anyone under 65) be patient with us. It may sound like all we know is what’s happening to our bodies, but we’ve been there, and returned, and obviously survived. So, if you need advice on how to do the same, just ask. You would be surprised on how much perspective our extra years of living life’s experiences have given us.

Where Did All the Mold Go? 

    It dawned on me the other day that I’ve not heard anything about our old friend mold for some time. Years in fact. 
    A few years ago, maybe 20 by this time, mold was all over the place and scaring the bejebbers out all of us. We had all kinds of mold. Some benign and some highly toxic. It got so bad that if some school kid wanted a couple weeks’ vacation, all he had to do was go to the principal with some black gunk stuck under his fingernails that he had scooped off his plate in the cafeteria, and claim that it came from some other place in the school. Of course, he would have had to smear some of this gunk around that spot as well. 
   The school would be shut down in a heartbeat and kept that way until the mold people had been there and done a through inspection of the place. Like I said, between the scientists, media, and people who suddenly found out that they could make a good living searching out and destroying mold, it kept the rest of us on edge all the blessed time, wondering when we would ourselves succumb to some kind of mold. 
    Mold came in a rainbow of colors, the very worst being black mold. (I always wondered if there wasn’t something racial in that designation.) If black mold was found in a building, you might as well, in most cases, kiss it goodbye. The building that is. No one was dumb enough to kiss black mold. 
    When the mold people showed up it didn’t make you feel any better. They were clomping around in their hazmat suits like robots while sounding like Death Varder. Just having them on the premises made you want to leave, whatever the mold situation turned out to be. If these guys found mold, then they were hired to get rid of the mold, if that was possible. 
    Now it always seemed to me that there was a slight convergence of interest since the people who said that you needed them were the same people you needed. They were telling you how bad the situation was and at the same time what it was going to cost to remedy the situation. It was a win-win situation for the mold people. Nice work if you can find it. And building owners stood still for this. But that’s just how desperate and scared we were.
    If anyone in an office building developed a cough, the first thing that came to mind was mold. The fact that this person had spent the last weekend with three sick, coughing, runny-nosed nephews and nieces crawling all over him, was not considered pertinent. The building would be vacated until the mold people could make a ruling. 
    How many good buildings and businesses were unnecessarily laid waste because of mold, we’ll never know. But as I said at the beginning, I don’t hear about mold anymore. Did it go away, or did we reevaluate its toxicity? If someone knows please enlighten me. Thank you.

Honey, Anyone? Or Please Pass the Bee Vomit. 

   For many years honey was the one food that was not only good to eat, but was one that we could depend on to be good for us, as opposed to nearly every other edible thing on the planet. 
    We’ve learned not to depend on most other foods. Fats have been fickle. Proteins have been perfidious. Sugars are shaky. Grains have had a sometimes gratuitous reputation. Carbs have been less than constant. Legumes have been consistently okay, except they operate on the basis where diminishing taste means higher food value. (I think it must be some kind of evolutionary self-preservation thing.) And then we have vegetables---but who cares anyway. 
    Now within each of these groups there are individual foods that have opted to go their own way. Either on the good side or the dark side. But foods can change their minds. Some, after being on the dark side for years, have suddenly been rehabilitated and are now on the good side. For how long is always the question. And just the opposite happens on a regular basis. It takes a person with a large computer and plenty of time to keep track of all this. 
    The problem with that? The stress of keeping track of what is good for you to eat today will in itself shorten your life.  
   Now we have honey. Through the years it has remained constantly consistent. Good for external and internal use. Everything from being chuck full of antioxidants, good for improving cholesterol, being better for diabetics than sugar, and good for lowering triglycerides. Plus, it promotes burn and wound healing. Quite a super food. 
    Then I ran into this study that explained that all of the above just wasn’t so. That honey was nothing more than a jumped- up sugar that had been taking advantage of us for years. I read to the end of the article and they explained that this research used 55 people, over a period of six weeks. I was a little put out at their having wasted my time, but have been around long enough to believe that this is similar to much of the operating parameters used in many food studies. 
    Another thing about these studies that prove one point or another: you need to make sure you know who is funding the research. Not just who is doing the research, but who is funding it. For instance, a study by the University of Nebraska showing that people who ate beef three times a day live longer than people who don’t eat at all, is interesting information. But before you start with eating all that beef, look at the fine print and you’ll probably find that maybe the study was funded by the Nebraska Beef Council. And if they did not actually pay directly for the study, you will probably find that the Beef Council just built the university a new sports center. 
    To say that many of the scientific? Studies now being done are biased is, I think, probably an understatement. 
    So where does that leave me and my body and what I eat? Eat some of everything you can stand, enjoy it, and don’t worry.

Pure Logic 

   It’s not often that you hear of people using pure logic to solve life’s little problems. For instance, a man in Mississippi intentionally crashed his truck into the local courthouse. The reason? He wanted to let officials know that his drug paraphernalia had been stolen. The report didn’t say if he was under the influence of anything other than good old Mississippi swamp water or not. One can only surmise. 
   But it was evidently the logical thing to do as he got the attention of the officials in a very quick but somewhat negative way. They did know he was there and what his problem was. Well, beside the damage to the courthouse. 

   On another note, I have just published another book. The title of this one is “My Uncle Vellanoff’s Journal, Escapades and Adventures of a Traveling Thespian.”  
   The back cover in part says this: Vellanoff, my possibly imaginary uncle, joins up with a traveling group of thespians after he emigrates from Russia to the United States. It seems he spent some time in the Russian military, until he had a misunderstanding with the Russian Secret Police and had to leave the country---quickly. 
   As the troupe travels around the country, Vellanoff becomes involved in a number of hair-raising experiences which he records in his journal, along with other interesting material he feels is worth remembering. His everyday activities are more than interesting but the adrenaline raps up big time when he gets involved with mobsters; train robbers; and mean, hill-country bootleggers, just to name a few. 
   Keeping up with Uncle Vellanoff, his penchant for adventure, and his keen sense of humor might be something you’d like to read.      This book is available at Amazon and most other online book sellers. Just use the name of the book, or type in Eldon Spady. Either one will get you there. If you like it put a review on Amazon. Thanks.   Or just use this link.   https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=eldon+spady&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Aeldon+spady

Grocery Shopping and other Tribulations

    Recently, during a grocery shopping adventure in a Fred Meyer store I observed a harried looking woman adjusting the things in her shopping cart. She was taking some items and piling them in the front of cart and moving other items toward the back. I thought I knew what she was doing so commented, “It’s hard to keep it all straight isn’t it?” 
    Her head snapped up and she growled, “You can say that again. I need an %$*&@# assistant just to keep track of everything I need to know to buy a few groceries.”
    What was she talking about? This week at Freddys' the buying public, henceforth noted as ‘we’, have several money saving? options. We have an assortment of items on which we can save $.50 per item if we buy ten of them. We have another category where if we buy 5 we can save @1.00 per item. Then we have some items that are just on sale, as old-fashioned as that concept may be anymore. 
    In addition to this we have what they call, “Digital Coupons.” These are coupons you can digitally clip on line when looking through the money-saving offers flogged on Freddys’ website. 
    Mixed into all this and confusing the issue still more is that every other thing in the store is carrying a shelf tag announcing “New Lower Price” which is eye catching, but otherwise mostly meaningless. The big question for this category of course is, lower than what? 
   Back to the ‘buy 10 and save $.50 per item’ marketing ploy. We find these items all over the store. So, as we navigate the aisles we are throwing into our carts some of these items along with non-sale items, items on which we can save $1.00 if we buy five, and just items we need but that are selling for regular prices. Now the tricky part is that if we end up with less than 10 of the one category, we don’t get the $.50 off on any of them. And if we pick up more than 10 of these items, we don’t get the $.50 off on the additional ones unless our count reaches 20. So, keeping track of how many of these particular items we have in our cart is paramount. The same program applies to the $1.00 off if we buy 5 sale. 
    And then there is always the calculation of, if I do save $.50 on this item, is it a good buy? Many times, even with the discount it leaves us paying more than this item’s regular price. Invariably, we decide that some of these $.50 off items are not a good buy so we pass, which fouls up our count, hence the need to keep them separated in the cart so we (at least me) can more easily keep track of them. 
   Now, as we get ready to check out, we find that we do not have 10 of these items, but 8 or maybe 15. So another dilemma. Do we scrounge around the store until we find more $.50 off items to bring our count up to 10, or do we discard some items to bring out count down to 10, or do we again scrounge around the store to take our count from 15 up to 20 items. In either case how much money do we spend on items we don’t need, at least right now, to save $.50 per item. 
    Now the digital coupons are another stress inducing subject. We’re assuming that between our computers and the Fred Meyer computer there has actually been some conversation. We can’t know this for sure until we check out and maybe not even then.
    Our shopping experience up to this point has been such that by the time we get to ‘check-out’ we are so glad just to see daylight, meaning the door to the parking lot, that we are prone to not pay much attention to what the computer totaling our purchases is doing. The thing will list all items at their regular prices, which, if we are paying attention, nearly gives us heart palpitations, but then at the end it lists all the discounts. Unless a person wants to take the time to actually go through the list and compare each discount to some item on which we should have gotten a discount, we are left with hoping that the store is honest, that their computer knows who we are, and will give us all the discounts we have been promised. 
    Personally, I think that these systems all work most of the time and come out as they should, but then again, who knows? 
    That’s why, when I’m grocery shopping, I should have someone along with a grocery ad, my list of digital coupons, and a computer to keep track of all this for me. It would be nice if they had some knowledge of first aid, because I move around the store fairly fast and sometimes people just don’t get out of my way in time.