Statistics

Just something quick, just to break the ice from this long stalemate from writing. I heard on the news this morning the following statistic, that the baby boomers are starting to come of age for Medicare benefits this year, to the tune of approximately 10,000 a day. This is a staggering, breathtaking statistic, designed to make everyone in the audience gasp a little and say, "Oh no!" What irritates and aggravates me (seems that's getting easier and easier to do), is the lack of the "rest of the story" (apologies to Paul Harvey) this statistic provides. The other logical side, of course, maybe a little morbid, is how many people on Medicare are dying every day and thus leaving the program? In other words, what is the real net increase, if there is one, and why doesn't this particular news source, who claims to be neutral and unbiased, also provide this information as well as the more inflammatory and unfinished remark?

I once had a great Journalism teacher who taught us how statistics can be used to provide justification for nearly everything, including points that are total opposites to each other. I don't remember the statistic she used, but she took one and managed to derive about ten interesting and at times, totally opposite results from the same number. (Many teachings from my old journalism school really did set with me, such as this one, and such as the one my old copy reading and editing teacher admonished, to "always consider the source!"). I had an interesting time with this when I used to work at a hospital who was fined over a million dollars in bogus Medicare charges due to its incorrect coding for pneumonia patients. As a result the respiratory therapists were charged with the duty of obtaining sputum cultures within 4 hours of admission for every patient admitted with the diagnosis of pneumonia, and when that number, on paper, was not reached, we were skewered, splayed and flayed before the administration for our laziness. The reality of the situation was much different and the percentage results were variant on many factors, many of which were totally out of our control, including a basic one -- that we were rarely informed of the admittance of a pneumonia patient within the 4 hour time span, leaving us very little time to do our protocol, which was itself a 3 hour procedure. I became so angered at receiving the rancorous phone calls from the infection control nurse and the administration that on one occasion I took the infection control nurse's statistic and ripped it apart about ten different ways. It didn't stop her from calling our department, but when she got me on the phone, she simply told me to tell my boss to call her.

My journalism teacher simply taught us, statistics can be manipulated to mean anything you want them to. My constant and persistent complaint, ad nauseam, is how difficult it is to find good, well-balanced news sources anymore who are willing to take even this simple little concept into consideration much less any of the rest of the plethora of factors that separate a fair and unbiased story from propaganda.

For instance, without getting into a huge Journalism 101 explanation, the very decision regarding what to print can dictate the bias of a news organization. Take in point a story written by the Associated Press about the Hawaii governor's resistance in releasing Obama's birth certificate, that, although written by the AP, considered fairly neutral and unbiased, was only published on Worldnews.net, a decidedly biased news media. Does the fact that thiis commonly respected AP story was published on a decidedly biased news media somehow stain the story? No. The bigger question, I'm asking, is why this story wasn't picked up and published on the supposedly respected mainstream media?

If you comment on this post wanting to argue with me about whether or not I'm a birther and all the other crap, don't bother. You're totally missing the extremely simple, elementary point. In the last dialogue not one person actually addressed that point, the exact same one the great bastion of liberalism Chris Matthews also asked regarding Obama's birth certificate, "Why doesn't he just show it?" Unlikely as it usually is, I agree with Matthews on this one, who wants to put all the diatribe and excuses aside, and simply wants to know the answer to this very important question.

THE NEW CD - Generally Speaking

The new CD. It has taken so much work, but I think it may be finished. The package design has already been sent to Discmakers and we're still fine tuning the master. I don't know what to say about it right now, except that I am exhausted.

This is the process -- write a song, then re-write it, and re-write and re-write. Then record it at the home studio, re-write again, and chart it out. Then mentally assemble a group of musicians to record it, send it out to all of them along with the words and charts. Then comes the scheduling of all involved. We finally meet in the studio to make the final arrangement decisions and actually record it. Now you listen to this song, I can't count the number of times, fine tuning each musician's part, bringing up this phrase, taking down that one countless, countless times, plus adding new instrument voices to the mix as you go and doing all the mixing with those tracks. Then you multiply this process by 12 songs. I am totally exhausted, and I have no idea how my Ed, my engineer has managed to stay sane through the whole thing. 

If I have listened to the songs a hundred times, Ed has listened to them a thousand, tweaking here and there constantly. All told, it's been two years -- thank goodness it hasn't been a constant thing until just lately. I have only a vague notion of all of the things, effects, whatever, that can be done through audio engineering. I'm an analog girl, and knew my way around the analog studio. Everything is digital now, analog to the nth degree. There are the technical aspects of making all of the voices, human and instrumental, achieve a certain level, and a certain warmth and freshness. It is unknown to most that recording is done flat, with all resonance and such taken away, and then those characteristics are added back in. The whole point is to be able to make all of the instruments sound like a cohesive unit. I can't explain it much more than that. I do know it is a great deal of work.

It does things to your ego, listening to yourself that much. One might think it would be a wonderful thing, but it's not. First of all, I'm not that fond of my voice, and then there are the thousand tiny things I wish I could change -- one song should have been in a higher key, one was faster than I intended it, I kind of flubbed that note, etc., etc., etc., ad nauseum.

It is nearly done, though. I probably wouldn't be able to listen to it full all the way through again, were it not for the wonderful job that the musicians did. I have to admit that I am less interested in my singing than I am the playing of these musicians. I know I will enjoy this album for the rest of my life simply because of the wonderful musical talent that is on it. If it were up to me, the music would go on forever. Just hang an iPod on my ears when you cart me off to the old folks' home.

I have said this before, that song writing is a singular, solitary thing, and what you manage to croak out and strum on your front porch becomes a whole new thing when you invite other people to join in and put their own impressions to it. This process to me, is the most fun thing I can ever think to do. To be able to sit down with wonderful players and let them take my song, everybody contributing in, and make it into something else completely is, well, my idea of a good time. That's what does it for me. 

A Time To Be Quiet

It's been over a year since I wrote last, but the time has not been wasted. I've been busy at work finishing my CD, Girl Who Loves Horses, and I'm happy to say that I sent the artwork to the cover off yesterday. Hopefully the mixing will be done soon and that too can go off to DiscMakers.

I've also had the honor of working on an old friend's book, although I've had to put it on the back burner the last month. He is 90 years old, and this book that I'm editing will be a compilation of photographs that he's gathered to himself all of these years. It's a wonderful collection and it's been a great journey for me to be a part of it.

I had to put another of my animals to sleep a couple of weeks ago, and it's made me feel very quiet. I'm not one who makes it a habit to speak when I have nothing to say, but this time I found I had too much to say, and so was ironically rendered speechless. She was old by any standard, she was my mare, and she was ill and she was suffering, and so it was time, but, as always with the four-leggeds, their lives are not as long as yours and so at some point you will surely suffer heartbreak in return for all of the love they have given so easily to you. The price of love is grief, the owner of Barbero said, and they were eloquent words in their simplicity. 

And so I will begin to write, perhaps to share my chapters of my fiction novel I plan to finish following my friend's photo book. But for now, I just need to be a little quiet, just a little longer.

Daily Observation 8/5

Just got done listening to the local noon news. There were two stories that caught my interest today, and one I recall from yesterday.

The first one was a story having to do with how a community reached out and donated enough money and supplies so that school children, in a less affluent county than Fayette, had school supplies to work with this year. 

The second story was about one of UK's football players who has broken rules and gotten in trouble, and is now being kicked off the team.

The third story, that was aired yesterday, was about how one particular school district is thinking about going to a 4 day school week because apparently it costs them almost $1500 per school bus per day to get their kids to school.

First let me say I'm all in favor of 4 day work weeks. The energy savings would be astronomical.

But, in another vein, I have to wonder how much money was spent recruiting this particular football player, and also how many times this happens. It seems like at least every year there is a particular UK basketball or football "bad boy," who just can't seem to realize the blessing they've been given and get their shit together to do a job they've signed on to do. And I also have to wonder how many school supplies, food, diesel and other supplies the money spent on these idiots would buy. 

Perhaps the UK coaches ought to add this to the player's contracts: If you get here and screw up, you have to repay all the recruiting money we spent on you. And then donate that money to the schools.

Mitake Oyasin

Being an animal lover, I have often speculated on exactly what the defining difference between animals and humans is. What is it that makes what one being does "animalistic," and what the other being does "humanistic?"

Throughout my life, I've met and been involved with a lot of animals. Whether they were technically human or not is another question. I've met humans with every advantage in the world, intelligent beyond the norm, who were the crassest, basest beings I've ever met. And I've been involved with animals from the most desperate conditions who were only "voice boxes" away from being able to talk. 

The ability to communicate with verbal language is one defining difference. That has to be said carefully, because, according to an old linguistics professor I had a thousand years ago in college, animals cannot communicate with us. Come on. What a waste of an education that man had. No, they cannot, in English, say, "How do you do this morning?" But I think everyone who has had a pet knows when their pet is happy to see them. They are able to express emotion, which is right next door to communicating openly and freely, and quite frankly, is absolutely impossible for many humans I have known. 

Psychological make up is one place that I've found a very defining difference. There are many different psychological behaviors that animals and humans have in common. For instance, obsessive/compulsive disorder. Consider the human who locks and re-locks his front door 5 times and compare him to my friend's dog, Emma Lou, who walks around with a large rubber bone in her mouth and will not tire, cease or desist from baiting you to play "fetch" with her. She is interesting in being fed, she takes care of her daily dietary and bodily needs, but her main focus in life is getting someone to throw that bone.

Seemingly unreasonable phobias is another. Come a thunderstorm, both of my dogs will be in my lap, or as close to me as they can possibly get. Come a severe thunderstorm, my border collie will stand at the sliding door and ferociously growl and bark at the storm, coming back repeatedly to me to let me know there's a monster outside the door. 

Of course the list of human phobias is practically endless. Fear of heights is my main one, ironic for a girl who loves the mountains. I have to say, and this may reveal some deep, dark secret of mine, I love to look off of a mountaintop, but I find myself with the most unnerving desire to fly off the precipice and coast like some hawk or eagle. Or try to. This is a girl who, watching an advertisement for a theme park, will suffer actual vertigo watching people go up and down on roller coasters. 

There is one huge difference I've noticed from my 15 years in the medical field. Animals do not delight in disability. We do. If I've seen it once in medicine, I've seen it a thousand times, and yes, in myself also. We hold on to illness and nurture it. We use it as an excuse to not get up. We wallow in our illness, becoming very encouched and comfortable in our disability. Very different from the little dog I had to lose earlier this year. She had every disability in the world, and tried tirelessly to be the dog that she was regardless of whether she could move freely or not. And she did become depressed, however she was always ready to change her mood. She would cry sometimes, from frustration I would guess, because it was always when she had gotten herself stuck. It was the most heartbreaking, lonely sound I had ever heard. Her little mouth made the most perfect little circle, and all of her heartbreak would just pour through. I could never get to her fast enough when I heard this song. It was an unbearable thing for me to hear. But the very instant I touched her, it was gone, replaced with the joy of being picked up and cuddled.

I have had pets who have faked having a hurt paw for a little attention, but it is never like a human being does. I address this, because I see the tendency so much in myself. I have surprised myself on many occasions when someone has asked about my health and I found myself launching, quite happily, into a detailed description of all my latest health complaints. 

I wonder if this difference can be explained because we have the ability to recognize that there is a distant future. There is instinct. Animals, I think, can surmise that a danger could be present, for instance, the canine practice of circling the nest two or three times before lying down. But I don't think this is the same as realizing that tomorrow may not come. Much like a teenager, I'm not exactly sure they can realize they are not invincible. My greatest pain with my little dog was knowing for sure that she was totally not ready to go. Neither was my father despite the tremendous pain he was in. My mother, on the other hand, I think was done with this world and with us and only wanted to be with my father again. 

Despite my professor's belief that we are so much more developed than animals, I think I have to side with the four-leggeds on this one. There's a whole lot of reasons I find myself vastly preferring four-legged company to human, unless they are humans that have great relationships with and great respect for the four-leggeds. After all, we are all related.

 

Shingles

Sorry for the delay in posting. The shingles spread to my right eye and I've had great difficulty in being able to see out of it. Things are much better now, though, there is still some fuzziness there. So sorry for any typos that might have slipped thru...

Look below for my latest thoughts on mountain top removal.

Lyn

The Eloi and the Morlocks, Kentucky style...

Of the many issues rampant today, a particularly volatile one involves the strip mining method known as mountain top removal, which is being practiced in the coal fields of Eastern Kentucky.

The ones who own an interest in the coal want it to be mined. These are not just cold-hearted coal company people who routinely go in, ravage an area, claim to re-claim it and then leave it an environmental mess. They are also honest, hard-working and at times elderly residents of the area who look at the coal as money they can pay their medical bills with and perhaps leave something for their children. It's two sides of the same coin, and I'm torn between two lovers on the issue.

I despise strip miners. I despise the way they manipulate and swindle the people, I despise what they do to the land, and I despise the way they go off and leave the slag fields for someone else to clean up.

Here is a case in point. Peabody Energy Company contacted me some time back wanting permission to lease some land that I was heir to back in Leslie County. Here was their spiel. They wanted the land so the could do exploratory drilling for gas and oil, and if they struck it, then besides the revenue from the leasing of the land, there would also be revenue from the proceeds of the drilling. I thought, well, drilling is not as bad as strip mining and the extra money would sure help my aunt and uncle. Come to find out what they are actually doing is leasing this land (thus preventing the owners from using it), drilling and finding wells, and then capping them off. No help for America, and certainly no revenue for the aforementioned aging relatives.

It's the brazen lying and manipulation of a population of people who have historically been manipulated beyond belief for generations. It is the manipulation of a part of our state that is rarely acknowledged as absolutely imperative to the survival of the state. It's the dirty little secret that we never talk about when we're advertising our great horse farms of the Bluegrass, of Central Kentucky, all of which are powered by the coal mines in Eastern Kentucky.

It's a question that has plagued me since childhood when I saw first hand the poverty that my people grew up in. It's the question that kept coming to me when I saw the affluence of the Bluegrass. What about the mountains? Where is their share? Why must my elderly aunt and uncle drive four or five counties away down two lane mountain roads to receive adequate health care? All of the coal that has been ripped out of those hills, and nothing's changed. There's a new Wal Mart in Hazard. Oh boy, that's some progress. But the health care workers at the regional hospital there had to strike for a decent wage.

Kind of reminds me of the Eloi and the Morlocks in H.G. Wells "The Time Machine."

Governor Beshear, I challenge you to make things right with Eastern Kentucky. I challenge you to empower our universities with the ability to find other, better, renewable forms of fuel, to build better health centers and clinics in the areas that are supplying the rest of you (my house is solar-powered) with power and energy. They're not just our country cousins, they're our people.