Bob Homans is up to his eyebrows in paying work. He’ll return when he can.
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Grandpa Sasha is on his way home, accompanied by Grandma Nadia and Oksana. They will arrive this afternoon shortly after noon, finalize the arrangements, inhale the service and burial tomorrow.
It's a simple affair. No one undertaker necessary - it's all very quick. There will be a burial and awake, and Oksana plans to return tomorrow night. There is a simplicity and a dignity to the whole thing, and the cost is in line with what Ukrainians can handle, a bit over $1,000 all told. Sasha’s medical bills over the last couple of years have also been very reasonable - probably a bit over $2,000. Corporate medicine, medical insurance, group practices and such are just getting started here. What we have is a workable mixture of underfunded government clinics that are better than they have any right to be and private clinics where it is fee-for-service with a real doctor-patient relationship.
Grandma will remain in Svetlovodsk indefinitely. However, she did give an indication that she is coming back. I was unable to dig up her garlic patch on account of my bursitis. I had thought she gave up, but it turns out that she dug it herself and planted it. I asked who would attend to it and she indicated she would be back to look after it.
She is wedded to the land. She has invested an awful lot of work in our backyard. I'm not convinced that she's getting a good return on the effort invested, but since it's a labor of love, who's measuring? I can say the same for Sasha. Without asking Oksana, and at the risk of doing it wrong, I started to clean up Sasha's room. Taking all of the crutches, wheelchair, walkers and such up to the attic and putting his bed linens in the wash.
While I was in the attic, I stumbled over the apples that Sasha had cut. Wasn't much he could do for the family in his last year, but what he did he did with gusto. He sliced apples to dry and cracked walnuts. We have enough of both to last a few years. I brought some of the dried apples down and started to make a compote out of them. We should be drinking apple compote all winter, raising a cup to Sasha's memory as we do so.
I am dictating this with the built-in dictation software in Microsoft Word. It is not nearly as good as Dragon Naturally Speaking, but it is free. Dragon stopped working, having decided for some reason that I had not activated the product. Their customer support is not very good or very fast, so I'm learning Microsoft as an alternative. It still beats typing, and I'm a pretty fast typist.
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Children’s culture
My kids don’t have other American kids from whom to learn kids’ culture. I try to recall as much as I can. My fear is that traditional lore has been pushed aside by what kids learn from TV. Anyhow, the following I am sure were invented by real children. They are too inane, too pointed, and too lacking in commerciality, to have come from the media:
To somebody telling untruths
Liar Liar Pants on fire
Hanging on a telephone wire
When the kids find some coins fallen out of my pocket
Finders keepers
Losers weepers
Every, every day. When name calling breaks into fisticuffs
Sticks and stones may break my bones
But names will never hurt me
I’m rubber and you’re glue
Everything you say
Bounces off me and sticks to you
Counting down to select one member of a group
Eeeny Meenie Miney Moe
Catch a tiger by the toe (don’t ask about the original)
If he hollers let him go
Eeeny Meenie Miney Moe
My mommy told me to choose the very best one
As Zoriana gets old enough to learn modesty
I see London, I see France
I see somebody’s underpants
When we got a television in 1951, my conclusion was that the offerings, especially Howdy Doody, were so puerile as to be disgusting. I didn’t watch much. What I did watch was Disneyland (Wednesday nights) and a few shoot-em-ups, notably the smart-mouthed Maverick. My Gladys Avenue friends listened to Bobby Benson and the B-Bar-B Riders on radio. I didn’t because we didn’t have one.
Upon entering college, I learned how much had been absent from my media acculturation. Alan Birholtz would often refer to Jellystone Park, saying “Yabba dabba do” and claim he was “smarter than the average bear”. On the Internet I find “30 Yogi Bear Quotes to Understand That Hope Will Never Fade.” They fade – I never remember hearing the other 29. Other snatches one would hear were about waskally wabbits, I tawt I taw a puddy-tat and so on. My kids won’t learn those, and I don’t regret the oversight.
Television, and children’s literature are of course commercial. Financial interests had something to say about content. Sesame Street was pushing vaccines as early as 1972. Here’s Captain Kangaroo in 1979. The producers undoubtedly thought they were doing good – the government, the American Medical Association and universities peddled the notion that vaccines were one of the chief miracles of modern science – but I suspect they made some money from it. A few perceptive souls realized early on, such as with the Salk polio vaccines of my childhood, that the vaccine safety and effectiveness story was a scam. The powers that be were effective in squelching doubts. I never heard about them.
Patriotism and the valor of law enforcement were themes in the 1950s. It changed. It became more hip, more cynical with The Simpsons and Southpark. I find them watchable and often share their cynicism, but I don’t want my kids watching. Homer is not the image I would like to see as the head of the household Some, like Beavis and Butthead, I find to be simply a waste of time. The rainbow messages in Disney bother me far more. Please, leave gender and sex themes for adults!
I think my kids are best off as they are. There is very little media in their lives. They don’t have smart phones. Zoriana’s Christmas list includes a smartphone and a tablet computer. I’ve told her in advance that no electronic Santa will be visiting this house.
That's the news from Lake WeBeGone, where are the strong man is holding the fort until the good looking woman gets back. The kids gleefully anticipate being able to watch (very old) cartoons more than mommy allows. They are also going to get an apple pie. I’m savoring having my kitchen back. I could be lazy with Nadia in the kitchen, but I really like my own cooking. And I love it when things remain where I put them and I don’t have to navigate through somebody else’s mess in my kitchen.
We didn't get a TV until I was ten. The first TV that I had a chance to watch was my grandfather's. He got it as part of the package he got when he retired after 40 years working as a janitor in our local grammar school. I remember going with him on Halloween night to sit in the car outside the school to make sure that the rowdy kids didn't wax the school windows. We sat and talked, I assume, since I was probably seven or eight at the time, but I don't remember anything except feeling warm and safe with him.
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They wouldn't let me watch much TV. I wanted to watch Dragnet, but they thought it was too rough. It seems so tame now when you watch an episode on YouTube. After my mother divorced my father, we got a TV and watched the usual drek like I Love Lucy, 77 Sunset Strip, and Maverick. After leaving home, I didn't have a TV for years, and even then I didn't get any regular channels since I lived in the woods. We watched videos with the VCR. One year, I got a satellite dish and could watch 200 channels with no content at all. The best thing was the ten HBO channels on the satellite dish. That's mostly what I watched when I had satellite reception.
As a kid, I listened to the radio. We didn't have one in the house, so I had to sit in my dad's truck and listen to the Lone Ranger by myself in the dark. Of course, the neighbor girl had a TV so we watched the Mickey Mouse Club.
Now, occasionally, if I am staying in a hotel, I flip through the 40 plus channels that are available and find nothing to watch. People are better off without things like Netflix. I have it now as a gift from a friend, but I probably watch one film every six months. There are lots of serials on Netflix but I don't want to devote hours and hours to mindless sitting.
By the way, the drug companies are already eyeing Ukraine as a target for their drugs. I used to teach English for a short time at one drug company office where they posted the sales by regions. Their goal was to get Ukrainians to buy as many drugs as Americans. The American market is the standard that they want to achieve, every person taking twenty pills a day, those little multi-box plastic containers in which somebody loads the weekly supply. I never saw or heard one mention of the improved health of the populace. They don't care if people get better; they measure success not in health outcomes but in dollars. It's pure evil. And in Ukraine the doctors are paid commission for prescribing shots, pills, and tests. It ain't about your health. It's about filling their pockets. That's why America is the most drugged country in the world with the highest cost of health care per capita and a steeply declining measure of life expectancy.
As one doctor said, "It was a necessary surgery. I needed the money to buy a boat."
M-yeh, What's Up Doc?
The old Warner cartoons are a treasured part of my life. Never was a fan of Mickey, et al. ANYTHING from Hanna-Barbara was dreck. Loved Futurama.
RIP, Sasha.
BTW, considering the current lapse in support, it's like I told all my Ukrainian friends, "NEVER trust the USA." Oh look! Squirrel! (er, I mean Israel). (If you saw the movie "UP!" you know of what I am speaking).