Author: Philip Weiss

When boys are molested

One friend of mine is pretty adamant that women do not commit violence or prey on men and boys, at least not with any significantly measurable frequency. I’ve countered her anecdotallly by noting that on more than one occasion I’ve been on the receiving end of violent attacks, and so have a significant number of my male friends. That’s not statistical proof, of course, but violence against men is very rarely looked for or measured. I strongly suspect that women bear the majority of violent and sexual attacks, not the other way around. But the chances of men experiencing violence are high enough that the phenomenon shouldn’t be ignored.

Anyhow, this came to mind again because incidents like the following seem to be a daily occurrence. The response from many on the net, including me at times, is to see what the perpetrator looks like. As if the harm to a boy from having a pretty older woman abscond with him is somehow dependent on whether she’s attractive or not. Boys want to make it with hot women, so it can’t be harmful to them, right?

Frankly, I have no idea what the answer to that question is. What percentage are truly traumatized for life? What percent get messed up but no worse than normal teenage trauma that passes? What portion of boys that this happens to really feel fine with the experience? And is it really dependent on the looks of the woman? And can we draw any lessons from this to the wider phenomenon of girls being preyed on? I’m not saying by any stretch that girls just need to get over being victims. I just wonder if there are any parallels. Or is there any difference in how boys handle predatory behavior from men compared to that from women. In other words, is it really any less harmful to have a female teacher molest a boy than a male priest?

As I wrote, I think too often we dismiss the problem as insignificant. Then again, maybe it really is.

School fires teacher accused of ‘inappropriate’ relationship with pupil

The South Buffalo Charter School teacher whose disappearance led to a police investigation into her relationship with an eighth-grade student has been fired, two sources familiar with the case said today.

Cara Dickey, 29, was given her termination papers Wednesday, the day after she was found sleeping in her vehicle in Springville, the sources said.

Dickey was suspended with pay on Monday, and school officials escorted her off school grounds that afternoon. She then went missing until State Police found her sleeping in her vehicle late Tuesday morning.

Long day

It’s been a long day. Today was the 80th birthday for my grandmother, and my mom and aunt hosted a party for Gram. The party doubled as a 60th wedding anniversary for my grandparents as well.

The drive down went pretty swimmingly. We took my car because it has angled headrests. Dad drove. I sat behind Mom and flipped the suction device on and off when she needed it.

The ALSA provided a tilting wheelchair for mom to use at the party. Mom used it when she was in my grandparents’ apartment, but we never really were able to get the headrest adjusted to Mom’s satisfaction. That was frustrating. So at the party itself, she used her brace.

This was also the first time in 4½ years that my entire immediate family was in one place. Dan cam and brought Brenda and Victor. Elaine and Brian came. Joe and Sara came. As Sara put it while watching mom walk around with Victor, Your mom is stupid happy to see him.

Drive back was tougher. Mom was worn out. Her ibuprofen wore off, so we had to stop on the way to give her something stronger. Also, the piece of cloth holding her head in place to the headrest kept slipping off. And a muscle in my back cramped up something fierce. But we made it back.

I have about 8 pounds of food left over from catering. Two bags of salmon. One of chicken. One of potatoes. Two of a broccoli salad. Dad has a few bags too. And so does my cousin. They planned for the right amount of people, but it was mostly old folks who ate like birds.

Now, I finish my book and sleep.

Bowing out

This spring, I ran out of time before the Washington State Presidential caucuses before I could compare and post on Barack Obama vs. Hillary Clinton. I don’t intend to let that happen with the general election. I have five months to compare and contrast John McCain and Barack Obama. It’s slightly different in this case, in that I already know which one of them I prefer. However, it’s still useful to go through the exercise. So starting soon watch for posts on the issues.

But one last comment on the primary campaign. I’ve seen a lot of hate for Hillary Clinton that just doesn’t make sense. I’ve seen one or two people who have legitimate, if not well-thought-out, beefs with her. But mostly it’s people looking for reasons to hate her. The hopefully last one was the brouhaha over whether she should have conceded on Tuesday night immediately after the last two primaries.

My commentary is the same as Bob Somerby’s at The Haily Howler:

Some people wanted a concession on Tuesday. That’s fine, but historically, people don’t do that. By the way: It would be weird to spend all day Tuesday asking people to vote for you—then to show up at 8:30 PM and say, “I’m out of here—please vote for the other guy.” Whatever you think of Clinton’s speech, it would be somewhat odd to endorse on the night you ran in two primaries, trying to win. Historically, people don’t do that.

So I repeat, a lot of the anti-Hillary Clinton invective is really just that much bullshit.

Doctor my eyes!

Mom’s monthly doctor visit today. Nothing really to report from the visit.

Left arm still going downhill fast.

Tomorrow morning the home health care agency will be coming by to plan. Hopefully we’ll have someone in later this week or early next.

Feeling very fragile lately.

I will be in Seattle for mentoring Thursday and coming back here Friday. It’s the last mentoring for the year. The following week I will be in Seattle over the weekend. I plan to be in Seattle weekends every two weeks.

In other news, Rat’s Reading actually made a profit last month, though not if you count the hours I spend fiddling with it. My hosting costs are $7/month (I think, I pay for two years in advance) on one of the cheap shared hosts. I cleared $17 and change in sales commissions. Probably be a while before that happens again though. Of course, I take the pay in books….

Venting

Bleah. My mom is difficult.

She asked me to help dad fill out some medical paperwork today. His shoulder was killing him, so he went to the doctor who referred him to physical therapy. The two offices are next to each other, so he walked next door, got an appointment scheduled and got some paperwork to bring with him. Dad is functionally illiterate. He can’t fill out the forms. Mom did that for him, but she can’t write anymore and communicating to dad what he needs to put in is too hard for her.

So I went through the forms, asked dad the questions, and filled in for him. One set of questions is for family history of illnesses. So for each of them I asked dad if anyone had the illnesses. Dad has eight siblings I think. And his memory for details isn’t the best. On cancer, he knew his mom had breast cancer. But he didn’t remember a sister had it. Or something like that. Mom threw a hissy fit because she remembered and we hadn’t filled out the form correctly. And we didn’t put down the multi-vitamin dad takes under medications. If it is 100% accurate, what’s the point?

When unhooking the feeding tube, the plug popped out and some water with a bit of formula spilled out all over the side of mom’s leg and onto the blanket and chair. Maybe a quarter cup before dad got the plug back in. Dad tried to take mom into the bedroom to get a clean pair of pants on her before he put the blanket in the wash and put a clean one on the chair. Mom threw another hissy fit because she wanted the blanket done first and wanted dad to sponge off the chair which got just a bit on it. By the time mom could get off the chair, the little bit was already soaked in. So no real point.

Mom also doesn’t want to go through an agency to hire CNA help. She figures that the best people aren’t with an agency because agencies take a cut. WHich may be true. But there’s no way I am calling 100 different people from a list of independents. If there is someone recommended, I will call them. But I have no way to vet a large list.

My broker recommended an investment strategy for my mom that lets her estate basically get free money when she dies. Mom likes it. But rather than have my broker handle it, mom wants me to open an account with a discount brokerage and do all of it myself. I know the basics of the strategy, and can probably do it. But I haven’t done it before and have to muddle my way through all the details.

It’s hard enough to do take care of all the things I do take care of. Having her argue with everything and want to do everything the difficult way is getting really tough. I’m burnt out, and the really hard part of her illness is just starting.

More stuff

I have two pounds to lose in two weeks. I think I’m pretty close.

I won’t be in Seattle next week. No mentoring. I will be tomorrow. And Friday. Applications for Phil time on Friday may be submitted in comments.

Two weeks from tomorrow is the last mentoring day for the school year. After that I will be driving to Seattle even less. I’ll come to any cool kid parties to which I get invited, but otherwise will be staying here more to help mom and to save gas money.

Mom can’t raise her left arm above her head anymore, and she is swiftly losing strength in her hand. I’m guessing she has about a month left of the ability to type. Could be more. Could be less. I’m looking at switches tomorrow. She’ll have to use a switch/scan system, which is going to suck.

Talked to an ambulance/cabulance company today about having someone drive mom to Seattle on the 8th rather than us. She gets uncomfortable in the car fairly quickly. He suggested that it would be jut as comfortable if we rented a top of the line Cadillac with extra soft suspension and 10 point seat adjustment. Mom seemed to like that idea.

I will also start calling around to hire in-home help. Dad finally agreed. Mom can’t even go to the bathroom by herself, since she can’t pull down her pants or pull them back up. And soon enough won’t be able to operate her suction machine or turn pages in a book. He’ll be overwhelmed by all the stuff he has to do. So getting someone else to help out is good. I’ll be there to do some of it, but I have a hard enough time seeing my mom deteriorate as it is.

The periodic decline post

Mom says she’s having a hard time concentrating even at things that really interest her. She’s more or less staying in her easy chair exclusively. She’s using the bipap to assist with her breathing during the day quite frequently now, though she’s trying not to this week because Elaine is visiting.

We have a doctor’s visit on Monday. These have been monthly. I think this will be the last one. After this the doctor will be needing to make a house call (he’s offered), because mom isn’t really up to leaving the house much even now. In a month, unless she’s having a really good day, she’ll be completely wiped out by going in to town.

Social Security won’t be there? Please.

Okay, so one of my pet peeves is people repeating stuff that just isn’t true. I don’t mean rumors that I’m sleeping with Jason’s ex-girlfriends. Hell, that sort of thing is perfectly okay. Tell all sorts of rumors, true or not, about me that you want. No, I mean things like you can’t get ticketed for driving too fast in Montana. Stuff that just isn’t true.

One of the ones that I heard last week was that Social Security will be bankrupt before we retire.

Under reasonable assumptions, it’s just not true. What do I mean by reasonable assumptions? Like we leave the laws around it alone. We could always make Social Security into a dishwasher funding law, but I’m assuming we won’t.

Right now, under the Social Security Trustees projections, Social Security is fully funded through 2041. Under the Congressional Budget Office projections, it’s fully funded through 2046. What does that mean? It means that all planned benefits can be fully paid. Benefits go up faster than inflation, actually. That’s important for what happens after 2041 (or 2046, under slightly more optimistic projections). At that point, benefits can be paid out at 75% of what’s currently planned for those years. 75% of plan at that point is better than if current benefits were indexed to inflation. In other words, retirees after 2041 will be collecting more money, adjusted for inflation, than current beneficiaries.

That’s with no changes whatsoever.

Let’s also point out how far out that actually is. 2041. I will turn 65 in 2035. I will be 71 when Social Security goes bankrupt. 33 years from now. Social Security was in worse shape in 1986 than it will be in 2041, and with a decent change was fixed. 22 years ago. It’s had a surplus since then and we won’t even be dipping into the surplus for another 20 years or so.

This point is so far in the future that if we make really minor changes to the funding (I know, my assumption was no changes, we’re moving on to another part of the argument), like lifting the cap on wage income that is subject to the tax, it will be fully funded forever. Right now if I made 150,000 a year, only the first 90,000 or so would be subject to F.I.C.A. (the tax used to fund Social Security). Poor people pay a higher percentage of income for F.I.C.A. than rich people do.

However, if the economy does as well as it did in the 1970s and 1980s, no changes will be needed. We don’t even need to assume that the economy will be as good as the Clinton years. The economic assumptions in the Social Security Trustees projections assume we won’t do as well as the 1970s. They are extremely conservative (not in the political party sense) assumptions.

To sum up: don’t panic.

Breathing

Mom cannot finish more than 2 or 3 pages without nodding off. It means she is losing breathing function a fair amount and there is a buildup of CO2 in her blood. Since she is already on a bipap machine, the only thing that can really improve it is a trach/ventilator or going on oxygen. She decided against both. I made her promise to ask the hospice nurse about her breathing and oxygen levels.

I am starting to feel like this is her last days. I hope hospice can tell. I need to know if I need to get the family here for their last visits or not. Most have visits scheduled between now and the end of June, but I’d hate for them to get here a week too late.

Anyhow, I’m all sorts of fucked up right now.