Praxxus

Severe flooding in southern Indiana

2008-06-07T13:44:00.001-04:00

The in-laws called me early this afternoon. They left Bloomington this morning en route to Ohio for a relative's graduation party. They said that roads were closed ahead of them, and being closed behind them, with cars and houses under water all along the way.

Here's MSNBC:

Local boy makes good

2008-05-30T22:11:00.006-04:00

A hearty congratulations to Sameer Mishra of West Lafayette, IN, winner of the 2008 Scripps National Spelling Bee.

The winning word was "guerdon."

I'm sure the Journal & Courier will have a writeup soon, but in the meantime, here's the Associated Press report.

And here's what's up at The Indianapolis Star.

Lastly, here's Sameer's 15 minutes --or 1 minute 15 seconds, at least-- of YouTube fame:

Windyana

2008-05-30T11:02:00.003-04:00

From today's Journal & Courier, a writeup about starting another wind farm in Benton County. As much as I dislike the guy, even Not-My-Man Mitch played it appropriately, showing up on a motorcycle instead of in a motorcade.

"Welcome to Indiana. America's Green Energy Capital. Mitch Daniels, Governor 5/29/08" is what the state's chief executive wrote on the blade that will be part of 222 wind turbines that comprise the first phase of the wind farm.

Phase 1 of the project, developed by BP Alternative Energy and Dominion, will produce 400 megawatts of electricity and is expected to be operational by the end of the year.

Phase 2 is expected to generate an additional 350 megawatts of power, and construction could begin as early as next year.

When fully operational the project will generate enough electricity to power more than 200,000 average homes.

As of right now, Benton County is where it's at in terms of the Windyana scene. Turbines are bustin' out all over, it seems:

The Indiana Wind Resource Map produced by the U.S. Department of Energy shows Benton County is one of only several counties in Indiana that has wind speeds adequate to power large turbines.

It is the location of two other wind farm projects. One is in operation, the other is being planned.

In April, Benton County Wind Farm -- the state's first operational wind farm -- began generating electricity from sites near Earl Park, in Richland and York townships.

The Orion Energy Group erected 87 wind turbines, which are designed to produce 130 megawatts of electricity -- enough to power approximately 40,000 homes.

Duke Energy has begun buying up to 100 megawatts of electricity from a portion of the Orion Energy Group turbines. Vectren Energy Delivery of Indiana has added 30 megawatts of wind energy from the project to its generation profile.

Indianapolis Power & Light Co. has reached an agreement with enXco to create the Hoosier Wind Project, a 100-megawatt wind farm near Fowler that is projected to go into operation next year.

The wind farm is expected to involve 67 turbines that will generate enough renewable electric energy to power 468,000 customers in Marion and surrounding counties.

Fan-freakin'-tastic, sez I! The greener the better.

Let me be the first to welcome our new cyborg simian overlords

2008-05-29T09:06:00.002-04:00

Monkeys Control a Robot Arm With Their Thoughts

Two monkeys with tiny sensors in their brains have learned to control a mechanical arm with just their thoughts, using it to reach for and grab food and even to adjust for the size and stickiness of morsels when necessary, scientists reported on Wednesday.

The report, released online by the journal Nature, is the most striking demonstration to date of brain-machine interface technology. Scientists expect that technology will eventually allow people with spinal cord injuries and other paralyzing conditions to gain more control over their lives.

<snip>

The new experiment goes a step further. In it, the monkeys’ brains seem to have adopted the mechanical appendage as their own, refining its movement as it interacted with real objects in real time. The monkeys had their own arms gently restrained while they learned to use the added one.

Oh sure, this is a major breakthrough and heralds great things for people who have lost limbs or suffered head and spinal injuries (e.g., returning veterans). All fine and dandy.

The problem, as I see it, is that now the cyborg monkeys can use their robot appendages to expedite the design and construction of new and better monkey cyborgs! Then those will turn around and build even better cyborg monkeys! Next thing you know it will be Planet of the Goddamned Apes all over again, only this time writ robotic!

And scientists wonder why people don't trust them.

Obama Townhall Meeting, Lafayette, IN

2008-04-11T10:17:00.005-04:00

Tonight, thanks to Mrs. Praxxus agreeing to stay home with Things 1 & 2, I had the chance to go see Barack Obama speak at Jefferson High School here in Lafayette. For those of you unfamiliar with the Greater Lafayette Area, West Lafayette, IN is home to Purdue University."

There were 2500 tickets handed out yesterday in two separate locations. News reports say that they were gone within 90 minutes. Today I arrived at Jeff about 20 minutes after the doors opened, and only had a 10 minute wait in the rain to get through security. Watching the news reports later, they mentioned people standing in the rain for "hours." Ooof.

As a cruel joke, people had to leave their umbrellas at the door before they went through the metal detectors.

Once inside, the place was about 2/3 full already. For some inane reason I kept walking along the bleachers toward the stage, and my illogical thinking was rewarded when I found an open spot in the front row of the bleachers (there were a few rows of folding chairs on the gym floor in front of me, then the "Press Cage" and the podium), about 25 feet from the podium!

The people around me were all very nice. There was a recent 18 year-old there with his 15 year-old friend. The 18 year-old said he has been following this election earnestly, as it's the first one he can vote in and he wants to make an informed decision. His friends don't understand why he's so into politics. I congratulated both of them for their involvement. There was a ~47 year-old woman behind me, later joined by her daughter. I know she is about that old, because she told me she went at age 7 to see the last presidential candidate to pass through this part of the country, and got to shake hands with Bobby Kennedy. There was an older couple --in their 70s-- next to me, that didn't have a lot to say.

The 40-ish lady behind me is a volunteer, and has been calling ("I had a 72 year-old man tell me that of course he was going to vote for Obama. It made my heart glad"), registering voters ("We've registered hundreds"), and even putting up a yard sign ("I live in a duplex, and I made sure and put my sign on my side, because my neighbor . . . well, he's an old country boy. The other day he came up to me and said he wanted to talk to me about my sign. I thought, 'Oh, here we go,' but he said, 'Why don't you go ahead and move that over to the middle?') She was great to talk to.

The crowd was diverse...lots of high school and college students, middle age, my age, old age, black, white, brown, and most skin hues in between. The way they had they gymnasium set up, the 2500 ticketed people + press and VIPs filled it all up rather well:

After some local folks did the warmup routines, Senator Obama came out. From what I have seen of his stuff, it was a pretty standard stump speech, but it was good to see a Lafayette, IN crowd getting excited about it. It seemed to me that he got the biggest applause when talking about the Iraq war. He mentioned his recent encounter with Petraeus and Crocker, and how they didn't want to leave until everything was perfect. He then said (paraphrasing):

My plan is to get out of Iraq gradually, which will give the Iraqi government time to become able to take care of itself. I'm only talking about drawing down troops at a rate of one brigade per month. At that rate, it will take almost two years to get us out of there. If they can't take care of themselves after seven years, and we stayed because of that . . . well, before long it would be 14 years. And if they still couldn't take care of themselves, next thing you know it would be 21 years, and if they still couldn't, this could go on and on and . . . pretty soon we'd be talking like John McCain, about having a presence in Iraq for 100 years!

The McCain jab was well received. I do believe he got a standing ovation at that point in the speech.

For another writeup of tonight's event, see motbob's diary over at The Great Orange Satan.

So enough about that. It was a great evening. Lafayette ♥s Obama, at least for tonight! Hopefully I will someday get to tell my kids about going to see the President speak at the high school gym, and getting to shake his hand. :-)

For the pics: My poor camera's flash was underpowered, even at the relatively close range. So I have a selection of mostly in-focus shots that are too dark, and well-lit shots that are a bit fuzzy. But some of them are pretty good.

You can also visit the full Flickr Set.

Here's the opening "stump speech" segment from tonight, at the stunning 320x240 resolution my little camera provides:

Here's my wee video of the one question from the audience that got Senator Obama off of his standard "stump" points. It was the last one, when a woman asked him about selecting Supreme Court justices. Watch the video to hear him discuss his "philosophy about the Supreme Court."

Here's the late-night writeup from the local paper, the Journal & Courier

Fuck cancer

2007-05-10T09:57:00.000-04:00

Remember when I wrote this:

On May 24th my mom was officially diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma. It wasn't a complete surprise, as she had been going through a gauntlet of tests that all seemed to be pointing that direction, but until you find out for sure you can at least hold out some faint hope that maybe all the tests are wrong. She started chemo treatment almost immediately, and has undergone radiation therapy for a mass that had wandered to her spine. She got tired of waking up with clumps of hair on her pillow, so had her sister come over and give her the cueball treatment. She keeps applying temporary butterfly tattoos to her scalp. She is tolerating the chemo well so far, and her spirits remain good even on the days right after chemo treatments.

Well, the chemo "didn't take," and in early April she was hospitalized with a fever and shortness of breath. Two days later she was on a ventilator. We all came down that weekend to see her, and she was in good spirits but very tired and got drastically weaker just over the course of the weekend. On April 15 my siblings and I met at the hospital and had her taken off of the ventilator, as per her wishes.

She lasted maybe five minutes after that. I hope they will always rank as the worst five minutes of my life, because I really don't think I can handle anything that would top that.

I had wanted to do a writeup for Mom like I had done for Dad, but am still too emotional about the whole thing. Then I realized that the eulogy my uncle gave at the funeral, pieced together from e-mails people had given him sharing their memories of Mom, was a far better writeup than I could ever hope to do. So here it is.

1944 - 2007

While I was collecting the information for this eulogy I found Mother Praxxus was a special person to many people.

You've heard the saying "If life hands you a lemon, make lemonade?." She did the best job of following that advice of anyone I know, but then she had more than her share of lemons to practice with. Through it all, her upbeat attitude was a reoccurring theme when I was collecting thoughts from different people she knew during the many facets of her life. She certainly enjoyed being with people.

She made "lemonade" of small things, too. A turn onto the wrong street while driving with a friend instantly became "the scenic route," the road to a new adventure. She wasn't as much a slave to the clock as most of us are.

Anyone who knew her at all knows she was a fanatical St. Louis Cardinals fan. I'm sure more than one of you has tried to talk to her on the phone when a game was on. That was a lost cause, except during commercials. Even a trip to St. Louis to take in a game in the middle of a school week wasn't unheard of. I'm glad she got to see them win the pennant [sic] last year.

----------------------Club
One of her many activities was the Friendly Neighbors club. She attended their meeting a month or so ago where she spent an hour cutting out quilt blocks, which would be used to make a quilt for a family that had been burned out. She spent some of her time and energy helping others right up to the end.

------------------------------Church
She enjoyed seeing everyone at church and especially looked forward to the secret sister get-togethers and participating in the area-wide singings. Again, she was remembered for always being "up" with time never being spent wondering "why me."

----------------------------Theater
She enjoyed everything about the theater. If she didn't have an acting role, she would help with lights, sound, costume changes or whatever was needed, just so she could be part of it.

These are some of the thoughts shared by those who participated with her in the Avenue Theater and other productions:
-Mother Praxxus was a truly kind, loving and patient person that never had a harsh word for anyone. She battled a horrible disease and she did it with dignity and grace. Whether she was working crew or acting on the stage we all knew we could rely on her to give it her all. I will miss her kindness of spirit.

-She was so kind and giving- always thinking about others and how she could be helpful. She was never judgmental and always caring- a true lady. She will be missed.

-I only had the opportunity to be a part of Mother Praxxus's life during the mystery dinner theater, but I can surely say she inspired me with her great talent and warmth to all cast members. She was indeed a friendly personality and would do most anything for anybody. I did see her for the first time in a play at the Avenue Theater, I believe it was "The Diary of Anne Frank." She was wonderful in character on stage. I thought during that production she was a talented actress who performed graciously with a smile.

-Mother Praxxus played her roles with professional acumen. She was always first, it seemed to me, to know her lines. She is missed.

Others remember her patience when working with children in the plays, her bringing her knitting to do while she waited until it was time for her part in the practice, her unfailing good humor and never complaining and the cookies she sometimes brought for everyone. Her caring extended beyond play practice to soup for the ill, birthdays remembered and phone calls to those with illness or other needs in the family.

I know she was proud of her world-class witch's cackle, which she used not only in appropriate plays and Halloween celebrations, but on at least one occasion to frighten a son who was greeted by that cackle rather than "hello" when he answered the phone on Halloween. She did love the fun of Halloween, from the costumes to the cackle.

------------------Call in radio quiz prizes
Even the radio people with the shows that give prizes for answering trivia questions will miss her. Sometimes when no one gave the right answer after several phone calls, she would call and say "I'm not eligible for the prize, since I've already won this month, but the answer is."

---------------Battered women shelter
She was a co-founder of the Emerald City shelter for abused women. Because of her own experiences it was near to her heart, even after her health forced her to stop her daily work with it.

----------------Teacher
She taught in several area schools for many years. Her son Praxxus shared these memories:

-Mom was rightfully proud of herself for finally getting her college degree. She was discussing her pending graduation date with someone, and said, "I dropped out of college to get married and have a kid. Now four kids and twenty years later I'm finally going to finish."

-When Mom got her first full-time teaching job, she was appalled that there were kids in the class that couldn't tell time on an analog clock. She promptly took down the digital clock in her classroom, and replaced it with an analog one. The kids did learn to tell time with it, probably because knowing when recess starts is REALLY important

I believe after that, whenever she took over a classroom she made sure the clocks in the room were analog as a matter of course.

One person she taught with shared these memories:
-As I look back to my earlier days at Glenwood, I can remember Mother Praxxus in the Special Ed. room having a great time with her kids. Her caring went beyond the classroom and even to the extent of taking students home and always taking time to talk to parents and co-workers. Better yet, she took the time to listen---really listen and care!

If she was ever in a bad mood, she hid it well. The spontaneous smile and spring in her step always cheered me up. I truly enjoyed Mother Praxxus in her many adventures at the Avenue Theatre and was amazed at how well she could remember those lines! She and I were late bloomers as we tended to family first and then began our educational career later in life.

All who were privileged to know Mother Praxxus consider themselves richer because of her. She will be missed!

Another who not only taught with her, but went to school with her while they were getting their teaching degrees, remembers that she worked hard in school to make good grades. When she became a teacher, she expected the same of her students. But, she always enjoyed school and did her best to make it enjoyable for them. She was well liked by fellow teachers and her students.

Others who taught with her remember her caring for the kids and doing neat things with them. She even wore funky hairdos and colored her hair as a way of having fun in the classroom and with life. One remembered her own children enjoying Mother Praxxus's class because she read to them a lot. Her voice and ability to make words come to life served her well in the classroom as well as the theater.

She was also remembered as a friend one could call and say "I'm down in the dumps today. Talk me out of it." That's pretty high praise for anyone.

Her upbeat attitude, ever present smile and zest for life that made her fun to be around were mentioned by almost everyone I spoke with no matter which facet of her life they were a part of. Her strength of character carried her through good times and bad.

----------------------Family
Our youngest sister did something this week I thought was neat. She went on a "remember Mother Praxxus" outing to their favorite thrift stores and included a stop by the Dairy Queen for their traditional strawberry milkshake.

She also recalled a 6:00am phone call this past winter.
"Have you had breakfast?"
No.
"Want to go to Amvets for pancakes, sausage and gravy and biscuits ' all you can eat ' ?"
Mother Praxxus, are you aware it's 23 degrees and snowing outside.
"So?"
They ate at the Amvets that morning.

-----------------------Mother
First and foremost she was a mother and a grandmother. This is from Praxxus:

-In 10th grade I was the alternate on the Quiz Bowl team, which meant I didn't get to participate much during matches. It was really frustrating when we lost in the regional tournament, because it seemed like every time someone on our team didn't know the answer to a question, I was sitting there in the crowd clicking my imaginary buzzer and muttering the answer under my breath.

The next school day everyone on the team got a balloon delivered to the office, congratulating us for a good showing in the tournament. I was still sour about the whole thing until I read the card attached. The balloons were from Mom, and my card read, "They also serve who sit and wait." I still don't know why exactly, but that really did make me feel a lot less frustrated. [It takes a pretty wise mother to come up with a plan like that.]

-I'll never forget how hard she hugged me on my wedding day.

---------------------------------------------

-She loved her grandkids. We got to spend a weekend with her in St. Louis just this last February. [Baby Praxxus was 4 mo and Little Praxxus 2 yr old at this time]. She got to meet Baby Praxxus, and she, Little Praxxus and I walked all around the bottom floor of the Siteman Cancer Center. She chased Little Praxxus around the columns, and they shared some butter pecan ice cream. She and Little Praxxus both slept really well that night.

The couple of times we ate at Applebee's while we were there, Baby Praxxus sat across the table and yelled at her, because that's what Baby Praxxus does sometimes. Mom loved every minute of it. She also insisted on picking up BOTH boys (one at a time), in spite of our efforts to get her to take it easy. Picking up grandchildren is apparently a God-given right, and no cancer or physical frailty was going to keep that particular Grandma from exercising it.

---------------------------------------------

-Mom was subject to, "Ah, that's Mom" moments from time to time. One Saturday morning in California she called me just to talk. At 7:00 AM. I pointed this out to her and questioned her proper use of Timezone Math. Her ready reply was, "Oh I know. I figured it's early enough you could go back to sleep when we're done."

And finally, this event, remembered by her daughter, captures the "essence of Mother Praxxus" best of all.

-Mom never minded a road trip, especially if there was family at the other end.

For example, when my daughter was born, I didn't expect much company. I was in Little Rock, and the rest of my family was in the Ozarks. What's more, my then-husband had taken paternity leave, and we were in a really small rental house, so we didn't need extra relatives coming to stay. I expected to hit the road and go visiting when the baby and I were up to it.

But I had forgotten that this was the first grandchild, and I had seriously underestimated Mom.

The day after my daughter was born--a weekday, mind you, when certain teachers and teenagers should have been in school--I woke up from a nap to find Mom and my 15-year-old youngest brother in my hospital room. I was surprised, but touched and pleased. The baby was brought out, passed around, and properly admired; gifts were given and opened; and so on.

Then, after about half an hour, Mom said, "I know you need your rest. We'll go now. We just had to see the new baby."

And that's what they did: they headed right back to Missouri. Mom had spent over eight hours on the road for a thirty-minute visit--but she had been the first relative on either side of the family to hold HER new grandbaby!

---------------------------------------------
As one person expressed it, the picture puzzles that are our lives, now have a big piece missing.

Mother Praxxus, you are missed.

Baby Praxxus update

2007-02-21T09:37:00.001-05:00

Riley Children's Hospital in Indy called yesterday, and we have a consultation with a neurosurgeon in just over four weeks. Of course they scheduled it for Little Praxxus's birthday because that's the way our luck runs.

But at least we have an appointment now.

Metopic syno...what did you say?

2007-02-19T10:46:00.001-05:00

The wee Praxxi both had their well baby checkups on February 8. Little Praxxus was fine, minus his usual double-barrel ear infection. He weighs 29.5 pounds, and is 35" tall. He's on some sulfa to clear up the infections, and we might get his hearing tested after they clear up to make sure we don't need tubes. Based on his ever-expanding vocabulary, I'm honestly not that worried about his hearing.

Baby Praxxus is huuuuuuge: 26" long and 17 pounds, 11 ounces. Chubby, happy, and healthy as you please. Then Mrs. Praxxus asked the pediatrician about this crest he has, starting just above his nose and running back to his very small soft spot, and she felt his head and went to get one of the other doctors in the practice.

After some poking and feeling, they said that he might have Metopic synostosis, a form of craniosyntosis. There's also a chance he might JUST have a little crest on his forehead, but they're going to schedule an appointment for us at Riley Children's Hospital in Indy (#11 children's hospital in the country, thank goodness) ASAP for some X-rays and CT scans to see for sure.

If it's just a crest, they'll monitor it to make sure it doesn't develop into metopic synostosis. If it is metopic synostosis, they'll operate to correct the problem.

Mrs. Praxxus had a friend look up some info on Craniosynostosis while we were driving to St. Louis that evening (to visit with my mom after her latest chemo treatment) so that we could get to the hotel and have some information at our disposal rather than taking the extra time to look stuff up.

Skull images showing a preoperative skull with metopic synostosis and trigonocephaly, and a postoperative skull with the defect repaired

Craniosynostosis is a congenital deformity of the infant skull that occurs when the fibrous joints between the bones of the skull (called cranial sutures) close prematurely.

Metopic synostosis begins at the nose and goes back to the sagittal suture. Premature closure of this suture leads to a condition called trigonocephaly. This may cause the baby to have a pointed forehead, midline ridge, triangularly shaped skull, and eyes that appear too close together.

We could be lucky, and Baby P's case could be minor enough to not require surgery. However, if it does need surgery, they will make an incision across his head from ear to ear, peel back the front of his scalp, remove the front part of his skull, re-shape the bones, and reattach them with plates and screws. The procedure is done by a team consisting of a neurosurgeon, a cranio-facial plastic surgeon, and various assistants, takes 3-6 hours, and leaves the patient's eyes swollen shut for a couple of days afterwards.

Needless to say, this is weighing on our minds just a little bit. We have found a couple of links to pages made by moms who have gone through this before with their own children. That made us feel a little less spastic about things. A little ... Of course it would help if we could just get the stupid appointment scheduled at Riley, but since it isn't a life-threatening emergency it doesn't seem to be a priority to them or the pediatrician's office. So we don't even know how much we have to worry about yet, which is of course worrying in and of itself.

Personally, I'm tired of worrying about shit. Seriously, WTF? When do we catch goddamn break around here? First it was the never-ending drama with Little Praxxus's foster parenting, then both of my parents got sick, and my Dad died. Things seemed to be turning around after that, with Baby Praxxus being born, and my Mom finishing her chemo. But no, the fucking chemo didn't get rid of the cancer, and at this rate she's going to waste away before she can even finish another course of treatment. Or worse, be too weak at the end of it to withstand the stem cell transplant necessary to finish things off. Yay!

And now we're looking into whether or not they need to cut off the front of my baby's head? And I'm supposed to go to work every day, function normally, interact with people, and care about their stupid work problems? Sure!

Well, I understand you are having problems printing, but I really can't give a shit right now because I'm worried about them cutting off the front of my baby's head.

No problem! Piece of cake! I'll just sit here and smile and fix your stupid shit, and then everything will be a-fucking-okay, right? Your printing/e-mail/broken server issues are foremost on my mind, I promise!

:-P

Sloths, bitches!

2007-02-12T10:30:00.000-05:00

A movie I'd pay to see

2007-02-01T15:16:00.000-05:00

I too am offended by boobs

2006-11-17T11:00:00.000-05:00

I'm of course referring to the "idiots who would throw a breast-feeding woman off a plane" variety, and not the "breast" variety:

Emily Gillette, 27, of Santa Fe, N.M, filed the complaint with the Vermont Human Rights Commission late last week against Delta Air Lines and Freedom Airlines, said her attorney, Elizabeth Boepple. Freedom was operating the Delta flight between Burlington and New York City.

Gillette said she was discreetly breast-feeding her 22-month-old daughter on Oct. 13 as their flight prepared to leave Burlington International Airport. She said she was seated by the window in the next-to-last row, her husband was seated between her and the aisle and no part of her breast was showing.

A flight attendant tried to hand her a blanket and told her to cover up, Gillette said. She declined, telling the flight attendant she had a legal right to breast-feed her baby.

Moments later, a Delta ticket agent approached and said the flight attendant had asked that the family be removed from the flight, Gillette said. She said she didn't want to make a scene and complied.

Jumpin' Sweet Jesus! This society has got to get over the breast feeding hangups! Delta should apologize to this poor woman and fire any and all idiots involved. Please join me in contacting them and politely share your thoughts on the matter.

Delta Headquarters

Delta Air Lines, Inc.
P.O. Box 20706
Atlanta, Georgia 30320-6001

404-715-2600

Email (via a web form)

I couldn't find any "Customer Relations" contact info (it figures), so here's their Media Relations department.

Delta Air Lines Corporate Communications

404-715-2554
Fax: 404-715-5876

Anthony Black
Senior Manager - Media Relations

Katie Connell
Senior Manager - Media Relations

Gina Laughlin
Senior Manager - Media Relations

Betsy Talton
Senior Manager - Media Relations

And last but absolutely not least please go sign the on-line petition that MomsRising.org has set up. Thanks.

UPDATE: So I called Delta's Media Relations number (listed below), and surprisingly got called back even though I told them I was an Internet Journalist *coughcough*. Even better, I received the following e-mail:

Mesa/Freedom Statement (Paul Skellon, VP Corp Comm)
Please accept the following in response to your email of November 14, 2006. At the outset I would like to emphasize how seriously Mesa Air Group and Freedom Airlines takes this situation. As soon as the facts were brought to our attention, we immediately launched a thorough investigation. We concluded that the flight attendant in question acted contrary to the Company's expectations. We believe our disciplinary action was appropriate and was taken after considering all of the facts leading to this incident. I do believe it is worth noting that the events described in the article failed to include the fact that the flight attendant in question was young and new to her job. Furthermore, following the incident, the Captain apologized to the passenger and her family and immediately requested that they be re-boarded for their flight (an offer the family refused).

We are reinforcing the manner this situation should have been handled with our front line employees. Our handling of this investigation and resolution of any deficiencies found to have occurred were focused on raising awareness of this issue for our employees. I hope you can appreciate our efforts to prevent any similar occurrences in the future.

To clarify our policy, Freedom Airlines firmly supports a mother's right to breast feed a child. We understand that air travel presents particular difficulties to a nursing mother as airport facilities and aircraft are not designed to maximize privacy for passengers. Moreover while blankets are available for passengers convenience, we do not expect, (and will not in the future request) that nursing mothers use a blanket to cover their child while nursing. My comment in the original article to

the contrary was not an accurate statement of our policy. I thank you for expressing your views to us and truly hope that you find our response both genuine and satisfactory. Should you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact me at (602) 685-4016.

Delta's statements

--Delta supports a mother's right to breastfeed her baby onboard our aircraft.

--Delta regrets the decision to remove the passenger from Freedom Flight 6160 as it was not in keeping with Delta's high service standards.

--Freedom Airlines has completed their investigation of the matter and subsequently discipline the flight attendant in question.

--We're coordinating with Freedom to ensure that they deliver the level of service we expect for all of our customers.

So thank you to Delta for that timely reply --and giving the right answer-- and a begrudging thanks to Mesa Air Group for making the right decision. Though they lose some points for that little "an offer the family refused" bit. Dumbasses. Would you have wanted to get back on that airplane?

I hope by "disciplinary action" of the flight attendant they really meant "shitcanning."

Why I'm not around much any more

2006-10-20T11:45:00.000-04:00

You all know about "Little Praxxus," who was upgraded from "Baby Praxxus" a while ago. Not only because he was getting older and bigger (95th percentile for height, 80-85th for weight! yikes!), but because a new Baby Praxxus was on the way.

On September 30th, he finally decided to show up. Good thing, too. He was 9 pounds 2 oz., a week before his due date. We're all glad he didn't wait.

For those of you keeping score at home, that gives us an almost-19 month-old, and a wee tyke. Fun times, but not a lot of free time. ;-)

2006-07-26T13:32:00.000-04:00

1941 - 2006

On May 24th my mom was officially diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma. It wasn't a complete surprise, as she had been going through a gauntlet of tests that all seemed to be pointing that direction, but until you find out for sure you can at least hold out some faint hope that maybe all the tests are wrong. She started chemo treatment almost immediately, and has undergone radiation therapy for a mass that had wandered to her spine. She got tired of waking up with clumps of hair on her pillow, so had her sister come over and give her the cueball treatment. She keeps applying temporary butterfly tattoos to her scalp. She is tolerating the chemo well so far, and her spirits remain good even on the days right after chemo treatments.

About the time Mom got diagnosed, Dad went back into the hospital for excess fluid due to congestive heart failure/bad kidneys. Not a big deal, as he has been doing that for two years now.

In mid June we started planning a trip home in early July to see Mom before she might get too sick from chemo to enjoy company. We would also of course visit Dad, who was back in the nursing ho . . . no wait, he's back in the hospital.

The last full week of June I got a call from friend of Dad's who was very, very sure that Dad was in a horrible condition, and we should all drop everything and come down immediately. After some back-and-forth I finally got in touch with Dad's physician. They thought they had detected a mass in Dad's lung on a CAT scan, but couldn't be sure because Dad's kidneys were so bad they couldn't give him the radioactive goo you usually drink for such things. However, there was also blockage in the lung and an enzyme was showing up in Dad's bloodstream that is only there during active bone growth or if cancer has attached itself to your skeleton. Guess which is more likely in a 65 year-old man?

But that was all mostly moot, because his kidneys weren't going to last long enough for the cancer to be an issue.

The doc assured me that since we were already planning on coming down in 10 days we didn't need to drop everything. So the trip to visit Mom quickly regeared into a trip to see Dad one last time. My sister had already decided to be down that weekend and between the two of us we convinced our brother --not that it was too hard-- that yes, it really was important. So we were all back the first weekend in July and got to spend some quality time with the old man. On the advice of a friend I spent a few minutes alone in the room with him, and got to tell him a few things that I thought were meaningful. I found out later from my step-mom that Dad told her I had given him "a pot of gold" with what I said, so I guess he thought they were meaningful too.

Unfortunately none of us are in a situation to stay off work indefinitely, so we all headed back to our respective homes on July 4. I thought that I might get back down there one last time, but we were all sick the weekend of the 7th. By the 9th Dad had started an obvious slide downhill. I made the horrible, selfish mistake of telling him that I was going to try to come down and see him on the 14th. "I'd love to see you," he said. As he handed the phone back to my step-mother, she said, "Did you hear that?" "No," I said. "He said, 'Now I guess I have to stay alive a little longer.'" So I got to do what I hope is the hardest thing I ever do in my life. I had Step-mom put Dad back on the phone, and told him he could "do whatever he needed to do. We had a good visit when I was down. I love you, and know that you love me. So you just do whatever you need to do."

On July 12, at 2:05 EDT I got the call that he had passed away. After talking with my step-mother for a while, I got around to calling my siblings at ~2:20. Got ahold of neither. My sister was "running errands," and I got no answers on any of my brother's phone numbers. So I called my wife, my Mom, social workers, family friends, the funeral home, and cried in my office most of the afternoon. My siblings finally got around to calling me back after 5:00.

In the days leading up to the funeral I spent most of my time at work on the phone with friends, family, and the funeral home. My siblings and I hashed out funeral details in hours-long evening phone sessions (thank you, Vonage, for the no-charge long distance and three-way calling). To make me feel even better, I got told by my boss that he was concerned that I was falling so far behind. Given my boss's completely not-in-your-face style of management, it's a statement to how bad I have been slipping up at work while I dealt with personal stresses.

The service was a nice, personal, non-religious affair just like Dad wanted. Family and friends shared their favorite memories, and a few readings were . . . uh . . . read that we thought Dad would have appreciated. Now there are just a few loose ends left that need mending.

What passes as a newspaper in them-there parts did a writeup on the old man, but since it's a weekly it came out after the actual funeral had taken place. They did also include an "ad" on the obituary page thanking the family for the service, and telling us that Dad would have been proud of it. That was very nice. However, every time I read the writeup I get a little less happy with it. It was a very nice gesture on their part, since Dad had worked there many years and many more long hours. I don't think it does him justice, though.

My dad only had a high school education, plus a few odd college classes and umpteen million books. He could hold conversations on just about any religion of your choosing, ancient American civilizations, and numerous sciences. I remember the time he was sitting in a bar with my brother and I, and he made our collegiate heads swim while he filled multiple napkins with diagrams, going on about focal lengths and mirror radius and refraction angles as he told us about the new telescope he was planning on building.

He loved music, and was especially fond of playing the harmonica. He also dabbled in the concertina, melodica, trombone, and piano. When each of us was in kindergarten, he came to school one day and demostrated different musical instruments to all the wee kiddies. That was a proud day in my six year-old head, to be sure.

He was nearly obsessed with anything involving a lens you could focus. The aforementioned telescopes and his love of astronomy, his life-long fascination with microscopes and pond water, and especially cameras. He had "the eye" for taking pictures, and could do more with a crappy old Polaroid Instamatic than I could with $15000 worth of equipment. There are those that stop and take the time to smell the flowers; Dad was one to stop and photograph them. With that and his love of reading, losing the ability to enjoy those hobbies due to diabetes complications seems especially cruel.

He loved his kids, and absolutely adored his grandkids. He always encouraged us to do well in school so we would "get good grades so you can go to college and make something of yourselves." Over the years he worked as a farmer, school bus driver, grocery store stockboy, metal polisher, truck driver, photojournalist, and editor to support us. He always tried to do what was best for us, even though we didn't --and still don't-- always agree with the decisions he made.

I realize that I'm very fortunate that we knew ahead of time he was on his way out, and I got a chance to see him, kiss him, and tell him what I wanted to before he died. Still, my head is overrun with guilt, sadness, and the woulda-coulda-shouldas that always accompany the death of a loved one. I've been trying to put a fine point on how I feel, and maybe why, ever since we left on July 4th.

I think Baby Praxxus might have said it best, though. In order to facilitate communication between us and his little non-verbal self we started teaching him sign language when he was old enough to sit in a high chair, and were rewarded at about 9 months of age when he asked for "more" food. Then he realized he could use "more" for other things, like playing or singing. The signs for "food," "milk," and "kitty" soon followed, as well as "all done," "gentle," "please," "help," "Daddy," and his breakfast-time favorite, "cookie."

I had been out to dinner with Mrs. Praxxus, Baby Praxxus and a friend the evening Dad passed away. We had arrived separately so we left separately and I got home before the wife and kid did. By the time they pulled up, I was on the phone with someone talking something about funeral times or somesuch. I was standing in the garage when they pulled in, and I quickly got off the phone to help hoist the kid out of the car. Mrs. Praxxus was laughing as she got out, and I asked what was amusing. She said that when Baby Praxxus saw me standing in the garage he started signing "more" and "Daddy," "more Daddy, more Daddy" over and over again.

I smiled at his cleverness as I went to get him out of the car, but all I could think was, "Me too, kid. Me too."

Sunday, Bloody Sunday

2006-06-21T01:00:00.000-04:00

Freakin' brilliant!

I admire anyone with a) this much talent and b) the intestinal fortitude to sit through enough Preznit Bloodbath speeches to put this together.

Update: Found an earlier version of it in .WMV format. Which unlike YouTube's Flash video is like, downloadable and stuff!

Check it out.

Is this thing on?

2005-09-16T13:29:00.000-04:00

Eek! The Blogosphere!