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MVC by the numbers: How far to go? I’ll be finished in 30 months

With the Flash and the Pan post this morning, I am at number 485.

That’s how far I have to go (484 more actually.)

That’s the number of posts I have left to fulfill the vow of reviewing or writing about the 678 vinyl records I  collected, mostly in my teens or 20s (1970s, 1980’s). Although I do have some newer vinyl, which sounds very good I must say. And I have a little bit from the ’50s and ’60s.

I’m doing it with diminishing brain function. I  have Lewy body dementia and am trying to raise awareness to this misunderstood and little known disease which affects more than a million people. Please read up on this by going back through my blog, and reading about my thoughts and experience. Also go to the Lewy Body Dementia Association website at LBDA.org

So let’s do the math on My Vinyl Countdown. From 678. Counting backwards I am on 485. (This is the number that appears at the top of each blog spot next to the artists’ name I am reviewing.)

So 678-485 = 193.  I have reviewed and written about 193 albums right now.

That is 193/11 (months) = 17.5. That’s how many I have been doing per month.

So 485/17.5 = 28. That’s how many more months I have if I keep at this pace. Two years and four months.

I have vowed to live long enough to do this, but I am compelled to chug through this to complete the task. I was diagnosed two years ago. On the high end, survival after diagnosis averages 7 years. I’ve done 2 so that gives me 5 years left of life.

PREDICTION:

I’ll complete this in 30 months, with 30 months to spare on my life span.

 

 

 

 

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Lewy Lewy. Come on, call it by its name!

See updated article, click  here.

Great news breaking a few days ago from AARP — you  know the’old folks’ lobbying group.

I have forgiven them a long time ago for inviting me to join them when I was 50. Now at 58 and a card-carrying member, I have a new beef with the group.

And it comes out of the praiseworthy announcement headlined online like this:

AARP Invests $60 Million to Fund Research for Cures to Dementia and Alzheimer’s

“This move reflects our ongoing commitment to people with dementia and family caregivers”, wrote Jo Ann Jenkins, CEO of AARP.

Later she writes:

More than 6 million people in the United States suffer from various types of dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease, and those numbers are growing at an alarming rate. Based on current projections, by 2050 that number will exceed 16 million, or about 1 in 5 Americans age 65 and older.

My beef? 

She never mentions anywhere in the article the name of  the 2nd leading form of dementia after Alzheimer’s:   Lewy body dementia.

I wish I could say I was surprised. But Lewy body is the disease with no name it seems. Name it. Lewy Lewy.

Lewy Bodies in the brain.

I was diagnosed about two years ago. They say the average lifespan is about 4 to 7 years, (some stats say 8 years) after diagnosis. Of course there are many exceptions. The Lewy joke is if you know one Lewy patient, you know one Lewy patient.

I have been trying to raise awareness of this disease ever since I was diagnosed. It’s important, I believe not to lump all dementia cases together. Lewy may have similar symptoms as Alzheimer’s but it’s a totally different malfunction in the brain. Lewy body’s brain malfunction more closely resembles Parkinson’s disease.

Many primary care doctors, based on the anecdotal evidence I have received from readers, are not familiar with Lewy body dementia. Patients don’t know to ask about it. Yet I continue to see its name omitted in stories about dementia. Say its name: Lewy Lewy.

Some in the medical field call it a disease that’s on a spectrum with Parkinson’s, and that seems  possibly is true. But if we’re lumping all research  under the nomenclature ‘Parkinson’s’ or Alzheimer’s we may never discover, much less cure, a separate disorder called Lewy body dementia.

Say its name. Lewy Lewy.

It’s kind of like now we are building Spacehip Research to launch into space with no destination beyond planets Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Hey what is that  planet we just passed? Not Pluto, it’s Lewy Lewy.

What to do?

Read up on the disease. Go to the website of the Lewy Body Dementia Association.

I have a blog where I count down my vinyl records to raise awareness; In addition to lots of music reviews, it has lots of stories about my experience with the disease. It’s called www.myvinylcountdown.com,    

At my website hit the ABOUT ME button for more, er, about me.

Read about the AARP money by hitting the headline with the big letters at the beginning of this column.

Last year a fund-raising basketball tournament in my name raised $13,000 for the Lewy Body Dementia Association.

This year we have the 2nd Annual Mike Madness basketball tournament.  Sign up to play. Or just come to watch on July 21 at UAB Recreation Center. Hurry sign up to play is July 15.

If  you can’t come, please consider a donation. This year,  in addition to LBDA, we are giving to UAB for Lewy body research. We are much excited about that.

Details here:: https://mikemadness.org/

Help spread the word by saying its name: Lewy Lewy.

(Or singing it.)

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Mike Madness and all its basketball glory is back July 21

Lace up the kicks. It’s time to get ready for the 2nd Annual Mike Madness 3-on-3 basketball tournament.

Register early, like now, because this event — set for July 21 at the University of Alabama at Birmingham Recreation Center — is hot.

Here’s where to go: https://mikemadness.org/.

Last year we raised more than $13,000 for the Lewy Body Dementia Association to help support research and awareness of this often misdiagnosed disease. Behind Alzheimer’s, it is the second leading form of dementia, affecting 1.3 million people nationwide.

I have the disease. So, I have a personal interest in any research that will help. This year we hope to raise more money and we will again be giving to LBDA but also are going to support UAB research of Lewy body dementia.

(Not related: But the UAB team, also, happened to win last year’s tourney with a roster of Division 1 talent. This year we’ll have two divisions– see rules.)

The average lifespan after Lewy body diagnosis is roughly 4 to 7 years. I’m 58 and was diagnosed a little less than two years ago. I’m not going to lie, the disease has noticeably affected my game. My stamina has lessened. My right arm has weakened, affecting arguably the best part of my game -3-point shooting. I’m using my left hand more because it is less affected.

But I still have my ‘elbow’ pass, which sometimes actually finds its target.

Why me? And why basketball?

I’ve been playing pick-up basketball in my 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s. In fact, I was probably playing the best basketball of my life in my 40s when I lived and worked in the San Francisco Bay Area. I played full court 3 to 4 times a week. In Oakland I even played in some games with Warriors players (this was pre-Curry and NBA championships). But I played a few games with Chris Gatlin, a retired Warrior. And I had some fun playing with Adonal Foyle, 6′ 10″ center who in pick-up games fired away from the 3-point line – something Coach Chris Mullin would never allow him to do in a real game.

So, this disease, as I wrote last year, is pissing me off: It’s messing up my brain and it’s messing up my game.

But here’s what I’m doing to fight it:

For one, I started a blog at www.myvinylcountdown.com, counting down and telling stories about my 678 vinyl records I collected in the 1970s and 1980s. I’ve done more than 170 records with about 500 to go. Again, it’s about raising awareness of Lewy body dementia, and I have vowed to finish them all, so LBD get outta my way.

And second, the reason for this column: I’m asking you to play in Mike Madness, get someone else to play, contribute through the website, or all of the above. Not just for me, but for the 1.3 million Americans who are losing their games for the same reason I am

No trash talking (unless you are good at it.)

For more of my informal and totally nonbinding rules see this post.

For the real rules go to the website.

My Team: Nephew Joe Oliver, brother/coach David Oliver, nephew Jake Vissers, nephew Zack Cohen, me/

tact and passed a lot so I could live to play another day.

Reach Mike Oliver at moliver@al.com

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Forgive J.R. Smith (blog version)

NOTE:  A version of this originally appeared on AL.com.

I remember it like it was yesterday (and I have a degenerative brain disease.)

Playing right field, I reacted to the crack of the bat. This was big time Little League baseball in Athens, Ga.

“Please don’t let it come to me” went through my head like 1,000 times in a millisecond. Everything slowed down. My adrenaline was surging through my body. Everything slowed waaaay down. People were shouting 33-1/3 rpm when they should have been 45 rpm:

“Dooon’t Drop The Ball,” a horde of deep bass Lurches were yelling . I was moving in slow motion like I was underwater. I thought about my dog, Lucy.  Lucy had died recently. Oh my gosh,  Lucy is dead. I grieved in a millisecond.  I thought about my Dad in the stands, won’t he be proud of me if I catch this.  i thought about my Aunt Velma in Idaho, wait a minute,  I don’t have an Aunt Velma in Idaho.

Then things sped up triple speed. Whoooooooooosh!  Bat crack. Baseball is tiny dot in earth’s upper atmosphere. Falling, falling, getting bigger. Smacks my leather glove. Rolls out.

I dropped the ball.

In three seconds, I lived a lifetime.

The bases– which seemed pretty well  occupied by other team baseball kids — cleared . I’m not sure,  but I think all nine of their players touched home plate in the frenzy afterward.

The game, or life as they like to call it in Athens, Ga., was over.

Just like in the Johnny Cash song , ‘I  hung my head and cried.’

Flash forward to just a few weeks ago, I was playing basketball in  my Old Man Hoops League here in Birmingham. Good friends we all are. They helped organize a basketball fund-raiser for Lewy body dementia last year which we are looking to reprise (stay tuned for details).

So these are very good friends. They know my game and have an extensive scouting report on me. Boiled down the report is:  He used to be good, now he’s not.

Fair enough. Good bulletin board  material. (Smiley face insert here).

It was a next-bucket-wins the game thing. I had the ball. Most of the time I’d take a shot in that situation. But  out of the corner of  my eye  I saw Paul in an area  where he is comfortable  and accurate with his sweet little jumper. My faithful  and often painful worship of my childhood hero Pete Maravich possessed me to swing a behind-the-back pass to Paul which was rather easily picked off by Clay.

There commenced a race down the court which my 58-year-old legs denied me permission to participate in. They scored, they won.

My team avoided eye contact with me.

I know this is a long way to  getting to  the J.R. Smith headline. J.R, a good longtime NBA sharpshooter now with Cleveland Cavaliers, famously made a boo boo last week  in an extremely important  NBA Playoff game. The consensus is that he thought  his team was ahead when he rebounded the ball   with seconds left.  But it  was tied. Instead of putting it back up for a score and a win, he dribbled the ball out. Tied, the clock ran out and the game went into overtime.

Guess who won in overtime.

I’ll bet the world slowed down and sped  up for him.

National headlines. A public shaming.

Few thoughts. First he needs to come clean  and apologize to his teammates. And maybe he has. If so good for him!  I sought forgiveness  and it was good. “Don’t do that ever again,” my teammates said.

Thanks for your forgiveness, I said. (That’s how we usually say we forgive each other: Don’t ever let it happen again.

Secondly, J.R. needs to seek therapy.

This isn’t the first high level boneheaded play for him. For goodness sakes there’s a YouTube video chronicling his mistakes. Maybe there’s something from childhood that is stopping him from being all he can be.

I have a friend, yeah that’s right, a friend,  who was having recurring nightmares  about dropping a baseball and then after therapy he  had a dream that he caught it. Yaaaaaay. He ran around with ball in hand triumphantly.

But everybody was pointing and laughing.

Because he had no clothes on.

AAAARGH. Just a dream. Just a friend’s dream. Sometimes therapy doesn’t work.

But I forgive you J.R Smith.

I’ve been there.

 

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Scientists find top song to lower anxiety, sounds a little like Pink Floyd

A website, Hack Spirit, has thrown out a headline I can’t resist riffing off of.

Neuroscience says this one song reduces anxiety by 65 percent

Given the venom I’ve seen spewed toward the Eagles, I’d guess it’s not ‘Peaceful Easy Feeling.’

I don’t know the science behind it but I do know music has helped me tremendously in my fight against Lewy body dementia, a degenerative brain disease (cousin of Parkinson’s).

I can think of lots of records/songs that help me relax, like George Winston or the soundtrack to Local Hero or some Miles Davis. Catherine, my spouse, has CDs specifically designed to help her meditate and relax

So what  about this one song Hack Spirit is telling us about?

The website writes:  A team of UK neuroscientists conducted a study on sound therapy. Participants had to attempt to solve puzzles, which induced stress, while wearing sensors attached to their bodies. They then had to listen to different songs while researchers measured brain activity and recorded their heart rate, breathing, and blood pressure, reports Inc.com and Ideapod.

According to Dr. David Lewis-Hodgson of Mindlab International, which conducted the research, the top track to produce a greater state of relaxation than any other music tested to date was “Weightless” by Marconi Union.

Well, I listened to the song and it sounded like the quieter parts of a Pink Floyd album. You know where they just  drift off into a low rhythm space. It’s just like that — though at any moment I expect to hear David Gilmore’s guitar phase in. Tangerine Dream might be another reference point for you aging Baby Boomer rockers.

I did feel relaxed and almost felt like a nap after listening to ‘Weightless’

Kind of cool. If you’re feeling extra stressed Hacker Spirit has found nine more sleep inducing tunes and have posted them on their site hackspirit.com, including one by Adele and one by Coldplay.

I can believe it about Coldplay. Zzzzzzz.

Here’s the top ‘scientific’ pick:

 

 

 

 

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My Vinyl Countdown Updates — Hoops, summer reading, CD’s

UPDATE ON UPDATE: Am planning on making my train song announcement by end of day tomorrow. WEDNESDAY.

 

Coupla, three, four  things:

Mike practices his stand-up.

We are working on putting together the second  annual Mike’s Madness 3 on 3 basketball tournament to raise money and awareness for Lewy body dementia. Keep checking for details  here, but should be in and around late July.

I am publishing tomorrow on AL.com  an expanded stand-up comedy routine which I was playing around with in December. Watch for it. This could lead to an actual stand-up, or sit down  in front of real people. Here’s the link.

I’ve had so many bosses. Mostly good. One of the best, Michael Ludden hired me away from the Birmingham News in 1987 to work for the Orlando Sentinel. He was involved as an editor in a Pulitzer Prize winner in the investigative category about asset forfeiture, a pioneering work in its day done by friends/colleagues Steve Berry and Jeff Brazil.  Anyway he’s got a novel out that I’m going to read. This is saying something because Lewy body dementia  isn’t great for book-reading. You read five chapters and then pick it up two days later and, damn, where was I? So I have waited for some time off to dive into this one, which looks like a page-turner.

I have a beach trip coming up and I’m taking this and finishing this in between big grouper sandwiches and body surfing. Check his book out. It’s on Amazon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

CD’s. I do a vinyl record blog but while hanging out in my ‘Man Cave’/listening room today I started going through some boxes of CD’s I have a lot. Unfortunately I had many hundreds in giant jukebox CD player. So my CDs are all pulled out of their plastic cases and the paper inserts are pulled out as well. Bottom line:  a big mess of lots of CDs that needs an assembly line to get done.

Without the covers, the CD’s lose most their value. So, I”m thinking on what I should do here. All the while maintaining my LP countdown.

Lastly I posted on AL.com  today the weekly Saturday countdown story here.

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Is this my last column? (blog version)

This is not my last post. At least as far as I know this minute in time.

Because I have an incurable brain disease my life will likely be shortened; I just don’t know by how much.

So this has  me thinking about my last post.

I’m still getting along pretty well at 58 after my Lewy Body dementia diagnosis about 20 months ago.

Why think ahead to my last post? I don’t really want to think about it. How bad I’ll be when I can no longer type. I may not even know my last post when I write it.

But I’m thinking about it because I want to make the life I have now as precious as I can. With full knowledge of my assets and deficits, financially and physically.

I want to make decisions directly related to those things. I want to provide for a smooth transition for me and my family. Let’s call it transition defense.

Let’s make super difficult times into not-so-difficult times. It’s easier to smile, laugh and be with your loved ones if you aren’t worried about how to pay the light bill after retirement.

Everybody is going to die. There has been no change in the human mortality rate in, oh, forever. It’s holding steady at 100 percent. (Trust me, I keep my eye on this stat.)

Death should be an open conversation. My wife, Catherine, as a pastor who has worked as a Registered Nurse as well, has visited and cared in both of her roles for dozens of critically ill people in Florida, California and Alabama. Too many didn’t leave instructions or at least legally binding ones. She has helped from the patient’s advocate view to make sure the patient’s wishes are kept.

That means questioning our health care systems where doctors are taught to save and prolong life but not how to prepare for death. The system is  set, intentionally or not, to financially incentivize interventions and heroic measures. When the patient is a pain addled  95-year-old person, open heart surgery may not be the best idea . The system  doesn’t  do death well.

Have you thought about it? Like I’m doing here. Got a will? Power of attorney? Does your spouse or someone you trust know about all savings accounts, investment accounts, retirement funds? Passwords?

Heck, I’ve got more passwords than brain cells at this point.

If you have a spouse will they stay in the house? Or downsize? Maybe it’s time to think about downsizing now. Maybe you should look at assisted living facilities or step-down communities that provide increasing care depending on your health situation?

Do you have a financial plan for retirement? Other than waiting for Social Security. Are you at the age where you need to start moving the stock heavy positions in your  IRA or 401(K) to safer havens  like money market, cash or bonds?

Seek advice from a fee-only financial adviser. In other words, one who will take a flat fee, say $300, and build you a financial plan without trying to sell you any investments for which he or she may get a commission. Ongoing financial oversight of your investments generally costs about 1 percent of your holdings.

Have you talked  about death specifically. Funeral. What do you want to do with your body? Cremation? Have your ashes shot out of a cannon like Hunter S. Thompson? Pour the ashes in the ocean.

Do you want your wife or husband or trusted love one to authorize pulling the  plug or do you want your doctor to make every effort to keep you alive? Do you want that at age 85? age 95? Age and condition would be key considerations.

There’s a specific thing called Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) which you would need to discuss with your family. What happens when you become incapacitated and can’t make the decision yourself?

I do know I don’t want to consume a lot of health care resources when I’m too incapacitated to blow my own nose. I would like to say goodbye in a final column, go home and  kiss Catherine, Hannah, Emily and Claire on the cheek then slip quietly out the back door..

‘Night night,” I’d say.

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Life after death, the science of it, my take (blog version)

Uh oh.

I warned my compatriots in the newsroom that I will begin going into a rumination stage.

It’s because I saw this headline first thing when I turned on the computer yesterday:

After death you’re aware that you’ve died, say scientists

 It’s the subject matter, existence, time, who I am, — topics that I am fascinated by and I’ve written about (click on the links for sampling). This time I’m going to deconstruct this article live right now. See if we can squeeze out any insights. It won’t be really live but I am going to paste the article and read it and add my notes all the way to the end.
So I’m not reading it first. I am reacting as I read.
Now here’s the story written by Tina  Fey (that Tina Fey?) for Ideapod.
<the bold comments are from me>
It’s one of the biggest mysteries <agreed>of human existence: what happens when we die? Does consciousness cease to exist? How can we possibly know:?

Elizabeth Kübler-Ross famously studied and made known to the world the life-after-death experiences of thousands of people who were revived, but these accounts don’t tell us if consciousness continues after actual death. <didn’t Raymond Moody more famously study life after death? I thought Kubler-Ross is best known for writing on stages of grief.>

A growing body of research is studying the processes that occur after death and the findings suggest that that human consciousness does persist immediately after the heart stops.<Okay>

What it means is this: when we have died, we are aware we’re dead. Scientists have drawn this conclusion because they have observed the continuation of brain activity after the body has stopped showing signs of life. <OK, I haven’t read this article before I started critiquing, but I see lots  of potential pitfalls to this logic already.>

This at least is the conclusion of researchers at New York University’s Langone School of Medicine. <OK, first we have ‘scientists’ now it’s down to researchers at a medical school I haven’t heard of>

Dr. Sam Parnia is director of critical care and resuscitation research at NYU Langone School of Medicine, where he and his team study patients who technically died but were afterwards resuscitated. <technically died?>

Parnia and his colleagues are currently investigating whether consciousness continues after the brain stops functioning. <is this where the rubber hits the road?> They’re studying large numbers of people in Europe and the United States who have suffered cardiac arrest and were then revived. It’s the largest study of its kind, Parnia told the Independent. <Isn’t this what Kubler-Ross or Moody did?”>

The point of death is taken as the moment when the heart stops beating and blood flow to the brain is cut off.

Dr Sam Parnia said: “Technically, that’s how you get the time of death – it’s all based on the moment when the heart stops. “Once that happens, blood no longer circulates to the brain, which means brain function halts almost instantaneously.<almost instantaneously? oxymoron?> You lose all your brain stem reflexes – your gag reflex, your pupil reflex, all that is gone.”<Ouch>

Here’s what’s incredible: there’s evidence to suggest that there’s still brain activity when someone has died. <not sure why that’s so incredible. Seems logical the brain would be the last one to turn out the lights.>

The brain’s cerebral cortex – which is responsible for thinking and processing information from the five senses – also instantly flatlines, says Dr Parnia. This means that within 2 to 20 seconds, no brainwaves will be detected on an electric monitor. <so up to 20 seconds there may be brainwaves detected.>

“If you manage to restart the heart, which is what CPR attempts to do, you’ll gradually start to get the brain functioning again. The longer you’re doing CPR, those brain cell death pathways are still happening — they’re just happening at a slightly slower rate,” Parnia told Live Science.

People in the first phase of death<first phase of death? Isn’t death like pregnancy, you either are or  you are not?> may still experience some form of consciousness, Parnia said. Substantial anecdotal evidence reveals that people whose hearts stopped and were then restarted were able to describe accurate, verified accounts of what was going on around them, he added.

“They’ll describe watching doctors and nurses working; they’ll describe having awareness of full conversations, of visual things that were going on, that would otherwise not be known to them,” he explained. <could this be the brain imagining what is going on based on memory of surgery prep, etc.?>According to Parnia, these recollections were then verified by medical and nursing staff who were present at the time. <this I can believe>

Scientists can see that there is brain activity, but they can’t explain why people can have consciousness and thought processes when there is a flat line in the brain.

 How could patients experience awareness during death?Doctors can measure brain activity, but what does that activity represent? We don’t know, because the person is technically dead.

It may very well be that the brain activity does represent continuation of consciousness, as the doctors concluded.

If we accept that the brain and the mind are not the same thing, that the mind exists beyond the brain and is the seat of awareness, then the brain is not needed for consciousness; it acts more as a transceiver for the activity of the mind. <I think this is an interesting theory but not seeing hard evidence it is true, therefore can’t just ‘accept’>

Also, according to quantum mechanics, the intention of the observer affects that which is being observed. In other words consciousness can influence the physical world. This suggests that the mind/consciousness is primary to physical existence – we can’t interpret or understand the physical world without making reference to the mind.<yes, understand>

To quote Max Planck, theoretical physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918 for his discovery of energy quanta: “I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulating consciousness.”<and no one so far has been able to tell us what consciousness is.>

Whether we can observe brain activity or not, it is most likely that consciousness continues beyond the death of the body (and the brain).<yes but at the max, according this article, of 20 seconds>

 OK, not convinced I learned anything here. I’m planning on distilling some of writings and thoughts on the matter in a later column. One thing I’ve tiptoed  around is religion. It is another realm that I’m sure I will address. People say there are things we’ll never know. I’m not sure about that. I think it’s always good, and it can’t hurt,  to ask. In journalism we say the truth is the best defense against libel. In the Bible it says the truth will set you free.
As a tease to my further exploration, I will say that I am not an atheist. That’s simple. Atheists say they know there is no God or in their words they reject the assertion that there is a god. I don’t know how to even step in shoes of that argument. Existence and creation at the very least raise the possibility God exists. But we’ll jump in to that muck (or crawl out of it) a little later.
 
 
 
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Words matter, brain disease or not, Pulitzer affirms (blog version)

This is about breaking it down. All the way down. To the word.

Word is John Archibald and Alabama Media Group won a Pulitzer Prize last week, awarded for a series of John’s columns that had words that often shined a light on injustice. It’s a huge deal in the journalism business to be given this, the highest award in our line of work.

But what does AL.com’s winning the Pulitzer Prize mean for readers?

bodyguard john.JPG John Archibald gave readers insight into an investigation of the governor with examination of dozens of impeachment documents. These are the words from a bodyguard’s journal.

If nothing else, it’s a confirmation that there’s been effort and success at being a watchdog in the public’s interest and an advocate on the right things, the right side.

On the controversy over Confederacy monuments, Archibald said:

At this point in our history – after natural and manmade disasters, after church bombings and scarlet letters on our chests that had nothing to do with football, after the Civil Rights Movement, after revolution and reconciliation, after hard-fought progress and a quest for better hearts, is this really our story?

A 150-year-old war in which our forefathers sought to leave America rather than allow freedom for all?

Is that who we are?

I know what the Pulitzer award means for me:

More proof that words are precious; words can connect us. Or tear us apart.

Words that Archibald used to expose hidden wrongdoings have had effects, both immediate and repercussions we haven’t even seen yet. His words have begun (or continue) the dismantling –slow as it seems — of corrupt politics in Alabama, where deals have for too long been made for the enrichment of the few at the expense of the many.

Read full version of this story at AL.com.

 

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Two words emerge that I don’t like

There are two words I really don’t like.

One of them is ‘merge.’

The sign on the highway orders drivers to merge.

It sounds like a command, a rude command at that. Merge!

[Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
We can’t all do it at the same time. But we have to do it. The sign says so.

Now, what if I can’t merge.  The cars are too jammed together. Then, I need someone to  YIELD. I like that word.

The other word I don’t like is dementia. I have Lewy body dementia or (LBD). Sometimes it’s called Dementia with Lewy bodies.  Sometimes, people take the dementia out altogether and say Lewy body disease. But dementia is the most used and most accepted description. It is a word that broadly describes damage to the brain that affects cognition, memory, speech, etc. That brain damage can be caused by Lewy bodies (proteins) or Alzheimer’s or other brain diseases. Although we know the process of this brain damage, in cases like Lewy, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, we don’t know the cause of these diseases. And there is no cure.

So why don’t I like the word dementia? Well for one, it  is a root word of demented, which sounds menacing.

The word itself, demented, sounds too much like ‘demon.’ The dictionary says demon is a bad spirit or ‘one who acts as a tormentor in hell.”

The dictionary says demented means “driven to behave irrationally due to anger, distress, or excitement.”

Now that’s a little better than being in hell.  But if I’m driven to irrational behavior it’s because I am ‘driven’ to it.

 

Image result for yield sign

Because of my LBD, I have quit driving and am now being driven by other people: my wife, my daughter, my colleagues, friends, neighbors, church folk, Uber drivers. Just about anybody I  can flag down.

I must admit it has been an interesting life-changing adventure.  No longer in the driver’s seat, I’m on the passenger side.

The general consensus is that I’m one of the worst backseat (or passenger side), drivers  in the world.

It does allow me time to get work done via phone or laptop while someone else is driving. If I’m not gripping the seat with my white-knuckled hands

Or stomping the floor like I may find a brake on the passenger side.

I have so far resisted the urge  to discuss the correct method to merge with my drivers.

Take the zipper merge, for example, which according to my Internet research (Wiki) is a “convention for merging traffic into a reduced number of lanes. Drivers in merging lanes are expected to use both lanes to advance to the lane reduction point and merge at that location, alternating turns.”
Like a zipper.
But I usually keep these tidbits of information to myself, as I have seen my drivers get a little agitated when I ‘help’ them drive.
I usually save my instruction on my rides to things like: WATCH OUT FOR THAT TRUCK!
Um, oh, OK, we have the green turn arrow, I see that now. Sorry, I just couldn’t tell if that truck was stopping; it did roll a bit.
So I think I’ll hold onto that merge information until we put some time between my unnecessary shouting.
HONK HONK, the car behind us blares the horn because we are slow to merge.
I think of yelling, “Oh go merge yourself.”
But I yield.
Don’t want to act demented.