A flower grows out of concrete.

Almost every week someone is shot and killed in Louisville. There isn't a single scenario for these deaths. They are couples where one party, usually the man, shoots his wife or girlfriend and then shoots himself. A woman shoots her husband or boyfriend after years of abuse. One young man shoots another over a dispute in a bar. A group of young men drive around and shoot into homes killing the intended or unintended resident. An armed robbery is stopped by a clerk shooting the robber.

Recently I wrote about a home owner shooting at a group of young men running away, killing one.

The common element here is the gun.

Someone said the other day that although it is true that guns don't kill people, people do. How many people would have died Saturday in Tucson if the shooter had not had a gun?

I once worked for a company doing support for the data processing department second shift. It was a small department of five people. I was the only woman and about a decade older than the fellas. One man was a little tightly wound. He was a college educated smart married man with two kids. He was the guy who carried drama with him and when I walked into the office in the afternoon I would have a happier day if he was not at work. I wouldn't have said he was crazy. Evidently he was though, as he was a diagnosed manic depressive but not symptomatic, medicated.

A lot of perfectly "normal" people are mentally ill and medicated.

America is not a perfect place. America is my country and I love my country.

Much has been said about the cable and radio talking heads who lead a slavish audience tuning in to learn what to think. I guess I am somewhat surprised to not hear vitriolic speech this morning from all the usual mind makers. One reason things were strangely quiet however might be that the Leader of the Pack Roger Ailes instructed his minions to "shut up, tone it down and make your argument intellectually. You don't have to do it with bombast. I hope the other side does that." Although I don't see the same emotional effort to stir up followers of liberal thought, I look forward to the change of tone.

For people who love this country we must use our small influence and not accept those who will say anything for political fame. It is not sport to stir up your neighbor. A good citizen does not take on the demeanor of a two year old by shouting and saying anything to get attention. Little is ever accomplished by shouts. Much is by calm debate and thoughtful words.

In all this chaos I point out the heroes in the story. Just as those people who overtook the terrorists on the plane September 11 2001 and stopping it from crashing in Washington, there were people in Tucson Saturday who saved lives and stopped further victims, how many of us would go toward the danger instead of away from it? I am just so proud of those who did.

Heroes in America are teachers, clerks, students, nurses, retired generals, doctors, neighbors. Heroes are the people who do the right thing without any thought of personal danger. They stand up against evil and the self-serving whether it is popular or not.

Living with Santa Claus.

The exact chronology of how Dennis became Santa is something I can't be certain I remember but it seems it started the year John Y. Brown became Governor of Kentucky. Dennis had some friends who were related to a man who was responsible for putting on the parade for Gov. Brown's inauguration. Since the Inauguration was December 11th they wanted a Santa for one of the floats. Dennis being somewhat rotund and having played Santa at the company party the previous year, was recruited to be Santa.

Dennis as Santa in Governor John Y. Brown's Inauguration Parade 1979

Dennis asked a friend of ours Regina Mudd to make the suit and she got the fabric and fake white fur at Behr's, a big now closed, fabric store in downtown Louisville. He ordered a nice beard, wig and boots from Caufield's and she custom made a beautiful red velveteen Santa suit with fur trim.

On Inauguration Day Dennis and Regina went to the event. He was in the parade and she was taking pictures. I was working and took a small television to work so everyone could watch parts of the parade between working. They got to go to the Governor's mansion for a private after party and he handed out gifts to those attending and got to stand with the new Governor and his wife Phyllis George Brown. He told me the Governor had his hand on her ass as she was speaking at the microphone!

The appearance was quite the success and the next year we put an ad in the Courier-Journal advertising that Santa could attend your Christmas party for a small fee. This ran Thanksgiving and the next Sunday after that. I was the booking agent and kept his calendar and was his driver. Then almost every day after work Santa and I headed out with a carefully plotted route to visit private homes.

Santa always took a candy cane for every child. He would ask the children if they knew how to sing "Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer". Then he would lead them in a group sing. If he wasn't delivering gifts that night, he would have each child sit on his lap and ask them what they wanted for Christmas. The time he spent in the home was about 15 to 30 minutes and if he took longer I'd say, "We have to get to the next stop!" Sometimes he said they wouldn't let Santa leave!

The first year we did this we made about $300 at $15 for each visit. It was enough to buy Christmas presents and we both really enjoyed it. We were either paid in advance by a mailed check or someone followed Santa out and handed him the fee. Tips were not unusual! Only once did someone refuse to pay. It was a woman who lived in a very nice part of town. Dennis went in and did the whole routine. When he left she followed him and told him she was not paying him. He was hurt. He told me, "I told her that she was wrong to stiff Santa." We figured if she needed that $15 enough to do that she could keep it!

A friend of his was a photographer and he wanted Dennis to work at his studio two Saturdays being Santa for family photos. In trade for this he took pictures of Dennis as Santa. We used one on a post card which we mailed in late November each year to remind those who had hired him the previous year that it was time to book a visit for the following month! We developed a regular following this way.

The third year we got a big corporation party at a private home in the rich part of town and they paid Dennis $100. Those people had him back every year and every year they paid a bit more. He had several business parties with bigh crowds.  This went on for a decade.

Dennis died December 5, 1991. We had stopped using a newspaper ad years before but lots of repeat visits were already lined up. His Santa suit was at the cleaners and a beautician friend has his wig and beard, getting it ready to go. I had to call those expecting visits again that year and tell them Santa was gone.

I was married to Santa for twenty-one years and was his agent and driver for ten. What a wonderful life.

One marshmallow immediately eaten will change your life!

It was announced here Wednesday that Walter Mischel, a psychology professor and the Niven Professor of Humane Letters at Columbia will receive the Grawemeyer Award for Psychology. He is well known for his decades-long research in the area of delayed gratification and will-power.

I'm sure you are aware of the well known "marshmallow experiment".  From Wikipedia I quote:

The "marshmallow experiment" is a well known test of this concept conducted by Walter Mischel at Stanford University and discussed by Goleman in his popular work. In the 1960s, a group of four-year-olds were given one marshmallow and promised a second one on the condition that they wait twenty minutes before eating the first one. Some children were able to wait and others could not. The researchers then followed the progress of each child into adolescence and demonstrated that those with the ability to wait were better adjusted and more dependable (determined via surveys of their parents and teachers), and scored significantly higher on the Scholastic Aptitude Test years later

As a kid I was taught by my Mother and Grandmother's example and words that when I wanted some thing they thought too expensive to buy and give me, I should save my allowance and buy it myself. To reinforce this one Saturday my sister and I went to the building and loan and got social security numbers and opened passbook savings accounts. This was in 1958 when they gave you actual books about the size of a passport. Deposits and withdrawals were recorded by the teller at the building and loan office.

I began saving $1 a week from my $2.50 a week allowance. On Saturday when we came to town to buy groceries and do banking I would deposit my $1 into that savings account. When I began baby sitting for neighbors, I put that money in the account. That June I worked for a week to help Mrs. Prall clean her house and earned $10. I put the money in the account. It felt good to accumulate money in a savings account. When I started high school I had $350 saved.

This process of saving a little of our income for future larger purchases or in my case for paying taxes at the end of the year, is called delayed gratification. I'm not sure how paying taxes is gratification but if I were to be kicked out of my home for not paying them I might understand it a little better.

The motivation to work hard and save for purchases you cannot afford today, or save for future expenses is described as a Protestant or Calvinistic thing. We Catholics are told we must do good works to be saved. The Protestants say you are destined to be saved and you do good work as a result of that salvation. Now with this study the experiment was verified through scientific research. That doesn't mean we Catholics can't save for future gratification but there is some evidence that through biology we choose to eat the marshmallow immediately more than the other kids. That's for cradle Catholics I would assume.

Prof. Mischel began his work in 1960 and yesterday the award was announced. The Grawemeyer prize is accompanied by a cash payment of $100,000. This pretty much proves in at least an antidotal way that in addition to scientific results, fifty years later the gratification of the second marshmallow was realized for Prof. Mischel.

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The first reaction to the buttercup yellow paint soon to cover the Clark Memorial Bridge that spans the Ohio River at Louisville has been published in Letters to the Editor of the Courier-Journal newspaper this week. A local man Rick Thomas has this to say about the color:

I am surprised that citizens are not already complaining about the upcoming color chosen to paint the Second Street Bridge. Should anyone wish to see a sample of this paint color, they need only to drive to Second and Main Street and look at the newly painted railings next to the new KFC Yum! Center leading to the bridge. Please voice your concerns before they begin painting the entire bridge. It is awful.

Making a profit as a non-profit.

In 1997 the powers that be in the Commonwealth of Kentucky state government and the powers that be in medicine in Louisville Kentucky got together and formed the Passport Health Plan. The organization is non-profit and has a board of directors made up of representatives from the medical practices and hospitals who originally organized the company.

The idea was to make sure indigent and the working poor got good preventative and chronic disease medical treatment and to save money while doing that. Since then the state has been awarding an annual contract which is now at $800 million. By treating a person for minor health problems or routinely for a chronic disease you keep them out of the emergency room and you keep them out of the hospital.

That saves money and everyone agrees on that.

Beyond this point the operation of Passport Health Plan for the benefit of the poor is murky!

This past spring a State Senator Tim Shaughnessy asked State Auditor Crit Luellen to look into the operation of Passport. It took a while to get her hands on the records. Although Passport gets all its funding from the state, they denied her their files. Finally the audit was done. Her report covering the period 2007-2010 was published. The report revealed reason for concern.

Before I go further let me tell you that I question whether Sen. Shaughnessy would have brought this to Mrs. Luellen's attention if he didn't have a divided loyalty. Shortly before his concern was voiced he was laid off from his job as an executive for one of the hospitals involved in setting up Passport. I like to think he would have requested an audit because of his fiduciary responsibility as a State Senator. Some suggest it was revenge for being laid off.

Now, let's turn back to the findings in the report.

Over a million dollars was spent on public relations and to lobby the state legislature. As far as I know there were no other competitors for the state contract. The percentage increase in the contract funding from one year to the next was well below the general increasing health care costs for the community. The question is why spend a million of your state contract funds to lobby those giving you the contract if you don't have a competitor or get increased funding?

The public relations expense included a large balloon version of SpongeBob SquarePants for the Kentucky Derby Pegasus Parade and a contribution to an annual Kentucky Senate cocktail party! The Governor was upset about the cocktail party funding. The President of the Senate David Williams, who hopes to be governor next year, said he didn't understand why the governor was so concerned about the cocktail party. It is Mr. Williams' party by the way and those attending are lobbyists.

Executives of Passport traveled to medical meetings held in lovely spa locations. They used limos and ate lavish meals while staying in palatial hotel rooms. These travel expenses as well donations, holiday gifts and flowers having nothing to do with health care, totaled over $616,000.

Salaries and bonuses to these executives are in the mid six figure range. Despite raking in huge income from Passport some executives have divided loyalties. For example the executive director received compensation from sub-contractors. The Chairman and CEO is an executive at one of the hospitals involved.

The thing that supposedly got Sen. Shaughnessy going however was the distribution of reserves. Thirty million dollars of excess reserves amassed by Passport were distributed not back to the state but were divided amongst the hospitals and medical practices that set up the organization in parts equal to their original participation. In essence this was a distribution of profits from a non-profit organization funded totally by the state.

While there is much ranting and raving about the horrible cost of treating the poor the rest of the story is that setting up and running a non-profit contract to help these most vulnerable is treated as a blank check by the management.

It will be said that this is what you get when you "give" money to the poor. I can almost hear the strident harangue by the resurrected moral majority that everyone should pull their own weight. To paraphrase the Son of God in Matthew 26:11, "the poor shall always be with us." I don't think Jesus wanted us to increase the numbers of poor or steal the most basic of support from them. A self-righteous person thinks they are good but proving that means helping not stealing from the least of us.

Civility, Sexy or is it Sexual?

I like blogs that have only a few followers. There are readers who never sign-up to follow and I know this because I get e.mail from a few myself.

When I find one with sincere and clear writing I feel as though I have found a jewel in the barnyard. These people call out into the unknown trying to communicate, to tell a story of a life.

Sometimes the blog just started. Sometimes they've been blogging for years. When I look at the comments, often there are not any or if any very few.

What motivates someone to write a blog on which no one comments?

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The great consuming drama of the mid-term U.S. elections will end tomorrow when the polls close in Hawaii. I'm ready for this to end.

I watched the rally on the Mall in Washington DC on C-Span Saturday. It was put on by a couple of comedians and called "The Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear". I'm sure some of you attended. Some friends of mine did and they had pictures. It seemed to be an almost perfect day; no rain, wind or snow and bright sunshine. One person described it as a typical toss the Frisbee to the dog family day outside in the fall.

One thing I noticed as the camera showed those gathered were the smiles. People were smiling, talking to those nearby, laughing and hugging. People walked about with signs: Free Hugs!

Boy those signs were great too. There was a slideshow on a website of over 300 pictures of signs from the Rally. The signs were not angry or putting down anyone. The words were spelled right. Someone professed to being a person who sends grammatically correct text messages. The faces were not all white. There were a lot of brown people. The crowd looked like the America I see every day near my home.

A musician sang "Peace Train" and I almost cried. Tony Bennett sang "America the Beautiful" and I did cry. I am a Liberal and a Democrat. I am a patriot. If you cannot get your mind around that concept then you need to reconsider. Maybe we need to have a reasonable conversation where we both listen.

My favorite sign was the one that said: Civil is Sexy!

This past week it was reported that the University of Louisville had offered two season tickets for home basketball games to each of our state House and Senate members. This has been done for many years and they are offered at the usual price. A lot of the elected legislators appreciate the opportunity and buy tickets every year.

This year all people purchasing season tickets at the new YUM Arena are required to pay an additional "premium" of $1000 per ticket to underwrite the wonderful, fabulous, and modern luxury arena. This year the legislators were surprised at this additional cost. To help the President of the University, Dr. James R. Ramsey offered to pay this premium from funds in the U of L Foundation.

All this was reported in the local paper.

The Letters to the Editors were so hot I had to handle the folded paper that morning with padded gloves.

The next day it was announced that every single legislator had turned done the courtesy of Dr. Ramsey's offer. Although the legislators had not been able to get a budget passed this past session and had to do so in a sixty day special session, their good sense was demonstrated by turning down the offer!

One of the Letters to the Editor suggested they pay the premium with the extra pay they got for the special session!

Rain and the arena.

The rain started late in the afternoon Wednesday last week. It had been August 23rd since we had more than a sprinkle of rain in Louisville. The weather heads had maps showing the approach of rain, so it was predicted. I was skeptical as this kind of thing had happened several times during the past six weeks without result.

From the New Yorker, October 18, 2010 issue.  I scanned it so no link.

I had been reading and dozed off sitting up with the book fallen from my hands. The cat must have heard it approaching as she came running up the steps to sit near the chair. Her growl woke me.

There on the skylights was rain. I sat at the top of the steps looking out the smeared window as water fell onto the dry acre out back. It was pouring so after a while I went downstairs to stand at the door watching. There's something comforting about a hard rain after a long dry spell.

It continued all night and early the next day. The rain had left traces on the asphalt parking lot. Moisture had already gone from the big pot of lavender by the door. The grass was still brown and it wasn't long until leaves crackled again with the bunny family moving in and out of their den under the holly bush.

By afternoon you wouldn't have known it rained at all.

At Keeneland the turf course was a bright green and the horses running over it were beautiful, dark and fleet. But off that ribbon of grass the lawn around the clubhouse was brown and dry.

From the Courier-Journal, October 17, 2010

The $256 million Yum Center opened Saturday night for the first performance. The Eagles came to town to excite and entertain us. The previous week the police and mayor had a press conference where they reviewed the way traffic moves around the new building now. One hundred police officers were assigned to help with all the cars expected. Extra TARC buses were being put on the route. An official counted all the on street, off street and garage parking within five blocks of the arena and our Mayor announced, "There are 19,000 parking spaces nearby."

Yet ticket holders to the Eagles' performance were told to get to the arena early. No one wanted to talk about getting home afterwards.

The restaurants near the venue were all excited and new menus had been previewed. Extra help was put on shift and provisions bought. The effort was justified. Waits for dinner were over an hour everywhere, though most believed the wait was exacerbated by people who had eaten a late afternoon meal and were sitting at their table waiting to walk to the arena, thereby hogging the seats for later diners.

The Mayor had tickets and was being interviewed just prior to the show starting, "There are thousands of people walking on the streets this evening. This is the kind of thing a mayor likes to see." Well I think we all appreciated seeing real live suburbanites on the streets of downtown Louisville near dark. It's something that's seldom been seen since the late '60's, when most all entertainment was downtown.

Today there was a letter to the editor in the local paper. The writer had been to the Eagles' concert Saturday night and thought it was a great one. They even had compliments for the wonderful lux NBA worthy arena. But they said they would miss our old arena Freedom Hall. I will miss that place too.

I remember going to my first Toys for Tots concert there.  I went with a GI I had met at a USO dance.  It was 1969 and he finished his training at Ft. Knox.   We both thought he was going off to Vietnam.  We walked two miles from my apartment in the December cold to the arena.  I wore my brown Chesterfield coat, dress shoes, stockings and my nicest Sunday-go-to-meeting dress.  He wore his Army green uniform.  We were the best dressed and most sober people there.  Everyone else at the concert was stoned out of their minds in tie dye and bell bottoms.

Somehow I don't think the YUM Center will ever have that ambience.

A pistol in the hand vs a hand full of rocks and traveling cows.

Saturday afternoon this past week end, Andrew Elliott, 15 said good-bye to his mother and went to spend the night at a friend's home several miles away. Later that evening he and two of his friends were walking the streets of Louisville near the friend's home. They were confronted by Archie Ashley when a rock hit his car parked in front of his home.

There were three rock throwing incidents in front of Mr. Ashley's house Saturday evening. The first time Mr. Ashley confronted the boys and they left. Again rocks were thrown and Mr. Ashley confronted them with a baseball bat. The last time rocks were again thrown, Mr. Ashley confronted them and this time pulled a gun out of his pocket firing two shots at the boys running away. Andrew Elliot was shot in the back and died.

The man picked up his spent shells, went back in his house and hid the shell casings and gun. The police came. Archie Ashley was arrested.

He was charged with murder and tampering with evidence. When arraigned Tuesday.  His attorney entered a plea of not guilty for Mr. Ashley.   He is being held in the local jail on a $500K bond.  His family commented later that this event was sad. Mr. Ashley had an ongoing dispute with kids in the neighborhood throwing rocks but Andrew was not one of them. The police had no record of ever being called before to his house.

Andrew's family thanked the police for a speedy arrest. [Paraphrasing here] "There was no cause for this. He could have handled it another way. He could have called for the police or whatever. There was no reason for this. A fifteen year old boy should never be shot in the back for throwing a rock." His grandmother said she wanted Mr. Ashley executed.

Andrew Elliott's funeral mass and burial was today at his church.

One of Andrew's friends stated they had walked past Mr. Ashley's home only once that evening.

Mr. Ashley said there were three incidents and the shooting occurred after the third one.

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Today in a New York Times article Emma Graves Fitzsimmons wrote an article about UPS handling the shipping of 2000 Angus and Hereford cattle to the nation of Kazakhstan. The first shipment was 162 head loaded on a UPS plane in North Dakota Tuesday. These are cattle uniquely suited for the bitter cold of the central Asian nation.

Quoting Doug Goehring, the North Dakota agricultural commissioner:

"The region they're going to mirrors the Midwest. Our cattle are northern bred and can handle extreme climates."

The government of Kazakhstan is trying to rebuild the country's livestock industry which was depleted since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The project is facilitated through an agreement between Kazakhstan and Global Beef Consultants.

"This shipment is a first for UPS which has moved pandas and sharks before but never cattle," said Ronna Branch, a spokeswoman for the company. "We ship large things," Ms. Branch said, "But I'll say this is the first time that we have shipped cows.

A veterinarian and a few cowboys accompanied the cattle to tend to their needs. I wonder if they get food and something to drink without extra charge.United Parcel Service has a Worldport hub in Louisville. It processes slightly less than a half million packages an hour or over 84 a second. These are primarily express and international packages and letters. They employ over 20,000 people and will hire 50,000 additional short time workers for the holidays. During the holidays they will ship millions of packages daily.