you're preaching to the "everyone gets a medal, a banquet and a parade for just showing up" bunch. what do you expect from a society where everybody is entitled?

i was at nau the summer jim ryun trained there for the '68 olympics. we were so excited. now a marathoner is some kid's 50 year old dad.

>>Blood sugar testing is annoying yes, but its not that big of a deal. Its virtually painless.<<

like hell. jabbing a pin into a fingertip 5 times a day to make it bleed-- i am not a big baby, but i will swear this is painful (unless your fingers are remarkably callused and insensitive to begin with.)

i've been diagnosed as diabetic for nearly 20 years now. the disease has altered my entire life. for 15 years i was insulin dependent even tho i was type 2-- none of the little gluco-whatever pills worked for me. in the beginning i was sure i could handle this monster through diet and exercise. i was in control, i told myself. but i couldn't control stress and i couldn't control accidents, or just being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and so i was hospitalized, repeatedly, as incidents occurred and my blood sugar soared.

do you know what irks me? no, it is not the way the general public is led to despise diabetics. it is those who purport to represent aids or alcoholism equating their issues to diabetes. nothing is like diabetes. nothing.

you are very generous in your apology. i probably blew a little too hard myself.

there is a wierdness about diabetes-- it erupts, for instance, when a simple "boo-boo" morphs into serious trauma. before diabetes, if i mashed a couple of toes i simply stuck them into roomy shoes and at most limped around a couple of days until i was better. no more. i jammed two toes, ignored the problem (what problem? i stubbed my toe!) until i was hospitalized for ten days for infection, septicaemia, a foot ulcer, uncontrollable blood sugar, etc. the docs even rumbled about amputation. i was sent home on crutches, thankfully still intact. it was the first time i was hospitalized as a consequence of diabetes, but not the last.

people who are poor or uninsured or lack a competent caregiver at home are sh*t out of luck.

your dad had a previous will which left everything between you two 50-50, and sister named as executrix-- then you take control of his life in the final months and suddenly there is a new will where YOU are executrix and YOU GET EVERYTHING. no mention of sister at all, not even the customary $1. bequest to show someone is still remembered. if i were sister's lawyer i would question whether your dad was in his right mind when he made that last will. was he capable enough to remember he had a second daughter? was he under (your) undue influence? if you mean to hog everything, then you'd better stay cozy with the neighbor who could be your best/worst witness.

my suggestion? share equally with your sister.

so ashley weston's resume gets considered before laquinda mae bullock's because he/she has an "anglo" name, and laquinda's name is black. well, could it also be that ol' "ashley" sounds upper tone, and that laquinda's middle name of "mae" especially renders her poor, rural and even charmingly naive? "bobby ray bumpass" is an anglo name, too. ashley weston versus bobby ray bumpass-- whom would human resources favor? laquinda bullock versus bobby ray bumpass? laquinda bullock versus myrtle pirtle? versus dorothy ann doolittle? versus elmo bushmat? i really don't think we're talking race here at all.

i grew up working class with parents from a poor, rural background. they spanked, although i can remember only two such occasions myself. the first was when i had been unjustly accused of something by my brother. i don't remember the spanking itself, only the injustice of the thing. the second was my last spanking, when my father pushed me off his lap, saying "you're getting too big to spank." again, i don't remember the spanking, only the joy of it being the last one.

the beauty of a spanking is that once it was over, it was over. no recriminations. no "guilt trip." you had paid your debt to society-- but a lesson had been learned.

i never doubted that my parents loved me. i certainly loved my parents. they worked and sacrificed for me. it wasn't until i went off to one private east coast university, then another, that i met people my age from privileged backgrounds whose relationships with their mothers and fathers were ambivalent. many said their dads never had time for them. a friend there said that after he had once messed up as a child his mother told him that she regretted he had ever been born. i doubt any had ever been spanked. spanking doesn't leave scars, but words or unkindness or indifference does.

forty plus years ago, when the moyniham report was written, black americans were just gaining their civil rights. the percentage of illegitimate births among black mothers then was 23%; now it is nearly 70%. same race, did the culture change?

when bill cosby urges young black males to stop beating their women-- to get a job and support them-- is he criticizing a culture, or just being racist?

when the police chief of my small city (who is black, by the way) explained a rash of murders and violent crimes here-- which culminated in the previously unheard of total of four homicides in twenty-four hours-- he said it was all a too common combination of young african-american males, guns and drugs. was he speaking of culture? is my police chief a racist?

it is so easy to yell "racist." a child can call names. i wish we had a few more adults to deal with these problems.

yes, obama came down on the right side in opposing the iraqi war--good for him -- but he was only a state legislator at the time. his opinion held no weight, had no consequence if he were right or wrong. i have no issue with him, but cannot agree barack obama is a profile in courage.

he reminds me just a little bit, though, of a young fellow whom i cheered on for the nomination for vice president nearly forty years ago-- julian bond-- even though he was too young at the time to qualify, and i was too young to vote anyway.

even though

weren't poll taxes instituted in only southern states (and not all of them?) definitely they were applied across the races, black and white, and i daresay as many or more poor whites as blacks were disinfranchised as a result. how many blacks were lynched for voting, and where? women could not vote in most of the u.s. when my mother was born (1917)-- black men could.