Remembering Genie Jett....

Well, it's 5:00am and here I am again.  Can't sleep and even worse, I can't turn off my brain. And hey look, it isn't even a holiday, maybe I can get these blogs off the virtual press more frequently from now on.

As I mentioned in my last blog post, I have been advocating for my son's school in the redistricting planning that has been going on in Fayette County.  I had a meeting with my son's school principal yesterday.  She had been to another school for a meeting and came back with a water bottle branded with the name of the school across the front. So you are aware, some schools are branding their own drinking water and our school is asking the United Way for underwear and socks. Did I mention that these two schools are just 2 miles apart in my community? So yesterday these kids needed my tenacity and data junkie talents to politically navigate an attendance boundary debate, but today they need my willingness to wrangle coats.  

You see, our school has been having a coat drive since November because many of our kids don't have warm enough coats to endure Kentucky winters.  While we have had a pretty mild January, February and March may have different plans for us.  So anyway, we have been collecting coats from our kids whose families are financially faring better in this world and we will have those coats laundered and then bring them back to school and make sure that each of our less fortunate kids has a coat that they need to protect them against the elements as most of them walk to school. It's a pretty cool recycle, reuse effort if you ask me.  Fayette County does NOT provide bus service if you live within a mile of the school.  Most of our financially struggling families live within that one mile boundary, so to add insult to injury, these kids don't have sufficient protection against 10 degree windchills. And my job today is to wrangle the donated coats at school, call around to try and find a dry cleaner or laundry mat who might be willing to donate the laundering services.  If I don't find one, I will be blocking off a few hours in my schedule next week to wash them at a laundry mat myself.  Most likely some of of my phenomenal Lansdowne parent counterparts will join me to lend a hand at the Loads of Suds.

And when these coats are handed out to these very needy & very deserving kids, my Mom will be smiling.  I'm not unconvinced she wasn't responsible for my 5:00am wake up call this morning. My constant self-assessment of how much I am giving back to my community stems from my parents. Instead of being a nature vs. nurture consideration, I am convinced it is a nature & nurture argument.  I mentioned my Dad's school board service in my last blog post.  And that was merely one board of the dozens that he and my mother served on throughout my life.  

My entire childhood was spent watching my parents serve on various community boards, give of their time and talents to the less fortunate, serve as Scout leaders, and make a difference in the lives of those who needed it, while holding public officials accountable. 

While my Dad is highly intelligent, he is a relatively quiet analytic observer who uses his voice selectively. My mother was quite different in her approach.  She was a politically savvy, brilliant & witty, sharp tongued firecracker who never backed down from a fight. Did I mention she was raised by a US Army Colonel?  

Before she had children, and even a few times after that, she and one of her best friends would listen to the police scanners and show up in areas of town less fortunate than ours, and they would witness how the police handled the situation. Who does that?  Genie did. And this was soon after the civil rights era and if I am anything like her, I know what was going through her head.  The thought process was probably something like this: Well, just because they have achieved more rights under the law, it doesn't mean that anyone is policing the police to make sure these rights are being protected. So...she did something. 

 She was a huge advocate for public libraries and when garbage collection was not happening in the less fortunate part of town, well, she fixed that.  She was politically liberal and was a force in the League of Women Voter's.  Yet...she was also a member of the garden club, the homemaker's club, foreign foods group, and she was my brownie troop leader as long as she could physically manage it. And did I mention that she was self-employed & worked full time, along side my dad, managing Jett & Hall Shoes in downtown Richmond?

Unfortunately my mother was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 1981, when I was only 6 years old.  So I have had to rely on others to tell me about most of these civic heroics that she performed.  And to say that I miss her and grieve the tremendous impact she would have had on my life over the last 30 years, and the loss of the grandmother my children will never know, doesn't begin to explain it.  She passed away on December 28th 1984, at the age of 41, so this last holiday season marked 30 years that she has also been missing from her community, my hometown of Richmond, KY.  

Soon after my mother passed away, the President of the Richmond League of Women Voters wrote an editorial to the Richmond Register entitled "Remembering Genie Jett", recognizing the great sense of loss in the community that was felt after the death of my mother.  It is an amazing tribute to her.  I hope you will read it.  My favorite excerpt is "It is remarkable what "ordinary people" can do when they work with heart and commitment.  Then again, with such commitment, "ordinary people" are no longer ordinary, they become special.  Genie has left us with a challenge.  With her commitments as a mother, a wife and her business, she still had time to get involved. That's special."

Mom, I am answering your challenge as best I can. When I am not, I trust you will continue with the 5:00am wake up calls.  So as I quickly approach 40, I have to hope that my ordinary advocacy attempts honor someone so desperately missed and so special.

I miss you Mom.

Now, I need to go wrangle those coats.

Dear Fayette County Schools Redistricting Committee....When the going gets tough, I stick around

Holidays seems to trigger blogs in my brain. Can't say why, they just do.  I am sure that for those who enjoy my rants and musings, the wait between holidays is longer than you would like but I am raising small humans, selling real estate to feed my family, nurturing my marriage of 18 years and trying to live the life that I believe I was meant to live.  In other words, my dance card is full but for reasons that I don't fully understand it seems to be holidays that force me to reconcile where I am in my life and whether the ways I choose to spend the limited time I have on this planet is being spent judiciously.

As such, for those that are friends of mine on facebook, you may have noticed that I have been "checking in" at the Fayette County Public School Headquarters,  attending redistricting meetings, sometimes twice a week, since early December.  Please make no mistake, I am not a member of this committee, merely an innocent bystander seated in the public seating area, closest to the TV monitor displaying the raw data.  

Beyond being an Economist by training with a strange hankering for data analysis, for reasons I can't completely explain, I continue to make myself endure this torture.  Attending these meetings is pushing my sanity to its brink while I witness my son's elementary school's diversity and socio-economic balance become decimated for no good reason. So evidently I must be a glutton for repeated punishment.  I have this obviously misguided sense that by being there, I am somehow impacting their decision making. But since the videos of these meetings are posted on a very, very delayed basis, that I am not unconvinced happens intentionally, the only way you can keep up with the madness (in real time to affect change) is by being there. And being there is something that I am really good at.  When the going gets tough, I stick around, even to my own detriment.

I often leave these meetings wishing that the Men In Black will jump out of the corner office and zap my memory to put me out of my misery.  But if you follow me on facebook you also know how often I am at my son's school, trying my best to make a difference in the lives of children (from over 30 different countries) many of whom come from homes and families that look nothing like my own but deserve everything in this life that a good education, in a democratic country, has to offer.  And it is for these kids, that I am fighting the good fight, but most days it doesn't feel like a good fight at all.

This is me in my fabulous Academic Challenge Coaching T-Shirt

Below you will find my submission to the Fayette County Redistricting Committee that I submitted on Monday morning (yes, the morning I was supposed to be just laying around in pajamas with my kids, eating waffles, before we left for a play date with a wonderful friend who is also giving of her time and talents for this wonderful school.)  If I were a mystic, I would swear that Martin Luther King Jr. woke me at 5am with my Let's Talk response on the tip of my brain. (For my Lansdowne Elementary friends, you may follow this link to voice your own concerns about the changes in Lansdowne Elementary school boundaries:  http://www.fcps.net/letstalk)

These new boundaries are very, very bad for Lansdowne Elementary!

I can't say that I am winning in this particular battle, as Lansdowne Elementary's new 76% free/reduced lunch metric was not mentioned even once this evening, although many of the questions that I raised about what they are not considering in this whole process were vaguely voiced this evening.  So maybe I am winning just a little, but not for my own kids or their school specifically.   But it makes me feel better that I am using my God given talents to try and affect change for all of these kids.  Public schools are worth fighting for and I am beginning to see that my path may one day include serving Fayette County on the school board, as my father served for many years in Madison County, Kentucky back in the early 80s.  Evidently he had a hard time sitting back and watching others make these decisions like I am now.  

He won in 1982 and served many years! 

This is my Dad in 1982

So here it is...consider yourself warned, it's a pretty long. And at the end, I'll be honest, I lied.  I don't really look forward to seeing them at the next meeting on Thursday.  But when the going gets tough, I stick around.

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Dear Fayette County Redistricting Committee,

I have been in attendance at all elementary redistricting meetings, with the exception of the meeting on 1/8.  What I have witnessed is startling and I truly believe that while your hearts are in the right place and your intentions are great, you are missing some key considerations in the elementary redistricting process.

We shouldn't approach elementary redistricting in the same fashion as middle and high schools.  As the first 6 years of education investment, elementary schooling is critical to either establishing habits of success and high expectations for achievement or losing the trust and excitement for learning in children and families.  This is where it starts.  Why are Kindergarten readiness percentages not being considered? Some schools are seeing less than 50% Kindergarten readiness for in-bound students. We have data that could tell us historical transient rates in particular schools, or in other words we should be looking at metrics which tell us if particular schools see higher or lower rates of student "churning" which is disruptive to all parties involved but when concentrated in certain schools is devastating.  You might be surprised what you find.   If we are not paying attention to these metrics, which Lisa and Bob could provide for you, and current achievement levels (i.e. are some schools somehow overcoming these disparities over time?), you could be unknowingly and unfairly placing a burden on some schools that become insurmountable. Perpetuating that is not only detrimental to achievement but it lacks compassion for not only these children and families but our dedicated teachers and administrators.  

It seems that while building capacities, free lunch percentages, walkability, and neighborhood cohesiveness is rightfully being considered, current achievement levels seem to be IGNORED?!  Is this simply an exercise in logistics with no consideration of the end goal, which should be a quality education for all children.  We have 35 existing schools which can provide value achievement and demographic metrics that can give us clues about what is working and what is not working and how we can better serve ALL kids in this county. We have UK College of Education Professors that I am sure would be happy to attend a meeting and answer questions the committee may have. 

 It seems that understandably loud voices of some neighborhoods are protecting high achieving/low free lunch schools and that understandably loud voices of those advocates for poorly performing schools are being considered but the schools where we are doing a good job of balancing relatively high achievement with diverse populations are being ignored and even harmed by this focus on the opposite ends of the achievement spectrum.  

Why is the committee not first looking at the schools and talking to the administrators of these schools that are expertly striking the balance with more socio- economic diverse populations and achievement to see what percentages they feel work in their schools instead of throwing around arbitrary numbers such as 80/20?  Why not send an anonymous survey to the teachers and administrators of these schools to find out their true thoughts and opinions on transient rates (or level of student churning), Kindergarten readiness percentages, English as Second Language Percentages, free/reduced lunch percentages, and what they think is working in their school?  Some of these educators bring their own children to work with them and some leave them in the schools where they are district-ed, creating its own burden that they are willing at accept for their own kids.  What could we learn from this? These are the educators that can be so helpful in giving guidance on what is working and what doesn't work!  Schools like Lansdowne, Picadome, Julius Marks, Glendover, Sandersville, Dixie, & Harrison should be studied to see if they can be demographically re-created in other areas but they should also be protected so that the positive momentum and quality educations they are providing to all of those kids is protected!  

For example, at the 1/8 meeting, the attendance boundaries of Southern and Lansdowne were completely redrawn.  Years ago, these attendance boundaries were crafted the way they are for a reason.  Instead of redrawing these boundaries, what should be evaluated is why there is currently such a disparity in achievement between these two schools with very similar demographics, not just moving people to just appear to be fixing something that is perceived to be broken but IS NOT.  The latest re-alignment of the Lansdowne/Southern attendance boundaries is unnecessary, disruptive, and makes no sense as neither schools are walkable nor neighborhood schools to any neighborhood south of Wilson Downing.  Contiguous areas are not a magic bullet and in this case they will cause more disparity.  This is a unique area of town where we can actually try and keep a balance!   And although under the latest proposal you are reducing the free lunch population at Southern, you are increasing it at Lansdowne.  But because you have not truly investigated why Lansdowne is performing as they are, you are willing to roll the dice and put their achievement momentum at risk without any guarantee that Southern's achievement will rise in any statistically significant way.  And sadly, given the seemingly unavoidable higher free lunch percentages in other parts of the county, the new free/reduced lunch percentage of 76% at Lansdowne will most likely be well within the "tolerance" levels of most vocal committee members.  This is a very, very bad change that is unfair to educators, families, and students that have been working so hard at this school to become a proficient/progressing school under challenging circumstances.

Making the same assumptions that affluent neighborhoods with very low concentrations of free lunch and high performing schools, or conversely the preferences of the extremely poor have about neighborhood schools, is a very dangerous and unfair slippery slope when applied to more socio-economically balanced areas of town with good performing schools that require unavoidable busing. 

Home ownership is powerful. Having  "skin in the game", over the long run is critical to parent engagement.  Parent engagement is critical to success.  Similarly, one key metric that needs to be considered in Scott's GIS overlays is the concentration of multi-family housing in any one school. The populations in multi-family housing units is understandably transient in nature.  To ignore the concentration of multi-family housing and Section 8 housing, as a percentage of households, in any given school is unwise and shortsighted.  Similarly there are typically large numbers of children in many of these developments, some have more children located in them than entire neighborhoods send to public school.  You should be treating large multi-family housing developments as neighborhoods, within themselves.  What you are looking for is a student density metric to be added as an overlay.

Sadly, the elementary changes that have been made so far will simply cause more "educational poverty" concentration, as opposed to solving it.  Elementary redistricting done incorrectly will yield greater achievement gaps and inequity of opportunity in the future. However, when done correctly will pay dividends that will enhance and enrich the lives of children and families and improve Lexington for a lifetime.  Take the time to do this with great consideration and care.  Dedicate the energy and attention it deserves.  You are changing our corner of the world!

Thank you for your service to the committee and your consideration.  I look forward to seeing you at the next meeting!

Putting the "Thanks!" back into Thanksgiving, and taking the Black Friday Out

As I sit here at 5:15 am on Thanksgiving Eve, trying to put into words what has been floating around in my head for weeks, I find it a bit ironic that I am awake earlier today than I would be on a school day.  On a day I didn't have to be up at a certain time to get my two small humans into the care of those that do the hardest job (and get paid the least) in our society, I was awake at 5 am.  Waking after 7 am is as elusive in my life as a sighting of a Sasquatch (Bigfoot or Yeti, if you prefer). But fundamentally, even though I am sleepy, I have been given another day to grace this planet, and for this, I am thankful.

So I hear a lot about how we need to put the Christ back into Christmas.  Now make no mistake, I am a Christian (Presbyterian to be more specific) and I agree we could all use more Christ in our lives, but in my mind, it is impossible to take him out of ANYTHING! He's tenacious that way, always all up in my business, making me a better Lucy, ever present with his unending grace and expecting me to love others...just BECAUSE!  So this premise that we can take Christ out of Christmas, or anything else is a bit ludicrous, in my humble opinion. And don't get me wrong, it's not that we are getting Christmas "right" in our society, but to me you have to start with fixing the "Thanks" in November before you can get on with fixing the "giving" in December.

Thanksgiving has ALWAYS been my favorite holiday.  In fact I like it so much that in 1996, when planning my wedding, I initially tried to schedule our nuptials for Thanksgiving weekend but the US Army decided that Ethan Waterbury would be in Panama. And the US Army didn't give a rat's ass about my love for Thanksgiving so we made do with August. And 18 years later, tomorrow is go time in this house as my husband and I host family and friends here at our house for Thanksgiving. My Turkey is swimming in brine, my homemade cornbread is drying for the dressing and a pumpkin pie will be born into this world around 11:18am (depending upon when I publish this fine literary specimen).  

So why is Thanksgiving my favorite holiday?  Well hell, what's not to love? It is a day off from work (for most) built around the premise of giving thanks, eating wonderful food, & visiting with the ones you love. Historically speaking, there are many politically laden versions of how Thanksgiving originally went down (much of which makes this bleeding heart liberal proud and cringe at the same time) but in 2014, I just feel like we are missing it.  

It seems like so many in our culture are "going through the motions" to get to the Black Friday part of Thanksgiving, which in my mind, should be no part of it at all. While sightings of Sasquatch may be rare, sightings of Christmas trees the day after Halloween have become common place.  There is a radio station in Lexington that converts to Christmas music on November 1st, subscribing to the 55 days of Christmas model which seems to have become pervasive in our society.  

We blow past the Thanks! to get to the giving.  And that folks, is just plain sad. We think that giving people material things makes up for not giving them our thanks, time, love and affection. Our souls have been eroded by Black Friday retail "deals" and our collective concern for humanity has been replaced by a concern for keeping up the the Joneses (and the Smiths too, or so it seems!)

Occasionally I will run across folks in my facebook newsfeed that will take the time to express an attitude of gratitude about the simpler things in their lives and I find this encouraging.  So on this Thanksgiving Eve I am publishing my own attitude of gratitude list in an attempt to set an example of how to get the "black" out of this sacred day.  Here goes...

I am thankful for...

• those who enrich my life by their presence
• those who love and serve others who are so desperately in need of love and services
• those who put themselves out there to affect positive change in their community
• those who use their voice to speak their mind for the voices that have been silenced
• those who sacrifice their lives to protect mine
• the innocence of children and the wonder in which they approach life
• an appreciation for all that is beautiful in this life, the ordinary and the extraordinary

While this is by no means a comprehensive list of everything for which I am thankful, it is a pretty good start.  And, money cannot buy any of the above.  For those who will get up from their Thanksgiving table tomorrow to go "cash in" on those material goods, the reality is that it is your soul you are selling. Life isn't found in what is bought and sold, it is found in experiences and memories and those are not for sale, they are for the taking and making.

May your Thanksgiving table be filled with an abundance of food and those you choose to spend it with be filled with an abundance of love and thankfulness for all that is good and beautiful in this life.

Dear Mr. President...there isn't enough bourbon

Dear Mr. President,

This is your future Ebola Czarina checking in.  You've been pretty busy lately, so if you missed my blog about Ebola, you can read it here: How Do You Solve a Problem Like Ebola?  Seems like we have Ebola under control at the moment, so kudos to the current Czar, but if you would like to write in a succession clause, I'm your girl. 

But I digress, Ebola is not why I am writing.  Earlier this week, exactly 56.2% of the 46% of Kentuckians who even bothered to show up to vote sent Mitch McConnell to represent them in the United States Senate. (Note: let's be fair, Lexingtonians and Louisvillians are excluded from this statistic, they actually voted to send Alison to the Senate in the same proportions) 

I have to believe that a certain percentage sent him back, not because they liked him, but to bring home the "pork" to Kentucky, as Senate majority leader, because after all, it's the American way. I'm not sure how I feel about those people as it is this logic that has completely bastardized the resource distribution of our democratic government but that's a letter for a different day.

Those Kentuckians didn't send him to represent me, as I promise you that the votes he will cast will never reflect anything that I stand for.  And you know that saying, "You have to stand for something or you'll fall for anything".  Yeah, well let's just say that too many Kentuckians will fall for anything, and evidently that disease is pretty contagious among the voting electorate in the mid-terms of 2014.  

On Wednesday, after those Kentuckians who cannot see that they are being lied to and their votes and souls are being bought by fear mongering billionaires, decided that Mitch McConnell, after 30 abysmal years of legislating, was yet again their man, you invited him over for some food, fun & fellowship at the White House. You said, I quote, "I would enjoy having some Kentucky bourbon with Mitch McConnell." Now Mr. President, I will take you at your word that you meant what you said, but I have to assume it would be the bourbon that you would enjoy with Mitch McConnell, rather than the discourse.  

In this state, bourbon flows like water.  We drink it in any manner you can imagine, we've built a trail around it, we make candy out of it, we have even been known to light it on fire when served as part of a decadent dessert or two. In a few hours, I myself will be tailgating with it at the UK vs. Georgia game, but I think you get my point. 

But Mr. President, this Kentucky girl is here to tell you...there isn't enough bourbon. You could push Bourbon through the veins of Mitch McConnell intravenously and he still wouldn't see what you and I see.

• To see that people are people, and Corporations are NOT
• To see that inconvenient truths not addressed for decades, could become species ending nightmares at the end of the millennium
• To see that legislation passed in his name is often exactly what Jesus WOULDN'T DO! (not WWJD!)
• To see that choosing "Pork" in Washington, in the long run, harms the men and women bringing home the bacon
• To see that profit maximizers don't self-regulate
• To see that ending the "War on Coal" fuels a war on clean drinking water and irreversible environmental damage
• To see that access to healthcare makes us all healthier
• To see that Student Loans are as important, if not more important, as Business Loans
• To see that Planned Parenthood serves low income women in ways they will never understand 
• To see that birth control pills are used for dozens of women's health concerns, only one of which is preventing birth
• To see that being Pro Life should mean feeding, clothing, and nurturing these children long after the birth is over
• To see the importance of funding Sesame Street instead of Wall Street
• To see that tomorrow's criminal is today's abused, neglected, and broken child
• To see that neediest children come to school to be loved as much as to learn
• To see that Head Start isn't just an academic start, it is the ONLY start for many of these children
• To see that choosing butter over guns is not only the right thing to do but the smart economic thing to do
• To see that love is defined by the heart, not the type of genitalia
• To see that government can and should reduce suffering, instead of inflicting it
• To see that as Americans we are, and should be our brother and sister's keeper

So now that the Bourbon Summit is over, keep fighting the good fight, please get back to doing what you have gotten really good at, rebuilding a country and economy you inherited 6 years ago that was decimated by 8 years of the policies of the same party that just dropped by for a bite of lunch.  

And while these next two years are going to be a nightmare of preventing the passing of legislation that will undo the economic growing, deficit & governmental fraud reducing and consumer protecting accomplishments of your presidency, please know that history will be kind to you.  

And Mr. President, if Mitch didn't bring the Pappy Van Winkle, he brought the wrong stuff.

How do you solve a problem like Ebola....

(Maria is not the problem we need to solve at the moment, and in all reality was she ever really a problem?! I mean she was a dream of a nanny who ended up loving those children like her own.  Have I mentioned The Sound of Music is my favorite movie OF.All.TIME?)

I am not a doctor.  I don't play one on TV.  Hell, I don't even want to cut my husband's toenails. Okay, maybe when we are octogenarians I will, but even then it will be reluctantly. Additionally, my only forays into politics, outside of being President of my high school class (have I mentioned there were only around 50 of us so even that wasn't too difficult to achieve) are two failed attempts at running for the Site Based Decision Making Council at my son's elementary school.  So I guess what I am saying is the chances that I will be appointed the next Ebola Czarina are remote. 

Having said all that, my degree is in Economics & Sociology and everything I learned while pursuing my relatively inexpensive University of Kentucky college education (compared to what it would cost in 2014...by the way, in Econ, we call this secondary education hyper-inflation) tells me we are getting this Ebola thing all wrong.

But majoring in Econ and Sociology is a bit like living in two worlds at the same time; the world of studying supply vs. demand, rational vs. irrational behavior, correlation vs. causality, & nature vs. nurture. Where these two disciplines intersect is the study of when the chickens come home to roost, so to speak. So on my diploma it should really read:

Lucy Jett Waterbury

(yes, I was married before I graduated!)

Summa Cumme Laude

Bachelors of Arts

When The Chickens Come Home To Roost

Even if you are not the fear mongering type (Fox News viewers among us, stay with me here), this virus should be on your radar screen, but perhaps not for reasons that you may think.  Although there are those in our society that choose to live life in fear, I am not a card carrying member of this crowd. (Have I mentioned I have experienced a statistically significant number of frightening life experiences including watching my mother and brother die around age 40 from fatal brain tumors and living in the familial aftermath of the murder of my uncle in a random convenient store robbery?  I am only 39 folks.) Obviously the brains tumors are in my DNA, and my uncle was murdered by random evil that existed in 1986 and still exists in this world.  So yeah, fear could be something that defines me, but I simply don't let it.  But let's be real, if you aren't the slightest bit concerned about a horrific virus with a 50% mortality rate, that has already reached our shores, I am sure I can find a good suicide hotline phone number for you, as this is serious business.

Fortunately, we are now at the end of the quarantine period of those nearest and dearest to the first victim of Ebola in America, Thomas Eric Duncan, and his medical support team.  And for the most part, we can breathe a sigh of relief but it is now are duty to investigate "WTF just happened?!" and how do we respond when it happens again, because it will.

As I mentioned, this strain of Ebola, Ebola-Zaire, has a mortality rate of 50%.  Yep, you have a 1 in 2 chance of meeting Jesus if you become a card carrying member of this group.  Medically, we seem to THINK that we understand how it is transmitted (we will revisit this point later). But this assumes it does not mutate as viruses have a propensity to do (I hate it when that happens!).  We also seem to think that we know how to contain it but we have a major, modern medical facility and the CDC that cannot adequately explain how two nurses, using the proper protocols and wearing haz mat suits, contracted it. 

For those who have been living in a cave over the last couple of months or so, let's do a little Ebola 101.  According to the World Health Organization (WHO):

"First symptoms are the sudden onset of fever fatigue, muscle pain, headache and sore throat. This is followed by vomiting, diarrhoea, rash, symptoms of impaired kidney and liver function, and in some cases, both internal and external bleeding (e.g. oozing from the gums, blood in the stools)."

What that WHO fact sheet fails to do a very good job of explaining, is what dying of Ebola really looks like.  Our own National Institute of Health (NIH) does a better job of explaining this in bullet points (Americans are all about their bullets so this not surprising...)

• Bleeding from eyes, ears, and nose
• Bleeding from the mouth and rectum (gastrointestinal bleeding)
• Eye swelling (conjunctivitis)
• Genital swelling (labia and scrotum)
• Increased feeling of pain in the skin
• Rash over the entire body that often contains blood (hemorrhagic)
• Roof of mouth looks red

Sounds fantastic, doesn't it? Bleeding from your eyes makes pink eye look appealing, huh?

(Have I mentioned that according to the CDC, the budget cuts from "The Sequestration" hampered the NIH's development of a vaccine for Ebola?  How do you like the Sequestration now?  How does that thought process go exactly, "Hmmm, wow, I am really glad we cut government spending to a point where it may have put millions of tax payers lives at risk for the most deadly epidemic since the 1918 Spanish Flu outbreak. After all, we handled the 1977 Mexican Hot Sauce Botulism Outbreak just fine. History will treat us kindly, don't ya think?") Chickens roosting folks, chickens roosting!  If you are a geek to the level that I am, you can check out the Bipartisan Policy Center's "The Sequestration Explained" fact sheet here.  But how we got here is somewhat irrelevant, what counts now is what are we going to do about it and what have we learned, right? 

Let's talk about the continent that has been hosting this plague of 2014, Africa. But let's get more specific, shall we?  The countries that are currently cesspools of Ebola are Sierra Lione, Guinea, & Liberia. 

Source: www.vox.com

Most of my readers would not be surprised if I suggested that Africa has issues...lots of them. But when you consider Africa in the context of a deadly virus outbreak it has some things going for it. Intuitively this may seem awful that I am calling these positives but compared to the complexities of containing a deadly virus in the US, these are positives. Many times these outbreaks are contained in small, remote villages. And let's just say that most Africans do not have the means or method to leave the cesspool village. Sadly, it takes years for the village to raise a child but in Africa, they can unintentionally kill that same child in a matter of days.  Secondly, protecting basic human rights isn't exactly priority #1 in these countries so to be a human there is pretty awful and you are at the mercy or abuse of whomever dictates your quality of life, or lack there of.  Just as the politics of famine are complicated in Africa, so are the politics of disease. When competent to do so, the local folks will do what it takes to try and contain the disease but alas, even with limited mobility, denial of human rights, and governmental attempts to regulate travel, Ebola-Zaire landed in Dallas, TX on September 20th.

How does this happen?  Well, you show up at the airport without a fever, tell security what they want to hear and then board the plane for the promised land.  Can you really blame him?  After all, your fiance'  is in Dallas, you have other family in the States, you already quit your job, and basically YOU CAN. This post is not intended to demonize anyone and evidently Thomas Eric Duncan was a pretty darn good example of a kind, compassionate human as his willingness to transport a dying pregnant Ebola victim earned him his own ticket to meet Jesus.

To say that any of us would act differently is a self serving stretch.  Now many of us would have NEVER answered the call for help to move the dying Ebola patient, that is a given.  But most Americans, when afforded the opportunity to better his life and see his loved ones, would do what he did and the same would happen here. You would get on that plane to go "home" to see your loved ones and choose a better life, whatever that means in your circumstances and locale. If you say you would not, you are lying to yourself.  He acted rationally.

Did you know that the person responsible for the Nigeria outbreak was a Liberian-American (yep, those pesky Americans who think they can travel the world as they please) who traveled to Nigeria and infected 19 people. Nigeria has since been declared Ebola free but it was an American who brought it there.  Does that make you think about things differently?

The key to containing this virus here in the United States is controlling it before it reaches anywhere near what we call in Econ, the tipping point, which is a mind boggling low number of infections.  Because if you let it reach the tipping point, containing this virus here will be far more difficult.  I don't care what epidemiologists say, I don't care what the CDC says, when you have a critical mass of Americans exposed to this virus, the cows are out of the barn folks.  Why, you ask? Because the devil is in the details, as they say.

Here are some details:
1. Most regional hospitals and small community hospitals are not prepared adequately, nor is their staff trained to handle even a single highly contagious Ebola victim that stumbles into the closest ER, bleeding from every orifice.  What are most going to do with them once they have them?  They will assess them for disease and do what medical professionals do every.single.day, put their own lives at risk to save others (This assumes that at this point in the epidemic that enough doctors and nurses have decided it is worth it to keep coming to work...a big assumption for some that went into medicine for the wrong reasons).

2. If this virus reaches anywhere close to a tipping point, people will have no idea they even have the virus or were exposed to anyone with it, as they may think they just have the flu, decide to work anyway or send their sick children to school anyway.  Remember the onset of Ebola is very much like that of the flu.  In a country where medical costs are outrageous, the working poor will do what is rational which is continue working and sending their infected kids to school.  It doesn't matter what they should do, or would like to do, they like to eat and put a roof over their head and there is no back up child care available to them.  When the going gets really rough, like bleeding from the eyes, rough, they will eventually seek medical treatment, but far too late to prevent a potential public health nightmare created by their rational behavior.

3. We do not have sufficient ways to contain the virus in a population where human rights are at least in the top 10 priorities of our Constitution (okay, let's be real it is not #1 and if you believe that I can guess your race and socio-economic status in 1.5 seconds flat, remember, I am an Economist and Sociologist by training).  On any given day, I can jump in my car in Kentucky and I can put my foot down on the soil of most of the 48 contiguous states within 3 days, 5 of them within 3 HOURS!.  I don't have to ask for permission, I don't have to be screened by anyone, I just CAN. 

4. Quarantines work when people cooperate, choose honesty when facing unknown repercussions, and make their medical condition known to authorities.  We can quarantine citizens but by then, how many have already been put at risk.  These numbers start to get out of control quickly. 

5. Dogs can become infected with Ebola-Zaire and produce antibodies and excrete the virus in their stool and urine.  Can they transmit it to humans?  Are you ready....WE.DON'T.KNOW!  In a country where you are far more worried about where your own next meal is coming from,having a canine mouth to feed is highly unlikely and completely irrational.  How about in America where dogs are members of the family that sleep in the same beds with their owners?!

6. Tens of thousands of American lives are lost to the flu every year, and we have a vaccine for it that many people refuse to take (albeit for many and varied rational reasons)!  You could say that many would more willingly take a vaccine for a disease that has a 50% mortality rate but remember we still have hundreds of millions of Americans to vaccinate which is a logistics challenge, in an ideal set of circumstances, much less during mass chaos and hysteria.  

So what do we do now?  We can rejoice that it seems we dodged the bullet this time. We can dig deep, talk to professionals in many and varied disciplines outside of the medical profession and we can make sound public policy decisions and allocate adequate resources.  Some of these policy decisions will test our resolve and make us feel very uncomfortable.  But being uncomfortable beats being dead.

Any when BioProcessing, the company located in Kentucky, has produced enough Ebola fighting compound, a suspected cure for Ebola ,made from....(wait for it)...tobacco, we can all breath easier, both literally and figuratively.  Fortunately, the land of my birth and where I choose to call home, is exceptionally good at growing tobacco and we could really use the jobs.  (And if you are registered to vote in the land of my birth, for the love and anything and everything, please Ditch Mitch & vote for Alison!) 

Perhaps now that the potential cure to this horrific virus can be found in a previous delivery mechanism of death, we will think differently about a lot of things.  Maybe we have just been using tobacco wrong all of these years?! In an ironic twist of fate, perhaps it took the deaths of millions of Americans from tobacco smoke, and a potential epidemic to realize the life saving mechanism of tobacco was under our nose, literally and figuratively, all along.

So when Sequestration rears its ugly head again, and it will, just think of all the potential medicinal uses of Kentucky Bourbon we might be missing?! Okay, and in all seriousness, as the 101st Airborne Division out of Ft. Campbell, Kentucky is mobilized in a last ditch effort to try and keep Ebola-Zaire in Western Africa, ask yourself why bullets are funded more often and freely than the National Institute of Health.  One funds death re-actively, the other funds life proactively.

And according to Maria, the Reverend Mother said, "When the Lord closes a door, somewhere he opens a window".  It is our job to look for that window and not break the damn thing with our efforts. 

Rainy Days, My Congressmen, and ISIS Really Get Me Down

Enough already! Could the torrential rain please stop in Kentucky?  Flash flood warnings, impassable roads, and flooding basements (including my own) have become so common, we have forgotten what a normal rain event feels like around here. We smashed some daily and monthly rainfall records in August, last night, and every day, or so it seems. It is getting a bit moldy and mildewy as everything is a bit soggy around here. My garden is full of tomatoes that never got their time to shine, pun intended, and rot claimed them.  For a gardener, food rotting on the vine is pretty depressing, let me tell ya.

And I have a confession to make.  Okay, let's be real, I have a lot of those but I will let you in on just one of them today; I did not watch Obama address the nation about ISIS last night.  

And make no mistake, it is not that I think that ISIS, whom I refer to as "It's Satan!,It's Satan!", isn't worthy of my attention and concern (did I tell you I am a Presbyterian and we don't talk about Satan much, although we probably should, but let's just say that Dana Carvey and the Church Lady were not Presbyterian). ISIS is truly a horrifying nightmare to everyone on this planet, not just Christians and democracies. 

It's not that I don't like Obama, in fact the contrary it true, I proudly cast my vote for him twice and I sing his praises to anyone who will listen (did I tell you I am a classically trained soprano? so it isn't my singing that is the problem).  But those that want to hear the truth, or talk about substantive topics at all, are few and far between these days.  Our society has little tolerance for serious discourse and as a result of this, those chickens will come home to roost one day, typically in the form of a world war. 

And while many of you have most likely not watched a live Presidential address to the nation in years, I RARELY miss them.  I am ashamed of myself. Instead of listening to the leader of the free world explain his plan of dealing with this hell on earth, I went to bed. Yep, I did, I went to bed at 9pm (and my 4 year old joined me 30 minutes later, and my husband put the 4 year old back in her bed, and came to bed himself most likely around 11 but I digress...).  

Fear not, I told myself, fortunately we live in the digital age, right?  With 24/7 media coverage, not only could I find 10 different replays of his address this morning, if I looked hard enough on YouTube I could likely find a parody of it to the tune of the latest Taylor Swift song, Shake it Off. This song is kind of catchy.  You can watch the video on YouTube here ----->, Shake it off .  (did I tell you there were 12 years of my life that I wore tutus and danced en pointe like the ballerinas in that video? Don't believe me, here's proof!)  

Anywho, fundamentally you have to understand that I am am one of those "Be the change you want to see in the world" kind of gals.  And last night, all I was concerned about was when the sheets were changed last and that is shameful I tell you, shameful.  What has happened to me?!

I think what has happened is I am a tired mother of small children who pays attention and can't turn her brain off.  And because I was raised by liberals, and am a card carrying one myself, I care deeply about not only my corner of the world but every corner of the world (did I tell you some of my best friends are conservative Republicans, including the guy I have been sleeping with for 18 years?).

I am not one to typically bail when the misery index of the world reaches outrageous levels but the sadness of 9/11, the legitimate fear of "It's Satan!, It's Satan!", my Congressional representation in Washington (did I tell you that Kentucky really needs to ditch Mitch?), and the continued flash flooding in Kentucky is making me crazy.  And when the going gets tough, the crazy go to bed, or she did last night.

Eh, in time I am sure I will just shake it off as the "haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, but I'm just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, shake" (if you are lost, watch the video!). And if you are a Kentuckian, for the love of anything and everything, vote for Alison. 

Dear Ann Coulter...if you are looking for moral decay, look no further than your own reflection in the mirror

On June 25th, just days before the US World Cup Soccer team played their hearts out representing the United States of American in a single elimination round match against Belgium, Ann Coulter, a well known right-wing, conservative talking head, made an ass of herself. This wasn't the first time she has done this, and I promise you it won't be the last.

If you missed it, or would like to waste precious minutes of your life reading her nonsensical, hatred filled ranting you may read it here:  Ann Coulter's Hate Speech about....Soccer?!

While I refuse to waste precious time out of my life to do point & counter point on each of her ill conceived rantings, I have chosen a few that I would like to address.

According to Coulter, 

(1) Individual achievement is not a big factor in soccer. In a real sport, players fumble passes, throw bricks and drop fly balls -- all in front of a crowd. When baseball players strike out, they're standing alone at the plate. But there's also individual glory in home runs, touchdowns and slam-dunks. 

In soccer, the blame is dispersed and almost no one scores anyway. There are no heroes, no losers, no accountability, and no child's fragile self-esteem is bruised. There's a reason perpetually alarmed women are called "soccer moms," not "football moms." 

This woman has obviously never actually PLAYED soccer or she would realize how ridiculous she sounds here.  Perhaps Ms. Coulter is unaware that goals are scored by individuals and defended by individuals.  When goals are missed wide or high or right, they are also missed by the individual and in the case of the World Cup, in front of a WORLD audience.

And Ms. Coulter, the number one job of a goal keeper, such as Tim Howard , the new United States "Secretary of Defense" is to prevent the ball from going into the goal, making sure that "no one scores anyway"  If the amount of points scored defines your value of a sport, are you sure you have even watched a major league baseball game?!  

(2) Liberal moms like soccer because it's a sport in which athletic talent finds so little expression that girls can play with boys. No serious sport is co-ed, even at the kindergarten level. 

I am a liberal. I am a mom. I like soccer.  Not only that, I am a liberal mom of one son and one daughter, who coaches soccer. Ms. Coulter, you are none of these!  Until you are raising even one member of the next generation of Americans, you cannot pretend to tell me why I enjoy the game so much that I have both children playing it on gender separated teams, and take the time to coach the ALL BOYS team of second and third graders that I do. And Ms. Coulter before you disparage your gender any further, it is the girls who dominate the boys at this age, as their coordination and ability to focus are more developed.

And Ms. Coulter, I coach like a girl and I am proud of it.  And although I was the only female coach in our age division, we won, A LOT.  We won because I taught my players that team work is exceedingly important but I also tried to develop each player to their own set of strengths as an individual.  

(7) It's foreign. In fact, that's the precise reason the Times is constantly hectoring Americans to love soccer. One group of sports fans with whom soccer is not "catching on" at all, is African-Americans. They remain distinctly unimpressed by the fact that the French like it. 

Ms. Coulter, perhaps if you or I were African-Americans, we might be able to speak to this, but neither of us qualify here.  But, I can assure you, they could give a rat's ass whether the French like it or not.  My education in economics would suggest that most likely it comes down to opportunity cost, earnings potential and specialization of "labor", in regards to your beloved football and basketball, but that would bore my readers so I will leave it at that. The bottom line is that the above statement is in poor taste and divisive, not that I should be surprised. 

(9) Soccer is not "catching on." Headlines this week proclaimed "Record U.S. ratings for World Cup," and we had to hear -- again -- about the "growing popularity of soccer in the United States." 

.............

If more "Americans" are watching soccer today, it's only because of the demographic switch effected by Teddy Kennedy's 1965 immigration law. I promise you: No American whose great-grandfather was born here is watching soccer. One can only hope that, in addition to learning English, these new Americans will drop their soccer fetish with time. 

Ms. Coulter, 28,000 fans attended just 1 viewing party at Chicago's Soldier Field.  They gathered together to watch it on TV, nothing live was even happening in the stadium for goodness sake! And this was only one of such viewing parties that drew tens of thousands of Americans together around the country to cheer on their national team. Additionally, the largest demographic that has grown up playing soccer in this amazing country caught on to soccer just over a decade ago. It is the demographic that chooses to consume your hate speech that would benefit from "catching on" to a sport that the entire world adores.

I have great, great, great-grandfathers that were born here and I awoke yesterday to find my 7 and 4 year old watching the replay of the US vs. Ghana World Cup game ON DEMAND. I have to believe that I am doing something right when they chose a soccer game over Disney Junior.

Coulter begins her tirade with the statement below:

I've held off on writing about soccer for a decade -- or about the length of the average soccer game -- so as not to offend anyone. But enough is enough. Any growing interest in soccer can only be a sign of the nation's moral decay. 

I will end my tirade with this.  Please Ms. Coulter, do us all a favor, quit writing all together. I agree, enough is enough.  If you are looking for a sign of this nation's moral decay, simply look at your own reflection in the mirror.  Fortunately, the raising of the next generation of Americans is not in your hands.