a little red hen

Why Healthcare Reform Could Fail, or Please, don't stand next to me in the checkout line!

You are lying in a critical care bed in upstate New York.  A nurse approaches.  Has she washed her hands?  Maybe.  Has she had an H1N1 flu shot.  No!  How safe are you feeling?  If I were still living in NYC, this would be my newest concern.  Back in NYC, a large number of healthcare workers are refusing these shots because required to do so.  Oh, it would be okay if they could be in charge of the decision?

"We don't feel the government should have the right to force us to put any substance -- whether or not the government feels it's safe -- into our body," said Laura Ally, a critical-care nurse at St. Peter's Hospital in Albany. New York is the first state to mandate flu shots for healthcare workers.  According to this news report, a group of them will rally for their questionable cause  at the state capitol.  Makes me wonder how long before the U.S., led by folks such as these, will rid itself of a central government.

Ever since our daughter and son-in-law had their first child in Portland, Oregon, one fact worried me more than others.   Many parents here are opposed to vaccination for their children...read this scary story from last Fall.   The elementary school our 7 year old  attends has one of the highest rates of children whose families have opted out of innoculations for their kids.  Wondering if these same folks as as committed to the idea of reproductive choice for women as they are to making my grandchildren's surroundings unsafe.

We had a new sort of experience in getting our own yearly flu shots this weekend.  Three pharmacies in town had advertised FREE shots.  We'd missed the September dates at Wahlgreen's (where it was not clear whether we'd have to pay $25) and Rite-Aid.  At Safeway, we got an appointment for the next day, used Medicare.  If we had any doubts before, we now know that reform of the healthcare system could fail because the money does not follow our having a more rational system. And, reason two, there are a remarkable number of uneducated people standing in the checkout line. Powerful combo.

Mandatory-Healthcare-Factoid:  "Pilgrims who travel to Mecca this Fall Get Oral Vaccine," whether they like it or not,  as reported in Tuesday, September 29, "Science" section of the New York Times.  [sorry, could not find link]

Slow Knitting in the City of Roses

Yes, yes, I am way behind on details of our many good experiences, educational and environmental, in the place from which we are now voting--Portland, Oregon.  [NYC friends ask, "How you doing with the rain?"  What rain; it's been gloriously sunny.] 

Most immediate issue (after more and more

emails to our new congresspeople about single payer/public option health care legislation) is yarn.  How to store it and where it fits in my life.  Will I make something from this 50/50 wool and hemp?  Bought at some fiber fair a few years back, no memory of my plan.  Sunday we return to OFFF (Oregon Flock & Fiber Fest) in Canby. 

Will the PDX Knitters respond to the idea of Slow Knitting as a new category in fiberland?  Last year, they were  quite good-natured about modeling the Couverle Condom Amulet (a newsboy kind of cap.)  "So how is it different?" a knitter I met yesterday at the OSHER program (more on that later) asked me.

Needlecrafts have become explosively popular among younger knitters, I answered, so different from the days when one was simply "a knitter."  One example is the "Sock Summit" held at the Convention Center here August 5-7.  Someone needs to tell me whether the number who attended from around the world was 7,000 or 17,000; these women, and a few men, are intense and constantly producing.  That's fine but just one pair of booties is a big project for me.  Feels vintage to say to an enthusiastic foot-coverer, "I knit my last socks in the 1950s."

We all know that I definitely am vintage and have the incipient arthritis to prove it!  So Ron and I have had one of those talks about our visit to OFFF.  He will check out  fiber for potential additions to his spinning stash.  My own plan: locate other Slow Knitters.  But no new yarn purchases--would love to hear  ideas for  small things to make for family and friends-- with what's already on hand--like the 8-inch stuffed animal almost finished for youngest granddaughter. 

Speaking of Knitting Small...in  public ways to save the world as we know it--Oberlin College, my alma mater, has published a lovely piece about The Oberlin Condom Amulet in their current issue. Thanks to Google, the Alumni magazine editor called, then made the immodest proposal to the powers-that-be.

Rachel Walden of Women's Health News, an alum from a later decade, has mentioned it but there has not been a stampede yet from startled women over 50 gasping "...I never heard of that..."

By the way,  check out Rachel's post at Our Bodies Our Blog about a recent study  connecting  HRT and lung cancer...may raise more questions than it answers.

Elderblogging 2.0 Begins in PDX Retirement Community

Ten days into our altered lifestyle in the northwest.  Besides the physical part of getting settled, accepting that we really did not reduce our possessions enough, there's much to experience--in addition to our family.  Last week we went to  orientation for SSI, Senior Studies Initiative,  sponsored by the local community college.  We'd enjoyed a couple of their "Current Events" meetings last winter on our "deciding" visit.   There are six sites around town, only one close by. 

It took place in Lake Oswego, very leafy with big houses; I wondered how people get there without a car.  Intrigued that one of the groups has a presentation scheduled on Emma Goldman.  Looking forward to that.  Today, after a trip to an ENT doctor (nose-bleeding is my dramatic response to the move), I mentioned to Ron that our time so far has felt very suburban.  Must get out of the car soon, take mass transit buses and light rail which are very available from our place.

Saturday we stopped by the Belmont Street Fair, an annual explosion of  hippie-dom plus eviro and neighborhood consciousness.  Not the only one, of course; the city is filled this time of year with celebration, fruit festivals.  Young people come to several parts of Portland for the lifestyle of music and tatoos, live alongside young families who sort of like that atmosphere.  This is the world we know from visiting our daughter in a nearby neighborhood. 

Yesterday I went to the Terwilliger Users Group (TUG to insiders) and was amazed by how many people were there.  Must have been forty, men and women.  A woman gave a talk about Facebook which I was pleased to hear.  Each of our children, different as they are from one another, is now on it.  When I had dinner in New York before we left with Lisa Daehlin, the soprano/knitter, she told me I ought to consider it for the Condom Amulet project.  It's thanks to her that there's a group for it on Ravelry but Facebook does have some perks not available there. 

The staff tech person (how cool is that?) for Terwilliger Plaza had mentioned there were a couple of other folks with blogs living here, so I asked if the internal website might list them.  It's going to happen.  This is very different from New York City where I never met another blogger near my advanced age.

Tonight another Plaza activity, "Victory for Woman Suffrage in Oregon," a talk with great slides by Dr. Kimberly Jensen of Western Oregon University.  I have been too east-coast-centric about women's studies; was surprised by many western states voted to give women the vote ahead of the opposite coast.  Portland was a leader in moving the Oregon legistlature to do in 1912--on the sixth try and pioneered less ladylike approaches with mass advertising and public displays.  In  her recent book, Minerva, Mobilizing Women in the First World War,  Jensen has written about Dr. Esther Lovejoy, a Portland physician and local leader in women's rights, who was an Army doctor. 

For the coming 2012 centennial of woman suffrage in Oregon, here's a link to an active committee gathering ideas and material--particularly interested in finding photos and letters from the period. 

Zoe, our granddaughter, on a brief visit to our apartment, announced in her four-year-old way (birthday party last Saturday), "What a mess!"  One day we hope to present a better model to our descendants. If we can only figure out where to hang all the pictures, stow the books.

"Grandma, How many boxes left?"

"Quite a few," his grandmother answers.  And does not tell him that it may be some time before every one is emptied.  Tony Patterson, our mover, who did a great job, said there were 140 boxes.  And then there was the furniture--and the car.

Some of the resident chickens are settled and enjoy their view.  That's Zoe, standing rather than sitting, in the first day of nursery school.  Zach on his way to Tae-Kwan-Do class.

 

We are very happy to be here in Portland, Oregon, where people seem less stressed.  Okay, it's an illusion but that's a relief some times too.  So many friends and acquaintances were puzzled that we'd choose to leave the Big Apple.

Our last day in the City, AM, the free newspaper handed out at subway stops, ran a front cover to remind us of the enormity of our decision.  But this works for us--a smaller, gentler place: second stage retirement.