HeidiAllen.com

Another Martin Luther King Jr Day has come, and again, news outlets phone in their headlines about the “Slain Civil Rights Leader”. They take the safe, easy way out, disrespecting King by painting him merely as a black leader while ignoring important and still-controversial components of his great legacy. While King was undoubtedly the most important figure of the civil rights era, he was also much, much more.

Like pretty much all of my heroes, Dr. King was driven by Love.. Love with a capital “L”. Love led him to active compassion. Compassion naturally extended into a committment to non-violence, social justice and human rights. His civil rights work, condemnation of the Vietnam War, of nuclear proliferation and of colonialism were just some of the ways in which Dr. King acted as a humble servant of Love.

The King Center, founded by his wife, Coretta Scott King, quotes him thus:

“Life’s most persistent and nagging question, he said, is `what are you doing for others?’.”

This is why they call MLK Day ‘A Day of Service’ and ‘A Day On, Not A Day Off‘. Put aside some time to serve others, even if it’s just for an hour or two. By honoring King’s legacy, you’ll also honor the best within yourself.

The watered down King tributes try to make Dr. King’s vision something small and non-threatening… some anachronism tied to a single, supposedly resolved issue and time. The real Martin Luther King, Jr presented us… all of us… with a challenge that is as critically important today as the day he uttered these quotes:

“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”

“True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”

“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”

“They are talking about peace as a distant goal, as an end we seek, but one day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal we seek, but that it is a means by which we arrive at that goal. We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means. All of this is saying that, in the final analysis, means and ends must cohere because the end is preexistent in the means, and ultimately destructive means cannot bring about constructive ends.”

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction….The chain reaction of evil–hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars–must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.”

“…we are challenged to achieve a world perspective. Anyone who feels that we can live in isolation today, anyone who feels that we can live without being concerned about other individuals and other nations is sleeping through a revolution. The world in which we live is geographically one. The great challenge now is to make it one in terms of brotherhood.”

“We must all learn to live together as brothers – or we will all perish together as fools. This is the great issue facing us today. No individual can live alone; no nation can live alone. We are tied together.”

“All I’m saying is simply this: that all mankind is tied together; all life is interrelated, and we are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be – this is the interrelated structure of reality.”

“We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late.”

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”

I used to be an independent IT contractor, and one of the things that I disliked about the job was the difficulty in getting behemoth companies to react to changing technology. There seemed to be three primary reasons for this:

1. The opinions of high level managers trumped the advice from experts. No effort was made to weigh differing opinions against the facts.
2. Pre-existing contracts with fellow behemoth companies made upgrading to current technology legally impossible and/or financially prohibitive.
3. Employees comfortable with the existing technology were so fearful of change that they would impede or even sabotage attempts to bring software and hardware up to date.

This last phenomenon appeared to happen primarily on a subconscious, rather than conscious level. However, there were contractors whose continued lucrative employment depended on the ongoing use of outdated technology. On at least one occassion, a contractor bragged to me that he had so “personalized” his code that the company would have to continue renewing his contract forever if they wanted their technology to work.

Bottom line: The customers of these companies suffered, whether they were aware of it or not. Their data was harder to obtain. Customer Service reps had access to fewer tools, which slowed them down. Websites were designed by third parties with no understanding of specific customer needs and expectations. Lastly, updates rarely happened.

Surfing around the web, I see these problems played out repeatedly. Today, I came across the International Finance Corporation’s page, ‘How To Report Fraud and Corruption‘. The IFC is a member of the World Bank, and is the world’s largest lender for privately financed projects in “developing” nations. Billions of dollars and millions of lives ride of its ability to operate efficiently and effectively. Yet this short, but important webpage features not a form, but a clickable email address.

Why  is that a problem? First of all, users should have some sort of guidance as to the specific information they need to provide when it comes to something this important. Web forms are commonplace these days. A business entity of IFC’s size shouldn’t be using a method that’s at least a decade old.

Of greater concern, spammers have software that “crawls” the web, much like search engines do. This software looks for email addresses. Congratulations, IFC! You’ll receive so much spam that it will be nearly impossible to sort the junk from legitimate fraud complaints.

But my post isn’t intended to target the IFC. Rather, I’m presenting a problem in search of a solution. How do you change entrenched corporate culture? How do you get an elephant to move with the speed of a gazelle? Google does it, so clearly, such a thing is possible. Now the new paradigm needs to propagate… faster.

I sent this letter to President Obama, House Speaker Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Reid just now. If you see this in time and agree, please do the same. Feel free to use my letter as a template.

Dear __________:

When reconciling the Senate and House health bills, please favor the House bill.

As you know, the Senate bill:

* Has no public option, a critical component of any real healthcare reform.

* Would restrict access to abortion. (In states like Texas, “abstinence education” is the only sex education available. Rates of infanticide are high. Further limits on abortion access will mean the deaths of more children who have already been born.)

* Tax a worker’s health coverage to pay for reform. (Give to the right hand and take from the left hand?)

* Allow insurance companies to remain exempt from anti-trust laws.

In addition, please reconsider the requirement that all Americans would be forced to purchase health insurance. Not only is this a giveaway to the insurance industry, which has already proven itself unable to behave in an ethical manner, but it would cause widespread hardship.

For example, I doubt my household would qualify for subsidies that would help us to purchase insurance, but I can’t imagine how we could handle another bill, especially now that we’re struggling to pay off the obscene hospital charges from a recent accident.

If it’s too late to remove this requirement from the final bill, then please choose the House version over the Senate version.

Thank you in advance for your consideration.

Sincerely,
Heidi Allen

One of the reasons I post so infrequently is that I can’t bring myself to write anything without putting in hours or even days of research, and editing a dozen times or more.

Yes, it’s true. I’m a perfectionist. (Whatta surprise, eh?) Anyway, I’m going to try to relax my OC tendancies a bit in the service of blogging more often. Let’s see if I can bring myself to actually do it.

On a side note, we have an osprey who’s set up shop in a tree along the river in front of our house. It’s an impressive creature, but it’s been screaming non-stop for the past half hour.

Seeing as an osprey’s cry is similar to that of an eagle’s, I keep thinking that the Colbert Report is about to begin. I hope it’s catching some big fish down there!

If anyone is interested, I now have a Flickr account (photos). I’ll work hard to keep it interesting.

Ah! So long since I’ve posted. I always have so much to write about, but never any time to write. But onto the post…

I was sent a link to a video entitled ‘Nerdy Kid Shreds on the Accordion‘. I watched the video and was blown away. I’ve never heard an accordion sound that incredible! It’s like an entire orchestra fired up with passion.

I was immediately reminded of the violin virtuoso Pope in the film ‘The Red Violin’. And I had some questions:

How do THEY know he’s a nerd?
What’s his name?
Shouldn’t a guy this good get some respect?

Being the OCD researcher that I am, I just had to know the answers to my questions. It took less than 10 minutes, with the help of YouTube and a translation tool. The kid’s name is Aleksandr Hrustevich. He seems to be Ukranian, and you can see more videos of his work here.

Based on the number of professional accordionists that subscribe to his channel, it looks like he IS getting some respect, and he should. Check it out. You’ll be glad you did!

The more I hear about James von Brunn, the more I think about Bodean Gazzer.

Gazzer was the main villain in author Carl Hiaasen’s dark comedy ‘Lucky You’, published in 1997. Racism provides Gazzer with both the perfect excuse for his failings and the fuel to propel him forward. Every poor decision and unfortunate event can somehow be blamed upon minorities or the government, alleviating him of any personal responsibility.

The fervor of his hatred gives him strength. The seductiveness of his reasoning sucks in others. After all, they’re being offered a chance to be cleansed of their sins… by making those sins someone else’s fault.

Gazzer and his disciples have found a less painful way to hate themselves. Ironically, by removing the impetus to improve as human beings, their hidden self-loathing will only grow.

This kind of hate engine can ultimately lead to violence. The bitterness builds, along with the derangement of logic. If left unchecked, the self-proclaimed “patriot” may well implode mentally, taking a course of action that’s both self-destructive and harmful to the perceived enemy.

Some readers found the character of Bodean Gazzer to be way over the top. There were hints that Hiaasen himself might be prejudiced against “rednecks” and “white trash”. Having grown up in Florida, I know that Gazzer is neither one of these. These terms refer to those who take their worldview from the culture into which they’re born. People like Gazzer actively build their own paranoid reality… and there are more of them than you might think.

Now we have murderer and white supremacist James von Brunn, a sort of uber-Gazzer whose exploits and ravings far exceed anything Hiaasen has ever concocted. Despite this, the mechanism behind their madness is the same. We owe Hiaasen a debt of gratitude for so starkly revealing it.

As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, "Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.". Seemingly in response, Lord Byron declared, "Truth is stranger than fiction.". And it certainly is.

The United States Congress wants to pass some kind of healthcare reform this year. Unfortunately, most Senators and Congressman are refusing to consider the least complex, least expensive, most universal option… single payer healthcare. That means that help is probably NOT on its way.

If you’re dealing with a health issue now, and are struggling financially, you may want to consider medical tourism. This is true even if you have insurance. The cost will probably be less than your deductible.

This past September, I went to Costa Rica for a month to see a gastroenterologist and an opthamologist. Both speak English and are highly respected physicians. You won’t believe how little it cost me!

With the opthamologist, I had 4 or 5 office visits to fit one eye for a contact lens and adjust it properly. I also purchased 3 months worth of Acuvue daily use contact lenses.

With the gastroenterologist, I had an office visit, a gastroscopy, a colonoscopy, surgery and lab tissue analysis. (I was diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease, which is often missed.)

I also purchased a 2-3 month supply of a handful of medications, including Nexium.

While I was at the hospital, I started to go into a diabetic coma. The staff acted quickly, giving me a glucose IV and keeping me conscious until my levels returned to normal. My nurse spoke English.

The total cost for ALL of this was $1,855.34.

My air travel came to $745.02, including the Costa Rican airport tax.

I stayed with my mother, who lives in Costa Rica, so my lodging expenses were $0. However, there are many decent hotels with rooms for $35 a night. You can find hostels for even less. Most include breakfast.

Better yet, you could rent a room for a month from someone with a home. You should be able to find something for around $300. (Also check here.)

My food and miscellaneous expenses came to $181.61.

In the U.S., the average cost for just a colonoscopy is $3,081. My entire month-long vacation cost less than that, and I would still have had $300 left over for lodging.

(I’ve also had extensive dental work done in Costa Rica. My dentists had some equipment that even my US dentist didn’t have!)

It’s worth noting that my Tico (Costa Rican) doctors were much more accessible than my US doctors. They provided email addresses, and invited me to contact them at any time. (They’ve both responded promptly to emails since.)

My gastroenterologist had two copies of a full report including color photos ready for me when I regained consciousness after my surgery. My lab physician insisted on giving me my results personally so that he could tell me how sorry he was for my Crohn’s Disease diagnosis.

(UPDATE: The US Embassy in Costa Rica maintains a list of medical providers.)

If you decide to go to Costa Rica for medical tourism, here’s some tips:

* DO NOT rent or drive a car. Use taxis and buses, or hire a Tico driver. Costa Rica has one of the world’s highest accident rates, and people unfamiliar with the awful roads and bizarre traffic customs should not be driving.

* Learn some Spanish before you go. Yes, learning even the basics of another language can be tough, but it will be worth it… big time! Most Ticos do not speak English. (Why should they?)

* Arrive with at least $20 in colones in your pocket. At the very least, you’ll need to pay for a cab or bus to your hotel.

* Learn to count in colones… in Spanish!

* Buy a pocket translator / currency converter.

* Do not exchange money at the airport or through independent money exchangers. Do it at a bank. Also avoid ATM machines if at all possible.

* Make color photocopies of your passport, driver’s license and plane ticket as soon as you can after arriving. (You want a passport copy with the stamp that proves you entered Costa Rica legally.) Carry these with you rather than the originals. Keep the originals somewhere safe.

* Wear a money belt or other hiding place for valuables. If you’re carrying more than one item of luggage, break up your cash, credit cards and important documents so that the theft of one item won’t cause you to lose everything. Tourists are always targets, no matter where in the world you travel.

* Take a good look at the Costa Rica By Bus website and consider buying their guide. The website offers lots of excellent, free advice.

* Also thoroughly read the pertinent parts of Lonely Planet’s Costa Rica pages and consider buying their guide.

* Study a map of Costa Rica, especially San Jose.

* Stay away from bars. They’re trouble magnets, especially if you’re a male Gringo or a female alone. (Side note: I went to a club with a Tica friend and made the mistake of going out on the dance floor by myself. Within seconds, two men began grinding their bodies against me and a larger crowd of men gathered to await their turn!)

* Avoid US fast food chains, especially McDonald’s. My brother (for some reason I utterly fail to understand) went to McDonald’s on his first day in Costa Rica and got food poisoning. Tico food is better anyway! On the other hand, the Pizza Hut in San Jose is considered a fancy place to eat. (?!)

* Do yourself a favor and try Gallo Pinto (Painted Rooster) at least once while you’re visiting. I live on this stuff every time I go. (It’s usually vegan!) The dish is basically fried rice and beans with some red veggie bits and seasoning, but the description doesn’t really do it justice. Ask a Tico friend for a soda (casual restaurant) recommendation.

If you’ve downloaded the WRW (WorldRadio Widget) from the Apple Dashboard Widget website, and you can’t get it to work, you probably don’t yet have RealPlayer or Flip4Mac Player installed. (For RealPlayer, use version 10. Version 11 causes dropouts when switching back to your desktop.)

WRW enables you to listen to over 1,000 radio stations from around the globe… very cool! However, it’s a little bit buggy. Once you install it, click on the “i” in the lower right corner, then select the ‘Update’ tab and click on the ‘Download all radio stations’ button. You’ll get a message telling you how many stations there are to download. (Don’t worry. The download is quick.)

You have to click on the ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ buttons. These are nearly invisible and located to the right of the message. You’ll then get a message when the download is complete, and will have to click the ‘Ok’ button. This is another almost invisible button just below the message.

Next, select a country and a radio station, then click on the Play arrow. You should see “Contacting../Connecting….” in orange letters on WRW’s screen. Sometimes, it takes minute or two to connect. When the “Connecting…” message disappears and there’s still no music, the widget has given up trying to reach that station. Try another one.

If you aren’t able to connect to any station and the controls stop working, you may have to close WRW and start the whole process over again. In fact, you’ll have to do this every time you restart your computer, but hey!… It’s free.

Be forewarned that it will take a little time to find interesting music. I had no idea how severely bad dance pop has infected the planet. Apparently, you can’t escape it anywhere. I just listened to an Egyptian station playing clone-pop that featured male singers demanding sex… now!

Not exactly what you’d expect, but then again, isn’t that what channel surfing is all about?  ;)

Easter’s coming, and that means that many people will be tempted to buy chicks, ducklings and rabbits as gifts for their kids. Every major animal advocacy organization in the US has come out against this practice, and for good reason. Rather than repeating their warnings, allow me to share my own personal experiences related to this annual tragedy.

When I was in the fifth grade, our teacher thought it would be a good idea to bring in five or six tiny chicks for us to celebrate Easter. She let the class come over to the incubator tank to “pet” the chicks. I was a skinny, short kid, so I was one of the last kids to get a turn.

By the time I stood up on my tiptoes to look through the glass, only one chick was still alive. And it wasn’t going to be alive much longer. One of its legs had been ripped off. The tank was filled with chick blood and chick parts. It was very traumatic for me.

The teacher came over to see what was wrong and was shocked by what she saw. She demanded to know who in the class would have done such a thing. All the kids sincerely swore that they’d only pet the chicks. I knew they weren’t lying. They were just kids, and they were used to petting dogs and cats.

Chicks and ducklings are unbelievably fragile. A simple attempt by a child to run their fingers through the chick’s fluff can result in ripping off a wing. And even if the chick or duckling manages to survive a child’s curiousity, what will your family or class do with them when they grow up?

As for rabbits, they don’t like to be picked up or cuddled. They can really hurt you by biting, or kicking off against your chest, arms or legs by using their rear claws. And they require a lot of specialized care.

I used to go walking in a big park almost every evening. A couple of days after Easter, rabbits started showing up everywhere. They weren’t the small, brown rabbits I was used to, but rather, were showy and large.

The rabbits were terrified of everything. I couldn’t get near them. Meanwhile, people would take their dogs to this park and let them run off-leash. The dogs would attack the rabbits, and within a few months, all that was left to remind me of the whole nightmare were the rabbit bones scattered everywhere.

On a side note, dumping dogs or cats in rural areas to “live in the wild” doesn’t have a happy ending, either. I’ve been living out in “the country” for the past 7 years or so, and what I’ve seen is that coyotes are very grateful when you give them tasty kitty snacks. Farmers will shoot any unknown dog to make sure it doesn’t attack their livestock.

We met one of our cats when he showed up on our front porch one day and rolled over to reveal the bloody, black, twisted mess that remained of his testicles and belly. A chicken/goat farmer down the road had decided to teach him a lesson by employing a goat castration elastic. Cat flesh just isn’t remotely as tough as goat flesh. We were able to save his life with emergency surgery, but he’ll always have problems as a result of his experience.

Bottom line: Don’t bring an animal into your home unless you’re prepared to care for it for the rest of its life, which can be a considerable length of time. Learn in advance what its needs are. You may not be able to meet them.

Know that you won’t be able to just drop it off at a shelter if things don’t work out. Most shelters stay full and it can take months before they have an opening. Shelters with faster turnover tend to euthanize (kill) animals that aren’t adopted quickly. And releasing an animal “into the wild” will probably result in its death.

If you’re still determined to bring a pet bunny, chick or duckling home for Easter, see these care tips for rabbits or these care tips for chickens and ducks.