Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Changing Weather
A jet rising from Atlanta and fleeing toward Washington DC flies overhead and takes twelve seconds to cross the branches of a Yellow Pine. It flies into a cloud which at the same height but moving south crosses the branches in forty-nine seconds. The cloud is moving at about one fourth of the jet's speed.
I am 200 plus miles from the DC airports so jets are not climbing or gaining speed when they pass my Wytheville apartment. Jets move at 500 to 600 mph as they cross my sky. Mid sky clouds are moving south, southeast at 150 to 160 mph. That's very fast for a weather front. There are no ground winds now but there are sure going to be soon.
I imagine this high moisture warm air is rushing toward a partial vacuum somewhere over Bermuda. Snow for Spain and France in two days. High winds for southern Virginia.
The five inches of snow that fell on Sunday night melted away this afternoon, and the neighborhood boys have mined the last parking lot piles for snowball ammunition. The wind is forty mph now and sixty degrees feels like thirty. It was so much warmer this morning.
I am 200 plus miles from the DC airports so jets are not climbing or gaining speed when they pass my Wytheville apartment. Jets move at 500 to 600 mph as they cross my sky. Mid sky clouds are moving south, southeast at 150 to 160 mph. That's very fast for a weather front. There are no ground winds now but there are sure going to be soon.
I imagine this high moisture warm air is rushing toward a partial vacuum somewhere over Bermuda. Snow for Spain and France in two days. High winds for southern Virginia.
The five inches of snow that fell on Sunday night melted away this afternoon, and the neighborhood boys have mined the last parking lot piles for snowball ammunition. The wind is forty mph now and sixty degrees feels like thirty. It was so much warmer this morning.
Saturday, January 28, 2012
Lump sum political contribution
Dear Governor Kaine,
I would love to be able to send an additional donation to assist your run for the US Senate. I think the policies put forth by all the Republican candidates really suck.
Unfortunately, I am not able to contribute as all but $200 of my total income each month goes to pay bills. There is the usual rent and utilities, and medical bills to be paid. I hate paying the medical bills, but I have little to say in the matter. Doctors and hospitals have better legal representation than I do and more importantly better rights and privilege. So I pay and use the remaining $200 to buy food.
A bit more than a year ago, my mammogram showed a mass and caused a small cancer scare. My Nurse Practitioner referred me to a surgeon for a confirming biopsy. She made the appointment and sent both my pictures and medical records to him. Shortly after I arrived in his office, that doctor's nurse invited me into an exam room where she told me the doctor would not be performing a biopsy on me. She told me that he did not do biopsies on women who had taken hormone replacement therapy. When I mentioned that most postmenopausal women had used some form of hormone therapy, she said he would not do a biopsy on a woman who had saline breast implants. When I questioned her about why he would exclude such women, she told me the doctor would not see me because my medical records showed I was a post-surgical transsexual and he did not want to treat a Transgendered patient. I asked if the doctor could refer me to another surgeon as waiting for this one had already used up six weeks and I worried my suspected breast lump might be growing. She said he would not refer me because he had religious objections to having me as a patient.
I left his office and called my Nurse Practitioner asking for another referral. In a few hours her staff called me back with another appointment with another surgeon. While I waited the next four weeks for this appointment, I received a bill for the first surgeons consultation time. When I called to express my dismay at being billed for a service I had been refused, I was told that I owed the amount because I had seen his nurse and consulted with her.
I submitted the bill to my employer's insurance company. They wrote back saying surgical procedures could not be paid in my case because the medical insurance coverage did not cover procedures for transsexuals. They suggested I send the bill to the net insurance company as my employer, Kmart was switching providers after the first of the year.
When I arrived for the appointment with the new surgeon, his office manager invited me into her office. She told me the doctor had looked at my medical file that day and had decided not to see me. She let me know that he refused to treat transsexual women because he believed we were inherently evil. She expressed her sympathy, but said there was nothing she could do. At least, I never received a bill from her or the doctor.
Now three months after the first finding of a lump and having it confirmed by a mammogram, I still had not had a biopsy. My Nurse Practitioner found two additional lumps at my next appointment with her and she scheduled a biopsy at the University of Virginia Women's Oncology Center. Six months after finding the first lump, I began treatment for clear cell carcinoma. It cost a lot more than it should have because of lymph node involvements that had been aggravated waiting so long for a biopsy.
When I presented my bills to the new Kmart insurer, they told me I was not covered by them at all. They said my cancer was a result of my preexisting transsexualism and the law did not require them to pay anything.
Kmart asked me to accept a part-time position or face termination because I had taken medical leave that was not covered by their insurer. They said my leave amounted to excessive personal leave time.
I retired instead. I now draw a reduced Social Security benefit for retiring at 63 instead of at 66 years old. I am still buying groceries and paying past due bills.
Bear with me and I will help your campaign later this year.
Dawn Storrud
I would love to be able to send an additional donation to assist your run for the US Senate. I think the policies put forth by all the Republican candidates really suck.
Unfortunately, I am not able to contribute as all but $200 of my total income each month goes to pay bills. There is the usual rent and utilities, and medical bills to be paid. I hate paying the medical bills, but I have little to say in the matter. Doctors and hospitals have better legal representation than I do and more importantly better rights and privilege. So I pay and use the remaining $200 to buy food.
A bit more than a year ago, my mammogram showed a mass and caused a small cancer scare. My Nurse Practitioner referred me to a surgeon for a confirming biopsy. She made the appointment and sent both my pictures and medical records to him. Shortly after I arrived in his office, that doctor's nurse invited me into an exam room where she told me the doctor would not be performing a biopsy on me. She told me that he did not do biopsies on women who had taken hormone replacement therapy. When I mentioned that most postmenopausal women had used some form of hormone therapy, she said he would not do a biopsy on a woman who had saline breast implants. When I questioned her about why he would exclude such women, she told me the doctor would not see me because my medical records showed I was a post-surgical transsexual and he did not want to treat a Transgendered patient. I asked if the doctor could refer me to another surgeon as waiting for this one had already used up six weeks and I worried my suspected breast lump might be growing. She said he would not refer me because he had religious objections to having me as a patient.
I left his office and called my Nurse Practitioner asking for another referral. In a few hours her staff called me back with another appointment with another surgeon. While I waited the next four weeks for this appointment, I received a bill for the first surgeons consultation time. When I called to express my dismay at being billed for a service I had been refused, I was told that I owed the amount because I had seen his nurse and consulted with her.
I submitted the bill to my employer's insurance company. They wrote back saying surgical procedures could not be paid in my case because the medical insurance coverage did not cover procedures for transsexuals. They suggested I send the bill to the net insurance company as my employer, Kmart was switching providers after the first of the year.
When I arrived for the appointment with the new surgeon, his office manager invited me into her office. She told me the doctor had looked at my medical file that day and had decided not to see me. She let me know that he refused to treat transsexual women because he believed we were inherently evil. She expressed her sympathy, but said there was nothing she could do. At least, I never received a bill from her or the doctor.
Now three months after the first finding of a lump and having it confirmed by a mammogram, I still had not had a biopsy. My Nurse Practitioner found two additional lumps at my next appointment with her and she scheduled a biopsy at the University of Virginia Women's Oncology Center. Six months after finding the first lump, I began treatment for clear cell carcinoma. It cost a lot more than it should have because of lymph node involvements that had been aggravated waiting so long for a biopsy.
When I presented my bills to the new Kmart insurer, they told me I was not covered by them at all. They said my cancer was a result of my preexisting transsexualism and the law did not require them to pay anything.
Kmart asked me to accept a part-time position or face termination because I had taken medical leave that was not covered by their insurer. They said my leave amounted to excessive personal leave time.
I retired instead. I now draw a reduced Social Security benefit for retiring at 63 instead of at 66 years old. I am still buying groceries and paying past due bills.
Bear with me and I will help your campaign later this year.
Dawn Storrud
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Kindness from Strangers
The world is an amazing place.. it often surprises me. In October my little brother was found alive in Polson, Montana by the people at the hospital. He had been missing from our lives and from the eyes of the world for 15 years. My brother road bulls as part of his military tour and the doctors there prescribed a pain killer addiction for him prior to his discharge. After his discharge he would drop out of sight to score on the streets in the Seattle and LA areas. For the last 15 years my sister, Mona and I have often thought of him being dead in a gutter somewhere.
Orin wandered into the emergency room of the Polson hospital on October 15TH and politely asked for help finding his sister Mona. He had no coat, was confused, talked to himself and could only tell the staff that she lived somewhere near a ski mountain in the area. One of the techs noticed that he looked starved and fed him. He was not sent back out into the cold, even though he had no ID of any kind. He was allowed to sleep in the emergency waiting room and the chaplain and the hospital staff got on line trying to find Mona, who lived over a thousand miles away in Deer Park, Washington.
They gave Orin a coat and a bus ticket, asking the driver to make sure he did not leave the bus. Orin was picked up by my niece in Spokane and is now safely staying with my sister.
I hope to get there to visit as soon as I can.
Orin has audio and visual delusions caused by irreparable brain damage. If the folks in Polson had not taken care of him and gone out of their way to help him, he would have died in the winter cold. Hurrah for all who helped him. Thank you so much.
Orin wandered into the emergency room of the Polson hospital on October 15TH and politely asked for help finding his sister Mona. He had no coat, was confused, talked to himself and could only tell the staff that she lived somewhere near a ski mountain in the area. One of the techs noticed that he looked starved and fed him. He was not sent back out into the cold, even though he had no ID of any kind. He was allowed to sleep in the emergency waiting room and the chaplain and the hospital staff got on line trying to find Mona, who lived over a thousand miles away in Deer Park, Washington.
They gave Orin a coat and a bus ticket, asking the driver to make sure he did not leave the bus. Orin was picked up by my niece in Spokane and is now safely staying with my sister.
I hope to get there to visit as soon as I can.
Orin has audio and visual delusions caused by irreparable brain damage. If the folks in Polson had not taken care of him and gone out of their way to help him, he would have died in the winter cold. Hurrah for all who helped him. Thank you so much.
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Designing the Houseboat 1
Last week, I began the pleasant task of designing a place to live and a boat to float in for the next stage of my journey down the New River and then the Ohio River. This short trip is the preview of my continuing travel along the Great Loop. If the boat is a good one I may live aboard for some years in a number of countries.
I started by reviewing all the houseboat plans and views I could find on the internet. Some of these dated back to Old Popular Mechanics issues from the 1950's. A very interesting set of drawings come from Jay Benford, who designed houseboats with ferry boat lines in the early 70's.
Next, I thought about a concrete structure, because I had once read a book on ferro-concrete yacht construction. I laid out a possible design and figured the weight of it. From this I computed the draft (that's how much water it would take to float it) and decided that I would not always have so much water to float her.
Then, I started thinking about high bouyancy systems, like docks and floats that do not require deep water to manuever. I contacted one dock engineer at Dock Hardware and discovered the sizes of standard polyethylene wrapped foam floats used to float docks and breakwaters. Docks are usually built from such floats crowned with steel, aluminum or wood platforms. Breakwaters use the same floats that are then weighted by concrete to rest low in the water and resist wave travel.
The standard measure of flotation for these wrapped foam floats is 65# per cubic foot. Now, even though the engineer used this figure, I think he over estimates. Salt water lifts about 64# per cubic foot and fresh water about 62.4#. I will use 55# as my design figure so I will not under estimate my flotation. This also gives me a 10% safety factor in fresh water and 15% in saltwater.
The floats come in standard sizes, in multiples of 2 and 4 foot lengths. I think a 4' by 8' by 3' float block will give the best lift per draft ratios. Each block can lift 5280#. These blocks cost approximately $620 shipped to the building site, wherever that will be. So each pound of lift costs about $0.12.
I think twelve (12) blocks would float almost any structure I might use. So 63360# of lift costing me $7600 will be one of my design restrictions.
I paced the slip widths at the docking area of Claytor Lake State Park in Virginia. These can take a vessel of 24' beam, so I will use this as my maximum width, because I will do quite a bit of freshwater docking. Length can be much longer and as long as the boat can turn within its own length at a near stop, it can be up to 50 feet at this same facility.
The image below occured on Stumble and I thought I could design a houseboat to display it. So I need a long first story and a smaller second story for this houseboat. That also give rise to roof garden structuring and solar collections. Ignore the roof here and imagine one that is flat above the mushroom and again above the girl. A sort of USA train caboose shape would be fine.
This two story concept led me to give up on the ferro-concrete building idea completely as a concrete two story building with concrete or even steel walls becomes outrageously top-heavy. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 63,000#, which leaves no margin for safety once furnishings are fitted in.
So I began to explore the idea of floating a prefab steel or aluminum building. These are much to pricey for my pocketbook at the moment, so I thought further and decided that a modification of international steel shipping containers would do the trick.
I am looking into costs for these, but at the moment they really interest me. I am thinking two 40' containers welded or bolted side by side with a third 20' container on top. This would give me two decks and the desired shape.
I will add more thoughts tomorrow. Right now I need to review the Wall Street Occupation statements coming out of various encampments.
Sunday, October 16, 2011
My Leaders' Infidelities
Dissatisfaction, sadness and despair are not reasons to become unfaithful. I read these words in a Nora Roberts book. She is an author I really love and admire, but I am not so sure that this statement is a true one. She was speaking about a marriage and about how a father had used these reasons to break his marriage vows to bed another woman. In the mouth of her character, the child-now-grown surviver of such a marriage, why not just end the relationship? Break it clean instead of cheating, lying, tolerating and just existing.
I think about my government, the leaders of that government, both the ones out front and the ones behind the scenes, and wonder as a child of this country, how long they will keep living with their infidelity? A long time ago, these leaders became disenchanted with the rules and mores of our country. They saw that they were not able to accomplish their goals and dreams if they had to be bound by those rules.
They put in place secret societies that promised to protect their members from exposure in the event a member's lawbreaking became public. They called these societies important names like the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Secret Service and the National Security Agency. But, they were just secret societies, formed by a group of cheating husbands to lie for each other in case of need. They could not let the country know that they had abandoned their promise to defend the Constitution so they could make deals with organized crime and criminal businessmen.
The leaders said to themselves, we need to keep our plans secret, we cannot let the public know because they will not understand. We cannot let our allies and especially our enemies know our plans.
By saying this our leaders abandoned the idea of a free and open society. They walked away from a nation of law and stepped on the trust of their people. Another Nora character says, “People have their reasons for the damnedest things in my experience.”
Before a national leader can even be sworn into office, he or she is let in on some of the secrets of the secret societies and is expected to acknowledge a continued allegiance to them. A congress member is sworn to secrecy and may not expose the crimes of past and present leaders. The President is expected to continue the policy of keeping quiet and even approving of new crimes. All the cabinet officers are pledged to allegiance to the societies and not to the flag.
This is not right! We as a people have been violated. Our leaders regularly sneak out to screw around. If one of them should develop a conscience in some area of their actions, that leader is blackmailed and pressured into going along with the societies hidden party politics, and not with the way of open argument and discourse. These secret groups have grown in power with each election since World War One. They decide who will lead and where we will be lead. Banks and companies run by members are now too big to fail. Health care and even minimum financial safety nets are gutted even though the vast majority of the people in open election demanded otherwise.
I fear the people of my country, like the betrayed wife who has long known of her husband's infidelities put up with them and him in the hopes of somehow saving her marriage, have finally come to their senses. Now, we discover whether the divorce will be amicable or hate-filled.
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
From Way Back When "The Doctor Was In"
The doctor, not Kevorkian, but ahead of his utilitarian bioethic time, saw the opportunity. He was not usually in the room where the straps were attached and the button pushed down. He seldom saw that ten year old body jump as all the muscles tightened at once. Technicians and nurses saw these jumps and put the rag in the ten year old mouth before they button pushed. They would come out then reporting, the patient is responsive, nauseous, disoriented but remarkably calm They would tell him that the button had been pushed two, three, perhaps five times and he had prescribed. His staff was well trained.
Today, he was in the room. Two years of electro-convulsive shock therapy had not cured this one. Carefully monitored jolts had not broken through the delusions that plagued this one. This male child still claimed to be a she. Yet the doctor had pledged to cure this child. That strong and healthy body should not forever be the vessel of a poisoned mind. The doctor demanded much of himself and his staff. He demanded a cure.
He was in the room when the button was pushed and stuck. He saw an opportunity when the ten year old body jumped , clinched and kept on clinching. He grabbed that opportunity with all that he had. He grabbed the wrist of a nurse as she reached to pull the clip from the head strap connector. He explained his reasoning as the body relaxed, the eyes stayed open. Doctor and staff, they waited six minutes to pull the plug from the wall.
Some of the skin over the temples pulled away when the head straps were loosened. The doctor seized his opportunity but then the child breathed a shuddering breath. One breath and then another, so the opportunity slipped through the doctor's fingers. The child's parents were entitled to a perfect body untroubled by a poisoned mind. They needed an end to this torture and worry. The doctor needed closure. They weren't going to get it. The child still breathed. .
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)