Healthcare

Lunch time, so I’m going to take advantage of WiFi and post.

Hillary Clinton Promises Universal Healthcare

This is an issue I’ve thought a lot about over the years. As a “fringe person” (the bizarre fringes, but who’s labelling?), I’ve had very few encounters with healthcare in America.

Cut for TMI and rantiness

My first encounter was pregnancy, and the baby was born 4 1/2 months premature (she survived and is doing well). Her twin was an invasive cancer. (as an aside – all pregnancies are a form of cancer, it’s just that some of them develop into viable beings) The doctor for the pregnancy was outstanding (he’s now in research because he can’t afford malpractice insurance as an OB-GYN), the insurance company was not. We were left, after insurance paid their share, with more than $1,000,000.00 in medical bills.

Yep, that’s right – after insurance paid their share.

The doctor thought he’d gotten all the cancer from the twin out, but it metastasized to several other places, cropping up virulently a year later. A year and a half of intensive chemo, radiation therapy, and chemotherapy later, it was in remission, leaving us with half a million in debt, added to the previous million.

The gods weren’t through with us yet, though, and I became pregnant agin – startling the medical community. He was also born 4 1/2 months early, another million dollar baby (he’s doing well and serving in the military).

In each instance, the insurance company refused to pay for many procedures and necessary tests – lack of which delayed needed treatments which contributed to the prematurity of the babies. The insurance refused to pay for much of the necessary support for the babies because they were so premature. Their attitude was that these babies were “unsalvageable” and therefore not to be treated. After 2 weeks in intensive care, I took each baby home and cared for them myself. Both babies are now adults, with college educations. One works in IT for the Health Department and the other is a soldier on deployment.

The insurance company thought these two people were not worth saving.

And therein lies my concern for a universal health care system. How many more babies like these two will be deemed “not worth saving” – and not have the advantage of a fringey mother who knows a lot of phytotherapy and magic to keep them alive and well without any professional medical support at all?

I’ve only used the traditional healthcare system to get tests run that I felt were needed. Occasionally, I’ve used them for diagnostic purposes. But I have never again used the medical system for treatment of anything for me and mine – precisely because insurance doesn’t allow us to do what is in our best interests health-wise.

I fear, very much, that auniversal health care system, at least all the ones that have been promoted so far, will be as detrimental to our overall health, or worse, than health insurance has proven to be.

I wrote an article almost 10 years ago (might have been a bit longer than that, time flies when you’re having fun) about how the average uninsured Pagan and itinerant Rennie merchant could have good health care with little or no health insurance – and I didn’t recommend learning herbal therapies or reiki or anything else of that nature.

I’ve somewhat modified my views since then with new information that has become available but the bulk of whatI wrote then holds true still.

I’ll share with you the type of healthcare system I think might be a viable on in American culture.

One is to take the taxes we currently pay for Medicaid and Medicare and use it for “level one” health care: primarily preventive care in the form of routine vision screening, basic dental care, immunizations, common ailment care provided at out-patient clinics that can be easily handled by RNs and interns (colds, flu, minor injuries like simple fractures, cuts, and other small emergencies that are not life-threatening but still require medical attention), birth control, chronic illnes care that is not in crises (like hypertension, diabetes, seizure disorders, thyroid disorders, allergies, and such needing monitoring and refill of medication), pain mangement of chronic illnesses, screenings for illnesses of various sorts (based on family history and need), basic pregnancy and childbirth, and preventive health education which includes free classes on nutrition, CPR, dental care, vision care, cold and flu prevention, exercise programs, health cost management, etc. All of this would be routine, handled by trained personnel but not necessarily MDs and specialist MDs. All would be paid for by our tax dollars and it would be available to everyone in America – including tourists and visitors from other countries.

It would also pay for “level two” care – crises situations, immediate, life-threatening injuries and illnesses until the patient is stable.

Level one and level two care are funded by tax dollars, but that still leaves a vast portion of health care uncovered – the high risk pregnancy, the lengthy illnesses that are not chronic, like cancer care, surgeries for conditions that are not immediately life-threatening, physical therapy and supportive after care for critical care patients – all of the healthcare that insurance companies term “major medical”. This level of care is where something resembling health insurance steps in. That nasty “pre-existing condition” clause has to go because most of these conditions would be found during the “level one” care, or would be the wind up of “level two” care – every condition treated here would fall under “pre-existing”. Because not everyone will need this type of care, I see no reason why it should be entirely tax-supported. It can be paid for through private insurance, as the bulk of our healthcare currently is, or we can seek viable alternatives.

Our tax dollars should provide major medical care for all children up until they leave school (whether that’s high school or college), for all senior citizens over the age of 70 (may treat younger if the adult in question is incapacitated by age-related conditions, such as Alzheimer’s – and older if the senior opts out of the care, but the senior can choose to take advantage of it at anytime after age 70), and for the disabled.

One such alternative I propose is the Health Trust Accounts. It’s sort of like the Health Savings accounts – vaguely, anyway.

Let me tell you how I envision a Health Trust Account working: Each person receives a Health Trust Account at birth, with our tax dollars providing the seed money for it and a nominal sum paid into it each year ($100, $200, something like that). The parents can put as much or as little money into it as they want or can afford, and their employers will put in an amount to match the tax dollar amount. Because children have all of their healthcare (except elective cosmetic surgery like rhinoplasty with no underlying medical condition or breast enlargement) paid for by tax dollars, they won’t be touching the money in these accounts until they are full adults and will have a large fund to pay for major medical costs. As adults, they can continue to deposit money into these Health Trust funds, and their employers, instead of paying for health insurance, can deposit that amount in the Health Trust Fund of their employees. Basic and life-threatening health care is still tax-dollar funded, but now the adults are in control of how and where their health dollars are spent for major medical care and they can work in pertnership with their doctor for their medical care. The doctor can charge reasonable and fair fees instead of the grossly inflated fees they must charge in order to recoup a fair amount.

Did you know that a doctor charges $120.00 for a typical 15 minute office visit for an established uninsured patient but only receives between $25 and $50 from the insurance company of an insured patient – the rest is “written off” and the doctor doesn’t see a penny of it – this is why doctors now charge office visit co-pays, so they can double the amount of money they get. Wouldn’t it just be easier if they charged – and received $50 – $75 for that visit? As it’s set up now, the uninsured patient pays far too much just for being uninsured. There are some doctors who will negotiate fees with uninsured patients, and others who offer sometimes large discounts if the patient pays cash up front.

The insurance companies starve the doctors of their rightful fees, force them to cut corners at the patient’s expense, deny necessary procedures because they are expensive or “unnecessary”, and charge a hefty premium with lots of deductibles and in-covered charges to the patient. Everybody loses except the insurance companies.

anyway, back to the Health Trust Account. Employers who previously couldn’t afford to provide health insurance to their employees because of the premiums could afford to contribute to a Health Trust Account. Perhaps they could do a “matching funds” – whatever amount the employee designates be withheld from their paycheck could be matched by the employer so the employee gets a double deposit. Most employers even of quite small businesses could afford to contribute $50 or $100 per employee per month.

That money adds up very fast for healthy adults. If they never need to touch their Health Trust Account, they could enter their senior years able to opt out of the tax-dollar paid health care. After age 70, they could choose to use the Health Trust Account money as a secondary retirement fund for daily living expenses or use it to pay for their medical care.

Obviously, they get out of it whatever they put into it, and there should be no limit to the amount they can contribute to their Health Trust Fund.

To use it, they would present a debit card to the doctor, hospital, pharmacist, clinic, masseuse, chiropractor, nurse, or other health care provider and the amount would be debited from their Health Trust Account. The patient controls the funds, and decides what health care is needed and what isn’t.

Medical care would go back to being between the patient and their health care givers without the insurance companies controlling both sides of hte health equation.

For surgeries purely for cosmetic reasons (breast enlargements, penile enlargements, liposuction for those not seriously or morbidly obese, nose reshaping with no medical need, ear shaping, etc.), the patient would not be able to use the Health Trust Account funds and would have to find another way to fund these things, just as they do now. Of course, they may just have more money free to save for such things.

So tax dollars would pay for basic, preventive, and educational health care, supplemented by major medical care funded through private dollares – either via a tax-free Health Trust Account or through traditional major medical insurance programs.

The emergency rooms would return to being for life-threatening injuries and health crises and not be clogged with the uninsured and Medicaid people who can’t get the health care they need otherwise. We wouldn’t have children dying of an abcessed tooth because the parent couldn’t afford a $70 dental visit and a $20.00 antibiotic.

People who abuse the medical system now by going to the ER or the doctor for every little twinge would be more aware of the actual cost because it would be coming out of their Health Trust Fund. And yanno, if they’re paying for it, why shouldn’t they get the attention of a health care provider? It won’t be my tax dollars paying for that, nor will I be paying higher insurance premiums to cover the cost. The people who need it – children, the elderly, the disabled – will get it, and the able-bodied adults will have a system whereby they can get quality medical care at reasonable prices – and only the healthcare they need.

I would hope there would be no more gouging like when I was charged $30.00 for a box of preemie Pampers – and charged for 4 boxes a day (there were 90 diapers in a box of Preemie Pampers back then)- when my babies were in NICU and the retail value of that same box of Pampers was $3.75 and I used a box a week instead of 4 boxes a day. I would hope there would be no more “routine x-rays” if one is admitted to the hospital, and no more “routine pregnancy tests” when you enter the hospital if you’re female even if you’ve had a tubal ligation, a hysterectomy, or passed menopause.

Each time I went to the hospital for radiation or chemotherapy, I had to also pay for a regular pregnancy test even though I was taking a hormone assay that was more sensitive and definitive than a regular pregnancy test to chart the progress of the cancer, and I had to have a chest x-ray – upping the amount of rads I was receiving to unsafe levels with the radiation therapy. Had I been able to opt out of those (and other) unecessary tests, I certainly would have, but opting out of a few tests meant I was “refusing treatment” and I would have gotten no care at all.

That seriously needs to be revamped even if we don’t get a tiered universal health care system.

If we keep insurance as an option, we need to lose the “pre-existing condition” clause, and we need to allow the patient and doctor decide which tests and procedures are essential. There should never be a “routine chest x-ray” or a “routine pregnancy test”.

So, that’s what it boils down to: tax-subsidized basic health care, health education, and preventive care for everybody; tax-subsidized major medical care for children, disabled, and elderly; private subsidized major medical for able-bodied adults.

I’d like to see insurance dropped entirely, but the industry has enough political clout I doubt it will happen.

Still, I can hold out hope that we can be allowed non-insurance alternatives that won’t cost us the fortune being uninsured does.

A few of My Favorite Games

I love to play games. Board games, card games, RPGs, puzzles, and so on. I am not very big on computer games, probably because I’ve never owned a computer capable of playing most games.

I love Mah Jongg and have a set I bought in Germany 45 years ago. It has ivory pieces that are legal to own because they predate the ban on owning ivory items.

I have Trivial Pursuit (and several subsets), Encore, Risk, Monopoly, Life, Backgammon, Mancala, Parcheesi, Abalone, Cathedral, Outfox, Pillars of Plato, Quadtria, Tablut, Clue, Aggravation, Operation, Yahtzee, Trouble, Ludo, To Bed Venus, Go, Pente, Articulate, Dirty Minds, Chickenfoot, Dominoes, Candyland, Sorry, Snakes and Ladders, 221B Baker Street, Wizards, Basari, Mastermind, Othello, Scrabble, Alabi, Andromeda, Galloping Pigs, Heroscape, Tic-Tac-Toe, Knucklebones, Senet, Tesserae, Merels, HeroQuest, Kanugo, Kingmaker, Crokinole, Bingo, Connect Four, and ElfChess. There’s more, because I like games, but these are the ones I remember off the top of my head.

Then there are the card games: Set, Uno, Wizard (the card game, not the board game), Loot, Munchkins, Go Fish, Fluxx, Killer Bunnies, Once Upon a Time, Ninja Burger, Spanc, Chez Dork, NaNoFictionary, Memory, Spooks, Labyrinth, Magic: The Gathering, and several ordinary decks of cards.

And the RPGs. I have RuneQuest (first edition), Bunnies and Burrows, Tunnels and Trolls, D&D (the mimeographed set), EldQuest, GURPs, Vampire the Masquerade, Fudge, Traveler, 7th Sea, CyberPunk, Paranoia, Land of Og, Zombies!, GreedQuest, Dork Tower, The Awful Green Things From Outerspace, Vampyre, DragonMech, ShadowRun, Rifts, Tribes, Toon (the original, not the new release by Steve Jackson Games), and HackMaster. I also have a lot of the “pocket games”, started by Steve Jackson, like Car Wars, Wizard (a different Wizard – seems to be a popular game name), and Ogre. And some of the Cheap Ass Games like Lord of the Fries, Give Me The Brain, Unexploded Cow, Devil Bunny Needs a Ham, One False Step for Mankind, and Spree!

I want to get GURPs DiscWorld Game next, and when it’s released, I want GURPs Vorkosigan.

I feel a need to visit Gamer’s Headquarters again.

This doesn’t include the various games we’ve made up over the years, or the “freak-outs” we do – like building fairy houses in remote locations and leaving them for others to find. These fairyhouses are built much like we play ElfChess.

Gargoyle’s Roost

This is rather ambitious, and probably totally impractical, and will flop like a fish out of water if opened here in Oklahoma.

But I still like playing with the idea.

Gargoyle’s Roost is an entertainment emporium of immense variety. It’s virtually a mall all to itself, and would require lots and lots of employees to make it work right. I can’t conceive of ever having enough money or people to help make this happen.

Consider this: the outside is sehr Gothic – with gargoyles and grotesques brooding from the roof and other nooks, done in solemn grey stone, perhaps a faux marble. The roof itself must be tile. Inside, the Gothic atmosphere lightens somewhat, but it still appears as if you are entering a castle, and you are in the foyer of it with arched doorways leading off down intriquing halls. This foyer contains a coat check room and information desk combo. Tapestried banners hang from the walls proclaiming the delights available: a non-alcoholic bar, a dance floor, assorted movie and game rooms, and a gift shop.

The non-alcoholic bar was built from a book I once had and can’t find now. I can’t even find it used or out of print, and that saddens me. The book was a slim, narrow volume, hardbound in red, and I seriously believe it was produced by the same people who give us the Mr. Boston Bartender’s Guides. The only recipe I can clearly still “read” when I visualize the book is “Dracula’s Cloak” – a superb non-alcoholic cocktail. That’s the book I want to use to create many of the beverages served at this bar. There will also be munchies – popcorn in a wide variety of flavors, freshly baked or fired potato chips, a wide variety of hard and soft pretzels, mini cookies, single-serving sized cakes and pies, single serving sized quiches and savory tarts, Scottish Eggs, deviled eggs, and party-sized sandwiches. The drinks and food from here could be taken to all other areas of the Gargoyle’s Roost, but only purchased in the bar.

The dance floor would have a stage area for live music, bistro style seating around it where people could wander in from the bar with their drinks and snacks, party lights and floor fogging. The stage area would have access to a “green room” area for the performers. The majority of the performers would be local bands and performers, and there would be an open-mike night and Readings (book and poetry, including Bad Poetry), and Pundays.

It’s obvious where tehse rooms would get their prfots – from the sale of drinks and food, tips, and cover charges to enter the dance floor and listen to the performers

There would be a labyrinth of game rooms and movie rooms wending throughout the rest of the building, and an indoor/outdoor area for LARPs.

The game rooms would be for boardgames – from Hi-Ho Cherry-O to Risk, Monopoly and Wizard, for card games – from Texas Hold’em to Go Fish, for tabletop and paper RPGs like Bunnies and Burrows, D&D, ‘Toons, and more, a computer room for people to log on to MMOGs – for those like me who want to play them but lack the computer power to do so, and a room of the old fashioned pinball and arcade type games that people still love to play.

Then, there’d be the movie rooms, where people could go to watch movies in a home style setting – sofas, a large screen High Definition TV screen. They wouldn’t be first run movie theater type movies, but ones released on DVDs, classics and cult favorites, mostly. The rooms would be large enough for a good sized collection of people watching them, all comfortably seated on sofas or recliners with coffee tables for snacks and things. Unfortunately, given the fact that so many people are messy, the furniture would be scotch-guarded and the floors would be easy to clean, but other than that, it could be a cozy place to hang with friends and watch movies when your own home was too small.

These rooms would make a profit by reservations – people could reserve the room or computer for a fee per hour, or movie in the case of the movie rooms, and the arcade games would be coin-fed. There would also be sponsored tournaments for various games that would bring in money.

The LARP areas would have moving walls so the configuration could change from game to game. The outside areas would have “furniture” that would move around between to alter its configurations so players wouldn’t become complacent about where things were or how they worked.

The LARP areas would make a profit through reservations.

I don’t think I want to create a paint ball area, but that is always an option as well. I mean, if I’m going for a mall-sized entertainment emporium, I would have room, wouldn’t I?

I’d also put in a roller skating rink, and possibly an ice rink, because people like them and they’re fun. Profit would be from admissions and skate rentals. The skating areas would be visible from the bar, perhaps in a sunken format so people could look down on them from balcony seating.

And then there’d be the gift shop, where people could buy all kinds of gaming supplies, board games, decks of cards, costumes, clothing, bags, cases, movies, and items related to all of these things.

The whole thing would be thematically tied together with the gargoyles, grotesgues, and a perversely humorous Goth decor. Think Jan Brett gone Goth. Or Design Toscano meets Dancing Dragon. Employees working there would dress in pseudo-Victorian or Renaissance clothing – a fantasy mix because there’s really no need to be historically accurate. It’s all for fun and entertainment.

And it would need a lot of employees. I have no idea if it would be profitable or not, but it is a place I’d like to hang out at and play with my friends at. I like the concept of setting it up like a mall so you can pick and choose where you’ll play, and I like the fact that the whole place is dedicated to enjoyment.

I’ve been building and designing and play-testing and test-marketing this idea in my head for the last 18 years. I think, in the right city, this would be a raging success. I cold lighten the Goth theme to a more medievalish one – fantasy medieval, not historical.

Surrogate Community

“What I came to understand was that WoW was not necessarily an escape, but a surrogate for a community that is harder and harder to find in the real world.” By Ta-Naheisi Paul Coates: Confessions of a 30 Year Old Gamer.

This is perhaps the truest thing written in the entire article, the most relevant and important sentence.

Sociologists, psychologists, lawyers, law-makers, religions, and all other such agencies and groups, take heed: these MMOGs are popular because as a society, we fail to address the quite human need to interact. Our society has made us so afraid to meet in person that we retreat to the relative safety of the internet. So long as you avoid in-person contact, almost all on-line contact is physically safe. Yes, there are computer viruses, and con games that can deplete one’s finances, and the possibility of identity theft; but you can’t catch contagious diseases on-line, you get raped on-line, or beaten, or murdered. Your virtual creations can suffer these things, but you, in your corporeal form, are safe. You can get robbed, and that’s about it. If you take adequate precautions, you can beat the odds on being robbed most of the time, so virtual communities are safe communities.

They are also less powerful than in-person communities. When you fall down and break your leg in the drive-way during an ice storm, you can’t rely on any of your virtual communities helping you up and taking you to the ER – or to set that broken leg and cast it. When a loved one dies, you may get expressions of sympathy, but they aren’t as good as a real hug, or someone to urge you to eat, or to cover you with a blanket when you fall asleep in the chair because you can’t bear to get in the bed, or to help you bear up as you sort through the left behind possessions.

The damage of on line gaming is that the real life relationships all around one are abandoned – which is why there are Gaming Widow/er groups – spouses and children of gamers who want the physical relationships they are denied by the gamer who gets caught up in their gaming communities to the detriment of their families and their work. Their on-line creations have all these exciting adventures and gain all these wonderful non-corporeal objects and skills – while the person at the keyboard gains weight. Instead of going out into the real world and doing things, they let their avatars do it all for them. And when push comes to shove, the skills their avatars have don’t work in the real world. The gamer can’t build house, or fix a flat tire, or rappel down a cliff, or fight with a sword, or give a persuasive speech.

And child-rearing on-line? Don’t make me laugh. Game children are ever so much duller than real children – and this from a woman who doesn’t particularly like most children. I’ll take a real child over a game child any day.

There are many reasons why people prefer virtual communities to real ones, most of which can be attributed to what I call the “American lifestyle” which is highly corporate-oriented. People are pressed from all sides, told what a tight job market it is, and how difficult it will be to find another job as good as the one they currently have – and the job they have isn’t really all that good. And employees know that most of the jobs out there aren’t as good as they could be. But they are often paralyzed by the fear that maybe the boss is right – there isn’t another, better job out there. So they stay with a job they’ve outgrown or dislike, with co-workers they aren’t allowed to befriend, so of course they’re going to seek community somewhere. Nowadays – that’s on-line. And companies hate that, too, so they put up computer blocks and filters and everything they can to continue to discourage community of any sort.

Add to this that there’s no corporate loyalty to the employee, only the “bottom line”, yet employees are expected to be slavishly loyal to the company. Businesses discourage their employees from socializing with one another – one of the primary opportunities for people to build a local community is destroyed right there. People spend a vast portion of their waking time with their co-workers (most people spend between 9 and 11 hours a work day with their co-workers, compared to 3.2 hours a work day with their friends and family) so it makes sense they’d want – and need – to form a community with them. From reading far too many management books and corporate “rescue” books and so forth, I know the corporate cultural norm is to keep employees isolated one from the other so they will be dependent upon the company for information and consider the company their “family”, fostering a false sense of employee loyalty, yet they also have an unspoken policy of firing approximately 5% of the employees each year – to keep employees “fresh” or “for their own good”, etc. This is sick, and should be changed, but that’s another rant.

Now, it’s not just corporate office attitude that prevents community from forming in the workplace, it’s the corporate policy of relocating employees, transferring them to other offices or even other cities and states. According to corporate lingo this is to keep the employees “fresh”, but what it does is prevent community. When employees are transferred to other cities and states, it even prevents neighborhood communities. People learn they can’t make friends with their neighbors because they aren’t permanent. The military has been notorious in relocating their employees, but they also have a tradition of building company loyalty through fostering off-duty socialization, and permitting some degree of on-duty socialization. American companies could do worse for a role model.

Corporate attitudes wend their way into public as well as private lives.

Add in the government fear-mongering that’s been going on for a while – your next door neighbor could be a terrorist, working for the al-Queda, a tripped out druggie – all variations on the “your neighbor is a commie” theme that drove neighbors apart. Government programs are in place for people to spy on their neighbors, and to report suspicious behavior without any clear definition of what constitutes “suspicious behavior”. Government oversight committees and laws regulate how charities can help their intended people – and in the process eat up a large chunk of resources meant to help the needy. It doesn’t even have to be as blatant as that – look at all the “neighborhood associations” formed to control the neighbors, right down to the types of vehicles they can own and what types of plants can grow in their yards. Small wonder so many homeowners, instead of enjoying their property, spend as little time outdoors as possible and are even paving over their yards so they don’t have to deal with draconian grass height regulations.

All of this makes on-line fantasy communities seem much more enticing.

Religions have gotten into the game, too. They tell their followers that people who adhere to other religions deserve to be shunned, their homes and families and livelihoods destroyed, and even beating people who are different isn’t seen as a bad things. And I’m talking about some foreign country where this happens – it’s right here in America. The gift shop owner whose store windows were bashed out because she sold “devil things” – crystals and other new age claptrap. The woman denied custody of her child because she joined in the play of a spoof religion (Church of the SubGenius). Homes and vehicles vandalized because they display something with which the religion’s adherents disagree. The people beaten up because they were believed to be homosexual – as if a person’s gender orientation mattered to anyone other than their loved ones. The people run out of their churches because they took a milder, more loving stance. It appears, on the surface, to foster community within the church, but it’s more like rats on a sinking ship – bonding together only until someone steps wrong, then turning on them to tear them apart. The illusion of community is very tenuous in a mob – and that’s what these religions have become.

“I also see that it regulates activities available to employees in their own lives.”Yeah, I’ve complained about this so much, I completely left it out here. The comapny isn’t paying us for the time we spend traveling to and from work, the time we spend at lunch, the time we spend at home, so they – in my mind – have no authority or business dictating what I do in those hours. Nor do they have the right to dictate how I spend the money I earn from them. I may be in a slightly different position than other people because I don’t work without a contract – and that contract outlines what I’m being paid to do and when, and explicitly states that that what I do outside of those hours is none of my bosses’ business, nor is it any of theier business what I do with the money I earn.

With “at will” employment, too many people don’t have this option. They can, literally, be fired for anything – or even nothing at all. Biss comes in with a bad mood on, and sees you. To make himself feel better, he fires you. That’s it. No reason. You’re suddenly unemployed.

And that “corproate culture” is an illusion. The only corporate culture they recognize is the bottom line – how much profit does it make for them? If you can’t prove you’re making lots of money for them, you have no security – and you don’t get to share the wealth, either.

How can you form a community of people in your physical presence if you can’t trust them? On-line, at least you know it’s a game, and you know the rules. In the real world, the rules are hidden from you, and you aren’t allowed to learn them. When you do – you either get pushed into the rule-making cult or you get punished – demoted, harrassed about your lifestyle choices, harrassed about your family, harrassed about your home and hobbies, harrassed about venting from the pressure being applied to you off the job as well as on it, pressured into quitting, fired, black-balled. Every venue you can create to relief the stress gets blocked and used against you.

Of course you’re going to turn to a fantasy world where you can be a hero, be strong, build a loyal base, live out the ideals upon which this country was founded, and kill things to vent your frustrations and relieve the stress of the pressure cooker world of employment.

Schools are doing the same thing – ever venue kids once had to harmlessly rebel and find themselvs is being blocked off – and they are being conditioned to having every aspect of their lives watched and dictated by others. Divide and conquer, indeed, and for what?

For what? I am so afraid to even hazard a guess, because I might be right and I don’t want to be.

And now, you begin to glimpse the appeal of virtual communities.  It’s easy to join one, easy to participate as it’s all verbal, and no matter where you live, they can still meet in virtual space.  No matter how many times you get relocated or have to move – the community is still there.

Face time is harder to get, but ultimately, face time is much more satisfying.  But we’ll settle for virtual time.

70 Before 70

Thanks to zoethe, my 60 Lessons in 60 Years morphed into 50 Things To Do Before She Turns 50 (and an interesting list it is).

And, unable to resist a challenge, I’ve decided to emulate her and try to think of 70 things I’d like to do before I turn 70.

I have 8 years to accomplish this, so I think it should be challenging. Even more, I’d like it to be 70 things I haven’t done before. Considering how action packed my previous 60 years have been, that’s where the true challenge lies. 70 new things to do before I turn 70.

This is going to require some thought. And I wouldn’t mind a few suggestions, if anyone has any.

iNotPhone

In spite of intense excitement and lawsuits surrounding the new iPhone, I won’t be getting one.

It’s not because I’m semi-Luddite, either. I love gadgets and technology as much as anyone else. I have a good GPS – and use it regularly to hunt treasure. I have some of the most state-of-the-art kitchen equipment. I have a several outdoor grills for different purposes. I have to keep away from tool stores when I’m short of spendable cash, because I am drawn to airbrushes, hoists, pulleys, grinders, drill presses, sanders, and a host of other tool goodness.

I like labor-saving devices and tools that are useful and fun.

But I dislike telephony in most forms.

This is, I suppose, because the telephone isn’t a tool for me to use, it’s a barbarically intrusive device that disrupts my day, makes more work for, and provides very little that is good or fun. Anyone can enter my home through a telephone, and because they can enter my home and my personal space, they seem to think they have the right to do so at all hours of the day and night at theri convenience. To me, that’s like someone breaking and entering – with my persmission. It’s worse than spam, because I can ignore spam, it doesn’t shrilly demand instant attention and no one’s offended if I delete it and don’t ever respond. On a scale of things I hate, the telephone/cell phone/iPhone rates much more hatefull than spam.

It wouldn’t be so bad if I could easily and reliably block all the callers I don’t want to receive, and allow only those choice few I would. Call blocking doesn’t work well. I haven’t seen anything on the iPhone that would block unwanted calls.

So, like the land line I disconnected, and the cell phone I don’t have, I won’t be getting an iPhone.

I do have Skype. Skype lets me block all calls I don’t want, and receive only the calls I do. I am happy with that. I also like the fact that Skype stays put. If someone needs to reach me, they can call my SkypeIn number and leave a message. I’ll get back with them when I can. And if they aren’t available, well, isn’t that what voice mail and email are for?

I prefer email because then I can share all the details I need to and get a response later, and no one’s inconvenienced.

I think that’s pretty good.

Besides, if anyone’s desperate to contact me, the ones who’d need to do that know where I live and work.

You CAN Have Your Cake and Eat It, too

I’ve been reading about people who sign compacts to not buy anything at all but food, medicine, and toiletries for a year, and others who decide not to buy anything new but food, medicine, and toiletries, and others who live by dumpster diving, getting even their food, medicine, and toiletries from other people’s trash. The purpose, for them, is to reduce their impact on the environment. That’s a worthy goal, but honestly, I don’t see how deprivation will achieve it.

We have to look at living lightly from a variety of perspectives. Consuming anything at all has an impact, the goal is to reduce that impact. Don’t sign agreements that limit what you will buy. Consider instead ones that suggest how you buy. Anything you acquire has both an economic and an environmental impact – whether you buy it new, used, or acquire it through dumpster diving. Spend some time before you embark on a save the environment course of living by actually researching how much of an impact your current lifestyle has and the impact your proposed lifestyle will have. Sometimes, in attempting to be environmentally conscious and economically aware, the course chosen does the opposite intended.

Accept, at the beginning, that anything you choose to do will have both an
economic and an environmental impact. You can’t avoid it. Find instead an
achievable goal – reducing the clutter in your life, for example, or weaning
yourself from impulse buying, or improving your own financial security. Create
a set of actions that will help you achieve that goal, and make those acts a
habit. Review your habits in depth every 5 years. Anymore often than that, and
you won’t be able to tell if what you’ve been doing actually works – some things
take a longer time to manifest than others, and you want to give it all a
chance. Besides, doing a yearly in-depth review becomes a chore that gets put
off because it is time-consuming and labor intensive. Do a brief overview
yearly and save the in-depth one for a five year review.

There are several steps to this process, don’t try to implement changes until
you’ve gone through all the steps. It makes more sense and you’ll be more
likely to stay on track. No shiny distractions.

Step One: This one will take a bit of time, but it’s all part and parcel with
almost every goal to simplify your life, life more environmentally aware,
increase your personal financial security, have a reduced economic impact on
society, or just make yourself feel better and happier. Do take all the time
you need to complete this step. The first thing you need to do with it is buy
yourself a spiral bound notebook or an insert for your day-runner that you can
write in daily. Keep this with you. In it write down every single thing you do
– from stretching and hitting the snooze button three times on your clock before
you get up to how long your morning grooming routine takes to whether you stop
to buy a newspaper or breakfast snack on the way to work clear up to your
bedtime time routine when you turn the lights out and snuggle down to sleep.
Everything. Stopping to feed the ducks, or watch kids play street hockey.
Driving aimlessly around town looking for someplace that appeals to you for
lunch. Chatting on the phone. Text messaging your co-workers. Tapping a
pencil against your teeth while you think. Watching TV or listening to your
iPod. All of it. Every last second of time you spend doing whatever it is you
do. At minimum, this might take a week, for the truly obsessive-compulsive.
Most people will take a month and think they’re done, but I think it should take
at least one year – so you include all the various holiday activities and
seasonal activities in all of this. This is where having a spreadsheet comes in
really handy, so enter the data you accumulate in your notebook daily or weekly
until you’re satisfied you’ve listed every thing you are most likely to do
throughout the year. Your time is one of your most valuable resources, and you
need to know exactly how you spend it. You can do other steps while you are
doing the other steps. Don’t forget to include the time you spend on this
project in your log of activities.

Bear in mind that if you work a 40-hour week, you will spend 2080 hours a year
at work, and probably about 520 hours a year getting to and from work. If you
sleep 8 hours a night, you will spend about 2920 hours sleeping, and another 365
hours a year preparing to sleep, and another 365 hours a year waking up.
Everyone has 8760 hours in the year, and we’ve already filled about 6250 hours
with work and sleep and waking. Then there are the routine tasks: grocery
shopping, clothes shopping, housecleaning, walking the dog, preparing meals or
taking the time to buy prepared meals, voting, keeping current with the news and
weather, lawn care, shoveling snow, doctor’s appointments, other types of
appointments, etc. Figure about 720 hours a year on necessary household and
personal tasks – that goes up if you have large gardens or lots of snow or
remodeling projects or frequent illnesses. That brings the total on work,
sleeping, waking, and necessary tasks to 6970. You have 1760 free hours a year
that aren’t dedicated to work, work-related tasks, or necessary survival tasks.
Approximately 260 days are work days, which means you have 3.2 hours a workday
free, and 9 hours a day on weekends. I have not removed holiday hours from work
hours because those vary widely, so you may have more free hours than 1760 a
year. Conversely, if you work longer hours, you’ll have less free time.

And if you have children, you need to factor in the time it takes for their
needs – trips to the doctor, school, and extracurricular activities, play
times, “drag” time waiting for them to get ready, extra time for meals and
shopping, appointments with teachers and school administrators, PTA meetings,
etc. In fact, if you have children, consider that the bulk of your free time
will be dedicated to them for at least 18 years. You will need to plan
carefully to have any free time to yourself and to meet your goals.

Pets also take time. You need to clean up after them, feed them, play with
them, train them, take them to the vet. Don’t forget to factor their needs into
your time.

Do you begin to understand why we feel so rushed and harried – we have so little
actual free time for personal pleasure and with which to pursue our own goals?

Step Two: Inventory everything you own. Everything, yes, even the report cards
you kept from your grade school, and your kids’ reports cards. Old
correspondence and greeting cards. Bits of ribbons and stray screws and nails.
Write it all down. It’s more fun to do this with someone – one person calls out
what they find, the other writes it down. Obviously, we are keeping the
computer and internet service, so use it. Type the inventory into a spreadsheet
like Excel or database program like Access. Use Library Thing to inventory your
books and music collection. Don’t sort, separate, or throw away anything at
this point. You can make separate lists – one for each room,and include any
outdoor space you may have, like garage, storage shed, greenhouse, doghouse,
rabbit hutches, poolroom; just don’t pile things into separate piles of “keep”,
“toss”, “sell”, etc. You want a full and complete inventory.

You might want a separate list for food items and consumables like toilet paper,
cleaning supplies, and toiletries, because these quantities may change as you
conduct the inventory simply because you’ll need to use them, and replace them.

That separate list of food is useful for many other things, which segues into
Step Three.

Step Three: Inventory your food. All of it, including herbs, spices, and
half-used packets of powdered cheese sauce. Don’t forget the Mystery Tubs of
leftovers in the refrigerator. On this list, it’s perfectly acceptable
to toss foods well past their expiration dates or ones that are close to
attaining sentience in their own right. Moldy, mildewy, spoiled, soured, or
otherwise bad foods need to go. Inventory only the edible foods.

A part of this inventory will include meals – list what you eat at each meal,
whether you cooked or prepared it at home or ate in a restaurant or at a
friend’s house. All three of these lists will be very important when you get to
Step Six and beyond.

Did you know that in some countries, people are taxed on the size of their
refrigerators, and few have the behemoths we do? We store far too many things
in our refrigerators, and then forget about them because we tend to have
refrigerators larger than we actually need. Freezers are a different matter.
We actually need much larger freezers than the typical family has. That’s
something to ponder as you continue on to

Step Four: Make a list of your personal goals, short term and long term.
Consider how much money you’d like to save, whether you want to invest any
money, vacations you want to take, things you want to own, things you want to do
or learn how to do, how much de-cluttering you want to do, people you’d like to
keep as friends, dietary changes you want to make, volunteer work you want to
do, etc. List it all, even the improbable and impossible.

Step Five: For each of the goals you listed in Step Four, make a list of the
steps you need to take to achieve that goal. If you know the time each step
will take, include that.

So – look at the goals you’ve made, the time they’ll take and compare it to the
time you actually have. Don’t forget to factor in time in which to do
absolutely nothing or to sleep in, and give yourself a bit of leeway for
unexpected opportunities or tasks.

Now, go through your list of goals and prioritize them based on what you now
know about your available time. Decide which ones you really want to do (and
that can certainly be all of them, if you want). Develop a time frame – a
humanly accomplishable time frame, in which to do them. And don’t hesitate to
decline any tasks that don’t fit into the time frame and “wiggle room” you’ve
given yourself.

Be sure to plan for simplifying your life as a top priority item. When you’re
finished, you’ll be using less time to keep things tidy and clean and organized.
It’s worth it to spend the time now to buy yourself more time later.

The more free time you can make for yourself, the more time you’ll have for
other pursuits.

Now, Step Six: What to do with all those lists you made. That first list is
how much time you spend on your activities. Look it over carefully and see
where you can rearrange the time you spend on things. Consider your commute
time – can you reduce it by using another method to travel to and from work, or
work from home part of the time? How about transferring to a closer work
location? Is it possible to take that unpaid lunch hour and move it to the
start or end of your work day to give you more time that isn’t spent at work?
Any free time you can create is your time. Your boss isn’t paying you
for your commute times or your lunch hour, so find out how you can reclaim those
hours for yourself.

What about other tasks? Can you reduce the number of times you do them, like
shopping once a week or once every two weeks instead of two or three times a
week? Or can you combine tasks – like dropping your car off for the oil change
and walking to the nearby grocery store to shop or pay bills at a nearby bank or
place that accepts payments? Can you schedule everyone to have routine health
care done at the same time? Remember, this is your time you’re spending, and
you have a list of things you plan to do. Areas you cannot trim too far are the
ones dedicated to your children and your pets. You’ll just have to plan around
those times and accept that those times are dedicated times.

Look at your deadlines. Are you always a day late on bills and having to pay
late fees? What other fees do you have to pay because you didn’t get a chance
to do things in a timely manner? Here’s where you’re plotting and planning your
time, so be sure to make a schedule for paying bills, filing taxes, renewing
memberships and subscriptions, and doing other things that have deadlines. One
of those large graph calendars would be good for this – and the best place to
hang it is either beside the refrigerator or the computer, with a pen attached
so you can write in appointments and such as they come up.

Step Seven: In List Two, you made an inventory of all the things you own. Take
the time now to go through that list and sort – on the computer screen, by room,
the things you must keep, the things you’d like to keep, the room it should be
in (funny, how things travel to odd places about the house, isn’t it?), the
things you never use, the things you don’t want anymore, that are broken, worn
out, past their expiration date, or that you can’t figure out how to use. Print
these lists out and take them to those rooms with boxes labeled: Don’t Want and
Broken. Fill the boxes up. Figure out if the broken things can be fixed and if
you want to keep them enough to fix them. Sell these things on eBay or put them
up on Craigslist or Freecycle.

What’s left needs to be examined to see if they, too, need fixing, cleaning, or
refurbishing. You may need to invest in proper storage or display for them –
shelves for books, for example. When you’re moving and cleaning things, take
some time to paint or paper or wash your walls, baseboards, lintels, window and
door frames, and other architectural fixtures. Take down and launder or replace
curtains or blinds. Put everything back in its new and proper place.

Do this one room at a time. Don’t expect to get it all done over a single
weekend. If you’re a pack rat by inclination or genetics, expect it to take
months to get through all of this. You’re spending a lot of time on simplifying
your life, but when you’re done, you will find you have more free time.

Step Eight: In List Three, you listed all the foods you have on hand, and
tossed all the expired and spoiled foods. Now, look over the list and see what
your diet is like. Are there places where you could streamline it, condense
shopping trips, buy locally? Are there foods you regularly buy that you never
really eat? Stop buying them. Are there things you wish you had on hand that
you never do? Add them to your shopping list. Do you want to explore new
cuisines? Here’s the time and place to tailor that to your life. Do you eat
out more than you think you should – or less? Here’s the place to rectify that.

With your inventory printed out and in hand, you can go through your pantry and
clean things up even more, organize them, and make things convenient for your
use. Don’t hesitate to do things like re-arrange the kitchen equipment, trade
the large refrigerator for a smaller one and add a freezer. Put in shelves for
your canned and jarred foods if you need to. Simple ones, like the expensive
Swedish modular shelving, can be made from dowel rods for the shelves and 2×2’s
for the supports (or 1×2’s for the shelves and either 2×2’s or 4×4’s for the
supports), or buy “L” brackets and screw the shelves directly to the walls, or
buy pre-made shelves. Organizing your foods will make a tremendous difference
in streamlining your meal preparations – and that frees up a bit of your time.

Now, with these eight steps, you’ve organized your home, de-cluttered your life,
saved a bit of money, and altered your diet. From here, you can decide how much
further you will go. Step Nine is all about the future.

Step Nine: Remember, all of this started because you were interested in “going
green”, or reducing your impact on the environment and the economy, or to
simplify your life. In the previous eight steps, you’ve settled your life so
you can do just that. Now, you have time to ride a bicycle to work (assuming
you live close enough to work to do that), or choose to buy less and consume
less.

Most places will tell you to just stop buying things, but that’s not so easy.
What I recommend is the “wait for it” method. Never go shopping without a list.
Buy only what’s on the list. If it’s not on the list and you see it and want to
buy it, walk away. Go home. Think about it. Think about how many hours you
have to work to pay for it. If you still want it after going home and thinking
about it, put it on the shopping list. When you go shopping, if you still want
it, it’s on your list; you’ve budgeted for it, and given yourself permission to
buy it. This gives you a cooling off period, keeps you in your budget, and
reduces your spending. You’re less likely to reach for that magazine or candy
bar if you have taught yourself to wait for it.

Anticipation is a highly underrated tool. Given the passage of enough time,
you’ll either determine you really do need whatever you wanted on impulse, or
you’ll realize you didn’t need or want it after all; it was just a neat gadget
with which to re-clutter your house.

Shop at thrift stores, second hand stores, or acquire things from Craigslist or
Freecycle,or paperbackswap.com, to reduce your personal expenditures and
slightly reduce the environmental impact (it doesn’t realistically reduce it by
much because if you’re buying it used, someone else is probably repalcing it
with a new version). If it squicks you to buy something used (like shoes or
gloves or mattresses), go ahead and buy it new, but do some comparison shopping
and buy brands you can support in good conscience.

One thing I do recommend is applying the concept of permaculture to your kitchen
and home – make it a cohesive and interrelated whole. To quote one of the
founders of permaculture, Bill Mollison, “permaculture is urging complete
cooperation between each other and every other thing, animate and inanimate.”
We want to care for the earth, care for people, distribute the surplus and
re-invest in the earth and the people. That can be done on a small scale within
the home. Every element in a design should have multiple functions within the
home, serve several purposes, and be related to one another in use and setting.
Think of the kitchen, where the stove, sink, and food storage are located close
together. Your counter tops, equipment, and books related to cooking are all
together within easy reach and function together as a unit. Expand this type of
functionality throughout the house, letting the design and the furnishings flow
from one use to another. Consider how friends and family tend to gather in the
kitchen during visits, and it seems natural to bring the two rooms together with
a blurred and open border between them, so the functions of entertainment and
visitors mingles with the function of feeding everyone. Think of other ways you
can blur the borders between rooms and their functions and even with the
outdoors.

Energy-wise, in the home, consider how the home is situated towards the sun, and
use it for lighting and supplemental heating. Consider how your home is related
to your neighbors, your friends, where you work, shop, and play, and see how you
can maximize a permaculture concept there. You can’t get cooperation from a
divided and hierarchical system, but it’s natural to a “guild” or community type
system, where each element depends upon the others. That recognition of
dependence is the true “greening”. If you want to be environmentally and
economically conscious, rather than buying “green” things just because they are
labeled as “green”, consider their place in a community of appliances, supplies,
things, people, critters, and uses. Even things which aren’t technically
“green” or labeled as “green” can be so, if used appropriately. Once you’ve
inventoried and de-cluttered your home, organizing it along permaculture lines
should be easy enough. Then, it follows that the things you come to need and
want will fit in with the permaculture concept and you’ll find yourself buying
less. When you do buy, you will buy better – better quality, a better fit to
you and your chosen lifestyle, and better for the environment.

It may not be better for the national economy, which is based in consumerism and
obsoletism, but it will be better for your personal economy.
And that, in nine time-consuming, but comparatively easy steps, is one way to
become more environmentally and economically conscious and to live a lifestyle
that is greener and better for the world and for you.

More on WoodSpirits

When we (Linda, Mike, Teresa, John, and me) first tossed the idea around, we
thought of organizing it along the lines of traditional youth organizations like
Camp Fire, Scouts, The Y Indian Guides, Boys and Girls Clubs, etc. Small groups
of people would meet regularly – weekly or monthly as schedules permitted to
plan out activities, do them, and have small awards ceremonies. It also gives
an excuse to display the patched and pearly banner.

It would
operate mostly on the honor system. We’re adults, and we know that cheating
does us no good in the end. We wouldn’t have to report to some central agency
to order pearls or patches. I personally would suggest no fundraising for
supporting your local club. We are adults and are clever enough to find
ways to afford our fun.

We didn’t visualize this ever becoming a tax exempt
organization because it’s a purely selfish club – for the purpose of having fun.
That is not a tax deductible expense, even if our Declaration of Independence
says that the “pursuit of happiness” is one of our rights. That’s a primary
reason for not doing fund-raising. If you want to stay free of the taxman,
don’t collect donations or do fundraising for your WoodSpirits group.

There
should be someone who facilitates communications – keeps an emailing list, group
blog, makes a newsletter, maintains the phone tree, keeps minutes, etc. There
should be someone who calls the meetings and organizes them – finds the meeting
location, arranges field trips, makes sure everyone has supplies, etc. If you
do rough camping, there should be someone who has basic rescue and woods craft
skills. Any offices beyond that are up to individual groups. If you decide
there should be group supplies, or to pool money for field trips, etc, you
probably need a treasurer or bookkeeper.

The symbol we chose back then was a
winged acorn, because while we were adults, we were still in the process of
learning. The wings represent the fun we have learning and doing things. The
wings have been variously depicted as butterfly wings, oak leaves, dragonfly
wings, bat wings, bird wings, or just feathers. We haven’t picked any colors,
although I’m partial to green acorns, with shimmery dragonfly wings. Except at
Halloween, when it’s an orange acorn and bat wings.

We figured participants
would want some sort of uniform, so we thought a T-shirt with the winged acorn
painted or silk screened on it would be a suitable all-purpose uniform; or if
someone was crafty enough, lapel pins or embroidered patches of winged acorns to
pin or sew onto suit jackets or polo shirts. (edited to correct a failed entry:) Or maybe even jewelry – earring,
cuff links, tie tacks, finger rings, bracelets, belt buckles. Or knitted caps
and scarves or some such. The unifying theme would be the winged acorn.

If
people wanted to wear their pearls and patches, they could sew them to a baldric
or sash, or make an over-sized Peter-Pan-style collar to sew them to, or a
tabard, or make jewelry of the pearls or beaded fringes on a shawl bearing the
patches. This would be for wearing to ceremonies where you officially recognize
the pearls and patches you’ve earned since the last time – or maybe, if we ever
have enough people who want to be WoodSpirits – at big camping jamborees or
conventions. As adults, we want something that helps tie us together while
still maintaining our own individuality, so while we would all have pearls and
patches, we’d show them off in our own ways.

Now, I also like the concept Camp
Fire had of using symbols to create personal and group names. When my children
outgrew Camp Fire, there was talk of abandoning the symbols, and browsing
through the last Camp Fire catalog I got, I don’t see the Symbols Book being
offered anymore. I don’t see any reason why we can’t do something similar –
except, we don’t have to limit it to assorted American Indian symbols. We could
use symbols from other cultures as well – particularly if our ancestors came
from the culture that originated the symbols – using a Chinese or Japanese style
crest, or Celtic knotwork, or Pennsylvania Dutch symbols, or caveman
pictoglyphs, or the European heraldic symbols. We could use that in conjunction
with the winged acorn to identify our club or ourselves – or both!

If
WoodSpirits catches on, I suppose eventually we’d need some centralized group to
organize the regional and national events. Get big enough, and we’d probably
have to comply with some government regulation – insurance and injury
liabilities spring to mind. What if someone breaks a leg at a national camp
out? My personal instinct and thought is – we’re adults. Most of us probably
have health insurance, but all those in attendance at the vent would probably
kick in to help cover co-pay and other out-of-pocket expenses related to the
injury, and the injured person wouldn’t sue the WoodSpirits. But I can’t
guarantee that everyone would behave as adults, not if the idea catches on and
there are lots of people playing – so, yeah, I suppose at some point, there’d
have to be formalized organization.

But that’s still a way in the
future.

In the meantime, paint a winged acorn on a T-shirt and go
out to have fun. If anyone asks, tell them you are with the WoodSpirits.

WoodSpirits

ME: As adults, we have more resources, and I don’t see why it’s so hard to recruit adults to this.
This year, that’s what I want to do. I want to recruit other adults to play with me in a nature-oriented, awards-based, craft-making, camping club.

Dulcinbradbury – Of course, in some ways, I think the SCA competitions and awards are a way of filling that niche for some people. Just because you’re an adult doesn’t mean you don’t appreciate recognition for the work you’ve put into learning a new skill or craft.

I’ve often wondered why modern adults shy away from doing fun activities if they don’t have children along as an excuse to indulge themselves. When I was younger, parents made opportunities for themselves to have “adult time”, to play and do things among adults that they considered fun. My grandmother, for example, made tissue paper flowers, crocheted, knitted, and embroidered with her friends, and they gave one another pearls for completing projects or participating in crafting events. Sometimes, they’d race walnut boats down the river, with trophies and all. My grandfather carved cunning wood puzzles like the balls inside bars and little race cars and boats, baked cookies, brewed beer, and raced the walnut boats. He also participated in foot races, ice skating competitions, and roller skating races clear up to his death at 104.

Modern adults seem afraid of playing anything other than computer games. Groups may gather to do specific things – but the goal always seems to be to benefit some charity or other. I think it’s cool that some fun events are done to raise money for good causes. But why are those almost the only “respectable” fun events adults can engage in? Almost everything adults do in groups for fun must be done to benefit some charity or other – from science fiction conventions to SCA tournaments, from races to pie eating competitions – and if you make crafty things, they have to be of a quality good enough to sell. All adult fun activities, it seems, comes with an external price above and beyond the expense of doing the activity. It can’t be done just for fun, it must be done in such a way as to benefit some other group.

Why?

Why can’t adults do things that are fun just because they are fun? Why can’t they tour a dairy or a chocolate factory just because they want to see how it’s done in company with other adults, and not as chaperones for some youth group? Why, if adults want to learn assorted crafts and games, must they either lead a youth group or have a child in a youth group? Why can’t they glue popsicle sticks together because they want to earn their own beads or badges? Why is it the only awards they can earn are the ones that demonstrate they were good leaders to a youth group or raised X amount of funds for this organization or that? Why can’t they earn pearls (like my grandmother) for doing things that give them pleasure without having some string attached to the activity?

I don’t know about you, but I think it would be grand to earn pearls (or beads or badges or emblems or whatever) for learning HTML coding or Java Scripting, or designing and putting up a web page or balancing a checkbook or paying bills on time or finding a frugal way to have a party or growing a specialized garden or capturing a wild yeast beastie and culturing it into bread or vinegar or making pom pom animals or gluing popsicle sticks together or having an adult Pinewood Derby or even making and racing walnut boats. I think it would be cool to earn special patches for going camping with friends. I think it would be cool to have banners on poles with beads and feathers attached to show all the cool and nifty things I’d done with friends – to show off in my home or to set outside my tent when camping. I think it would be cool to have group banners for the same things to carry to multi-group meetings so each group could show off what they’d done and learn new activities from other groups.

The SCA does indeed fill part of that need for some people. Not everyone is drawn to the costuming and the drama that accompanies being “in period”, though. I like the SCA well enough. After all, many of my interests and skills coincide with the times the SCA recreates. But I also like modern things and futuristic things, and there’s no place in the SCA for popsicle stick art and chocolate factory tours and building rocket ships and scuba diving and hang gliding and parasailing and polymer clay crafting and roller derbies and car racing and making God’s Eyes and pompom animals and Pinewood Derbies. I want to camp, yes, but I want to camp with a lot of my modern conveniences without having to build clever disguises for them or made to feel embarrassed that my ancient and decrepit tent isn’t “period” enough. I want to sing SciFi filk and silly modern songs and tell current ghost stories around the camp fire while making shaggy dogs and s’mores.

Part of the appeal of the SCA is that you get to do nifty things. But it lacks the awards. I mean, I was a member of the SCA for many, many years. I co-founded three groups that became baronies, I started 4 newsletters that are still in print today, I autocrated a coronation and a number of other events, I started the Minister of Children’s office, I’ve held every office in a group (but no kingdom level offices), I prepared and served any number of feasts, I hold the distinction of being banned from more SCA bardic groups than anyone (shouldn’t there be a Guinness Book of World records for that?), not to mention the more personal achievements. While I have lots of nifty things from my hobbies, I have not one single recognition from the SCA for anything I’ve done for them. Lack of recognition hasn’t stopped me from continuing to do things. It has, however, encouraged me to want to branch out into non-SCA areas, and to have a system where recognitions are more generous.

The Mardi Gras Krewes also fill a part of that need, but really, so few towns have Mardi Gras Krewes that most people don’t have that option. I could really get into being a part of a Mardi Gras Krewe full time – the costuming, float making, feasting, and fellowship all were fun the brief times I was able to participate.

There are the LARPs, too, but those are limited in scope and function, even more than the SCA, being tied to specific games and game systems.

What groups are there that offer the same fellowship and scope for one’s talents and desires to learn new things or do them en masse, without being tied to a charity or benefit, and without restrictions of time periods, game systems, or location?

I can’t think of any.

That’s why I want to promote WoodSpirits. Some friends and I tried to start it – oh, probably 15 years ago, but they got transferred to other cities before we got it started and life got in our way. I think we were wrong to let life take over the way it did, pushing us out of finishing this. We could have made time, looking back, to make it work back then. But, yanno, hindsight doesn’t change the past, and it’s useless of we don’t apply the lesson we learn from it towards future events. So, I’ve decided that it is worth making the time for adult play and games and kitschy crafts and camping. The appeal of it is that we can dabble in a huge variety of things without making any one thing our “be-all” hobby – and we can do it with other people, and earn pearls (or beads or patches or whatever) for accomplishing them. For people who haven’t found a hobby because they’ve been busy with higher education schooling, or work, or raising a family, or getting sucked into computer games and are realizing they can actually do in real life, the things they play on line – I think WoodSpirits would be an answer to the lament of “I wish I knew how to (fill in the blank)”.

Imagine – earning a pearl for balancing your check book. Earning a pearl for learning how to make friendship bracelets. Earning a pearl for learning how to cook escargot (or fried Dr. Pepper!). Earning a pearl for learning a new song. Earning a patch for attending a campout. Earning a patch for marching in that protest. Earning a bead for writing a letter to one of your elected employees. Earning a patch for remodeling a room in your home (or someone else’s). And then, sewing those pearls and patches on to a banner or a baldric or a fancy collar to display when you gather together with others doing their own arts and crafts and stuff. Or use the display to encourage friends to join you in having fun. Imagine the relaxation having such freeing fun will bring you.

Give yourself permission to have some fun that isn’t tied to work of some sort, even if it’s worthy volunteer work and benefits one-eyed cats in Indonesia. You can still raise funds for trunkless elephants in south Africa, but every once in a while, you can have unburdened fun.

So, I’m promoting WoodSpirits so adults can learn to relax and have fun without guilt, without an agenda attached to it. And with pearls and patches.

Full Disclosure

The WaPo has an article about the FTC and full disclosure between “word of mouth” endorsers and companies.

The relevant portion of the article states:

“The FTC said it would investigate cases where there is a relationship between the endorser of a product and the seller that is not disclosed and could affect the endorsement. The FTC staff said it would go after violators on a case-by-case basis“.

Now, since I have endorsed a number of products here throughout the year (the latest being the Archer Farms Italian Sodas) and will probably endorse or condemn more, let me state my full disclosure policy.

Nobody pays me to say the things I do. In fact, there are quite a few people who wish I wouldn’t say anything at all.

I do not receive review copies of books or music. I do not receive samples of cookware or food items from companies soliciting my reviews and “word of mouth” endorsements.

Everything I endorse (or disparage, let’s be equal opportunity here) are things I have bought with my own money and used and either liked or didn’t like – and I’ve said so with no prodding or payment from anyone.

No one sponsors the charity work I do – it all comes from my pocket and uses my time. I do not take donations – although I do encourage others to start similar charity programs of their own.

I have a podcast that no one but me pays for. I do not put in ads or endorse other podcasts that I haven’t listened to – and if I do mention another podcast, it’s because I want to, not because they pay me. My podcast is very amateurishly done and only costs me a whopping $5.00 a month to do – it would be stupid to accept sponsorships for it.

I don’t even advertise the books I write here, nor my herbal products, nor my art, so I make no money even off of my very own things.

The reason I do this is not to boost my credibility (I honestly don’t care if others believe me or not), but because this is a blog, not a commercial. When I talk about things, it’s always filtered through the lens of me. I may do some research to satisfy myself – if it doesn’t satisfy you, then go look it all up yourself. Google is but a click away, and the library isn’t that hard to get to, and newspaper archives are accessible, and so on. You have at least the same access to the information as I do, and maybe more in some cases.

What I offer are my thoughts, my feelings, my conclusions, on things, events, and critters.

There are a great many things I do not discuss on this blog (or any other blog I have, for that matter). I do not always write about everything in excruciating detail – no 500 page thesis from me on urban development, charity project budgets, or utopias. Or anything else for that matter. This is a blog – short is best – and that means a great deal of detail is left out.

You get whatever I want to say packed into as many or as few words as I want to use. Any footnotes, substantiation, and so forth are offered for my personal reference so I can remember where I got it, and not for you to check up on me to see if I’m telling the truth. I have this blog listed as public – and 99.9% of my posts are public – so I can access my posts from other computers and so I don’t lose the data. If you want to read it, feel free. There’s nothing dreadfully private here. I keep all the private stuff off all computers.

What you’ll get here are snippets. Odds and ends of things that cross my mind during the day. If I like something, I’ll post about it. If I don’t like something, I’ll post about it. If I read a bit of news, and want to preserve my thoughts on it, I’ll post that, too. I am not a political correspondent or journalist of any stripe. My interpretations of the news and world events are filtered through me and my personal experiences and are not to be construed as objective or even necessarily as informed. Sometimes, the thoughts I post about current events are ones that I want to remember – spur-of-the-moment reactions and feelings, not deeply-thought-out analyses. Those deeply thought out analyses rarely make it on-line, so what you get here are the knee-jerk reactions.

And it’s all filtered information – filtered through a single person who speaks from a personal point of view.

So, there you have it: no one pays me to speak up or shut up.