The Blaisdell Blog

Halloween used to be a children’s holiday.   In an Eisenhower-era America Halloween was a chance for children (usually about 10 and under) to dress in silly costumes, parade the neighborhood for candy and defy our fears by making fun of ghosts, goblins and other ghoulies.   Mom would put a paper sack over our heads, cut out some precarious eye holes (probably the scariest part of the whole evening).   She would dress us warm, throw us out the door and tell us to stay together.   That was it.   We would come home an hour later, cold but with a city block’s worth of treats in our sacks. The worst thing that could happen was forgetting at which house the Jehovah’s Witnesses lived.   [ The small white stucco at the top of a steep set of overgrown stairs on the hilly side of the block .]   That place was always a disappointment.   You went up the hill and only got a copy of the Watchtower for your trouble.    The best place to go was the resident home of the nuns of St. Anthony’s chu

The United States Constitution is a document so beautiful that it implies divine intervention.    It is the law of the land.   Simple in form and only 4 pages long in its original hand written form, it created our government, allowed for change, and, most important of all, preserved to the states all matters not mentioned in the Constitution itself.    This preservation of power for the states is a key part of the document, and it does so with both subtlety and grace.    For example, in Article 4, Section 4 the constitution states, “The United States shall guarantee to every state in this union a republican form of government.” The states are guaranteed the right to their own representative body of government.   Laws are not only to be made by the states, but their right to do so is guarded by the federal government.   There is a clear implication that the government will always be answerable to the people.   The consummate good sense of this document is an important reason why

The world is too heavy today; let’s take a walk on the light side. The Huffington Post had a fluff piece (oh, God, the double entendre has started already) a week or so ago about the meanings, deliberations and judgments concerning the practice of women shaving—well—ummh—parts, yes, let’s call them parts!   Ignoring the frequently heated comments that accompanied this article, and excusing the questionable subject matter to begin with, what I immediately thought of was, of all things, my mother.   No, not for the reason you might think.   Read on. My mother was a Victorian leaning woman in all matters save those economic and vocational.   She thought all women should work outside the home and keep a tight eye on income and outgo.   She had a paying job every day of her life, trained more than one of her bosses and expected each of us girls to pay for our own clothes and transportation the day we got our first paycheck.   Beyond that, however, she was straight out of another cen

The next time someone tells you that Republican funding cuts are at fault for our anemic response to Ebola, please tell them they are either liars or the unthinking dupes of liars.   Here are some hard facts: (1)   In 2000, at the beginning of the Bush administration, the CDC budget was $26 billion.   By 2006 it was $30 billion.   In the last gasp of the Bush administration, it allocated an extra $10 billion that went into effect in 2009. (2) The Obama administration has consistently requested cuts in CDC funding, specifically as late as the 2013 and 2014 budgets.   (3) In January, the Republican-controlled House passed legislation that increased CDC spending for 2014 by $567 million which is $300 million more than was requested by President Obama.   (4) Since the passage of Obamacare, the CDC has received a dedicated stream of $3 billion/year from the Affordable Care Act as additional funds.   They have chosen to spend less than 6 cents of every dollar on res

On October 25, 1415, Henry V of England laid some serious hurt on the French at the Battle of Agincourt at Pas-de-Calais , France .   Part of the success of this campaign was due to Henry’s use of the longbow, but part of it also goes to the creative use of military indentures.   These legal contracts required all of the English captains to provide specified amounts of men, material and time to the King’s cause.             An indenture was a document, written in duplicate and then torn along a jagged line, like little teeth ( dents ), in the paper.   One portion of the contract was in possession of each party and when the required conditions and period of service were fulfilled, the parts reunited and the debt was considered paid.   Many of the people who first came to this country from England came as indentured servants, worked off their debt and became the backbone of the country.             Today we are creating a nation of not indentured servants, someone with a care

Nine thousand years ago a man died along the Columbia River .   About 40 years old, he stood 5 feet 7 inches tall and his 160 pounds were all lean, compact strength.   He was no stranger to injury.   In his life, he had skull injuries, 5 broken ribs and a spear point lodged in his pelvic bones.   In each case, he recovered, which means he had someone to care for him.   At the time of his death, cause unknown, he was buried with dignity.                He is called Kennewick Man.   He came to North America long before the peoples currently called Native Americans arrived.   DNA evidence proves he is not related to them.   If there is a real, “first” American, it is this man, most closely related to two far flung groups: Polynesians and the Ainu of Japan.   If you are a Native American, and think you have an historic right of ownership to North America , look over your shoulder.   Kennewick man not only predates you, but he did not even come via the Berengia land bridge.   He

The idea of helping people disabled by accident or illness is a good plan.   It allows us to both express our better angels and give back some of the benefits which come from living in the richest country in the world.   But the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, and a bureaucracy is Hell incarnate.             I doubt that the first plans for disability payments included the possibility, nor even the probability , of spending $260 billion per year on 14 million people.   But there is no, “Murphy’s Law” addendum added to legislation.   While you may want to do good, others just want to do well.             The types of diagnoses that make up disability have changed a great deal.   In 1961 heart disease topped the charts with 25% of all disabled.   By 2011 that group only made up 10% of disabled individuals, and had fallen to third place.   In contrast, 1961 back problems were next to the bottom of the list with 8%, now they make up 34% of the disabled, followed by me

Omar Gonzalez spent the last year or so telling friends that the government was trying to spy on him.   He was sure people were trying to break into his home.   He put his cell phone in a microwave.   Gonzalez would have been just one more increasingly crazy street person, until September 19 th when he decided he had to tell the President that the atmosphere was collapsing.   At that point, Omar became the luckiest man in America .   I can imagine no other explanation for why he is not dead.   Mr. Gonzalez, armed with a knife, leaped over the fence at the White House.   Despite the presence of Secret Service personnel, trained guard dogs, locks, barriers, and snipers all evidently on stand down because—well—force is so…so…Republican, Gonzalez sprinted across the lawn, and through the North Portico door.   He over-powered a guard at the door, ran through the foyer and on into the East Room where he was finally subdued.   Thankfully, he ignored a staircase that led directly to the l

Under a microscope an Ebola virus reminds me of a sailor’s double half hitch.   It is a virus of African origin, a hemorrhagic fever, meaning it causes intense bleeding, frequently from every orifice of the body, in the later stages of the disease.   There is no cure and no vaccine (what we are trying is only in an experimental stage).   It has a mortality rate of from 90% to 60% depending on the medical care a patient receives and the simple luck of ones DNA.   The virus, like all viruses, is designed to live on.   A man who has survived Ebola can transmit the virus in his semen for up to seven weeks after he is declared, “cured.”   Like HIV, which also began in equatorial Africa (face it, those moist, warm, dense forests are natures Petri dish) Ebola virus disease (EVD) typically emerges periodically in small villages of Central and West Africa , near tropical rainforests.    Ebola’s natural host is probably the fruit bats of the tropics.   Bats are mammals, like us.   When th