Celebrating The Sum Total Of My Parts

This week I noticed that my upper arms are getting saggy – not flabby because they have always been small, but now they are small and jiggly.  That’s okay, because I can raise my arms to hug someone, to hold a little one or just to give praise.   Lifting weights will take care of the jiggle.   

One day I stubbed my toes and made my already swollen feet ache just that much more.  But the pain was in feet that move and fit into shoes that protect them, so it was not such a big deal. 

Chipped fingernails reminded me of the missed mani-pedi, but I remembered the people of Congo and Sudan who endure mutilation of their hands and arms, and a missed manicure was not so important. 

My thighs and waist don’t seem to remember that they should weigh less, but my legs are strong enough to hold me up and to take me anywhere that I decide to go so that can include going to work off the pounds, which seems like a fair trade.  

My hair has decided to turn gray in a disorganized manner, but I thought of my grandmother and my great-aunts and how their gray hair framed their faces filled with love every day that I saw them, and it isn’t an issue anymore. 

The doctor told me that my heart and my rash were aggravated by stress and anxiety, so after he fixed my heart in 2009 I decided that stress had to go live somewhere else and I took control of the things that had me twisted around.   They are not problems – they are opportunities to do different and do better.  All gone?   No - but I refuse to be overwhelmed and under-responsive.  

There was a woman staring at me in the mirror and I wondered where she came from.  She looked back and told me that she was the traveler on my journey of life, and she recalled seeing me along the paths that she had taken.  She does looks somewhat familiar; perhaps we’ll compare itineraries.

So my jiggles and stumbles and cracks and excess and grey patches and trauma are not causing me to feel uncertain about what lies ahead.  Instead, they make me thankful that I have come this far by the grace of God.  Thankful that I have another day to be and do what I was not and did not do the day before.  Thankful that I have a loving mother who makes me smile and laugh daily, and family by blood and by the bonds of friendship that are as strong as any DNA.  Thankful that I live in a time and in a country where what was declared impossible can now be declared achievable, in a time where the goodness of humankind still triumphs in moments of great need and adversity.  Thankful to have another year of life behind me, and to look forward to the years ahead.   

Even with a Nor’easter bearing down on the East Coast today, reminding of the stormy night before my mother delivered me, there is so much to be thankful for.  

And I wish that each of you have occasions and reasons to be thankful for yourselves.                                                      
                                                                                                                                                                                      
   

Happy Birthdays!! 

The Window Seat by Karen Caffee is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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Three Thousand Two Hundred Eighty-Five Days Later

Nine years ago, time froze while we tried to absorb what the eyes were seeing and the ears were hearing.  So much for the brain to process at one time.  The day that we never really expected to have to live through in our homeland.  Nine years later, we are still trying to adjust to living beyond that day, and we’re not putting forth a good effort as a nation.  Tragedy and death should never become opportunities for opportunists – political, racial, or financial – of any kind or ilk.  The rawness of this tragedy has been trampled on by so many people for their hateful and selfish purposes.  

The dialogue about the proposed center near Ground Zero has fuel more argument and bashing than discussion.  I expressed my feelings about the center over the past six weeks and have been saddened by the harshness and nastiness of some responses, empowered (I think) by the anonymity of the internet.  I know that some people will seize any chance to try to win a point with rude and bombastic staging, but social media has given people a false sense of power, or maybe for some people it is the only sense of power that they have to say whatever they want.  Whatever their reasoning, it’s not a good look.  You may feel that enough time has passed and that the constitutional and legal right to build such a center is what matters.  Others of us are not ready now for such – maybe later, and for some there will never be a time when they are ready.  We should all respect each other’s feelings without turning discussions into slugfests.  And no matter which side of the discussion you fall on, the safety of our troops and civilians overseas should never be jeopardized by self-promoting racists here at home (with the help of some media platforms and outlets).   The idea of burning any book of worship is reprehensible.  None of us is perfect, but no good can come of desecrating God’s Word, through flame or any other sin that you choose to commit. 

While we are caught up in the drama of the vitriol and the rhetoric, life is still going on.  There are people who observe their birthdays today with a pause to remember.  Tomorrow is National Grandparents Day, a good excuse for lots of hugs and kisses, flowers, cake and ice cream. This is Pediatric Cancer Month, a good time to buy a cup of lemonade to help look for a cure.  Take a stand for cancer research.   Support our troops and our veterans.  Create an idea to strengthen your neighborhood, or vote for someone else’s idea. 

We can’t change that day or bring back any of the lost, but we can honor their memories and sacrifices by working together to make our nation stronger.  Whatever you choose, make it positive, something good to help our country to heal and move forward.  I want my hero to know that we will never forget.  God bless the USA.

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Getting Ready For The Houseguest You Never Want

--September 3, 2010 

The sweetest words from my mother this week were “They said we dodged a bullet.”  She said that when we talked Friday afternoon, as eyes were trained on the Eastern seaboard and Hurricane Earl.  We had been through the preparations earlier in the week for the storm, leading up to the twelve hour window this afternoon until shortly after midnight.  On Monday she was sewing for one of her friends, but on Tuesday she got busy.  Pull out emergency kit with battery powered radio (and batteries) - check, purchase extra bottled water, canned and dry food - check, prescriptions ordered and picked up - check, emergency plan reading online - check, and lastly on Thursday, returning patio furniture to the basement – check. 

We had reviewed what to do if the hurricane or tropical storm winds hit the house at night (get in the closet and close the door), and the designated evacuation centers in our town.  I am sure that I got on my mother’s nerves with the calls and e-mails and quasi-lectures (that I tried to make sound like I wasn’t worried), and she responded with patience and calm for the most part.  If you have aging parents whom you don’t see every day or live near, you have an idea of the switching of roles that takes place as events and situations occur, and you are trying to manage for them without running over them.   Yes, she would listen to the updates on the news, and she would evacuate without hesitation if one was ordered.  No, she did not need assistance from the first responders to evacuate – let them go help someone else.  She kept any anxiety that she was feeling from me, only saying that whatever was meant to happen would happen (but she hoped the roof wouldn’t get damaged).  She checked on all of her friends and they compared readiness notes.  All but one was proactive in getting ready, but the stage manager (yours truly) made provision for evacuation if needed. 

Once her choir rehearsal was over on Thursday night, the waiting began.  As the winds lessened and the National Hurricane Service  announced a downgrade, my breathing got easier while my mom tried to rest.  Daylight came; my ‘trainer’ had to be walked after I checked the weather reports.  On our first call of the morning, she announced that she was watching the rain through the window over the kitchen sink as she washed dishes.  Life does have to go on while one waits!  My social media network checked in with updates on their loved ones (all well) who lived in the first affected areas, and continued prayers and good wishes for all in the projected path of the hurricane.  The news reports throughout the morning looked promising, and then in the afternoon my mom repeated that beautiful phrase that she had heard on the newscast about dodging a bullet.  Thank God, and exhale.  


She called again at 6 p.m. to say that she was going to bed.  A week of anticipation and probably quiet anxiety over the first hurricane in nineteen years had robbed a girl of some peaceful sleep, and she was determined not to lose any more!  We gave thanks and then said goodnight.  She slept, and I thought about how on this five year remembrance of Hurricane Katrina my mother could have become a part of a story like the one that she avidly followed in 2005, expressing outrage and shock at the lack of preparation and response in the Gulf.  This outcome is markedly different because of good preparation and planning on the parts of citizens and government and also the incredible and divine timing of the mass of cold air that helped to take the steam out of Earl’s engine.   While we have been caught in the grip of this weather emergency, we witnessed the rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico and the 7.0 earthquake in New Zealand, and we pray for all. 

We are still in hurricane season until the end of October, and there will be more seasons and more preparations will have to be made (please not this season).  There are a number of things that can be done in advance to make it easier to get ready to leave, especially for elderly residents.  

Documents: scan and create PDF files on flash drive; photocopy papers, place in waterproof bags (you can buy boxes of ziplock bags in dollar stores)

Register with local senior services department for notification and evacuation (if available) or with local law enforcement/responders

Prepare list with Emergency contact information  

Prepare List of medication names and dosages

Help write an Emergency plan

Create an emergency kit, or help to purchase/order a kit

Photographs of valuables; print or burn to CD-ROM for safekeeping away from residence (part of the emergency plan)

Text messaging lessons; when landlines go down and wireless lines are overloaded, text messages can be the most effective and fastest way to communicate, and it keeps the phone lines free for emergency use. 

I am so thankful that we have had the reverse mother-daughter ‘discussions’ about emergency preparation. My mother might or might not secretly delight in my take-charge attitude in preparing her to function on her own if she has to with new technology (that’s another blog about bribing her to read text messages and then teaching her to send them).  She has gone from fearing the computer and despising the cellphone to using her Bluetooth every once in a while, surfing the internet and creating some of her own documents.  She has taken several computer classes and signs her e-mails and faxes “Your computer nerd mother”.   While it’s a new and sometimes trying adventure for her, it is a measure of peace of mind for me.  I love and salute her courage and willingness to embrace new challenges, as well as those of her generation around the world who are keeping up with their loved ones and making new friends.  Next up on our technology agenda is Skype so she’ll be ready to give first-hand reports and interviews to the press, and then we’ll work on growing her friend list on Facebook!

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Things I've Learned About Life And Race As An American (Before the NAACP - Tea Party dust-up)

~ None of us had a vote in choosing the parents that conceived us or the families that we were born into.

~ None of us arrived with knowledge and experience, but had to acquire them from everyday life.

~ Studying your own history, culture and heritage is not selfish.     

~ Positively supporting your own culture or heritage is not unpatriotic or treacherous or treasonous.

~ Studying other histories, cultures and heritage is not a burden; you may not become an expert but you won't remain clueless, either.

~ Education is a precious privilege that in America is granted from birth, and public school or private, I have an opportunity that does not exist everywhere in the world.

~ Life events can bring great trials and heartache at the hands of others, but also great comfort and support at the hands of others.

~ Ignoring a wrong to someone that doesn't look like me doesn't prevent that wrong or another wrong from happening to me; would I want to be ignored?

~ It is more effective to have a conversation about problems and wrongs than a deafening screaming match.

~ If I choose to isolate myself from other people of other cultures and heritages, I have chosen to build my own tower of ignorance.    

~ None of our skin colors rub off, taint the chairs or poison the swimming pools.

~ It's okay to ask questions about another race or ethnicity - how else will you learn the answer?                

                                              

~ Each of us has made mistakes along the road of life. Learning from those mistakes should be celebrated and not held against us.  

                                                                                                                      

                                                                                                                                               

~ My cheese can get moved:                                                                                                  whether career, home, economics or politics - and yours can,too.    

~ I would rather learn to live in an era of change than to die in an era of stagnation and hatred.

                                                                                   

~ I don't choose my friends because of skin color, eye color, hair texture or ethnicity. I chose you because you have ideas, ideals and values that I have grown to respect, and because you bring something unique to the journey called life.
                                                                                                                                    

~ Sometimes the fifteen minutes of fame, the microphone and the television camera are focused on the wrong people. That does not diminish the rest of us. 

~ Every morning in kindergarten we recited The Golden Rule: 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.'    

~ 'Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent.'                          -- Eleanor Roosevelt

~ "The measure of a man is what he does with power."
--Pittacus, one of the Seven Sages of Greece

~ Character is who you are and what you do when you think no one is watching or will ever find out.  It is who you are "in the dark". It is not who others think you are, but who you know you really are.
--David West, Inside Out Leadership Development, LLC

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From Decision To Action

Dateline: Los Angeles – July 8, 2010 

It’s been quite a day.  News of Russian spies being convicted and deported as part of a swap.  News that a mother in Iran will not be stoned to death (nothing about her life being spared, just that she won’t be stoned).  News that a police officer was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter, after ‘accidentally’ drawing his revolver instead of his taser gun and shooting a downed and restrained man.  News that an accused serial killer will be arraigned next month.  Oil is still leaking in the Gulf of Mexico. Our troops are still in Iraq and Afghanistan. Two million people are still without unemployment benefits. Cities and states are still fiscally fragile.  Comprehensive immigration legislation and enforcement is still a hot topic.  

And then we have ‘The Decision’.  It is true that some good did come from the much-hyped announcement: five hundred thousand dollars in addition to untold advertising dollars going to the Boys & Girls Clubs of America, along with five college scholarships for deserving students.  So after a week of suspense, following months of rampant speculation and guessing (and my guess was in the hunt but ultimately wrong), tonight we know that royal hoop hype is moving into South Beach.  No disrespect to the players and teams involved, but that speaks to the attention paid to this one announcement.  

The communications universe was ablaze today, as it has been all week, in anticipation of the announcement.  Local television and radio, network television and radio, cable television, satellite television and radio, social media sites, websites, newspapers and magazines were all prophesying and punditizing.  Who had the real inside scoop? What’s next? What does it all mean???  

Checking in *ahem* occasionally with my social media friends, it brought to mind last year’s running commentary during a high-gloss memorial service for another King.  There were posts and tweets and texts and messages about everything from the old-school memories to the hats and accessories, and all in between.  When it was over, there were some friendships begun that have been strengthened since then with many a deep and meaningful discussion about the world we live in, and have since grown to include even more friends.  Today one of those friends posted a thought about the collective number of social media citizens in comparison to the UN, and that gave rise to this not original thought: how do we utilize the minds and talents of the social media universe from our respective patches of earth to be the change that we want to see? 

We can’t all go to Washington or to city hall or to the state house, but we can take a crack at doing what our representatives (whom we elect to work for us) are charged to do: make recommendations and decisions after research and study, based on the needs and to benefit the collective good of the people (not the select few).  We have enough tools to cyber-meet and talk  and craft policies and documents that we can submit to our representatives.  We can set our calendars, conference calls and meetings from the comfort of wherever we want to meet (Sweet Tea or iced coffee in hand). We can strategize and then publicize our goals and positions instantly, and be available to promote those ideas around the clock and around the globe.  WE can be the change that we want to see.  Is anyone ready to ride? 

And on a more serious note, may cooler heads and hearts prevail tonight and tomorrow(s) in Iran, Oakland, CA and Cleveland, OH.










                                                                                                                                                                          
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Father's Day 2010

 A Father:

Knows that “Spit don’t make babies”

Knows that making a baby is never the same as being a parent;                                                                              one is an unprotected event – the other is an investment in protecting and nurturing

Talks to God before the child is born, and every day afterward

Knows that reality TV shows are not where you determine or dispute being the father

Knows they must teach and use valuable words with their children:                                                                       please, thank you, share, excuse me, I apologize, I love you

Knows that how you speak to and about others plays a significant role in how your children do the same

Knows that how you speak to and about others may determine how your children expect and allow others to speak to them

Teaches his children that policemen and policewomen, firemen and firewomen and military personnel are also moms and dads

Understands that the school system and teachers are not responsible for raising the child – they are responsible for providing educational and civic tools that will be reviewed and sharpened at home

Knows that bling will never be greater than or equal to brains

Knows that saggy trousers/shorts, tight tops, tight pants and short skirts expose more than underwear

Explains and lives the terms character and integrity

Follows his parental intuition at the moment instead of lamenting how ‘he knew it’ later

Knows that the moneymaker is above the neck and not below it, and makes sure that his children understand that as well

Knows that a child needs more than guest appearances from a father who does not live in the home

Goes to great lengths to make sure that the child understands that whatever happened between dad and mom is not the child’s fault if mom and dad are not together

Recognizes that blending a family requires extra doses of patience, love and caring, and doesn’t push his way into the father role but lives the role instead

Asks for help when needed, and steps up to help when needed

Gives mommy a break and cleans up whatever mess gets made before she gets back

Finds the monster under the bed, sends the boogeyman away, knows                                                                               the Itsy Bitsy Spider, Barney, Yo Gabba Gabba and Elmo

Finds the answer to “Why is?”

Cooks breakfast, lunch and dinner not just when he has to

Learns to comb his daughter’s hair

Tosses the softball and attends the tea parties

Knows that his lap is a good place for learning to read: ABCs, Dr. Seuss, the Bible

Finds the adventure with his children in going to the local park or a theme park

Explains the difference between actions and consequences, before AND after – that dog will not walk itself or ‘hold it’ until the favorite show is over

Remembers the classmate without a dad and makes room for one more

Is familiar with technology because that’s good looking out for the child, who doesn’t understand that everyone on the internet is not a friend

Knows the teachers, attends parent conferences and serves as class parent when he can

Will delete the word ‘quit’ from the dictionary and vocabulary

Coaches without favoritism, or cheers from the sidelines without being an embarrassment

Gives his sons and daughters the one-on-one time they need with him

Knows his child’s friends and their parents

Knows that admiration for an athlete or a celebrity should not be confused with choosing a role model, and explains why to his children

Can’t find the handkerchief fast enough when the child tells everyone why they love their dad, and is okay with watery eyes and trembling lips

Knows that if he missed any parts of his child’s life, a relationship can’t go backwards but can be built going forward

Fathers, just like mothers, are God’s special gifts, whether Daddy, Pop, Papa, Father, Dad, Grandpa, Uncle, Cousin, Stepfather, Mom holding down two roles, or other angels filling in to raise the village.  

We praise God for you, and we love you. 

                                                                                                                                                                            
The Window Seat by Karen Caffee is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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Happy Mother's Day

To Mother, Mama, Momma, Ma, Mom, M'Dear, Mommy

To mothers in two-parent families,

To single mothers serving as mother and father,

To adoptive and foster mothers who have opened their homes and hearts,

To stepmothers in blended families,

To grandmothers raising grandchildren,

To aunts who are raising nieces, nephews, cousins,

To mothers serving in the military,

To dads who are father and mother:

Thank you for all of the love, encouragement, discipline (yes!), the tissues, stories, lullabies, Easter bunnies, Santas, Thanksgiving meals that didn't magically appear on the table, laundry, special 'I love you' notes, the encouragement, tripes to the library, making an extra way, making a way out of no way, special outfits, special occasions, dropping us off, picking us up, extra lessons, checking the homework, recitals, school trips as class parent, asking "how was your day" and really listening, the watchful *eye* the kisses to make it better, did we say the love, the PRAYERS, and the love that you have generously showered upon us.

Everything that God has allowed us to be is because we have you by our sides.

This is your day, from the most senior to the newest mother.

We praise God for you, and we love you!

     
                














                                                                                                                                                                
The Window Seat by Karen Caffee is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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Are We There Yet?

Twenty years ago today Nelson Mandela (called "Madiba" by many in South Africa) walked out of the prison on Robben Island as a free man after twenty-seven years of confinement.  It was an electric sight to see him standing tall in the sunlight after being held for so many years.  In his autobiography "Long Walk to Freedom" Mr. Mandela wrote "I always knew that someday I would once again feel the grass under my feet and walk in the sunshine a free man."   
After walking into the sunshine, Mr. Mandela didn't find a comfortable chair in the shade and just sit down with a cold glass of lemonade.  He continued to work for the rights of all citizens of South Africa, work that he had not put down while behind those bars.  The Freedom Charter was written into a wall at the Palace of Justice in Pretoria.  The preamble says "South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white and no government can justly claim authority unless it is based on the will of the people."  He was elected and served as president of his beloved South Africa in the first general election there, and worked hard to build up a democratic infrastructure. He is still an inspiration, for his dignity, his grace, his upholding of his commitment to freedom even when he was not free.   
                                                                                                                                                                              So in this 21st century, have we arrived at that destination called Freedom?  Have we touched down on the tarmac of shelter, food and healthcare for all?  Are we on the staircase of accessible and affordable education for all?  Are we crossing the intersection of Accountabilty Avenue and Integrity Road?  The sad, loud answer is "no".  Sometimes it feels as though the walk has gone completely off the road.  We have libraries with books and the internet, making it easier than ever to research and learn.  We have greater communication choices with even more being developed every day.  And what 'research' are we 'communicating'?  Reality shows that are spectacles of bad taste and language.  Videos that show how much one can shake while nearly naked.  Stories of bad government and wasteful spending around the world.    Missteps, misrepresentation and mistakes all around.  Marvin Gaye called it when he recorded "Make Me Wanna Holler" on 'Inner City Blues': "...Oh, make me wanna holler And throw up both my hands Yea, it makes me wanna holler And throw up both my hands..."  Owww!  
                                                                                                                                                              After the hollering and hand throwing, then what?  Back to the walk, back to working to make positive changes in our communities.  Back to speaking up for those without a voice or vehicle to make themselves heard.  Back to mentoring and encouraging the children to dream big and learning how to make those dreams real.  Back to speaking up and speaking out for what is right.  Back to getting up when we stumble or when we fall.  Back to being the change that we want to see.                                                                                                                                      
Rosa Parks, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Fannie Lou Hamer, Sarah Delany and Bessie Delany,  Justice Thurgood Marshall, Dr. John Hope Franklin, the Tuskeegee Airmen, Roberto Clemente, Osceola McCarty, Ulysses B. Kinsey, Jackie Robinson, Brig. General Daniel "Chappie" James and those who struggled for freedom in South Africa, among so many others around the world, didn't get it wrong.  President Barack Obama, Dr. Keith Black, Oprah Winfrey, Rep. John Lewis,  Ron Clark, Maya Angelou, Attorney Areva Martin, Rev. Dr. Thema Bryant-Davis, Rae Lewis-Thornton, Bernard Kinsey and Shirley Kinsey, and General Colin Powell, among so many others, aren't getting it wrong.  There is room on the road for us to continue the walk.                                                                                                                    Thank you, Madiba,  for your courage and your strength through the struggle. www.nelsonmandela.org/  It was a thrill to watch you walk out of prison on that Sunday afternoon.  It is an honor and a privilege to walk the path of freedom and to look to your journey and others' journeys for inspiration.       Go Well.







                                                                                                                                                                 
The Window Seat by Karen Caffee is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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Another Chance To Say "Thank You"

                                                                                                                                                            Today is Go Red For Women Day, organized by the American Heart Association to call attention to women's heart health.  Women and men are rocking red clothing today, whether one item or an entire outfit.  Wearing red is a symbolic statement encouraging people to learn the symptoms of heart disease and how to improve your heart health. Heart disease is no respecter of gender, race or even age.  We hear more stories of youngsters with heart disease, and sometimes with fatal outcomes.  Women think that they aren't at risk if they are thin, exercise regularly and eat right.  That's just not so.  We are a nation of too many diabetic and obese people - but that's not news.  Women's heart disease is too often undiagnosed because women don't focus on the warning signs, or put off being concerned about their health until later.   We don't all get to 'later'.  Too many women die of heart attacks and heart disease because they ignored their bodies saying "There's trouble here, time to get it checked out!"   

My body sent that message on two different occasions in 2009.  The first time was on Easter Sunday, while rushing around town to take care of some last-minute requests before an event at church.  The palpitations had been going on for a little while, and after I ran back into the store for a case of water, I passed out in the checkout line.  Not once, but twice, because after I came to I insisted that I was fine and got back in line to pay for the water.  After I dropped the second time, the paramedics came and even then I was insisting that I was okay and didn't need any help.  One of the paramedics gently told me that my heart was beating a little too fast to be considered 'okay'.  Please take note: when they inject you twice with a drug to stop your racing heartbeat, you're not okay.  Especially when the drugs don't seem to have any effect.  So we went to the hospital, but I "fell through the cracks" of the evening shift change and received minimal attention for the first four hours of my stay in the ER.  (I left just before midnight, hungry, frustrated and disgusted.  If I'm suspected of having a silent heart attack, how is it that the doctor on duty for the last four hours that I was there never came into the room to see me - just across the hall from the nursing station?)  Healthcare is not an option - but that's another blog topic. 

The second time was on July 2nd, after the funeral of a dear sister friend who had died of heart disease the previous week.  I was still at the church, working on a project, feeling bad and pushing through.  But again the message was pounding loudly in my chest, and when the paramedics came there was no discussion about going, just where to go.  While sitting in the ER bed that night, waiting for the IV to finish so that I could go home, the doctor came back and told me that the only place I was going was to a bed upstairs because they had run more tests and knew something was wrong, but not specifically what had happened.  She mentioned Silent Heart Attack, whose symptoms differ in men and women.  That time, in Olympia Medical Center, the cavalry was in place.  They started tests the next morning at 6:30 a.m., called in the cardiologist, who called in the cardio specialist.   Thank God for the episode that I had in the hospital while attached to the monitors because that helped the doctors with the diagnosis.  They made a plan and we made a date for surgery. 

One week after going home, I went to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles for an angiogram and a coronary ablation.  The angiogram showed that my arteries were clean.  The ablation was partly successful because I had residue of a heart medicine in my bloodstream, so the next month I went back to the hospital for a second ablation.  No open-heart incisions, no long scars. Surgery through catheters, home the next day.  How amazing is that!  Now nearly five months later, twenty-three pounds lighter, taking a nightly mile walk with my nine-pound, four-legged 'trainer' and just a nightly cholesterol pill, I beg you one and all to 1) learn the symptoms of heart attack and stroke, to 2) learn CPR if you haven't already taken a course, and to 3) tell every woman that you know to speak up when they feel bad.  We need to be superwomen and superdivas with healthy hearts!!   Take the time to make healthy eating choices, take part in regular exercise and share the weight of the world with others (stress will knock you down and can take you out).  Treat yourself as well as you treat your loved ones.  See your doctor regularly, and tell your doctor about the aches, pains, flutters or whatever it is that just doesn't feel right. 

God bless health professionals, healthcare workers and first responders for the work that they do.  To honor the memories of all of the women who did not survive heart disease or heart attacks, we have to make our health a priority in our lives.  Today is a great day to prioritize your heart health, woman or man, girl or boy.   For more information, visit http://www.americanheart.org/

Red love to you!!

                                                                                                                                                                
The Window Seat by Karen Caffee is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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The Wait Is Over

 We've been waiting a long time for rain in California. A very, very long time that brought several years of firestorms and destruction of hillsides. The fires all have names and they all caused loss of life, serious injury and catastrophic damage.

Throughout America, there has been a long wait for new leadership. A long wait, through terrorist attacks, economic decline, job outsourcing and downsizing, political scandal and intrigue. Each crisis has a name and they caused some level of deprivation that affected many or all of us.

One year ago a new administration took office in Washington, D.C. Two days ago a week of storms descended upon California. The waits were over but the results are not all that we want. We have seen a year of economic surgeries that were supposed to reinvigorate the housing and job markets, and rein in excess on Wall Street. We have seen the attacks by pirates, kidnappings of our citizens overseas, actual and attempted attacks on our homeland.

No amount of wishing is going to change what's happened. The clock won't turn back and the bell won't be unrung. We have seen some of our worst fears and some of our pretty bad fears come to pass. We have a lot of issues and problems to deal with, and we'll likely have more before we're satisfied that we have the change we want. So are we going to continue to point fingers, shout out loud, talk trash and fan flames with rhetoric and rambling? Are we going to wrap ourselves around ourselves and only worry about the nose on our face and the faces in our houses? Are we going to wait for 'someone' to fix everything? Are we going to continue to travel on 'More of the Same Road'?

I hope not. I hope that we will inhale, exhale and think about the criticisms that we want to level against the other party or the other side. Let's be real: if all of America's problems were solved by President Obama in the first twelve months of his administration, there would be murmurs of sorcery and calls for warlock commissions. The view from inside the job has to be decidedly different and a bit more realistic than when you're trying to get the job. You can't appoint only the people that agree with you (and he didn't want to), you don't get to select who sits in both houses of Congress (you can campaign for some, but no guarantee that they will win), and you don't get to turn out the lights and lock up the store for the night (even if it is a really nice store to live above). You get a 24/7/365 preoccupation that will test all of your skills and all of your patience. Remember the classic line from "Jaws"? 'Just when you think it's safe to go back in the water…' with the music building to a scary crescendo, and then came that shark that wouldn't die until the theater lights came up.

We have serious days ahead and we have serious issues to address as-a-nation. Sitting back doesn't work anymore for us as citizens. Who besides your immediate circle should know how you feel about the performance of your elected officials – the people who work for us? Answer: those same elected officials should hear how you feel from the time they take office until the time of the next election! You may or may not get the answer that you want, but your communication will remind them that you are paying attention to their performance. Just as your performance is evaluated by your boss or supervisor, elected representatives should know how their performance is rated by the people. But don't stop with communicating with those representatives: do something yourself to help make a situation better. Everyone has some skill to contribute to resolving problems. And here's a novel but not original thought: you can team up with people of different parties and positions to work for a common cause. The exchange of ideas leads to solutions faster than the exchange of insults. Don't quit if you don't prevail with your point or idea, keep expressing your ideas. Talking to each other is what's most important, not the size of the words or the smoothness of the speech. Dialogue is what counts and you have to be in the conversation to be in the game.

A very wise man named Stan Bush put it like this: "…It's really not about 'them'. It's about us…'We the people'. If WE continue to do what we've done for 200+ years, we will continue to be divided. We must not let parties and race (be) the deciding factor. After all, when the guy hits the winning home run in the World Series, or scores the winning TD in the Super Bowl…Nobody on the winning team really cares about his race or politics. They are just glad that their team won. We need a team."

Healthcare  for our citizens is still too important to ignore. The economy and workforce, housing and homelessness, education and national security have to be addressed. The team roster isn't closed, but the clock is ticking. Game on!