Family news: Getting old

 I had a birthday last week, and we had a big party: Slow roasted beef with baby potatoes and baked Salmon from a local take out place that makes gourmet meals, and we also had Pizza, Spaghetti and fried chicken from Jollibee (the best in the world according to Anthony Bourdain), and chocolate cake. 

Party was attended by the staff who lives here, and we also invited the ladies who were cleaning up our conference room and preparing it for the Baptists who meet there on Sunday.

Kuya loves his superduper smart phone, so gifted me one. (I had been using a small tablet that could make phone calls, but it is on it's last legs). Joy gave me a medium size tablet without a phone that she got with her cellphone last week which I plan to use for reading: both internet and ebooks.  So I have been busy cloning my information to these places and trying to figure out how to use the phone.... I have been avoiding putting my face etc on line, but now my new phone recognizes me so I guess its too late to worry about such things. The good news is that I can have it read stuff to me: I have developed cataracts and can't read small print. When they get worse I'll have surgery, maybe after the holiday.

Kuya slipped and fell getting off the elevator in the mall so they took him to the local hospital and he had a CT scan which was okay so he refused to stay at the hospital. It was probably a blessing, because they found that his Blood pressure which had always been borderline when I checked it,, was sky high. So I put him on medicine and now it's back to a safer level. 

Joy fell two weeks ago and tore a ligament in her knee: pain pills, and a brace might work, but she is on her feet a lot and could end up with surgery. Sigh.

We are all getting old. 

Medicare doesn't pay for health care here, but the company has us all on PhilHealth which pays about half the bill. And things are cheaper than in the USA.

When I had Mohs surgery for a small lesion on my face, I ended up paying 20 thousand pesos of the total bill (about 400 dollars out of a total that would have been about 1000 dollars US)... but it would have been ten times that in the USA.  

I had developed the lesion when Lolo was dying so there was a delay in getting it off. The second lesion I later developed I had a surgeon take off here: it was in an area where the scar would not show.

People who talk about moving overseas have to remember about health care. Many expats are married to local ladies so have family around, and other move to areas what cater to expats not just from the US but also Europe and Asia: and there is a special retirement visa for us. Unlike the US, the Philippines respects elders and so shops etc often will help me when I go there.

Medical standards in Manila is equal to that in the USA, so is a potential medical tourism spot. And we are getting more sophisticated here: I could even get a specialized retinal scan in the next city, and we now have dialysis and heart surgery, but also there are places for the poor to get subsidized medical care. Our local public hospital is often understaffed now so many folk have to go to the next town for specialized care at the public hospital, or pay extra at two local private hospitals.

The town has already started to put up the Christmas lights: the Christmas season here starts as early as October.

But the big holiday today is not Haloween (although some are starting to celebrate it in Manila) but Undas: All Saints day which is November 1st. That is the day when people return to their home villages to visit the graves of their loved ones. 

Usually you go to the cemetary, clean the grave site, place flowers and light some candles, and then stay awhile and visit with family and friends while you eat a small meal. Usually there are vendors there selling snacks and candles and small toys for the kids who get bored. 

So today we visited Lolo's grave. I sent the maid and her brother to clean it up yesterday, and today we brought the candles and flowers. Yes, it was early, but  on Oct 31 and Nov 1, the crowds are so great that usually you aren't allowed to drive to the gravesite, but have to leave the car on the street and walk. Since I had Dengue two years ago, I have trouble walking more than a block or two, especially in the afternoon heat. 

yes, I saw a couple of doctors about this, but after all the negative tests I asked them what was the problem: and they laughed and essentially said: it's old age.

 

AH! I INTENDED   NEVER NEVER   TO GROW OLD ... LISTEN: NEW YEAR'S BELL!
JOKUN

Sigh.

Dengue and Malaria? We haz that

 Malaria in Arkansas and Dengue in Calfornia.

short discussion on my medical blog.

the CDC is doing investigation of contacts  while doing spraying to kill mosquitoes: ironically, although both these diseases are spread via mosquitoes, the mosquitoes are different. Luckily, the way to kill mosquitoes is the same: Get rid of standing water and spray high risk areas.

there is a dengue vaccine but not a good one, and the malaria detected is the lower grade Ovale, which can hide in asymptomatic patients but doesn't kill as often as the more virulent Falciparum version which is becoming resistant to medicine.

With all the criticism of the public health service, you might want to remember that malaria was once common in the Southern USA, 

a different mosquito spreads Dengue, and although Dengue was not a problem, the same mosquito spread Yellow fever, which was a major problem in the USA.

History lesson here:

...

the election is crazy in the USA

 my son is worried that no matter who wins, there will be violence. Given the horrid rhetoric by Trump against illegal migrant criminals, one does worry that vigilantes will start attacking anyone who is an immigrant: Both legal and the peaceful ones who fled to work at an honest job.

He lives in elderly housing gated community so he should be okay. But things tend to be getting crazy.

On the other hand, as the saying goes: Only Nixon can go to China, and that is why I suspect that Trumpie boy will deport high risk gangs but give an amnesty to those who find jobs and are not criminal (similar to the Reagan amnesty, which by the way is how my son's wife became a US citizen back then)...

Harris is blowing things by making this about Trumpieboy as Hitler: I mean he was president before, and didn't even take Hillary to court for her illegal email server or the Russia hoax.

She should be telling us how she plans to tackle the growing debt, put rules in place to screen migrants (not just criminals but for disease like TB) etc. 

Actually she lost my vote by saying that she not only will pass a federal law to legalize all abortions up to nine months, but will not allow exemptions for those who refuse to do abortions for religious reasons. Since one abortionist tried to fail me in medical school for refusing to do abortions, I take this personal. (by the way: The Civil Rights act of 1964 protected me. Presumably this law is still on the books).

And this law might force Catholic hospitals to close. Alas, too many nuns who run these hospitals are getting woke, so they would probably ignore the bishops and let abortions (and later euthanasia) be done.

You know, this is not just a right wing Christian issue: when I was in training and a hospital tried to force their residents to do abortions, the Muslim doctors refused, and when they were threatened with loss of their job,, all the other Muslim residents said: You fire them, we all leave. 

But seeing how easily my fellow medical students changed their mind when Roe was passed, I have no trust that the Christian docs would do the same, especially now that medical school is woke, and medicine pushes following guidelines if you want to work and get paid.

As for Trumpieboy: I had to laugh when I listened to this:

Trump as in charge of the X men team with Musk as Tony Stark?

heavy rain continues

the tropical storm is passing into the west of the Philippines but it has been pouring rain all day. Wind not bad but we lost a couple of banana trees and some branches of our palm trees.

Ruby is calling us from Thailand: She had a bad cold and fever and now that she is over that, has stomach upset and LBM. Sigh. She is adjusting to the new germs in her environment, so nothing serious. That is why docs usually are healthy: We get exposed to all the germs early in training and then have resistance. 

signal 3

Heavy rain all night. mild wind only.

Another day, another Tropical storm

 Tropical storm Kristine is off the eastern coast of the Philippines, and we are getting heavy rain. Luckily the winds are moderate (70 km /hr) so the danger is mainly from the heavy rain.

We have harvested most of our rice, but what hasn't been harvested will probably be lost, Sigh. The harvest was late this year since they were dredging our irrigation ditch so we couldn't plant rice until the monsoon started.

the flooding right now is bad in the central Philippines, but as the storm moves north, we will be affected:

and of course, it will probably hit north of us in the mountains, and the rivers downstream will cause flooding.

Image from DOST / Pagasa

Learning to be a mother

 A caretaking robot gets stranded on an island and is trying to get home. The animals are threatening, the environment is dangerous, and no one will talk to it.

But then it adopts (or is adopted by) by a baby goose...

Lots of themes in this movie, (Caring for the environment, learning how to make friends, protecting the community where you live) but learning how to be a mother is the main theme.

a three handkerchief movie. 

  Based on this children's book: LINK

Pay up sucker

 

....

I posted this as an answer to this clueless essay on the Catholic thing discussing the latest court case for abuse against the Los Angeles diocese, long run by Cardinal Mahoney, who lay folks knew ignored abuse but he was a social justice warrior so the press never wanted to accuse him of anything.

In this painful moment of paying off the debt of sin, Catholics also have to forgive the Church. We let go of our anger for the evils committed. We pray for the repentance of the guilty. We pay our money to facilitate healing and reconciliation. Perhaps financial reckoning can be a turning point for the Church in America. The lay faithful can decide to come forward not with clenched fists, but with open wallets so they can help the Church compensate victims and then move forward to live the Gospel with zeal.

translation: pay up sucker.

it wasn't just LA nor did the failure to investigate and demand accountability stop at the Diocese level:  in San Francisco, Kamela Harris decided not to prosecute these cases when she was the DA.

 

I have links to a lot of stuff here.

I lived in Altoona diocese before that diocese imploded, and here on FR is an article from the local paper that explains what  lay folk were up against in 2002.

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I remain a Catholic because most of our priests and bishops and layfolk are good. I am angry about this because it is criminals/sociopaths/narcissitic manipulators who see good people and churches as an easy mark: so they steal, abuse kids, get cushy jobs, etc. and they don't care.

This is why the good and merciful Jesus recommended millstones for such people: yes forgive them if they repent, but often their repentence is a sham so they can go back to their exploitation of the good.

when you lost Andrew Sullivan

While the Pope (PBUH DUH) is promoting the gender confusion fad (not meeting with trans people but meeting with activists pushing this agenda), the good news is that some people still are protesting this evil fad that exploits naive kids (boys who are gay and girls who are autistic and easily persuaded that surgery will cure their dysphoria).

Since the normal voices of morality have been muted out of politeness or to go along with what they think is popular opinion, some unlikely voices have cried out in the wilderness to object.

Of course there has been punishment for their crime of heresy against the latest fad: e.g. Jordan Peterson lost his license and Harry Potter's mom is ridiculed and boycotted by the woke.

but the real question is why so many who should have opposed this fad stayed silent. Was it out of charity, i.e  seeking to be polite, or is so they won't be   called a bigot? Or is it because they are bowing to the "experts" who silenced them by shouting "SCIENCE" to support this fad. 

 So the radicals continue to push this on the innocent with few willing to say: the emperor has no clothes.

But slowly there has been pushback from organizations that actually sought the truth behind this fad..

The first pushback was when the UK issued the Cass report. which, as the Economist noted  

 The Cass Review damns England’s youth-gender services The largest review ever undertaken in the field of transgender health care is out. It is damning of practices that were commonplace in England until recently and remain widespread in other countries, notably America.

italics mine.

One would think that the Cass commission would have settled the problem, but here in the US the Biden/Harris administration is continuing to push the agenda.

and the poster child for pushing this is Dr Levine, who got her job by being openly trans, even though she promoted the policy to admit infectious covid patients into Pennsylvania nursing homes, which resulted in an estimated 20 thousand dead elderly people. (while removing her own mom from a nursing home to keep her safe).Newsweek article here.

And despite it being election year, and despite the unpopularity of this policy among normal folk, the Biden administration continues bullying and trying to silence anyone who says no.

So again, when the medical associations and famous medical journals and gay activist community stay silent, again there is now another small voice that stands in the way to shout STOP.

  Andrew Sullivan, a well known gay activist/political commentator, dares to point out the fraud and lies behind this government policy, and cries shame to the Gay community for it's silence in this matter,

 

headsup from Instapundit who links to his blog:

ANDREW SULLIVAN: Rachel Levine Must Resign: A case study in politics and ideology overruling science. With chi ldren as victims.

 

“The broad contours laid out in the brief were already known. But, with discovery, the specific details of private, internal emails make this medical scandal even more vivid.”....

But the discovery from a lawsuit against the State of Alabama over its ban on the medical sex reassignment of children has left me reeling. It shows a staggering level of bad faith from the transqueer lobby, and, also, from Rachel Levine — the Assistant Secretary for Health at HHS. Read the amicus brief here. Everything in this piece is based on it....

go to his blogpost for more details. 

An internal email from the Hopkins team concluded that there was “little to no evidence about children and adolescents.” Many WPATH members, we discover, also knew the studies would “reveal little or no evidence and put us in an untenable position in terms of affecting policy or winning lawsuits.”

Italics mine.

so thank God for lawyers willing to sue these organizations for the victims misdiagnosed with gender dysphoria, a condition that in most cases is a temporary condition and in other cases is simply that the child is gay and needs help to cope with his sexual orientation.

There is a reason that so few dared to be a whistle blower? the story of this physician should frighten any doctor who dares to oppose the Biden administration's policy:

another story here:

 

As a non woke Catholic (and ex missionary) I wonder about the silence of the churches: lots of talk of compassion and acceptance but no talk about how easily children can be groomed by sexual predators and those who have an agenda.

That is why I am angry at this Pope: 

True, Pope Francis has condemned the gender agenda, but last week his actions directly contradict his previous comments. Meeting with activists, who then go out and proclaim he backs them and plans to appoint trans friendly bishops to help push this agenda.

In case you are wondering what that last part is about: Well, it's about those pesky American bishops, not all of whom are supporting his change the church agenda.

The US bishops meeting plans to investigate why US Catholic hospitals have been found to be doing this type of surgery (which is forbidden under Catholic law which forbid  removing normal organs for social reasons). I suspect that the usual woke bishops will stop this from happening. But at least some of the Catholic bishops in the USA are trying to stop it. LINK 

I have less hope here in the Philippines where the elite  activists in the Manila gay scene and US State Department pushes the gay agenda on the Philippines and other poor countries. 

Here in the Philippines, being gay or trans or a cross dresser is not a big deal: Sort of like the men with second wives, tolerated as long as their actions don't destroy the extended family that is the basis for Filipino society.

The bishops are so busy saying acceptance and compassion that they are blind to such manipulation by American backed activists and American inspired liberal Protestant churches, and don't realize that their inability to condemn the gender agenda which is anti family, has resulted in driving many Catholics to join Bible believing Evangelical churches.

This fad started after I retired to the Philippines and stopped practicing medicine, but you know, in 40 years of being a physician, although I saw many gays and many children, mainly girls, sexually exploited, I never saw a case of transgender. Maybe because I worked with the poor and/or minorities who tend to be socially conservative, and the fad seems to be more common in upper middle class white folk. Or maybe it is because of the autism epidemic which has exploded in the last 30 years means these kids are more vulnerable.

Another day, another food recall: How to keep food safe

another day, another food recall: 

From Legal Insurrection:

Millions of Pounds of Ready-to-Eat Beef, Chicken Recalled Due to Listeria Affected products may have been used in ready-to-eat products that are “on store shelves or in consumers’ refrigerators or freezers,” or available for use by restaurants and other establishments.

 almost every week, we read about similar food recalls  in the USA. Imagine how common such things happen in other countries.

this is an important issue, since a longer shelf life means more food. How do you keep food safe and cheap? One answer is Chemicals that prolong shelf life but keep food cheap enough for ordinary folks (especially here in the poorer areas of the world). RFK Jr points out these cause long term health problems but hey, the cost benefit ratio means well nourished poor people.

Food recalls not only mean less food available to eat, but foods contaminated with common germs are a big health risk.

Germs cause diarrhea. Usually from the 4 F problem (contaminated FOOD (usually from not being stored correctly...the poor here don't have refrigerators), FINGERS, (not washing hands), FECES (fertilizer not washed off of vegetables, also contaminated water from poorly placed latrines) and FLIES (that carry germs on their feet that land on your food).

 So how do you stop bacterial contamination of meats and cheeze and fresh vegetables? Keep it clean, wash your hands, store it properly.

But for countries where food processing plants (not local farmers a mile away) supply your food, one overlooked answer to contamination is radiation to kill germs.

  

Here is an article about it in the journal Foods in 2023 which is actually discussing using radiation to prevent food contamination with pathogenic germs:

 But first they note that this high tech expensive technology should not be the main way to stop food poisoning:

 It is essential to note that irradiation is just one aspect of a comprehensive approach to ensuring the microbial safety of meat. Other interventions, such as good manufacturing practices, hygiene controls, and appropriate storage and handling practices, are also crucial for reducing the risk of contamination

but for food processing plants, radiation is another way that could help: 

Irradiation has been studied extensively for its efficacy in reducing microbial contamination of meat. By exposing the food to ionizing radiation, the latter reduces or eliminates harmful microorganisms that can cause foodborne illness. Previous research showed that irradiation could effectively reduce levels of pathogens such as Salmonella and Escherichia coli as well as levels of spoilage organisms, leading to improved microbial safety and a reduced risk of foodborne illness.

 

 

another technical article discussing not only radiation but UV light Ozone microwaves etc. And how these technologies might help not just with bacteria but with viruses.  

this is a news report summary of using radiation from eight years ago: 

this is a lecture from MIT from 2019,...It is more technical but he is a good teacher that makes it easy to follow his arguments..

 

 at three minutes in, he notes that you often find small bugs in rice. 

We find this is a problem: we grow and sell organic brown rice to upscale supermarkets in Manila and nearby cities. There is no way our small business could afford to radiate the rice to kill the bugs, so we use more traditional ways to keep our rice from spoilage.

When we package the rice, we sift the rice so the small bugs fall through the screen, and then blowtorch it lightly to kill the eggs that didn't detach (and would result in live bugs months later) but not enough to harm the rice.

We also pack it in vacuum bags which extends the shelf life and keeps it dry so it doesn't spoil as quickly. 

But then our rice is organic, i.e. no insecticide, and it is brown rice, meaning it has a limited shelf life so it is eaten before the tiny surviving eggs hatch.

As our city modernizes, we have modern supermarkets now that have the same standards of US supermarkets (and higher prices than the traditional markets AKA Palenkes).

But our cook usually buys fresh food every day at the Palenke down the street. 

What is a Palenke? An open air market with small vendors selling their wares.

This video by a local comedian is about the wonderfulness of the Filipino Palenke.

 

The manipulation of the Catholic synod nonsense

 

I have written before how the so called Synodality push by this pope is is a marxist type way to guide groups from above. This is done to disguise what is going on: so that they can pretend the agenda is grass roots initiative. But any Catholic can tell you that the activists with agendas will be busy filling the seats: Heck, even in Catholic Manila they found a lot of "catholics" at these meetings were actually members of the Freemasons, which is a group Catholics are not allowed to join.

The video has a long discussion of the meetings, but if you fast forward to 20 minutes, they mention a woman who plays the role of the child who points out that the Emperor is naked:

Transcript: I think one of the interesting things that happened this week that we've heard here in Rome is ...   somehow it leaked out, or it was just so notorious that it couldn't be kept in. Is that the thing that has gained the greatest applause by the full, almost 400 group of delegates inside the Synod Hall this week was a woman, a mother , who got up and said, what we really need in the church is some help. We women need some help and how to bring up our children to remain faithful to their religion in the modern. Or if you prefer, post-modern world, that mother standing up and saying, how do I bring up my children got the largest applause of anything that's happened so far in the Synod Hall. So that tells you something about what real women are thinking about. This other stuff. It just seems to me it's ideological verbiage .

 this synodality push has nothing to do with the religion founded by Jesus: the small group discussions remind me of the 1970s encounter groups we were forced to attend in medical school: we were supposed to bare our souls and get solidarity with the others in the group, but in reality it meant the most vocal pushing their agenda on the rest of us.

The modern Francis church is moving to establish a new church, but it more resembles the shenanigans of the renaissance Popes. whose agenda was power. So they worked with other world leaders and sent their minions, usually Jesuits, to manipulate politics. How bad was it? Well, it was so bad that the Catholic monarchs pressured the church to disband the Jesuit order.

And if these so called reformers, who follow the spirit of the woke/ NWO mindset take over, and will give the puppet masters another way to silence political dissadents (example: The fall of the iron curtain from believers demonstrating for freedom against tyranny).

If the Catholic church "reforms", it will be a big win for the elites who are planning to run the world.

it means they will run all the schools and hospitals will push the secular religion. So Catholic hospitals will allow abortion and euthanasia, and the Catholic schools and universities will push their agenda.  Not to mention diverting all that money into the pockets of the corrupt.

This is merely the secular harm that will be done if Francis gets his way.

from a religious point of view, the real sorrow is the loss of souls: Because people will reject a false religion of woke, and the most pious will be left without support for their souls.

It's not just Tolkien and Star wars and Marvel

 The US movie studios are planning a remake of Crash Landing on You, the very romantic K Drama hit about a rich and very modern Korean entrepeneur who crashes while skydiving into North Korea and is rescued by a NKsoldier.

Now why does that need a remake?

the ReviewGeek is not impressed.

We already know the the property will need to adhere to strict DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) rules and that will immediately throw into question how these are going to be added in....

 Translating (Crash Landing on You,)... to an American audience, and injecting modern day politics and social messaging, without losing the heart of the story? Good luck....

The film Parasite was pretty well ruined by Hollywood, since it doesn't make a lot of sense to Yanks, who have less class snobbery... but a common K drama theme is the clash of poor and rich families.

and even Pachinko was ruined by adding a modern day story about the problems of an American of Korean ancestry to the story. Season two is now here and remains confusing with flash forwards and flash backs, but I do wish at the end of the series, someone will make a fan cut of the series removing all that secondary story and simply telling the story of the Koreans in Japan from start to finish.

----------------------UPDATE

Geek reports that the plan is to rewrite it in outer space.

Hmmm... I am old enough to remember when this was done in Enemy Mine, where the alien is bisexual and later his/her child ends up adopted by the human...

Hurricane coming to Florida

This explains why President Biden remains popular.

,,,

I am also watching the ongoing news conferenced by the Governor of Florida, since I have family there.

.

The problem is that this is stopping people from going home, since the second storm is hitting.

Sigh. This is a super sized hurricane, and yes several of these have hit Asia this year (but luckily for us, we were on the edge and mainly had flooding and destruction of the almost ready to harvest crops)...

We flew over Hurricane Milton about 90 minutes ago. Here is the view out the Dragon Endeavour window. Expect lots of images from this window as this is where I’m sleeping while we wait to undock and return to Earth.

Timelapse coming in a separate post.

1/6400 sec, f8, ISO 500 pic.twitter.com/zkhJdTlag7

— Matthew Dominick (@dominickmatthew) October 8, 2024

I was hoping to follow it on Twitter, but too many political bitching back and forth from both sides of the aisle.

and as I noted in an earlier post: The confusion in the mountains is because the flooding was not expected. FEMA is the scapegoat here, but this type of confusion happens after all disasters, where the pencil pushing bureaucrats are slower at helping than the locals, i.e. church groups, relatives, National Guard, first responders, people who have skills and know they will be needed... etc.

celebrate music

 

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......

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as students, we used to watch him when he was in charge of the Boston Pops And at Tanglewood.

 

Family news

 So the typhoons passed and we are only getting evening thunderstorms of the monsoons. So no problem here, but I worry about my son in Florida. He said his town is outside the wind area but they worry about the rain might flood them. 

The rice, which was planted late because they were dredging the irrigation ditch, is almost ripe and the first harvest of our fields will be Thursday if we can rent the harvester/thresher machine.

Joy has been busy teaching: mostly business lectures for farmers but she also attends church meetings and gives lectures there. Not my church: I am Catholic but my weakness since I had dengue two years ago means I rarely can get to mass when it's hot.

The white Mamadog had two puppies a month ago: They were premature and small but lived and now their eyes are opening, so we may have to move them out of the closet when they start to wander.

There is a new half grown puppy in the street: Half starved and try to bite you if you go near. We put out food and water but because of the risk of rabies there is no way we would adopt it. 

The maid said the city has a free rabies shot clinic in the poorer area of our barangay (neighborhood) tomorrow so she will be late. It is for dogs and cats. We no longer have cats since all the cats in the neighborhood died off two years ago, and no new feral cats want to adopt us because we have watchdogs. We need a cat, since mice and rats invade and then we have to put out traps or for rats poisoned food. Yuck. 

Lecture of the week

 

most religious stuff on youtube is superficial,  but this is the Chaplain to Queen Elizabeth II, who has since converted to Catholicism.

Shipping routes: can a Thailand canal help?

 China is trying to block the shipping via the West Philippine Sea.

But there is another danger spot if China gets aggressive:

Malaca Strait — and Kra Isthmus, Thailand — Wildly important:https://t.co/Gdv4AsOldM

— Michael Yon: Callsign BIG HONEY 6 (@Michael_Yon) October 6, 2024

....

The trouble with bureaucracy in disasters::Regulations over reality

I have been through six typhoons since I moved to the Philippines, but only once did we get cut off from electricity, water, internet, and local help for more than a day or two.
  

We lived off of local food and generators for a week; our pump, which we had stopped using because the water level had fallen, was restarted and voila, it worked so we had water.  

So the disaster in the mountains of the Southern USA is worse than what we went through: Because in the USA, the need for backup generators is rare: but here, brownouts are common, so most middle class folk have one.

When disasters strike in the USA, usually local first responders have a plan intact. The local National Guard often has water supplies and the ability to purify water, and often the fire departments are volunteer based and have equipment to help rescue folk; the church groups have food banks and often help distribute supplies and even house those whose homes are destroyed. 

Relatives and friends arrive with pickup trucks full of supplies, the local boaters come in to rescue those in flooded areas, etc. because the outside help often can't get in because of blocked roads.

This is chaotic, and the bad part of this is often supplies are not distributed to where they are needed: Too much aid goes to one area, and no aid to another.

This is the background of FEMA stopping private aid going to the hurricane/flood victims: Their plan is to collect those supplies to make sure that it goes where it is needed, and then distribute it, including making sure all the paperwork is done correctly.

Because to a bureaucrat, the rules and paperwork are the priority: Things have to be done properly.

But as the saying goes: When you are up to your tush in alligators, there is no time to have a meeting on how to drain the swamp.

The bad part about this is that doing paper work to arrange who needs help, and who should get it first, takes time: Sometimes days. 

And in a disaster, time is lives. 

And that is what is going on in all those hysterical stories about FEMA blocking private folks trying to rescue their friends and relatives. Because paperwork and following regulations is more important than reality.

I see we’ve reached the stage of civilizational decline where the sclerotic federal bureaucracy is hamstringing the tech billionaire’s effort to run private disaster relief in the face of government inaction while trapped civilians run out of food and water… https://t.co/9QSXZBIavy

— John Daniel Davidson (@johnddavidson) October 4, 2024

Thailand school bus accident

 Ruby is teaching in Thailand and reports that the entire country is upset about a school bus accident, where 23 children burned to death.

the bus used hydrogen fuel, which are becoming more popular in much of Asia, and seen as a good alternative to electric buses: both are used because global warming of course...but the deaths seem to be in the back of the bus...( because the escape door in the back wasn't opened ?)

BBC Report.says that most of the gas cylinders were in the back but a few were illegally added to the front of the bus. The BBC article explains how changes had been made to the old bus chassis, and that this is common, and often does not meet the same standards found in newer buses.

The investigation found that a pipe coming from one of those in the front broke in the impact, leaking gas which ignited the fire. The trapped passengers appear to have been unable to open the rear emergency exit too, although it is not clear yet why.

Overseas adoptees: Seeking their birth parents

 This article is an AP story from a Japanese Newspaper about children adopted from Korea who now are adults and seeking their birth parents. 

These adoptees are among the 200,000 sent from South Korea to Western nations as children. Many have grown up, searched for their origin story and discovered that their adoption paperwork was inaccurate or fabricated. They have only breadcrumbs to go on: grainy baby photos, names of orphanages and adoption agencies, the towns where they were said to have been abandoned. They don’t speak the language. They’re unfamiliar with the culture. Some never learn their truth.“I want my mother to know I’m OK and that her sacrifice was not in vain,” says Kenneth Barthel, adopted in 1979 at 6 years old to Hawaii....

This is a common theme in K dramas, by the way, but very few US movies or films discuss it properly: often the story is happy happy shiny fantasy, and some are horror movies (the myth of the Bad Seed, i.e. the evil parents legacy to the child)..

In the US, adoptions are common: In my family it includes several cousins, mostly in country adoption but also, like my sons, older children from South America.

My sons were two of a family of six siblings whose parents died, and they remember their parents. I got two of the older boys. Their uncle abused them, so his wife arranged for her friend to take them to the orphanage and say she knew their parents had died and that they had no family. Luckily the uncle didn't bother to answer the ads looking for their family, nor did their siblings, at least one of whom was adopted in the same city and old enough to read the paper. The younger ones were taken in by friends or family: the youngest, a baby, was lost, but last year his cousin discovered the family living in Cali, about 100 miles from their town, so my son flew down to meet her. He also searched genetic databses and found a cousin, born blind, who had been adopted by a family in Minnesota, and met her also.

In the USA, it is almost impossible to adopt a baby: Most are kept by mom ,or aborted. Most of these children, if mom can't care for them ,are cared for by the grandparents until Mom is old enough to care for him or her, or if she descends into drug addiction, often the family will rescue the child who ends up being raised by grandparents or other family members.

Alas this means that often mom is an addict, and it takes years to legally free the child to be adopted, and by then, often the child has scars and attachment problems.

The rule that says to try to place children with parents of the same race. This is good, since after the TV show Different Strokes, there was a lot of upper class white people who wanted a black child, often to show they were liberal. American Indians have the same problem: And then the child, just like adopting older children from overseas, has to adjust to a different culture.

The Parting Glass

 This lovely song is from the ending of the film Waking Ned Devine, about a man who drops dead when he finds he wins the lottery, and since he has no heirs, the town conspires to pretend he is still alive so they can all share in the winnings.

I always assumed it was a traditional song, but apparently yes and no: according to the first video commentary:

Fill to me the Parting Glass was composed by Shaun Davey in 1998 for the closing sequence of the film Waking Ned; the words are traditional set to his new, original melody.

but that melody and the lyrics have a long history according to Wikipedia, which has a long essay on the song's history: apparently it was originally Scottish, and has many variations.

the melody of the modern version is similar to Old Cootehilltown: a song about leaving to work in America.

and the older melody was used in one of Bob Dylan's songs, Restless farewell, and one can see that although these are all different melodies, they have similarities to each other: something one sees in folk songs, which are often handed down by being sung, and those who write them down polish the words and melody.

One other note of trivia: No, the film was not filmed in Ireland as most people think. It was filmed on the Isle of Man, a small island between England and Ireland. The local government (that is semi independent) has tried to establish itself as a center for the film industry over the last 30 years. LINK but is best known for being the home of the tailess Manx cat.