Interesting day

[curious_guy (imported)]

Was it plate glass which shatters into large sharp pieces or tempered glass which shatters into little (not so sharp) chunks?

[Milkman (imported)]

As someone in recovery , I really appreciate this thread. Fortunately these problems arrived after I had established an academic career and was able to go back to my old job once I cleaned up, but for 4 years I lived a drunken nightmare.... DWI's, financial mess, and the loss of respect of family and friends.... I never was in a shelter, but ended my financial independence from my addictions... I am a believer and feel delivered from my self created foolishness....

[janekane (imported)]

How does one solve, mathematically or otherwise, an infinite regression? I have done many things which might be regarded as of self-created foolishness.

However, how is self-created foolishness itself created -- or, what is the source of self and what is the source of self-created foolishness?

What if self-created foolishness is anything but itself foolish?

After my wife and I were married, and learned that our marriage might last a while, we pondered the question of children. We had heard that there were children who needed a home, and developed a relationship with an adoption agency who was searching for a home for a particular child. We became foster parents and then adoptive parents.

It was said that our son's biological parents were "alcoholic." Our son's conduct was characteristic of a child born into an alcoholic parent household. Our son was hard on himself, sometimes brutally, cruelly hard on himself. And he worked away at teaching my wife and me to be hard on ourselves, the better for our son to accept his being hard on himself. My wife and I respectfully declined his offer.

There were times we talked with police. Times our son objected to being in an orange jump suit because of psychiatric hospitalization suicide and elopement precautions. DUI and we did an illegal repo of his car.

One day, our son remarked to my wife and me, "You were the only real parents I ever had." He had, by every test I could devise, learned to stop being hard on himself. A few weeks later, he was driving his wife to work. He was driving well below the speed limit. It was winter. The highway had not been treated to prevent black ice, and there was black ice, a big truck, and our son's wife's car was defectively welded at the factory where it had been made. A comparatively low speed collision resulted in the defective welds resulting in our son's wife's car exploding. In the explosion and its immediate aftermath, our son and his wife were killed. Life can be hard on people.

Might it be an error of attribution to assign responsibility for hard aspects of life to the persons whose life journey includes encounters with hard aspects of life?

What on earth is "foolishness"? Would it not be really foolish to not be foolish? Who could ever know, understand, or learn enough to be else than a fool? For myself, I doubt that anything better than being foolish is achievable.

[transward (imported)]

Was it plate glass which shatters into large sharp pieces or tempered glass which shatters into little (not so sharp) chunks?

Definitly plate glass. Shards were like razors. Got several small cuts trying to clean up.

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[transward (imported)]

I understand the reasons why alcoholics are not high on the transplant list when livers become available. That being said, it is hard to watch someone you have come to like, sitting motionless in a wheelchair, staring out the window with that "beyond the horizon look" , when you can almost see him thinking. About his declining health, his hopes for a new liver and the knowledge that his place on the list will probably ensure that he doesn't get one.

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[transward (imported)]

Given I cook for the alcohol and drug program, it is nonetheless amusing to listen to a very vehement rant on the evils of eating pork from a good Muslim, who was highly intoxicated on alcohol, also forbidden him by the Koran. Logs and splinters in people's eyes I guess.

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[JesusA (imported)]

Given I cook for the alcohol and drug program, it is nonetheless amusing to listen to a very vehement rant on the evils of eating pork from a good Muslim, who was highly intoxicated on alcohol, also forbidden him by the Koran.

Before I retired from teaching, my wife and I lived very near the campus. Every year we invited a flock of strays for a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. One memorable year, one of the guests was a devout Moslem, who immediately declared on arrival that, since Thanksgiving was the quintessential American holiday, he planned to behave like an American. He spent the entire evening concentrating on the ham and the wine.

Another of the guests was a devout vegetarian, who promptly declared that turkeys are dumb enough to be considered a vegetable. He behaved as if they are....

[transward (imported)]

Tonights dinner might have been the most bizarre meal in the 14 years I have been cooking for the alcohol & drug program. Several times a year a local rich private high school volunteers to provide dinner to my charges. It's part of a rich kids meet the homeless program, and it saves me from having to cook, and the kids are cute as kittens. I should explain that while all my customers are "in treatment," this is not a dry house and the residents can and do indulge. Also, most of them get some sort of government checks at the beginning of the month. The end of the month, everyone is too broke to buy drugs or alcohol, but come the first of the month, a good portion of my clients go on a liquid, or smoked or injected diet, so thing tend to get a bit hairy come the first week of the month. I was a bit worried about the kids showing up in the middle of all that. My worries were totally justified.

Kids were all set up ready to serve some burritos; We rolled up the curtain. I was on the customer side of the line putting out the condiments for the burritos. I reached for the sour cream, said "Excuse me, Fred." Fred said, "I'll be alright." I glanced at him; he was shaking like an aspen. He suddenly went rigid, and started convulsing, going into an alcoholic seizure. I caught him, (amazing since he outweighs me by a hundred pounds) and with another's help we got him down onto the floor, though he tossed me about five feet in a convulsion. He was chomping away and spitting out much blood. On the floor it was obvious he was drowning and we had to get him onto his side to drain the blood from biting his tongue. He stopped breathing for a minute. Fortunately the Medics arrived before we could start to breathe him. They laid him out and began to work on him. All the while six feet away, all the residents are going through the food line, flirting shamelessly with the high school girls. Some of the people were cheer leading. "Come on Fred, Wake Up." The medic told them quietly that he couldn't hear them. A half hour later another Medic crew shows up with cardiac equipment, hook him up and run a field EKG on him. They are putting in multiple IV lines, injecting drugs, all the while everyone is eating and laughing. They eventually got him stabilized and on a stretcher, but just as they got him out of the building he arrested again. The last I saw he was being loaded into the Medic One Van while they were administering CPR. They sat there for a while, when a full size fire truck pulled up and they had two Medic Vans and a fire truck all working on one man. And Fred is one of my favorite people in the whole building.

Around here the surreal is the everyday reality.

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[transward (imported)]

At noon today they turned off the life support. RIP Fred. Whatever demons tormented you, you were a great bear of a man with a heart more precious than gold. It was an honor to have known you.

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[transward (imported)]

Damn, damn, death is working overtime. Yesterday we lost a volunteer at one of our facilities. He was severely disabled with cerebral palsy but volunteered every day with the homeless. He would collect day old pastries from local Starbucks and deliver them. Did bookkeeping for the charity wood toy workshop associated with us. Greatly loved by staff and residents. He was run down and hit in his motorized wheelchair by a drunk hit and run driver. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/l ... un05m.html

When he received an award in 1995 for helping men at a Seattle shelter, Douglas Lefever said he tried not to let his cerebral palsy and wheelchair hold him back.

"I have two choices," he told The Times shortly after receiving the Hunthausen Award from Catholic Community Services. "I could stay home and be bitter and think 'poor handicapped me, wah wah,' or go out and help people and think positively."

Lefever was in his motorized wheelchair early Sunday when Seattle police say he was struck by a hit-and-run driver near the Magnolia Bridge. Lefever, 57, later died of his injuries at Harborview Medical Center.

A man with a history of drunken driving is expected to be charged Wednesday in King County Superior Court in connection with the crash, according to Dan Donohoe, spokesman for the King County Prosecutor's

. . . Arnbrecht, in a letter with details about her brother, said he was born with cerebral palsy. Lefever graduated from the University of Colorado with a major in business, and later obtained a master's degree in psychology.

Lefever lived in Seattle for the past 26 years, Arnbrecht wrote.

During that time he was active in city transportation issues, especially when it came to making sure city streets were wheelchair-accessible. Lefever volunteered at a number of charities and in 1995 received the Hunthausen Award for helping homeless or formerly homeless men at St. Martin's on Westlake shelter.

Lefever also donated accounting services to The Giving Tree, a shop within St. Martin's where residents build wooden toys and furniture.

"I love to help people grow," Lefever told The Times in 1995.

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