This is a tale of two dogs, one of them small, one large. One of them is purebred, the other a mutt. One of them is at the beginning of life, the other at the end. Both of them represent a paradox of affluence in life.
My husband, Jeff, and I met Hank on a Sunday afternoon as we drove home to Mississippi from a friend’s wedding in Birmingham, Alabama. Both os us love to tour sites, and this day was no exception, though being Sunday in Alabama, nearly everything was closed and our tours mostly consisted of viewing the outside of buildings and memorials. We made our way back to Goodman in a fifteen-hour trip that normally takes less than four hours. Our arc through beautiful Alabama took us to places such as Montgomery, Selma, and Georgiana, the boyhood home of Hank Williams, Sr., one of Jeff’s favorite singers. We arrived at Williams’ home in the early afternoon and proceeded to walk around and sit in rocking chairs on the wrap-around porch. We spent a few minutes pondering the universe and taking photographs. There was no sign of life, except for birds, anywhere nearby until a mother and daughter drove up to look around. After they left, we decided to move on to Gee’s Bend to see the relatively remote hometown of the famous quilters. As we left the parking lot of the Williams house, I decided to turn left, because it didn’t matter which way we went, and there was a squirrel in the middle of the road to the right. After we turned, I looked in the rear view mirror and noticed that the squirrel was chasing our car, and it looked suspiciously more like a small dog than a squirrel. I stopped and got out of the car, and the little dog ran under the car to the shade of the wheels. Jeff, apparently used to weird behavior on my part, continued to read the map in the front seat. I knocked on the window and asked him to please help me get the dog from under the car. He is wonderful with animals and, before we knew it, this tiny puppy who had run toward our car as if his life depended on it was in Jeff’s hands and drinking water from a bottle we had in the car. Leaving the car in the middle of the deserted road, we went back to the rocking chairs on Williams’ porch to consider our options and to share some pretzels the Holiday Inn had given us two nights before as we checked into our hotel in Birmingham. Before I could crunch the pretzels into small enough pieces to feed the puppy, we had decided we could not leave him. His ribs were showing, his tail had been broken, and he was desperately hungry and thirsty. He was just too small, and there was no food or water around that we could see. We weren’t even sure from where he had materialized. So, the puppy, quickly named Hank, rode with us to Gee’s Bend, Selma, Uniontown, Bellamy, Meridian, Jackson, and north to Goodman. Nine hours of site seeing, and Hank was good the entire way. Part black and tan hound, part greyhound, part chow, and likely many other varieties of dog according to our vet, Hank is now a bonafide part of the Edwards household. Six weeks later, Hank is three times the size he was when we first met him. We had planned to find a good home for him, but things just didn’t work out that way. Suffice it to say Jeff is quite kind and sentimental, and Hank knew precisely who to charm.
Exactly a week after Hank arrived in Goodman, I noticed a large dog on our front porch. She was, or at one time had been, a beautiful purebred hound. It had clearly been a long time since she had eaten. She was skin and bones, the skinniest dog I had ever seen, and she appeared to have mange. I ran to get some food and water for her. She was a bit timid, but more hungry than afraid, and clearly used to humans. She ate the can of food I had brought and then another. Jeff brought a bed and blanket for the dog we named Lucy, since the little hair she had left was bright red. For the next two days Lucy stayed with us, and we spent time petting her and letting her know as best we could we would help her. On Tuesday morning when the vet’s office opened, Jeff brought her in for a check up to see what we could do to make her well. It turned out Lucy did not have mange, but rather a likely allergy that was making her scratch to the point of loosing her hair. The black spots that made her skin look like she had mange were, in fact, healed burn marks. The vet said Lucy had likely been bred to the point she could no longer have pups and at some point had been abused. This gentle dog who, despite what she had been through, had been nothing but gentle and sweet with us, had had to endure torture and hunger that made her look as if she had emerged from a concentration camp. Sadly, the vet concluded there was nothing we could do to restore Lucy’s health. Jeff called me, and together we made the decision to euthanize her. She died in Jeff’s arms half an hour later. It broke our hearts. Lucy’s ashes are home with us now as we look for a beautiful place to scatter them that will honor her. Not a day does by that we have not thought about her and been grateful to know her, albeit briefly.
Americans love dogs and cats. More than 63%, or 69 million households in this nation have pets. There are somewhere between 4,000 and 6,000 shelters in the United States alone where 6-8 million animals are brought each year. About half of them are adopted. Animal overpopulation is not only an American problem. The number of homeless animals worldwide is, practically speaking, incalculable. If not spayed and neutered, cats, according to Pet Overpopulation Estimates, cats theoretically produce 420,000 offspring every seven years, and dogs can theoretically produce 67,000 offspring every six years.
Given the economic downturn, there have been more dogs and cats left to fend for themselves in Goodman since Hank and Lucy arrived. There are really good people in this community college town who adopt as many animals as they can and work to find homes for others, but the numbers are getting larger as people either find they can no longer care for or no longer want the animals. Goodman is not alone. This scenario has played in many communities. Southern cities have more animals in shelters than they can care for or for whom they can find homes. This is true despite the fact that there has been a trend in the North toward spaying and neutering as well as adopting pets from shelters and a shortage there of dogs and cats for the people who want to offer them good homes. Southern shelters, particularly since Hurricane Katrina hit and displaced so many people and animals in 2005, have been transporting animals to shelters in towns where the demand has been greater than the supply. Still, there is little or no room in no-kill shelters for animals like Hank and Lucy. There are simply too many of them there.
It is a paradox of affluence that in a society that loves and domesticates animals to the degree we do, that there are so many who need good, loving homes who don’t have them. All animals, human or otherwise, deserve a chance for healthy and happy lives. Leaving them to fend for themselves, even in a college town where a dog or cat is almost always likely to meet a kind person who will feed it, may be well-meaning. The reality, though, is domesticated animals left to fend for themselves have very short lifespans. There is no shame in bringing a pet to a shelter if you can no longer care for it. At a shelter, there is not a 100% guarantee everything will be okay, but there animals can be spayed or neutered and put up for adoption. It gives them an opportunity to have happy and healthy lives.
This was a tale of two dogs, Lucy and Hank, both of whom, as it turned out, are loved. Lucy’s footsteps, to paraphrase Charles Dickens, died out forever, but we feel she was however briefly part of our family and deserved better than what she got in life. Hank is a charming, fiesty fellow who fits right in with our menagerie. Their tales are the tales of countless dogs and cats and other aminals like them who deserve the same chance at happy lives and often need help from humans to make that happen for them.
Colleges are moving beyond the traditional requests for transcripts and standardized test scores. Robert Tomsho detailed the trend to add personality assessments to college admissions processes in a recent Wall Street Journal article . “Schools . . . are aiming to quantify so-called noncognitive traits such as leadership, resilience and creativity.” Ostensibly, this trend is for the purpose of increasing the admissions chances for students who would be rejected if judged solely on grades and standardized test scores and thus could be part of efforts to recruit minority and low-income students. continue
I love television. I could easily watch it for hours satisfying a variety of my interests – news, sports, music, movies, health, cooking, home improvement…
Shared television moments provide the background for many of my most cherished family memories. My husband and I have been known to arrange our schedules around Lost and 24. My mother loved British programs, especially the Hercule Poirot series. One of my earliest memories of my mom was hearing her laugh while watching I Love Lucy reruns. In later years, one of my favorite memories of our family’s time together was watching British chef Rick Stein’s Food Heroes with his trusty companion, a Jack Russell terrier named Chalky.
But even I have moments when I am bored stiff in front of the television grumbling that oft-heard complaint in the age of cable and satellite TV – “More than a hundred channels and there is nothing on!”
Ah, the paradox of affluence! Obviously, there is something on – in fact, there is TOO MUCH on. Television isn’t the only area where choices are overwhelming.
For nearly every type of product you find at the local mega-store (or even your local average store, for that matter), the choices can seem endless. Think about the choices you’ll find in everyday products such as frozen pizza, cereal, laundry detergent, salad dressings, potato chips, spaghetti sauce… there can be whole aisles devoted to one item. Check out sodas on your next visit for proof.
For those who have trouble deciding which item is best, this veritable feast of choice can be frustrating at best, paralyzing at worst.
In his book The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less, Barry Schwartz has written convincingly about how too much choice has affected our psyche.
He breaks the population into two categories when it comes to our reactions to choice: maximizers and and satisficers.
If you seek and accept only the best, you are a maximizer. To satisfice is to settle for something that is good enough and not worry about the possibility that there might be something better. A satisficer has criteria and standards and once those standards have been met, he/she stops searching.
My natural inclination was to think of myself as a satisficer. After taking the quiz in the book, I realized I agonize over choice more than I thought.
For example ~ here are just two from the list of identifiers that jumped out at me:
I often find it difficult to shop for a gift for a friend.
When I am in the car listening to the radio, I often check other stations to see if something better is playing, even if I’m relatively satisfied with what I’m listening to.
Guilty… and guilty!
Maximizers are much more susceptible than satisficers to all forms of regret, especially that known as “buyer’s remorse,” says Schwartz. In other words, maximizers are haunted with the “if onlys” in life… “If only I had asked others for their opinion.” “If only I had gone to one more store.” “If only I had researched more on the Internet.”
For a truly hilarious account of too much choice particularly when it comes to ordering a simple cup of coffee, read Bill Bryson’s commentary entitled “Enough Already” in his book I’m a Stranger Here Myself.
So is choice a bad thing? Of course not. “Choice has a clear and powerful instrumental value: it enables people to get what they need and want in life,” notes Schwartz. We express ourselves with the choices we make. It tells others who we are. Our choices in clothing, music, automobile, major field of study all give clues to what’s important to us.
It’s undeniable that affluence has increased our choices and in many cases, that’s a good thing. But we have to be careful that the seemly infinite number of choices doesn’t decrease our happiness or peace of mind. Life is about making choices – let’s save our angst for those that lead to longer term commitments than simply what’s for dinner tonight.
As many people are in this current time of economic instability and financial crisis, I have been evaluating all of my expenses and personal costs. One of the costs that ranks high on the list is medical insurance for health care. I spend over 2000 dollars a year on premiums for insurance. That’s with a job. Without a job or working for myself, those costs would easily double through COBRA (the fact that continued insurance coverage is named after one of the most poisonous snakes on earth has never been lost on me) or private insurance, and that’s all before I sought ANY care. Then of course, a myriad of copays, deductibles and fees factor in and increase that total depending on the amount of care I would receive in a year. This is all of course, for one person. I am not married and don’t have children, the costs double and quadruple bringing those factors into account.
Of course, none of this is probably news to anyone. However, it is important to stop and think about how all of this is tied into employment. continue
This Mother’s Day is the second one without my mom. She was diagnosed with colon cancer in the fall of 2006, endured chemotherapy and its awful side effects, and then died suddenly during her second round of treatment in March 2008. I thought she was getting better, but the truth is that the cure might have been worse than the cancer.
I recently read two items that made me think more about cancer treatment as a paradox.
First, in the May 1-3, 2009, edition of USA Weekend, Dr. Tedd Mitchell recounts how chemotherapy became the drug of choice for battling the deadly disease… with something just as deadly.
“During World War I, it was noted that many soldiers exposed to mustard gas developed declines in bone and lymph system function,” writes Dr. Mitchell. “Scientists theorized that such chemical power, if harnessed, might wreak havoc on cancer cells.”
Therein lies the paradox of taking something meant to kill and turning it into a lifesaver.
And then I read a quote from a CBS interview with Senator Arlen Specter, who was commenting on his reasons for switching to the Democratic Party after serving as a longtime Republican Senator from Pennsylvania, one of them being the Republican Party’s stance on healthcare: “If we had pursued what President Nixon declared in 1970 as the war on cancer, we would have cured many strains. I think Jack Kemp would be alive today. And that research has saved or prolonged many lives, including mine.”
Jack Kemp, who was Republican Bob Dole’s running mate in his 1996 U.S. Presidential campaign, died on May 2 after battling cancer. Phi Theta Kappans who were at our 1996 Convention in Washington, D.C., heard Kemp debate journalist Sam Donaldson. Kemp filled in last-minute when the originally-booked George Will couldn’t make it. Kemp spoke on our stage in April, and later that summer was named Dole’s running mate.
So is money for life-saving research the only answer to beating cancer?
I don’t know the specifics about Kemp’s cancer, but I know what my mom faced. In a conversation my mom’s sister later shared with me, my mom told her she had “messed up.” She was referring to her reluctance to go to the doctor as her symptoms got worse. My mother had the telltale signs of colon cancer long before she was diagnosed. If she had had a colonoscopy at age 50, which is recommended for everyone by the American Cancer Society, perhaps the cancer would have been vanquished or even caught in its pre-cancerous stage.
Colon cancer is known for its slow growth, and by the time my mom was diagnosed at age 61, it had spread to her liver and her lungs. Her doctor should have ordered her to have a colonoscopy, but even my mom realized the individual’s responsibility in healthcare.
Since there are many different types of cancer, there can be no magic “one cure fits all.” Is more money the answer to fighting cancer? Yes, I believe it’s essential. Research has already led to many new drugs and treatments that have greatly increased survival rates among cancer patients. But it isn’t the only answer. Individual responsibility is an integral component of any effective healthcare system.
The best way to fight cancer is to prevent it in the first place. A healthy diet, regular exercise and healthcare screenings are our most powerful weapons in this fight. Money can help ensure all of us have proper access to screenings, but eating a healthy diet and staying active are not cost prohibitive.
Medicine is a powerful weapon, but thank goodness it isn’t our only hope for living healthy lives.
To learn about Phi Theta Kappa’s partnership with the American Cancer Society’s Relay For Life Program, visit http://www.ptk.org/service/relayform.htm.
“There will be those who attribute the rise in reading to our current decline of cash, and if that is actually the case I would at least be able to think I forfeited my retirement account to a worthy cause.” (Ann Patchett. “The Triumph of the Readers.” Wall Street Journal Weekend Edition, January 17 - 18, 2009, page W3)
This seems to be zero-sum thinking gone wild. Must we really choose between money and reading? continue
During the Oklahoma/Arkansas Regional Convention that I recently attended, I was inspired by all of the speakers, but one in particular said something that has stood out in my mind. Dr. Dan Bell and his wife Suzie are founders of a free medical clinic in Eureka Springs, called ECHO (Eureka Christian Health Organization).
Doctors and nurses and a host of volunteers from all walks of life devote two nights a month to giving free medical care to those who are uninsured and considered at the poverty level by the federal government. Many who receive care are considered the “working poor.” But Dr. Bell pointed out that there is another type of poverty that plagues the most downtrodden… those who are relationship poor, meaning individuals who are completely on their own without family or friends on whom to rely.