Explore

Explore the unknown.  Take a ride that you would never take.

When you come to a fork in the road, take it. – Yogi Bera

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Authentic

Be your authentic self today, tomorrow, and always.

Interesting Perspective…

After interviewing Bryan Caplan about his book, The Case Against Education, I had so many thoughts rolling around my head that I decided to record a separate follow up episode. In this episode, I cover where I think Bryan is right, where I think he is wrong, and where I don’t think he goes far enough.…

via 139 – Bryan Caplan Interview Follow Up — Isaac Morehouse

Pot by the Road (A Client Story)

I saw the pot on the side of the road.  Just sitting, all alone.  It looked as if someone had taken it out of a car and forgotten it.  It was March, too early for leaves or flowers if there were to be any on its’ branches.

I was back a few days later.  That pot was still sitting there.  I drove over and swung the car around so my passenger side door was next to it, parked, got out, opened the passenger door and tossed the pot it.  I drove home carefully that day, trying not to knock it around.

When I got home I found a shovel and planted the plant in there.  A few weeks later pretty dark pink blossoms appeared.  In the two years since, it gives me the same blossoms each spring for a few days.

Those blossoms remind me of the client I was seeing when I found that pot.

The client was a third party referral and third party payer, something I appreciate because I know once the contract is signed and then I turn in my hours, I get paid.  Yet by the end this one brought more of a story than I was expecting.

My client lived in a condo complex off of a main artery that had a gated parking lot.  They didn’t drive so they didn’t have the pass code to the gate.  No problem, I waited for someone to come in and park in the unmarked spots.  No one bothered me until one day a man started following me from the building to my car and was threatening to call the police.  I thought it was because of the gate but I quickly realized he thought I was pimping.

I had the municipality’s non-emergency police dispatch number in my phone less than five minutes after I was home that day.

A bit of background: due to the third party arrangements, the client’s guardian squeezed every minute out of me they could get and refused to take less than an hour and a half at one time so I just made the sessions two hours to lessen the amount of times I would have to go.

The next time I just parked on the street and wedged myself through an opening in the gate.

Driving home I would have the windows rolled down.  The condo had a very interesting smell and my significant other would comment when I walked in the door.  Those clothes were immediately stripped off and in the washing machine.

The longer I was with my client the more I found out that helped some things I had observed make sense.

When I talk about my 85% to 90% success rate, this client was one of those I don’t know the outcome or outcomes.  I was summoned after they had failed their licensing test the first time and met the usual resistance.  They had certain expectations and their guardian had others.  The meticulous notes I found in the book and paperwork were not my client’s.  The second time their score went up yet it was still under what the State was requesting.  We used up the hours right before they were scheduled to take the test a third time. I left my client with a detailed, written instruction list of study tips, review tips, piles of organized flashcards, a notebook with notes, and a message of it is up to you to study for this.

I called the third party for a followup but never received any.

To this day I still don’t know what happened with them.  I wonder when I go by the area where they live, if they are still there.

I hope life has treated them well and they passed on their third try.  I think of that when I see the pink blossoms in the spring.

Marjorie Hart: Summer at Tiffany

I found this book in a Little Library.  It’s not something I normally would have picked up but it looked interesting.  I’m not a big Tiffany fan yet I do have a pitcher from there that is still in the trademark blue box and I have never used.  It’s tucked safely away for a special occasion.  The person who gave it to me said: “Everyone should have a gift from Tiffany”.

Marjorie tells about being in New York City in the summer of 1945 and about being young.  From what I can find she is still alive and in her 90s.  Marjorie and her friend Marty go to New York City through connections (yes, you should always have connections first) and work at Tiffany as floor girls.

This was a nice book to settle down with at night.

Rinker Buck: The Oregon Trail

This is a book about memory on both personal and national levels.  I didn’t want it to end.  Someone had it on the list for a local book club and karma bought it to me a few days later.  This is the type of book that is both heartbreaking and profound at the same time.  I will hold onto this book for a long time.

Rinker Buck is a fellow resident of the State of Connecticut.  Rinker takes a journey with his brother, Nick, across the Oregon Trail during the summer of 2011.  Rinker brings in his personal life and past into the American past and through self-reading brings out the truth about America’s past and the Oregon Trail’s past.  Rinker also talks about how the past is changed and hidden away and covered over and rewritten and reinterpreted. Many parts of the Trail are literally paved over.  Other parts have been taken over and renamed and their history glossed over.  Other parts are never discussed at all in the course of the teaching of American history.  Rinker brings these memories out to the forefront.  Yet reading it, I feel that his journey barely touched the surface.

A must read.

Connecticut SB 487

Good morning.  Thank you for taking the time to have this hearing and for incorporating individual testimony.

I am in support of SB 487.  I know there are many countless others who share this as well.

I want to let you know that Thomas Paine, who wrote the short book Common Sense, which as you know helped spur the American Revolution, was in favor of hemp production and believed hemp was one of the products that could make America strong and keep America independent from outside economic influences.  Most textbooks take out this part of his work.  I didn’t discover this until I read the complete book.  If you haven’t, I encourage you to do so.  I believe Mr. Paine would find the banning of hemp a travesty and if he were here today, be in favor of this bill.

I don’t know if Mr. Paine knew about marijuana or cannabis, I can’t ask. Yet I do believe he would find what we are doing today in banning plants a travesty.  Marijuana and hemp are that: plants.  The banning of plants is incomprehensible.  I’ve heard every argument from many people about why marijuana needs to be banned and I don’t get it.  Hemp as well.  Early Americans used hemp for rope, clothing, and everyday items.  America would not be America without the hemp ropes used to build the ships that sailed before metal was able to be processed securely.

Do we really need to sit here and debate about THC, reefer madness, gateway drugs, self-medication, and processing ad nauseam?  Marijuana is a plant that has a world of possibilities that we as adults are well aware of.  Any substance can be abused and we are well aware of that as adults as well.

Would you rather have the marijuana processed in a clean facility and you know what is in it than processed in someone’s garage or basement?  I can tell you from experience as an EMT that many people, even from their “regular” dealers, are sold marijuana laced with substances they don’t know about.

Are people afraid to admit to their own use?  Afraid to admit that their children may be using?  I know I would rather be out in the open than hiding.  Wouldn’t you rather be able to monitor what is going into the marijuana before people smoke it or at least give them the options of their own plants?  I know if someone told me today I have a disease or sickness where the best alleviation of it is to smoke or intake marijuana due to the THC, I would want to grow my own plants and gladly pay the State to do so.  It is small price to pay and cheaper than many prescription options.  Or are you afraid of the prescription drug companies?  They won’t lose out, they actually serve to benefit in the long run.  Many of them already use marijuana in their pills.  Look it up if you don’t believe me.

Why are you enabling the large dealers, many of whom are white and never see jail time and run enough marijuana to run a small empire and pay no taxes whatsoever ever on their transactions, to continue to do this?  Wouldn’t you rather have the money from their transactions, which can run into the millions of dollars, in the State coiffers than in their pockets?  Why are you enabling mass incarceration, or are you afraid of all the people who run the prisons here in Connecticut?

Please go out among your constituents and talk with them.  Listen to the people here today that have been persecuted when they are trying to take care of themselves.  Help bring crime down.  Help bring money and common sense into Connecticut.

Thank you.