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February 2010

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Spying on students; Lower Merion shamed

Tuesday, February 23, 2010 in Uncategorized by admin | Add a comment...

Lower Merion High School (class of 56) is my alma mater.   I was shocked to see it in the news and on the BBC (education).  It was reported that the school gave teenage pupils computers with secretly installed cameras to spy on them in their bedrooms.  The rationale seems to be that they were looking for stolen computers, pornography, and drug dealing.  I’m many decades removed from LM but I remember the ethos of the school.

My shock on reading this came on two levels.  First, LM is a middle class suburban school outside Philadelphia that for some reason always comes out high in the ‘got in college’ scores.  I suspect this is because the students get tutored for SAT’s as we did in the old days.  What got me was the fact that all these students were given free computers to take home.  I bet they were second computers, having had their first for Xmas or birthdays.  Do all the children in Philadelphia get computers at school?  I bet not. I live in London, so I might not be up to date on this.

Then, the second surprise came. The school turned cameras built into the computers onto the kids at home. What were they thinking?  This has to be the most litigious group of parents you could find and everyone is on tender hooks these days about ‘getting into college’. These parents are not going to let their  offsprings’ names be darkened by allegations of indecency, drug selling or computer stealing right before college interviews.   Lower Merion hasn’t changed that much I can assure you. The parents will see the administration through every court in the land and they should.  What a waste of the school’s, and parent’s resources! What administrator made such stupid decisions?

The school has a proud history but also a lot to be ashamed about.  When I went to school, there was a vocational school, next door where they taught the ‘trades’.  This was another way of saying ‘segregated classes’.  We never had black children in our school. They went to the vocational school.  So LM came top of the league in the number of college bound seniors but at the expense of the vocational students next door.

A lawsuit being carried out right now shows that in the Lower Merion School District the issues remain the same as they were in the 50’s except that parents’ are allowed their say in court.

The plaintiffs, whose parents are black, contend that the redistricting plan, which requires that some students living in Ardmore, Narberth and Penn Valley be bused to the new Harriton High School, in Rosemont, is racially discriminatory.

All of the plaintiffs live in Ardmore, which is near where the existing Lower Merion High School.

Having sent the black population to the vocational school,  Lower Merion high school  segregated  itself on religious grounds.  No Jewish cheerleaders ever made the squad for example.  I once gave a ‘sweet sixteen’ party at my apartment house which broke out  into a religious riot.  Someone played Jewish music on the record player and was punched in the face ten minutes after the party started.  Police came.

While  teachers and administrators  complain they are overworked with responsibilities it seems strange that they have to find the time  to get more involved in the personal life of students . When do they do the teaching and adminstrating?  Aare they expected to sit around voyeuristically inspecting children’s bedrooms?

I’m glad they didn’t do that to us.  I learned quickly how to go to school, sign the attendance forms stuck in the window of the classrooms and leave again.  We went downtown, museums, and coffee houses, whatever, and generally had a good time.  I’m sure we attended most of the time but I’m also sure that my attention was focussed  on being popular and having fun.  Towards the end of High School, I wasn’t at my moral best and would not have wanted a camera following my ‘Chevy’ around downtown Philadelphia.  The one saving grace was that most of my immoral behavior occurred outside the home.  I don’t think teenagers flaunt their bad behavior at home, alone in their bedrooms.  Maybe I’m out of touch but it seems the worse behavior still occurs outside the home, in groups of friends.  I  guess other cameras follow them round town.

Lower Merion as always, loves its so-called ‘reputation’ and will do anything to keep it.  I don’t think spying on their students will get them anywhere except in long lawsuits, which the administration (never having any real power) will lose.  The students might learn something about their civil rights, no bad thing and put that on their college statements.  I must be a real curmudgeon.  I still haven’t understood why privileged children need to be presented with computers in the first place.  I also read that when the LM students study languages they are given free Ipods.

Thanks to a “School of the Future” grant, each student in Spanish 4 honors or AP French receives an iPod for the duration of the school year. On these iPods, students listen to Spanish or French music, podcasts, and watch TV shows.

Wikipedia Lower Merion

Between the legal costs of defending this case, the cost of the computers, the time spent on spying, my bet is the school could have invested the same effort, money and time in teaching core subjects.  In that way the parent’s could relax a bit on out of school tutoring for SAT’s, and use the money to buy their children their own computers and Ipods when they, the parents, feel it’s appropriate.   It’s the parent’s authority that has been underminded by the school’s spying system and the teenagers’ civil liberties.  I hope the parents and students are successful in the courts.

Lower Merion High School  - 1950’s

A dangerous cancer: the effect of a narcissistic person on Haiti’s injured children

Saturday, February 13, 2010 in medical care by admin | Add a comment...

The plight of a baby lying in wait for a piece of paper that will let her travel for an operation in London has captured my attention over the last weeks.   Last night’s Channel 4 news (Jon Snow and team in Haiti) confirmed a fact that I only suspected but needed to confirm in order to write about this.  The arrest of Laura Silsby and her ten conspirators has led the Haitian officials to take a long and hard view of every baby leaving Haiti for medical care. I don’t think the Haitians can be blamed for this.  The minister of health and his department are overworked and worried.  The experts they needed could not be found.  For example they spent days looking for and not finding a Haitian neurosurgeon to approve the operation for baby Landina.

When I first saw baby Landina on the news she affected me immediately.  She had bonded with her doctor (one could see from eye contact) and her caretaker.  She had enormous spirit. Having been saved from the rubble, an arm amputated and several operations on her brain, she still managed to keep going.  Seeing her last night again, it became apparent that she was not doing as well and hours were ticking away. Even with the papers signed with the help of the Channel four news team (UK), it would take two more days to get her moving. She had five left to get to this operation.

I think this delay is, in large part, because of Laura Silsby, a very disturbed narcissistic person.  It is extraordinary that one person’s very serious mental problems can have an impact on this baby and other children who are in need of operations not available in Haiti.  The evidence for her disorder is abundant.  She is in debt in Idaho and yet has said on various occasions that she is building a resort in the Dominican Republic.  The contractor she mentioned said that he had sold her a house years ago and had not heard of her since.  It is a money making scheme, her fantasy and she took advantage of the earthquake to put it into action.  As I understand it, the resort was going to consist of an orphanage for the adoptive Haitian children, a hotel for adopting parents who would pay to stay in the hotel for three months, deciding whether to adopt of not and a compound of restaurants and shops. Laura Silsby of the New Life Children’s Refuge told Channel 4 News: “We may have been deceived by someone coming to us and saying: ‘The parents are dead. Please take our child.’ Because we’re taking them to a very… I mean, we have a beautiful place for them to go, and I can see how parents that were desperate, that had lost their homes, lost their jobs, would want possibly to have their child go to a better place.”

No one has seen the ‘better place’, When further questioned, she said she had rented a hotel for the Haitian children in the Dominican Republic until the resort was built.  Of course, all these statements are lies.  She has no money and her church is poor.  I personally doubt that any hotel or resort in the DR would welcome Haitian children during the height of the tourist season or at any other time. The orphans would attend schools and hospitals in the DR which is not a rich country.  Having lived in Miami, and visited the DR and Haiti, I need to say that Haitians are on the bottom of  a very high social structure. I’m convinced that the Dominican Republic is helping in any way they can during this catastrophe so that conditions in Haiti stabilize and they don’t have a rush of immigrants coming over the border.

Silsby also lied to every parent and child she abducted.  I doubt if she actually paid parents for children, but I have no proof.  Thirty-one children even at one hundred dollars apiece add up to more then the reported donations by her church.   The children thought they were going to summer camp, college and other fantasies that she told the parents. Five of the parents testified in the groups’ trial that they were unable to feed their children and hoped for a better life for them. I assume they were paid expenses to witness the case and perhaps a bit more for testimony. The so-called ‘missionaries’ were given a speedy trial by a Haitian judicial system said in reports to be non functional. Luckily, as Jon Snow pointed out, they weren’t Arabs in a US or UK jail.

On the trip to the border, Laura Silsby and her crew apparently gave the children no water and left them in the back of a van.  They arrived at the orphanage in a terrible state, so much for the promised land.

Her ‘team’ consisted in part of her nanny. (I don’t know who is caring for her two children in Idaho), a man with two teenagers and a wife and a group of men who I personally would not like to run into on an Idaho street at night if I were a Haitian.  I admit to knowing nothing about them personally.  One suspects that all these people thought they were in on a money making scheme. One wife said knowingly when her husband gets home they will sort out who said what to whom. She was under the impression that he wanted ‘to observe the earthquake’.

What brings tears to my eyes is the danger this woman’s pathological narcissistic personality has brought on the injured babies and children of the Haitian earthquake. The injured babies and children she will never meet. It is impossible to locate most if not all of their parents (buried in the debris) and understandably the Haitians want to make sure no other children are taken criminally from Haiti. They will bring them up in extended families.  It is encouraging when one person can make a positive difference but this case is a disaster.

I have sympathy for the people of Haiti.  They need to find resources to feed and house one million of people.  The so called ‘nonworking’ judicial system was able to give ‘the missionaries’ a fair and speedy hearing and a jail to live in with three squares a day and plumbing and two court assigned lawyers. (Laura fired the first) The detainees complain about heat and mosquito bites.  Getting rid of Laura Silsby and her crew seems a good idea. They leave 31 children in an orphanage with no clear way of returning them to parents, who might not want them back. I hope they face the fact that they have done no good in Haiti and have left it a worse place for their misguided if not criminal intrusion.  If they can face this with all the spin that will be placed on the story in their home town (most provided by Laura Silsby) they will have learned a valuable lesson. Laura Silsby and her crew have grown a much more serious cancer than my individual cancer which next to this seems unimportant.  Her cancer has spread to every sick child and injured child that seeks to leave Haiti for treatment.  Fundamentalism of course surrounds this case, but Laura Sisby is using fundamentalism and the tragedy of the earthquake in the service of her narcissism. My prediction is that she will never have insight about the damage she has done and she will continue with her self-serving schemes.  It is hoped that people will realize that there is a lot of very good work being done in Haiti and continue to give to the effort.  This child and others are being helped by Oxfam, Unicef,  Medicins Sans Frontiers, and to end Latina’s story with good news.

From Channel Four news (London)

Landina arrived in London this morning, where she was taken to Great Ormond Street children’s hospital for medical assessment on her head injuries.

Her journey had begun last night in the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince following weeks of bureaucratic delays.

Channel 4 News travelled with British surgeon David Nott, working as a volunteer in Haiti, who has looked after the child for two weeks since her arrival at the Medecins sans Frontieres hospital.

The baby’s mother is missing, presumed dead, and has no known family.

At the Santo Domingo airport, Landina’s new passport was stamped and she was checked by a nurse before being put on a British Airways flight bound to the UK to become the only Haitian child to be medically evacuated to Britain.

The charity, Facing the World, had invited her to stay in London for six to 12 months.

After she has recovered from surgery, she will return to Haiti.

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The Devil is in the Details: or is it in the Chemotherapy?

Tuesday, February 9, 2010 in Decisions, delusions and befuddlement by admin | Add a comment...

jdun473l

I think I have the advanced form of chemo fog.  I think I’ll call it chemo yes, details no .  Now I not only forget films, names and where I put things;  I forget the day and time of most appointments, even crucial ones and I don’t even have that much to do. Take the last month, I’ve been in hospital or bedridden about fifty percent of the time.  So what is there to forget?

I sent emails to my friend David in New York asking when he was arriving the next day.  In fact, I sent him several emails over about two weeks. He was actually coming a week after my last email. He was quite confused by all my correspondence.  What I needed to do was to go back over his emails and check.  But I was sure I was right. That is no doubt part of the symptom.

On Thursday of last week, I set up a tea for a very busy friend who was stopping between appointments and taking a train home.  I got sandwiches and cakes and waited.  He is always prompt.  I checked my texts and low and behold.  It was the next week. The date was clearly written, but once again I was positive I was right.

Then I showed up at the day centre for my chemotherapy and lo and behold, I was a day early. I had to go home.

That night I had guests for dinner.  I checked my texts at least ten times.  And guess what?  I got it right.  They showed up on the right day, on time.  Now I find I will have to check everything at least ten times. That is all right. I have nothing better to do anyway.

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A Valentine’s Day resolution: Dress up for the Hospital

Saturday, February 6, 2010 in Decisions, delusions and befuddlement, Uncategorized, medical care by admin | Add a comment...

DSC04352

Would you give this woman drugs? I didn't dress for chemo. I got turned away.

I had a revelation today and a resolution followed. I have to look well to have well-person treatment from the hospital staff.  I’m slow on the uptake. It took me two years into my three-year PhD to realize that my ‘hippy’ long dirty hair and jeans were not speeding up my degree in Education.  In this case my sleep wear is morphing into my ‘going out’ clothes and it is not getting me anywhere medically. Today, just as in school, I decided to turn over a new leaf.  Let’s call it a belated New Year’s resolution. I have to pay attention to my grooming, even though it may compromise  my  first priniciple, ‘be comfortable’ . Maybe I’ve taken this too far because there is a blur between my sleep wear and my going ‘out’ clothes.

I woke up yesterday during chemo. to the reality of the situation that how you look gives hospital staff from cleaners to consultants a clue to your health and if they believe you are seriously ill, they treat you accordingly, which may mean they don’t treat you at all or that your treatment takes longer, while they check and check and check. This is how I arrived for chemo for two days running. I wore some comfy trousers that I could have easily slept in. (I’m not admitting whether I did or not) My hair has fallen out to the extent that I should wear my wig or a proper scarf, but, what the hell, it’s 9.00 and I’ve not slept well, why not throw my long wool everyday scarf and forget it.  No makeup. Voice still an even dimmer whisper, if that is possible.  And, on my first visit, I arrive, limping, and arriving on the wrong day giving more proof that my mental state was deteriorating, too. Usually they would have scrambled around and given me my chemo a day early, especially since the blood tests had been done and were all right. They looked sideways at each other and said, ” I didn’t look well”, and they should postpone treatment until they spoke to my oncologist at the end of the day.  I still didn’t get it, but based on how I looked how could they think otherwise? My oncologist has dropped subtle hints’ that dressing up a bit might make me feel better. (We are very close friends; she is allowed to say that). Later that day she sent an emergency text saying that she would do a ‘house call’.  It was the time I was having my toes taken care of so that I wouldn’t limp, and I couldn’t make the meeting. She told them that chemo could be scheduled for the morning if I was up to it.  She understood that if I was out of bed, I was just looking my normal messy self and in this case, it was nothing to worry about.

Not yet  ‘getting the message,’ I repeated my performance of day one, sloppy trousers, same top, same, same.  The staff again looked worried.  “Have I seen my oncologist recently?”” I walk in and a friend who I hadn’t seen in daycare before came up and had to remind me who she was.  I’m terrible when I meet someone out of context.  She .too. was here for chemo. She looked amazing.  Well dressed, hair perfect, make-up also natural and beautiful, and neat, neat, neat.    She has very serious cancer and has not been too long out of a long hospital stay. I know she is a very private person and doesn’t discuss her cancer. She conceals it well.  She sat down and got her chemo within a few minutes.

While the staff dithered about the safety of giving me chemo, I waited.  I had to wait for the doctor in charge to give his OK and then wait as the nurse tried to puncture my tired veins looking for blood, so that the tests could be repeated to make sure. She tried four times and then called the senior nurse.  All this fuss to send yet another blood sample away for tests. This added an extra two hours to my four-hour stint.   Still I didn’t get it.

Another woman who has had a really tough time with cancer came in and sat across from me with her lovely husband.  She also looked well-groomed and attractive.  She moved through her treatment without problems. This is when a light bulb went on in my head, I GOT IT!  No one wanted to take the responsibility of giving a disheveled, sick-looking person chemo. If I were as sick as looked, I might collapse or whatever.  The senior nurse came over and apologized for having me wait but said she wanted to be very careful because I didn’t look well, although the tests were all right. At that moment I made my resolution. My resolution is to dress ‘up’ for medical procedures and meetings with doctors. I will spend at least a half-hour dressing.  w

What I will do with this time, it now take five minutes, but I will try.  Finding earrings will take about ten minutes of that time, locating my lipsticks aother  five minutes. Motivation: I can cut my chemo to four hours from six hours. It is the first week of Feb. I wonder if I’ll keep this resolution until March. I do love my comfy trousers and I hate ‘dressing in the morning’ when I actually don’t feel up to much. Will I find a middle way? . .

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Final Check list before you check out: hospital stay

Tuesday, February 2, 2010 in Decisions, delusions and befuddlement, cancer prognosis by admin | Add a comment...

I’ve become the kind of person who checks for keys ten times before I leave my flat and at least once after I leave. On the evening when my oncologist made a home visit and hospitalized me, I began a new kind of checking. (The fainthearted might not want to read this.)  Had I actually told anyone that I wanted to be cremated? In my demented mind I think there must be more than two choices; burial or cremation. I guess one can be frozen, well I don’t fancy it.  A choice between two things need not be difficult, but somehow it was.  I was immersed in ‘Wolf Hall” about the 16th Century and Cromwell and it seems quite normal that we should have the option of being hung in Trafalger Square.  Perhaps as an artwork on the fourth plinth It would be better than most of the work shown and would attract the press. I wouldn’t have to worry about who would come because the tourists would throng.

I don’t want a religious ceremony with someone leading it who I have never met\and those weird looking pall bearers who freak me out.   In fact I decide (still on the way to the hospital) I only want one ‘event’ and it is quite simple except that I haven’t told the person in charge of the venue what I wanted, because until that night I hadn’t made any plan.   Formulating this checklist, the next item was who would need to be contacted, how many would come, would someone say something, what?Was I so much of a control freak that I would have to write the eulogies or order people to say something. If I had a luncheon, who would be invited, and more and more items became additions to my checklist.

Where would the ashes go? I think this checklist will be the last thing I think before I close my eyes for the last time.  I couldn’t believe how involved it all got and all the details I had never would have thought had I not been on the way to the hospital.  I always assumed doing a will and a living will were enough. Now feeling truly horrible and sure that I was facing the end, all these things flooded into my head. They say that facing death your life flashes by but I’m convinced I’ll be checking and checking and checking until my last breath.

There are other things to check as well.  Every time I have cancer I give away or give to charity as many of my things as possible.  Then I spend the next years looking for things and wondering , “Have I or have I not given it away?”

I feel I’ve accumulated more  stuff  during my last cancer remission that needs to go.  But not the night, I am on my way to the hospital. That is too much to think about.

I’m adding to this list ten days later.  Now I feel better and I’m going home tomorrow. From this vantage point, all this looks like a to do list for some other time.

Reminders keep coming in. . Yesterday was tax day in the UK and that brings on worries about how what little I will no doubt have left be distributed or do I just split it between US tax and the British Tax and call it a day. (Yes expats pay both)  Instead of big questions I spent the day trying to pay my tax on line and eventually succeeding.

In the mist I had to call to check if I had money to pay the tax and Barclays (the worlds most hated bank) locked me out of the online banking system and forced me to call on the telephone.  As most readers of the blog know I cannot speak above a whisper and calling a Barclays call station in India was extraordinary.  “What is wrong with you?” the operator bellowed  in a heavy Indian accent, over a noisy background.  “Do you have a cold?”  No, I whispered back “I’m in hospital and I have cancer’  What?  Cancer? What C- a –n-c-e-r, I spelled.  It went on like this for 30 minutes, during each security question.  When I finally finished she began to tell me in detail how to log on and when I did log on they had taken the money out of the account but had not itemized the deduction in the statement. Useless.   I will never call again, so I just hope it is all right.  If not, I might go right from hospital to jail.  I won’t miss a beat.

This is what comes of too much checking!

Check the guests to make sure they will have the 'correct' state of mind! Almost forgot!

Check the guests to make sure they will have the 'correct' state of mind! Almost forgot!

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