Elvis week is coming soon

A local Madison artist will have her portrait of Elvis Presley featured in a art contest and show at Graceland, August 8-15. Robyn Kaftanski greated a velvety looking "blue suede shoes" image of Elvis. Check out the full story in Madison's arts news publication, 77 Square.

Find out more about Elvis Week at elvisweek.com.

A couple years ago, I was in Memphis for the 25th anniversary of Elvis' death. The crowds, impromptu shrines, and tributes were amazing. The line to take a candle to Elvis' gravesite at Graceland wound back and forth through the street for probably a mile!

The "fear" of government sponsored health care

Recently on Slate.com, "Scaring Grandma" relayed the speed bump in the Obama health care plan--reducing Medicare expenses, which some interpret to mean denying end of life care.

Here's an excerpt:

Many senior citizens are concerned that health care reform would mean cuts to Medicare. That much was clear at a town-hall meeting hosted Tuesday by the American Association of Retired Persons at which Obama fielded questions from seniors who don't want to give up their benefits.

But one question stood out. It addressed what the host from the AARP called the "infamous" Page 425 of the House health care bill. (Read the bill here.) "I have been told there is a clause in there that everyone that's Medicare age will be visited and told to decide how they wish to die," said Mary from North Carolina. "This bothers me greatly, and I'd like for you to promise me that this is not in this bill." The host elaborated: "As I read the bill, it's saying that Medicare will, for the first time, cover consultation about end-of-life care, and that they will not pay for such a consultation more than once every five years. This is being read as saying every five years you'll be told how you can die."

In a more balanced description of the options before Congress, the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys reports:

The Secretary of HHS has sent a comprehensive report to Congress entitled “Advance Directives and Advance Care Planning.” The report, requested by Congress in 2006, focuses on (1) the best ways to promote the use of advance directives and advance care planning among competent adults as a way to specify their wishes about end-of-life care; and (2) addressing the needs of persons with disabilities with respect to advance directives. You can link to the report at: http://aspe.hhs.gov/daltcp/reports/2008/ADCongRpt.htm. It includes an excellent literature review on every aspect of advance care planning, analyses of key ethical and legal issues, and a discussion of opportunities to enhance the effectiveness of advance care planning and advance directives. The report is particularly timely as health care reform is in the public policy forefront, and several bills are pending on the Hill regarding a dvance care planning and improving care near the end of life.

In addition to the full report, a background report is available at ttp://aspe.hhs.gov/daltcp/reports/2007/adacplpi.htm.

Happy reading!

Adoption can be an uphill struggle

In a heartwrenching story, with a likely happy ending, a West Virginia couple learned that giving foster care to a child does not always neatly lead to the availability of the child for adoption. In the New York Times account of the story of Kathryn Kutil and Cheryl Hess, it was even more complicated by the state's position on their same-sex relationship. Early in the article, the reporter asks, "Was it somehow O.K. for a lesbian couple to care for older kids no one else would take in but not for a newborn whom another set of more "deserving" parents might want?"

Several states outright prohibit adoption by homosexuals, and in some states only one party of a gay couple can adopt but not both parties. In the case of Kutil and Hess, when their infant foster child became available for adoption, the court opined "that the best interest of the child is to be raised by a traditional family, mother and father."

Ultimately, the West Virginia supreme court had to decide that the judge had improperly weighed the various factors to determine the best interest of the child. However, the adoption will still require approval of the state health and human services department and confirmation by a county judge, all of which will take several more months.

As Kathryn Kutil said before the jury in the county courthouse, "We've done nothing wrong but love this baby and love her with everything we had."

Story-telling power of scars

New York Times writer Dana Jennings reflects on his many scars--from accidents and surgeries--and concludes that they tell his personal story and give reasons for optimism.

Here's an excerpt:

[F]or all the potential tales of woe that they suggest, scars are also signposts of optimism. If your body is game enough to knit itself back together after a hard physical lesson, to make scar tissue, that means you’re still alive, means you’re on the path toward healing.
. . .

There’s also something talismanic about them. I rub my scars the way other people fret a rabbit’s foot or burnish a lucky penny. Scars feel smooth and dry, the same way the scales of a snake feel smooth and dry.

I find my abdominal scars to be the most profound. They vividly remind me that skilled surgeons unlocked me with their scalpels, took out what had to be taken, sewed me back up and saved my life. It’s almost as if they left their life-giving signatures on my flawed flesh.
. . .

It’s not that I’m proud of my scars — they are what they are, born of accident and necessity — but I’m not embarrassed by them, either. More than anything, I relish the stories they tell. Then again, I’ve always believed in the power of stories, and I certainly believe in the power of scars.

And that's the way it was...

Last week Walter Cronkite passed away at age 92. Nearly everyone over the age of 30 has some living memory of the august newsman. The New York Times included this obituary, which noted the following:

As anchorman and reporter, Mr. Cronkite described wars, natural disasters, nuclear explosions, social upheavals and space flights, from Alan Shepard’s 15-minute ride to lunar landings. On July 20, 1969, when the Eagle touched down on the moon, Mr. Cronkite exclaimed, “Oh, boy!”

On the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, Mr. Cronkite briefly lost his composure in announcing that the president had been pronounced dead at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas. Taking off his black-framed glasses and blinking back tears, he registered the emotions of millions.

Also, in another historical note, July 20, 2009 is the 40th anniversary of the U.S. moon landing. Here's the New York Times' segment, "Our Moon," on that historic first. Oh, boy!

Religious sisters show dignified and peaceful way to aging and dying

A recent New York Times story describes the peaceful, spiritual nature of an aging community of nuns. Specifically, the story relays the care and introspection that accompanies the ill and infirm sisters who face nearing death.

Here's an excerpt:

Few sisters opt for major surgery, high-tech diagnostic tests or life-sustaining machinery. And nobody can remember the last time anyone died in a hospital . . . .

“There is a time to die and a way to do that with reverence,” said Sister Mary Lou, 56, a former nurse. “ Hospitals should not be meccas for dying. Dying belongs at home, in the community."
. . .

[The primary physician for the sisters,] Dr. McCann said that the sisters’ religious faith insulated them from existential suffering — the “Why me?” refrain commonly heard among those without a belief in an afterlife. Absent that anxiety and fear, Dr. McCann said, there is less pain, less depression, and thus the sisters require only one-third the amount of narcotics he uses to manage end-of-life symptoms among hospitalized patients.

Alzheimer's disease and personal identity

My sister and I had inklings of a slow atrophying of my mother’s mind, perhaps of her very self, before she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in April, 2008. And yet, strangely, I’d also noticed around that time she’d seemed to be more “herself.” So I felt oddly reassured at the news. The diagnosis seemed to explain something about who my mother was, perhaps who she’d been most of my life. Due to its seeming genetic component, we believed the type to be early-onset. It could have started when I was still a kid.

This is how Elizabeth Kadetsky begins an op-ed piece in the New York Times, in which she reflects on her former-fashion-model mother, now living-in-the-moment mother with Alzheimer's. The author compares the present-moment essence of Alzheimer's with the practice of yoga, in that the past and future are absent from thought.

An interesting and touching reflection on a mother-daughter relationship and the influence the disease has on it.

It seems to me that the disease "enhances" the most recognized personality traits by robbing the individual of their multi-faceted and nuanced identity, so that, in the end, their most prominent traits are all that remain. Hopefully, for most of us, our prominent traits are our pleasant ones.

Living to 100 and beyond

I just finished reading If I Live to Be 100, the 2002 book by Neenah Ellis, based on her public radio series. She recounts numerous interviews of Americans from across the country who lived to be 100 years old or older.

In addition to meeting a fascinating variety of people, Ellis reflects on and reveals her own personal thoughts on aging, relationships, and self-identity. Here's a short sample from the introduction:

As I was listening to their life stories, I realized that I was being given the chance to choose my own future . . . . By lining my life up alongside theirs, I got a better idea of where I might be headed. I'd always had a sense of my life as a leaf floating down a river, on a course that seemed unalterable, but suddenly, in my mid-forties, I felt the need to make more choices: I could decide what sort of old person I wanted to be.

In a similar vein, check out the Dallas News piece on 30 ways to live to be 100. All of the suggestions are great, but my favorites are "dance, sing" and "find passion for the little things in life."