After an unseasonably warm, although ferociously windy Thanksgiving day, for late November it is still relatively nice outside, somewhere in the mid-50s . . . Probably I should have camped out in a parking lot somewhere, eagerly awaiting “Black Friday.” The more I read about this holy day following a holiday, the more I suspect that I somehow lack “American” genes or something.
I do NOT like shopping, for ANYthing, EVER. Never have, really, unless you count those halcyon days of my distant youth when a trip to the local dime store (yeah, we had two of those here, in fact--Place’s Five and Dime, and the Woolworth’s next door to it) was an adventure for kids mostly isolated on a farm eight miles out of town. That had less to do with the “shopping” aspect, given that we rarely had all that many nickels and dimes to our names, than with the sheer novelty of it--to see all this incredible “stuff,” all in one place, that you could actually pick up and sorta play with while you “shopped,” stuff you had thitherto seen only on television or maybe in the Sears Christmas “Wish Book.”
On the relatively rare occasions we got to “town,” our lives truly were full of wonders.
Best time of year was the Christmas season, of course, which back then began only after Thanksgiving had passed. Most shopping in town still was situated around the courthouse square or within a block or two of it, and all the stores, which throughout the rest of the year closed at 5 on every weekday but Thursday, when they stayed open until 9, stayed open until 9 every shopping day for the 4 weeks of the Christmas season. Christmas music played from speakers above the sidewalk, and going from store to store in the brisk cold under brightly colored streetlights, with a backdrop of red taillights on the street, sometimes even snow hanging in the air more than simply falling, added still more magic to the whole experience.
This was in the late sixties and early seventies, of course, and in small-town mid-America. The nearest shopping mall was 45 miles away; 24-hour stores like Seven-Eleven didn’t even exist in our little neck of the woods.
The environment wasn’t yet conducive to competitive shopping like Black Friday, or really even to pastime shopping--even had we been so inspired, there simply weren’t enough stores to enable us to pass much time engaged in it.
While I’m not yet old enough to wax nostalgically over the “good old days,” nor Republican enough to want to return America to an even earlier time (the Gilded Age of the late 19th century), from a 2011 vantage point, after 36 years in the workforce, having lived through and endured and mostly observed a variety of both personal experiences and social and cultural and political evolutions (heck, I remember watching JFK’s funeral on TV, and I was only a little more than 4-½ years old at the time; to this day I “remember” seeing red stripes--on our black-and-white TV--on the flag draped over the coffin; I remember Vietnam, I remember Nixon vs. Humphrey, and of course I remember Watergate and all that followed), I now wonder sometimes if those days, that little wedge of time in our nation’s history, will not eventually be seen through the historical prism as America’s having achieved its ultimate pinnacle--yes, there still were problems, deeply rooted ones like racism and sexism and so many other “isms,” and yes, we still had that “biggest kid on the block” mentality, though not to the extreme it would become, but what I remember, rightly or wrongly, was that we still had hope back then. Any man or woman had the power to “change his stars,” as Heath Ledger’s character’s father put it, in “A Knight’s Tale.”
We even often saw--and looked for--that “Made in America” stamped on whatever we purchased. We still made things in this country, didn’t just buy and sell them, and what we made generally was of much higher quality than virtually anything made anywhere else. The proverbial tide was beginning even then to turn, though.
In about 1975 I wrote a short story basically decrying the commercialism of the Christmas holiday season--not a particularly original thought, even back then; smarter people than I had been decrying the same thing for a while, although usually from a religious standpoint. I could never have envisioned--I’m not sure anyone could have envisioned--camping out in box store parking lots for days, just to secure a particular “bargain;” I am positive that no one could have envisioned a shopper going nuts with pepper spray to keep other shoppers away from a coveted item (as reportedly happened in Los Angeles this morning). But then, we would never have dreamed of stores open 24/7, either--maybe they had them in the “big city,” but they would never appear out in the sticks. Well, we’ve had our own 24/7 Wal-Mart for a lot of years now, and even a 24/7 grocery store.
Probably it’s just what Mario Puzo, who wrote books other than “The Godfather,” called “retrospective falsification,” but somehow “limits”--even as apparently essentially meaningless as a Christmas season limited to four weeks, or store hours limited to 9-5, Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday-Friday, 9-9 on Thursday, 9 to noon on Saturday, or purchases limited by the number of nickels and dimes in your pocket--seemed more to enhance the “shopping experience” than to detract from it.
Guess I’m just a Scrooge at heart. My "fallback position" has always best been characterized by a lyric from a Billy Joel song: "The good ol' days weren't always good/And tomorrow's not as bad as it seems." (If I could remember the name of the song, I would look it up and make sure that quote is accurate. Maybe I'm older than I think). I'm finding that position ever less tenable, however.
Friday, November 25, 2011
Thursday, November 24, 2011
Thanksgiving Snowy Owl
Yesterday morning I saw a snowy owl--at least, near as I could tell by matching up pictures I took of it with pictures of snowy owls I found online.
A snowy owl has no more business in this little corner of Missouri than Michele Bachmann has in a presidential race, so I was initially doubtful. Unlike this writer, snowy owls thrive in seriously cold places (think “inside the Arctic Circle); while it can be cold in the winter here, it never gets much below minus 20. Snowy owls like it a little cooler, from what I gather.
How the bird managed to find her (I THINK it was a “her”) way down here to my neighbors’ rooftop will likely remain a mystery to me, given what I’ve managed to find online so far. No migratory maps I’ve come across show them venturing much farther south than southern Minnesota or maybe northern Iowa, quite a ways north of where I hang my hat (or would, if I ever wore a hat). She was clearly lost.
Have to give her credit, though, for making the best of her situation. She perched very patiently on that rooftop for at least an hour, probably a good deal longer, yet she obviously never lost sight of the need to hunt, the need to survive--this breed of owl apparently will pick some high ground and settle there, scanning the country around it, for as long as it takes until it spies a potential lunch and goes immediately, hungrily after it.
In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I am thankful for having the chance to see the bird, so far from where it “belongs;” I am thankful that I have neighbors thoughtful enough to call me and let me know the bird was there; I am thankful that there was still a little room left on the SD card in my camera to allow me to photograph it.
Come to think about it, I am thankful for so many moments.
When I was about 10, it was coming up to the lip of a ditch crossing our farm and seeing a red fox (rare then, rarer still now) lapping at the ice far below me. Around the same time, it was driving to a grocery store and being startled by a deer leaping across the street in front of us, right in the middle of town.
A year or two later, it was making my way around a pile of brush in some woods separating two ponds I used to fish, and coming face-to-face with a mama skunk and two or three or more of her babies--I froze, didn’t stop to count, just backed off and ran away, but I can still see the skunk and her brood in my mind’s eye, my memory.
Much later, it was the possum lumbering in its odd, almost hunchbacked way toward me on a dark walking path early one morning, and the hawk with whom I came face-to-face when going out on a smoke break in the middle of midtown Kansas City; the hawk was resting in a tree at the edge of the parking garage, I was on the second floor, just about at eye level.
There were the baby raccoons, four or five of them, huddled 15 or 20 feet up against a tree trunk in streetlight, around 4:30 a.m. when I was engaged in my morning walk.
The humongous river otter that appeared one morning in a pond near my house, a long way from the nearest river (the Mississippi, actually).
The enormous beaver that waddled into the headlights, down by “Goose Pond” (not its actual name) in Kansas City North one night when we drove down there just on a lark.
I won’t even mention the rattlesnake stretched out on a rock, a squirrel in its mouth (well, I guess I did just mention that).
The world can be full of unexpected wonders, if we are open to them.
To borrow a line from Bob Seger, “these are the memories that make me a wealthy soul.”
A snowy owl has no more business in this little corner of Missouri than Michele Bachmann has in a presidential race, so I was initially doubtful. Unlike this writer, snowy owls thrive in seriously cold places (think “inside the Arctic Circle); while it can be cold in the winter here, it never gets much below minus 20. Snowy owls like it a little cooler, from what I gather.
How the bird managed to find her (I THINK it was a “her”) way down here to my neighbors’ rooftop will likely remain a mystery to me, given what I’ve managed to find online so far. No migratory maps I’ve come across show them venturing much farther south than southern Minnesota or maybe northern Iowa, quite a ways north of where I hang my hat (or would, if I ever wore a hat). She was clearly lost.
Have to give her credit, though, for making the best of her situation. She perched very patiently on that rooftop for at least an hour, probably a good deal longer, yet she obviously never lost sight of the need to hunt, the need to survive--this breed of owl apparently will pick some high ground and settle there, scanning the country around it, for as long as it takes until it spies a potential lunch and goes immediately, hungrily after it.
In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I am thankful for having the chance to see the bird, so far from where it “belongs;” I am thankful that I have neighbors thoughtful enough to call me and let me know the bird was there; I am thankful that there was still a little room left on the SD card in my camera to allow me to photograph it.
Come to think about it, I am thankful for so many moments.
When I was about 10, it was coming up to the lip of a ditch crossing our farm and seeing a red fox (rare then, rarer still now) lapping at the ice far below me. Around the same time, it was driving to a grocery store and being startled by a deer leaping across the street in front of us, right in the middle of town.
A year or two later, it was making my way around a pile of brush in some woods separating two ponds I used to fish, and coming face-to-face with a mama skunk and two or three or more of her babies--I froze, didn’t stop to count, just backed off and ran away, but I can still see the skunk and her brood in my mind’s eye, my memory.
Much later, it was the possum lumbering in its odd, almost hunchbacked way toward me on a dark walking path early one morning, and the hawk with whom I came face-to-face when going out on a smoke break in the middle of midtown Kansas City; the hawk was resting in a tree at the edge of the parking garage, I was on the second floor, just about at eye level.
There were the baby raccoons, four or five of them, huddled 15 or 20 feet up against a tree trunk in streetlight, around 4:30 a.m. when I was engaged in my morning walk.
The humongous river otter that appeared one morning in a pond near my house, a long way from the nearest river (the Mississippi, actually).
The enormous beaver that waddled into the headlights, down by “Goose Pond” (not its actual name) in Kansas City North one night when we drove down there just on a lark.
I won’t even mention the rattlesnake stretched out on a rock, a squirrel in its mouth (well, I guess I did just mention that).
The world can be full of unexpected wonders, if we are open to them.
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
A Modest Proposal
Newt Gingrich is a flippin’ genius.
Get rid of school janitors (well, at the poor schools), and let the poor 9- to 14-year-olds take over cleaning duties. It would teach them responsibility, get a little (presumably VERY little) money in their pockets, save the schools money . . . Everybody wins, right? If a few of the kids suffer life-ending or life-altering injuries, what the hey? We’ve got too many people in the country, anyway.
He may be onto something, but hasn’t quite gotten there yet. Let me help him along.
First of all, scrap this idea: Child labor laws were enacted for a lot of very good reasons. The “age limit” aspect, though, bears consideration.
After watching the so-called “Super Committee” in (in)action over the past few weeks, it occurs to me that we need to scrap the age minimums for our elected representatives. Instead of watching 12 “grown” men and women carp at each other, imagine putting a dozen 4-year-olds in the same room and letting them go at it. They would likely make just as much progress, and doubtlessly would be a lot more entertaining to watch.
Semi-seriously, I free-associated into wondering what would happen if you presented a “Budget Challenge” to high schools throughout the country? Schools would select 12 students, based solely on academic records, with maybe extracurricular activities as tie-breakers. Give them the same budget information that the Super Committee had to work with, then a semester or so to work out “deals.” At the end of the school year, each school’s proposed budget would be presented to a national panel of “adult” judges drawn NOT from Congress, but from a wider spectrum.
The budget with the most savings, with cuts and increases shared most equitably and with most clearly the best interests of America as a goal, would win.
The prize? Haven’t gotten that one figured out yet. Maybe the winning team would be given the option to select one lawmaker from each party to go at it, gladiator style, in, say, the Capitol building. Their weapons would be rubber swords, Nerf bats, and bubble-blow, and they would be wearing diapers (after a pre-bout meal liberally spiced with the laxative and the diuretic of their choice). The audience would be limited to congresspersons (mandatory attendance, plus mandatory sharing in the pre-bout meal), their staffers, lobbyists (may need to change the venue to a football stadium or Olympic arena to accommodate them all), Grover Norquist and Sarah Palin, as well as television crews, of course.
Plus Newt Gingrich.
Unfortunately, unless he gets elected to something (wasn’t he essentially driven out of Washington in disgrace, lo these many years ago?), he won’t be qualified for selection as a “gladiator.”
Salamander- or chameleon- or otherwise reptilian-boy Newt could handle the housekeeping duties after the fight, though. He would even share the same pre-bout meal and wear the same uniform as the combatants, with one minor change to differentiate him from them: A nice big letter “A” tattooed in scarlet ink on his back, just to remind us all of the moral high ground he occupies overlooking all of us.
But that would probably constitute "cruel and unusual" punishment (Nancy Pelosi in a diaper??? Jim Boehner??? Aaaarrrrgghh). In the case of Congress and Newt, it is probably warranted.
If this gives you the impression that I've lost whatever respect I might ever have had (not much) for our legislators, you're very perceptive.
Get rid of school janitors (well, at the poor schools), and let the poor 9- to 14-year-olds take over cleaning duties. It would teach them responsibility, get a little (presumably VERY little) money in their pockets, save the schools money . . . Everybody wins, right? If a few of the kids suffer life-ending or life-altering injuries, what the hey? We’ve got too many people in the country, anyway.
He may be onto something, but hasn’t quite gotten there yet. Let me help him along.
First of all, scrap this idea: Child labor laws were enacted for a lot of very good reasons. The “age limit” aspect, though, bears consideration.
After watching the so-called “Super Committee” in (in)action over the past few weeks, it occurs to me that we need to scrap the age minimums for our elected representatives. Instead of watching 12 “grown” men and women carp at each other, imagine putting a dozen 4-year-olds in the same room and letting them go at it. They would likely make just as much progress, and doubtlessly would be a lot more entertaining to watch.
Semi-seriously, I free-associated into wondering what would happen if you presented a “Budget Challenge” to high schools throughout the country? Schools would select 12 students, based solely on academic records, with maybe extracurricular activities as tie-breakers. Give them the same budget information that the Super Committee had to work with, then a semester or so to work out “deals.” At the end of the school year, each school’s proposed budget would be presented to a national panel of “adult” judges drawn NOT from Congress, but from a wider spectrum.
The budget with the most savings, with cuts and increases shared most equitably and with most clearly the best interests of America as a goal, would win.
The prize? Haven’t gotten that one figured out yet. Maybe the winning team would be given the option to select one lawmaker from each party to go at it, gladiator style, in, say, the Capitol building. Their weapons would be rubber swords, Nerf bats, and bubble-blow, and they would be wearing diapers (after a pre-bout meal liberally spiced with the laxative and the diuretic of their choice). The audience would be limited to congresspersons (mandatory attendance, plus mandatory sharing in the pre-bout meal), their staffers, lobbyists (may need to change the venue to a football stadium or Olympic arena to accommodate them all), Grover Norquist and Sarah Palin, as well as television crews, of course.
Plus Newt Gingrich.
Unfortunately, unless he gets elected to something (wasn’t he essentially driven out of Washington in disgrace, lo these many years ago?), he won’t be qualified for selection as a “gladiator.”
Salamander- or chameleon- or otherwise reptilian-boy Newt could handle the housekeeping duties after the fight, though. He would even share the same pre-bout meal and wear the same uniform as the combatants, with one minor change to differentiate him from them: A nice big letter “A” tattooed in scarlet ink on his back, just to remind us all of the moral high ground he occupies overlooking all of us.
But that would probably constitute "cruel and unusual" punishment (Nancy Pelosi in a diaper??? Jim Boehner??? Aaaarrrrgghh). In the case of Congress and Newt, it is probably warranted.
If this gives you the impression that I've lost whatever respect I might ever have had (not much) for our legislators, you're very perceptive.
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
OWS, Hope, Change . . . yada yada yada.
From where I sit, out in northwest Missouri farm country, I can’t yet decide if OWS is going to have any immediate or long-term impact on the direction of our nation, or of the world. The movement seems largely to be tilting at windmills.
For instance, I’ve read--and many OWS’ers are well aware of this--college tuition has increased 900 percent over the past 30 years, yet salaries for entry-level jobs requiring a college degree have remained fairly stagnant. Is there any chance of the OWS movement significantly rolling back tuition costs? No. None. And in a sense, they wouldn’t want to--rolling back tuition costs would mean elimination of a lot of jobs on campuses all over the country. Is there any chance of the OWS movement significantly increasing salaries paid by the lovely corporations running this country? No. None.
Does OWS have any shot at all at decreasing corporate influence on our nation’s government? No. We have the best Congress money can buy, and congresspersons will NOT give that money up. Even if OWS managed to find, back, and get elected “pure” candidates, those candidates, once elected, being human and all, very likely would very quickly succumb to monetary apples offered them by the myriad corporate “Eves”--and they would find ways to justify that to themselves.
And the evil corporations are not comprised solely of their CEOs and other multimillion-dollar executives--they also employ a lot of real people, most of them among the 99% who aren’t the “movers and shakers” of our political and economic world.
I love OWS and everything it stands for--but I still cannot figure out how it can succeed, and trust me, I’ve been trying.
It is going to take someone with a lot more imagination than I’ve been blessed with to come up with a real, tangible, doable plan--with real, tangible, accomplishable goals. It is relatively easy to see and rail at problems. Solutions are more elusive. The people--or “persons,” as the Supreme Court refers to corporations--will never give up or even minimally share their power. Why would they? Politicians will never give up the bounty they receive from those in actual power.
Much as I would love to see 435 representatives and 100 senators, maybe even a president (and I actually like Mr. Obama) out on the unemployment line, along with a few hundred or thousand corporate CEOs, I do NOT want to see their secretaries and housekeepers and cooks and on and on and on in the same line.
The question is how to “hurt” the bosses enough to get their attention, without hurting the many people who depend on them.
I would make a LOUSY revolutionary.
What I’m afraid of is that we’ve already slid too far down the slippery slope towards the end of “America as we know it” ever to recover.
OWS gives me some faint sliver of hope, but it’s just that, a faint sliver. People seem to be waking up, to be catching on to the essential etiology of what ails us, but it may be too late. We have reached the point of wanting “change,” but are essentially powerless to effect that change, on anything more than a purely individual level, if even that.
Come to think about it, maybe that IS the key--we all must find ways to effect change on an individual level.
When I figure out what that means, I’ll let y’all know.
For instance, I’ve read--and many OWS’ers are well aware of this--college tuition has increased 900 percent over the past 30 years, yet salaries for entry-level jobs requiring a college degree have remained fairly stagnant. Is there any chance of the OWS movement significantly rolling back tuition costs? No. None. And in a sense, they wouldn’t want to--rolling back tuition costs would mean elimination of a lot of jobs on campuses all over the country. Is there any chance of the OWS movement significantly increasing salaries paid by the lovely corporations running this country? No. None.
Does OWS have any shot at all at decreasing corporate influence on our nation’s government? No. We have the best Congress money can buy, and congresspersons will NOT give that money up. Even if OWS managed to find, back, and get elected “pure” candidates, those candidates, once elected, being human and all, very likely would very quickly succumb to monetary apples offered them by the myriad corporate “Eves”--and they would find ways to justify that to themselves.
And the evil corporations are not comprised solely of their CEOs and other multimillion-dollar executives--they also employ a lot of real people, most of them among the 99% who aren’t the “movers and shakers” of our political and economic world.
I love OWS and everything it stands for--but I still cannot figure out how it can succeed, and trust me, I’ve been trying.
It is going to take someone with a lot more imagination than I’ve been blessed with to come up with a real, tangible, doable plan--with real, tangible, accomplishable goals. It is relatively easy to see and rail at problems. Solutions are more elusive. The people--or “persons,” as the Supreme Court refers to corporations--will never give up or even minimally share their power. Why would they? Politicians will never give up the bounty they receive from those in actual power.
Much as I would love to see 435 representatives and 100 senators, maybe even a president (and I actually like Mr. Obama) out on the unemployment line, along with a few hundred or thousand corporate CEOs, I do NOT want to see their secretaries and housekeepers and cooks and on and on and on in the same line.
The question is how to “hurt” the bosses enough to get their attention, without hurting the many people who depend on them.
I would make a LOUSY revolutionary.
What I’m afraid of is that we’ve already slid too far down the slippery slope towards the end of “America as we know it” ever to recover.
OWS gives me some faint sliver of hope, but it’s just that, a faint sliver. People seem to be waking up, to be catching on to the essential etiology of what ails us, but it may be too late. We have reached the point of wanting “change,” but are essentially powerless to effect that change, on anything more than a purely individual level, if even that.
Come to think about it, maybe that IS the key--we all must find ways to effect change on an individual level.
When I figure out what that means, I’ll let y’all know.
Monday, November 21, 2011
Pennsylvania 6-5000 and 867-5309 (Jenny!)
There’s a Massachusetts nurse practitioner I sometimes encounter in the course of my work who always closes her reports with, “If you have any questions about this dictation, dial . . .” and she gives a number. “Dial?” To judge from her voice, which is really all I have to go on, at most she is very early middle age, probably in her thirties--does she even REMEMBER rotary phones? I’m pretty slow to adopt new technology, but even I had a touch-tone phone back in the days when there was still an extra charge for it on the phone bill--1980s. Has she ever “dialed” a telephone number?
Then again, I’ll still have people ask that a “carbon copy” be sent somewhere. “Carbon copy?” I think I last used carbon paper in typing class in the mid-1970s. Photocopiers pretty much ended “carbon copies.” The “cc” at the bottom of a document or piece of correspondence now pretty much means “courtesy copy.” Granted, some of the doctors, etc., doing the dictating are long enough in the tooth to remember “carbon copies,” although I’m sure none of them have seen such a thing in more years than they can remember, aside from maybe some forms (but even those are mostly “NCR”--no carbon required--these days). That doesn’t really explain why, say, a medical resident born in the mid to late 1980s would ask for a “carbon copy.”
What I suspect is that at some point they learned that “cc” was an abbreviation for carbon copy; having no reference point, really, to them, “carbon copy” means simply, “copy.”
I get the same feeling sometimes about all the acronyms we use, or that medical professionals use--it is as if the acronym has become the de facto “name” of a given disease entity. COPD--chronic obstructive pulmonary disease--is perhaps my favorite example because I’ll often hear people talk about “chronic COPD,” apparently forgetting what the C in the acronym stands for. As transcriptionists, of course, in certain sections of reports--diagnosis, etc.--we have to expand all abbreviations, and we are also supposed to transcribe “verbatim.” Somehow I’ve never managed to convince myself that it would be okay, even preferable, to type “chronic chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.”
I cannot remember ever hearing a psych professional refer to post-traumatic stress disorder as anything but PTSD, or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder as anything but ADHD, although I’m sure it happens.
I suppose that it really doesn’t matter, in any real sense, whether something is called “CLL” or by the polysyllabic mouthful, “chronic lymphocytic leukemia” (although there are other expansions of that particular acronym, which could conceivably lead to confusion): The physician presumably knows what he’s talking about, and calling it one thing versus the other won’t alter his treatment plan.
Still, sometimes the increasing use--and, to my mind--overuse and over-reliance on acronyms threatens to reduce “medicalese” to a kind of pidgin English, in the same way that a similar process has reduced much “on-line” communication to the same.
I first went on-line in 1996, about a month before AOL (anybody remember AOL?) went “unlimited”--that is, started charging a monthly flat rate rather than a per-minute charge for on-line usage. All the acronyms so widely used now, all the “wtf” and “lol” and “roflmao” and “fml” and so on, were born in the days of per-minute charges. People held on to that language even after the advent of “unlimited use,” when you no longer had to worry about every character you typed into an “instant message” or a chat room costing you money. It evolved somehow from “necessity” to “cool.”
Medicalese seems to have followed a similar progression. What makes me think that is that I hear so many “lay” people--people who are not medical professionals--slinging the acronymic lingo, as if it makes them part of the medical crowd, or something. The “medical crowd” reinforces it by talking to lay people--you know, “patients”--in the same lingo, the same pidgin. Interestingly, nurses seem to be some of the worst offenders. While the nursing profession has gone to great lengths, or so nurses have told me, to develop a language “separate” from that of physicians--a “laceration” becomes an “disruption of skin integrity,” or something like that, a nurse practitioner once told me--once they become advanced practice nurses, they embrace the medical pidgin with gusto, and speak in nothing BUT acronyms unless it cannot be avoided.
This is sometimes problematic from a transcriptionist point of view, of course, especially when so many spoken sounds can be so difficult to distinguish from each other (“f” and “s,” for instance, “m” and “n” to a slightly lesser extent; c and e and d, falling in the middle of a hastily blurted acronym, can be virtually indistinguishable from each other--sometimes all you can really hear is a sort of an “eee” sound).
Acronyms, in online communication or in the medical field, were originally designed as “shortcuts” that would enable us to communicate more information, faster and more efficiently, and they’ve succeeded.
Still, I cannot help but wonder sometimes if, after passage of a generation or two, we are not shortcutting ourselves out of any ability to communicate meaningfully with each other at all.
Random side-note regarding rotary phones: It occurred to me while pondering this stuff today that songs like Glenn Miller’s “Pennsylvania 6-5000” and Tommy Tutone’s “867-5309” could not be written now. Somehow, “613-814-5000” or “913-867-5309” just wouldn’t have the same, um, ring to them.
Gotta love progress!
Then again, I’ll still have people ask that a “carbon copy” be sent somewhere. “Carbon copy?” I think I last used carbon paper in typing class in the mid-1970s. Photocopiers pretty much ended “carbon copies.” The “cc” at the bottom of a document or piece of correspondence now pretty much means “courtesy copy.” Granted, some of the doctors, etc., doing the dictating are long enough in the tooth to remember “carbon copies,” although I’m sure none of them have seen such a thing in more years than they can remember, aside from maybe some forms (but even those are mostly “NCR”--no carbon required--these days). That doesn’t really explain why, say, a medical resident born in the mid to late 1980s would ask for a “carbon copy.”
What I suspect is that at some point they learned that “cc” was an abbreviation for carbon copy; having no reference point, really, to them, “carbon copy” means simply, “copy.”
I get the same feeling sometimes about all the acronyms we use, or that medical professionals use--it is as if the acronym has become the de facto “name” of a given disease entity. COPD--chronic obstructive pulmonary disease--is perhaps my favorite example because I’ll often hear people talk about “chronic COPD,” apparently forgetting what the C in the acronym stands for. As transcriptionists, of course, in certain sections of reports--diagnosis, etc.--we have to expand all abbreviations, and we are also supposed to transcribe “verbatim.” Somehow I’ve never managed to convince myself that it would be okay, even preferable, to type “chronic chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.”
I cannot remember ever hearing a psych professional refer to post-traumatic stress disorder as anything but PTSD, or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder as anything but ADHD, although I’m sure it happens.
I suppose that it really doesn’t matter, in any real sense, whether something is called “CLL” or by the polysyllabic mouthful, “chronic lymphocytic leukemia” (although there are other expansions of that particular acronym, which could conceivably lead to confusion): The physician presumably knows what he’s talking about, and calling it one thing versus the other won’t alter his treatment plan.
Still, sometimes the increasing use--and, to my mind--overuse and over-reliance on acronyms threatens to reduce “medicalese” to a kind of pidgin English, in the same way that a similar process has reduced much “on-line” communication to the same.
I first went on-line in 1996, about a month before AOL (anybody remember AOL?) went “unlimited”--that is, started charging a monthly flat rate rather than a per-minute charge for on-line usage. All the acronyms so widely used now, all the “wtf” and “lol” and “roflmao” and “fml” and so on, were born in the days of per-minute charges. People held on to that language even after the advent of “unlimited use,” when you no longer had to worry about every character you typed into an “instant message” or a chat room costing you money. It evolved somehow from “necessity” to “cool.”
Medicalese seems to have followed a similar progression. What makes me think that is that I hear so many “lay” people--people who are not medical professionals--slinging the acronymic lingo, as if it makes them part of the medical crowd, or something. The “medical crowd” reinforces it by talking to lay people--you know, “patients”--in the same lingo, the same pidgin. Interestingly, nurses seem to be some of the worst offenders. While the nursing profession has gone to great lengths, or so nurses have told me, to develop a language “separate” from that of physicians--a “laceration” becomes an “disruption of skin integrity,” or something like that, a nurse practitioner once told me--once they become advanced practice nurses, they embrace the medical pidgin with gusto, and speak in nothing BUT acronyms unless it cannot be avoided.
This is sometimes problematic from a transcriptionist point of view, of course, especially when so many spoken sounds can be so difficult to distinguish from each other (“f” and “s,” for instance, “m” and “n” to a slightly lesser extent; c and e and d, falling in the middle of a hastily blurted acronym, can be virtually indistinguishable from each other--sometimes all you can really hear is a sort of an “eee” sound).
Acronyms, in online communication or in the medical field, were originally designed as “shortcuts” that would enable us to communicate more information, faster and more efficiently, and they’ve succeeded.
Still, I cannot help but wonder sometimes if, after passage of a generation or two, we are not shortcutting ourselves out of any ability to communicate meaningfully with each other at all.
Random side-note regarding rotary phones: It occurred to me while pondering this stuff today that songs like Glenn Miller’s “Pennsylvania 6-5000” and Tommy Tutone’s “867-5309” could not be written now. Somehow, “613-814-5000” or “913-867-5309” just wouldn’t have the same, um, ring to them.
Gotta love progress!
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Occupational Hazards
Motivating oneself to work on a cloudy, cold Sunday can be challenge enough without seven highly unmotivating factors within easy eyeshot: Two cats asleep on the bed, another asleep on the chair I’ll have to occupy in an hour or so, yet another one asleep on the recliner in the living room, and the last stretched out atop the television case, sleeping quite comfortably. Then there’s the large dog asleep at the foot of my chair, and another one, the puppy, curled up on the couch, happily and increasingly sleepily gnawing away at a rawhide “bone.” The third dog, Nina, is the self-designated protector of the household and all within it, so she prefers to stay outside--but I’m pretty sure that if I were to look out the kitchen window, I would see her curled up in the corner of the yard between the house and the garage, asleep. This is not an environment conducive to maintaining the degree of alertness one needs when tackling medical reports.
When you first start working at home, you will be offered all kinds of advice and warnings from people who have tried it and succeeded (or failed). Prominent, of course, is that you must keep potential distractions--kids, spouses, phone calls, or, in my case, sunshine streaming through a window--to a minimum. You’ll be advised to keep your work space separate from your living space (and my work computer is indeed separated by 4-5 feet from my bed, 6-8 feet from my “play” computer, the one I use to write and go online for news and photo-edit, etc.). One self-described “crazy cat lady” who had a couple dozen cats told me that she put up a screen door between her office and the living room so that the cats could see her, and she could see them, but they couldn’t take up residence on her chair or stretched across her monitor (these were the days before flat screens; cats LOVED stretching out on those old-timey monitors).
Nobody ever warned me about the dangers of the cozily sleeping cat(s) on the kind of day people call “made for sleeping.”
Xena, the large sleeping dog, has now awakened--she apparently senses that it is almost time for me to begin my shift, and wants to make a trip outside. Dogs DO learn your schedule when you work at home, by the way. I used to have a Pomeranian, Pixie, who would get antsy and try to lead me back to my office when it was just about time for me to go to work. Cats are aware, as well, although they handle the situation differently: One or another of my matriarch cats, Sabrina or Evi, will curl up on my work chair about 10 minutes before I need to settle into it, practically daring me to move her.
Guess I’ll follow Xena’s example and step outside for some fresh (frigid) air.
When you first start working at home, you will be offered all kinds of advice and warnings from people who have tried it and succeeded (or failed). Prominent, of course, is that you must keep potential distractions--kids, spouses, phone calls, or, in my case, sunshine streaming through a window--to a minimum. You’ll be advised to keep your work space separate from your living space (and my work computer is indeed separated by 4-5 feet from my bed, 6-8 feet from my “play” computer, the one I use to write and go online for news and photo-edit, etc.). One self-described “crazy cat lady” who had a couple dozen cats told me that she put up a screen door between her office and the living room so that the cats could see her, and she could see them, but they couldn’t take up residence on her chair or stretched across her monitor (these were the days before flat screens; cats LOVED stretching out on those old-timey monitors).
Nobody ever warned me about the dangers of the cozily sleeping cat(s) on the kind of day people call “made for sleeping.”
Xena, the large sleeping dog, has now awakened--she apparently senses that it is almost time for me to begin my shift, and wants to make a trip outside. Dogs DO learn your schedule when you work at home, by the way. I used to have a Pomeranian, Pixie, who would get antsy and try to lead me back to my office when it was just about time for me to go to work. Cats are aware, as well, although they handle the situation differently: One or another of my matriarch cats, Sabrina or Evi, will curl up on my work chair about 10 minutes before I need to settle into it, practically daring me to move her.
Guess I’ll follow Xena’s example and step outside for some fresh (frigid) air.
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