some people would like to stay anonymous

"....Everybody knows the good guys lost


Everybody knows the fight was fixed

The poor stay poor, the rich get rich

That's how it goes

Everybody knows ........."  by Leonard Cohen from the song "Everybody Knows"
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It was toward the tailend of my shift when I felt, emotionally, that the bottom fell out; a  feeling of despair crashed on me again. My political party would lose in November, 2010. 

 I might as well talk about what is bothering me. Same old shit about me not having money.  In this instance, I decided not to go to this party w/ co-workers, because of no money and don't think it's a particularly good idea to live beyond my modest means.  I wanted to go to her party, but I just couldn't !

 But that wasn’t what frustrated me the most.  No, it was the frustration and despair that there are far too few people seeing what the real cause of the recession has been.  There’s far too few people who know what’s really needed to get us out of the recession. 

There’s so many greedy bad people who no one knows about (the billionaire Koch Brothers come to mind immediately.  & you don’t know about the Koch Brothers, do you?  I can't blame you for not knowing about them.  They are very  happy you don’t know about them. If you were polluting the planet would you want everyone to know who you are???!!??), and far too few people realize the devastation they have wrought, not only to the economy, but to the environment.  They create dangerous workplaces, ignore laws that are on the books.  Most of the time they don’t get caught. When their workers get hurt and they do get caught, they shrug their shoulders glibly while they get a wrist slap.    They settle their fine at a few million, and they are worth tens of billions.   Really! Think about it. 

Most of you make less than $100,000. If you get a parking ticket, do you feel like your whole financial future is going to crash down?   The $25 ticket you pay is about how painful it is for them when they pollute rivers and maim workers for having shoddy, dangerous workplaces.  Remember, if they are sued in a court of law, they have the best lawyers in the business, and they don’t lose trials, they negotiate relatively painless parking-ticket-like settlements.  

What a wonderful world we live in.  Reading about people like the Koch Bros. making money at the expense of others.  Hearing how they paid for the Republican takeover in Congress. 

Watching them stay filthy rich

 Watching them not giving a damn about the people they hurt working for them as they make billions.  They are not only NOT PUNISHED, but richly rewarded.   Do you realize over 10 people died last year in April, 2010 in the odious oil spill.  Do the rich who owned that oil well really care, or were they too busy blaming the 2nd company that owned and maintained the oil well???  Think about it ! !

Where’s the justice? 

Words to parent by.....

 The day after Andy (our 1st child) was born, I went to the hospital gift store, and lo & behold, I found the "Parents' Creed" and immediately bought it and it's been our refrigerator ever since. Here it is:



If a child lives with criticism,

he learns to condemn.

If a child lives with hostility,

he learns to fight.

If a child lives with ridicule,

he learns to be shy.

If a child lives with shame,

he learns to feel guilty.

If a child lives with tolerance,

he learns to be patient.

If a child lives with encouragement,

he learns confidence.

If a child lives with praise,

he learns to appreciate.

If a child lives with fairness,

he learns justice.

If a child lives with security,

he learns to have faith.

If a child lives with approval,

he learns to like himself.

If a child lives with

acceptance and friendship,

he learns to find Love in the world.

10 years ago

I can't help but think about what happened to me 10 years ago.  The Wednesday after Labor Day in 2000, I started working at Nolan Law Group  (  http://www.nolan-law.com/ ).  They not only do the standard personal injury cases (like car accidents) and workers' compensation cases, but also aviation disasters.  The premise in a aviation disaster case is that an airline tells you before you fly with them that they will get you to point A to point B safely.  When they don't do that, they don't do their job, and many times, it's due to allowing airplane parts to deteriorate and that's when crashes occur.  Thankfully, that doesn't happen very often.

I remember the first assignment that I had there was to help with their work on a case where a jet plane went down in April, 2000 in the Philippines.   The airline bought a 737 that had been laying in the AZ desert for years and there had been damage to the plane before it flew in the Philippines.  Anyway, the air crash in the Philippines was the worst in their history.  I was told to talk to one of the provincial governors there which was a thrill for me; it's certainly not something you do everyday.

I improved as a paralegal, and I learned a lot at Nolan Law Group.  I loved my office because it had a window with a small view of Lake Michigan.  I miss that view  :( !   Oh well, I am paid more now than I was when I worked there.  I have more responsibility.

Still, I am very thankful I had the opportunity to work at Nolan Law Group.  I learned so much from one of the paralegals there.  He was the best paralegal I ever knew!   Mike basically ran the workers compensation department there, and I'm sure it was a big loss (in many ways) when he died of a heart attack a few years ago.  He was not even that old (only a few years older than me), but when you smoke, you deal with some big health disadvantages. 

One of the big things that really helped is that when I applied as a paralegal at other firms, all my potential bosses knew about Nolan Law Group. The fact that I worked there for awhile helped make my resume stand out. 

Maribeth got on TV !

Plus, we were all real proud of Maribeth, b/c she was on the 10:00 news last night!!!!! As I told some of you already, she works at a very big hospital, Loyola Univ. Med. Center. They are using robotic doctors. A robot goes down the hall into a patient's room. & like a teletubby, there's a TV on their belly, and that's a doctor who speaks to a patient. They say the robot is very instrumental in rapid response, b/c if a patient is going bad and into a near lethal condition, the robo-doc can get to the patient's room quickly and take the patients blood pressure, run tests on the patient and give the doctor info that will tell him which drugs or which treatment to use.

So anyway, the 10:00 news in the Medical Feature series showed the robo Doc going into the patient's room and there was Maribeth "in the flesh" standing next to the patient. They showed her several times in fact. She was clearly happy and proud and quipped, "well there's my 3 min. of fame". She does not enjoy being a nurse, but I asked her if her being on TV as a nurse made working at Loyola more worth it and she said yes.