The following is reproduced from the flyer Mom's Kaiser Memory Clinic social worker gave to me. You can find PDF versions of it on the web by searching for "compassionate communication liz ayres".  I did not write this, but I've derived enormous benefit from the content very quickly. It is safe to say that the contents of this document created a real turnaround in my head of how to deal with Mom.

Compassionate Communication with the Memory Impaired

• Don't reason.
• Don't argue.
• Don't confront.
• Don't remind them they forget.
• Don't question recent memory.
• Don't take it personally.

DO:

• Give short, one sentence explanations.
• Allow plenty of time for comprehension, then triple it.
• Repeat instructions or sentences exactly the same way.
• Eliminate 'but' from your vocabulary; substitute 'nevertheless.'
• Avoid insistence. Try again later
• Agree with them or distract them to a different subject or activity
• Accept blame when something's wrong (even if it's fantasy).
• Leave the room, if necessary, to avoid confrontations.
• Respond to feelings rather than words
• Be patient and cheerful and reassuring. Do go with the flow.
• Practice 100% forgiveness. Memory loss progresses daily.

1. distract to another topic, or
2. start a fun activity, or
3. reminisce about their spouse, "I was just thinking about ______. How did you two meet?" You might even try, "He's gone for a while. Let's take our walk now."

• Don't (reason): "You've been seeing the doctor every three months for the last two years. It's written on the calendar and I told you about it yesterday and this morning."
• DO (short explanation): "It's just a regular check-up."
• DO (accept blame): "I'm sorry if I forgot to tell you."

• Don't (argue): "What? Don't be silly! The bank wouldn't be forging your signature."
• DO (respond to feelings): "That's a scary thought."
• DO (reassure): "I'll make sure they don't do that."
• DO (distract): "Would you help me fold the towels?"

• Don't (confront): I'm not going anywhere and you can't remember enough to make your own decisions."
• DO (accept blame or respond to feelings): "I'm sorry this is a tough time."
• DO (reassure): "I love you and we're going to get through this together."
• DO (distract): "You know what? Don has a new job. He's really excited about it.

• Don't (remind): "Joe called yesterday and you talked to him for 15 minutes."
• DO (reassure): "You really like talking to Joe, don't you?"
• DO (distract): "Let's call him when we get back from our walk."

• Don't (question memory): "Hi, Mom. You remember Eric, don't you? What did you do today?"
• DO (short explanation): "Hi, Mom. You look wonderful! This is Eric. We work together."
   

• Don't (take it personally): "What do you mean – who's your husband? I am!"
• DO (go with the flow, reassure): "He'll be here for dinner."
• DO (distract): "How about some milk and cookies?" .. Would you like chocolate chip or oatmeal?

• Don't (repeat differently): "Please put you shoes on." / "You'll need to put your shoes on."
• DO (repeat exactly): "Please put your shoes on." / "Please put your shoes on."
   

• Don't (say "but"): "I know chicken's not your favorite food, but it's what we're having for dinner."
• DO (say "nevertheless"): "I know chicken's not your favorite food, (smile) nevertheless I'd appreciate it if you'd eat a little bit."

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A pro-lifer who's spent a political career trying to legislate what women should and should not be allowed to do with their own bodies should not work for a charity promoting women's health. 

 I cry "bullshit!"on SGK.

SGK has been highly effective at marketing pink products (including handguns). Supermarkets and other retails are full of pretty pink packaged products, all promising to help stop breast cancer. What a pity that they're not as good at actually SPENDING that money on  supporting women's health issues. I have a distinctly uncomfortable feeling that very little of the money SGK raises actually goes into breast cancer research...which is supposed to be their goal. 

It is unconscionable that a major women's health charity would defund...a nonprofit providing women's health services. How fucking hypocritical.

Pro-lifers should not work for women's health charities because there is a fundamental conflict of interest in such a situation. Pro-lifers (and I should really call them "anti-choice" or "anti-abortionists") are all about removing a woman's right to choose what she wants to do with her own body.

They don't like abortions? Then they shouldn't get one. And they also shouldn't try to stop other women from managing their own bodies.

Until every pro-lifer is removed from the board and management of Susan B. Komen, I will never buy a product that benefits them, I will not contribute money to any function that funnels money to them, I will not support their charitable activities. Any time I am in a position to give money to SGK, I'll simply give it to Planned Parenthood instead.

And I will tell this to every woman I know who asks me to contribute something to an SGK "Walk/Race Until There's A Cure" or fundraising event. 

 

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If your money is in a bank that's going to charge you a debit card fee, move all of your money into a credit union. NOW.

Most credit unions are part of the CO-OP ATM network, meaning you can get money and make deposits at any credit union in the country. CO-OP also has an arrangement where you can withdraw money and check balances at any 7-11 ATM...and there a LOT of 7-11 stories all across the country. All CO-OP transactions are free.

My own credit union also gives me five free "foreign" ATM transactions each month...so if the only thing near me is a BofA or WFB machine, I can use it for free.

I've been banking with the same credit union for nearly 20 years, and haven't paid a cent to maintain my checking/savings accounts...ever.

I've purchased three cars through my credit union. They not only gave me a competitive rate, but gave me points off for automatic deduction of car payments from my checking account, and also for using their auto broker service. (Which found me my Prius at $1,000 below sticker price at a time when people were paying $4,000 ABOVE sticker price.)

There are credit unions all over the country. It's just a matter of your finding one. They're no longer restricted to accepting members from only a specific company or industry, either.

Nothing would gladden my evil little heart as much as seeing millions of depositors withdraw their money from BofA or WFB and move it to a credit union. It would be the best "Fuck you, Wall Street!" EVER.

You can learn more about credit unions, including finding one near you, at:

http://www.lovemycreditunion.org/

http://www.findacreditunion.com/

http://www.creditunion.coop/

BOOST THE SIGNAL! Repost this as a public entry in your blog or on Facebook, and send a message to the banks by moving your account to a credit union!



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Once a year or so, DreamWidth offers a limited number of "Seed Accounts" (read: "Permanent Accounts".)

TODAY ONLY, for approximately another 18 hours or so, they're offering Seed Accounts for $200.

If you have a DW or LJ account and you want a permanent home for your journal, this is a good deal.*

As of right now, (6:09 PM Pacific), there are something under 100 "Seed Accounts" left.

Go here: http://www.dreamwidth.org/shop to buy one.


*If you're a LiveJournal user and are fearful of something happening to LJ...be aware that DreamWidth will port over your ENTIRE LJ -- posts, comments, icons, and all --- and since it's an enhanced version of the LJ code, it's pretty much totally compatible with LJ for purposes of LJ clients, etcetera. I've been very pleased with it for the past two years. DreamWidth also has a cross-posting feature that allows you to post once to your DW account...and it'll cross-post automatically to your corresponding LiveJournal. Very slick. That's how I add entries to one of my other LiveJournal accounts, in fact.

Elisabeth Sladen, who played Sarah Jane Smith on the long-running science-fiction series Doctor Who, died on Tuesday at the age 63 from cancer.

I enjoyed both Elisabeth's Doctor Who and post-Doctor-al work, and was quite fond of The Sarah Jane Adventures.

No matter how ridiculous or improbable the script, Elisabeth Sladen always made it work with both humor and dignity.

When the fourth (and obviously final) season of The Sarah Jane Adventures reaches Netflix, I'll probably cry all the way through each episode.

Boosting signal for Frank Biafore, regarding the passing of his partner Richard Tuck (the East Bay square dancers, NOT the SF-based caller)

from EarthaFan@aol.com
date Tue, Apr 12, 2011 at 9:50 PM
subject Great Sorrow and Joy

It is with great sorrow and joy that I let you know that Richard Tuck (east bay) passed away this evening at home with Tim and I. For those of you that knew Richard you know how many lives he touched and how incredibly positive and generous he was. It is, I think, for that reason I can't help also look for the joy at this time. I am happy he passed away at home, as he wished, and that Tim & I were able to help him at such a special time. I can honestly say I am a much better man for having known him, loved him and learned from him for the past 17 years. It was also through him that I was introduced to square dancing and thru me that he started dancing again after a lengthy absence. I have missed our many square dance friends and look forward to being able to see many of you again. My visits to clubs and dances has been sparse the past year or two, but I hope that will change in the near future.

yellowrocks,

Frank (Biafore)

PS. If people could be sure this is sent to the other club email lists I would be grateful.

EDIT: If the embedding works, here's a picture of Richard Tuck:

I am *not* encouraging people to flee LiveJournal.

However.

A number of people on my friends list (most of them, ironically, actually friends) have lamented about what to do in the wake of DDOS-generated service outages and other issues related to the Russian ownership of LJ.

Here's a quick list of some alternatives. Please note that this isn't an exhaustive list. These are just the platforms and tools that I personally use (except for ljdump, since I don't have a Mac).

If you run across other alternatives, please let me know in the comments, and I'll update this entry accordingly.

This is a public entry, so that friends of people on my LJ friends list can see it, too. Feel free to boost the bandwidth by cross-posting this to your own F-list.


FOR A NEW ONLINE BLOG
http://www.dreamwidth.org is running a branched version of LJ code, including the ability to completely import your LiveJournal. Everything. Profile data, journal entries and comments, custom security groups, friends (as OpenID accounts), tags, and icons.

If you need a DreamWidth invite code, please let me know. I have a few left.

And yes, I'm on DW as allanh.dreamwidth.org; same name, same insane mutterings, different style sheet.


FOR AN OFFLINE COPY OF YOUR BLOG
If you want to save your LJ content offline, and are running Windows, there's LJArchive, which will create an offline version of your LJ, including comments.

The only thing I'm not thrilled about with LJArchive is that it doesn't handle embedded graphics and video content.

Every time you run LJArchive, it'll automatically re-sync all entries and update all comments. It also handles multiple journals. Very nice.

For Mac users, there's ljdump, which is written in Python, meaning it should be platform-nonspecific. It's my understanding that Python is/was preinstalled on Mac OS X 10,

Finally, there's LJBook, which I've used for several years, pulls your LJ into a (very, very large) PDF file. I suggest that if you're giong to use the service, you donate soething, but that's a personal opinion.


UPDATE #1: davidlevine has pointed me towards ljsm, a cross-platform perl application that he says saves posts, memories, and graphics.

UPDATE #2: danlmarmot has pointed out that WordPress has an LJ import feature, with some limitations:

http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2009/01/08/livejournal-migration-made-easy/

Originally posted by clari_clyde at post

With all of the hoo-ha in the news recently about metal fatigue in 737s, I went searching for one of my very favorite classic movies, "No Highway In The Sky", with (of all unlikely pairings) Jimmy Stewart and Marlene Dietrich. It's the story of a brave aeronautic engineer who devises a theory that metal fatigue is about to bring down a brand new model of airline, but nobody believes him, until...



The film was released in 1951, and ironically, three years later, in 1954, the then-new De Havilland Comet jets starting dropping out of the sky due to metal fatigue.



The movies been out of print on VHS for years, and never available on DVD, at least in this country.

Amazon Instant Video will rent it for $2.99 or sell it for $5.99.

So I bought a copy.

I am pleased.

My iPad 2 Smart Cover (Navy Blue) is in transit from Shenzhen, China. It should be here by the end of the week.

The dock for the iPad 2 ships from gawdknowswhere on April 18th, for an April 21st delivery date.

The iPad 2 itself -- WiFi only, 64GB. Black - will ship from the same place as the dock (gawdknowswhere) on April 25th, for an April 30th delivery date.