with the eye surgeon. On August 11, my sweety will drive me to the cataract place in Anchorage for the work.  And thanks to all the generous folks out there, I have enough in my FBO account to cover the surgery and the overnight stay in Anchorage and the next follow-up visit with Dr. Falconer.  After that, I dunno. . . .

I have no doubt, however, that things will work out well somehow.  I have been taught, and accept as true due to years of observation, that we never haver enough information to justify being pessimistic.

On Friday, the eye doc seemed surprised at how well I am doing.  I attribute this to increased exercise (one study I found online said this can reduce interocular pressure by 20 %), lutein, bilberry, prayer, and meditation, in addition to the  eye drops.   I don’t need to go back to see him again until after the first cataract surgery.  I am wating to hear from the surgeon to make an appointment.

Little bit of sticker shock, though–the office vistit cost $873 ($350 for one test which I thought was a waste of time), and the eye drops cost  about $40,000/liter.  That is, one .25 ml vial goes for $100 to $120 locally.

Oh, and in case anyone was wondering about medical marijuana–it isn’t on the table, which is fine with me.  I need to be compos mentis during the day.  Soo–on the off chance someone might have chipped in but didn;t wanna help finance an old dude getting high–it ain’t happenin’.

A few months ago, a young couple with a small girl moved into the cabin next door.  The woman never said much, but the man seemed amiable.  They are both unemployed, and he  would borrow small sums of money, and always promptly repaid me.

Then I started noticing the yelling and cursing and screaming.  The man did the yelling and cursing, the women did the crying.  Next day, everything seemed okay, so I kept my peace.

Everything escalated.  He hit me up for larger sums of money,  became more aggressive in his requests for money, and lied about how he would replay me.  I started noticing him drinking.  The yelling and screaming got worse.

I fronted him, told him I was sick of hearing him mistreat his family, and that I would call the police the next time it happened.

Last night the noise woke me up around 1:00 am, so I called 911.  The troopers got there while I was still on the phone with dispatch, stayed briefly, then left.  I went back to bed.

A few minutes later, a trooper knoecked and told me tht he ahd arrested theman for domesrticviolence, but he had escaped, and that I shoud call 911if I saw him again.  The women were okay, he said.

How quickly things change.  Yesterday, the man was a dictotor of a very small country which he ruled with fear and pain.  Today, he is a fugitive from justice, a wanted violent felon, and homeless to boot.

An extraordinarily generous donation from one of Kathy’s  Facebook friends will cover the cost of my first office visit for glaucoma care , and may stretch as far as to cover the cataract operation for my blind eye.

The $10,000 figure was based on rough estimates I got from Dr. Falconer.  Nancy at the clinic has asked him to provide a more detailled cost estimate. (By the way, folks at the cnic tend to be very first-namy.  As an old fart of the old school, I am a tad uncomfortable with this infoprmality, but when in Rome. . . .)  At any rate, the FBO acocunt now stands at something over $5,000.  I hope to have an exact figure next time I post.

Many thanks to everyone who has helped.

Ever had a doctor exclaim “WOW!” when doing an exam?  Happened to me, the first time Dr. Falconer got a glimpse of the big old yellow-orange cataract in my right eye.

And boy, was I lucky!  It just happened that he was doing a free eye clinic at Talkeetna the same week that I was diagnosed with glaucoma.–and I got the last available appointment.  (Stuff like this happens all the time.  Like when I run out of milk–and see a half gallon ofg my faveorite marked down.  Expensive stuff like bread and milk, I always buy out-dated or on sale–it is too expensive otherwise.  But I digress.)

This “luck”–for want of a more precise word–has kept me alive and kicking for years.  And it appears as if there will be enough money in the FBO account to pay for my office visit, and then some.  I’ll know more later today when I check the balance.

I have been very gratified by  the response to my request for aid.  Right now, things are on hold until next week, when I see Dr. Falconer.  I hope the sample bottles of eye drops last–I went back to using the toxic one (a beta-blocker!) every other day, to stretch out the good  stuff.

In other news briefly, I am still awaiting the results of last week’s cancer biopsy, and the high blood pressure medication I just went on seems to be working.

My plans for today are mostly to work on cleaning up the mess some kids made when they burglarized and vandalized my storage shed, doing thousands of dollars worth of damage in the  process.  The perps were lost children.  I have forgiven them, and asked the trooper on the case to tell the DA I would rather not see them prosecuted.  They have caused their parents enough heartbreak as it is, I reckon.

I have been grossly neglecting my health for years.  So when I took Kathy and Doug to Walmart to get new glasses (courtesy of the Willow Lions, yay!!!), I figured I should get new glasses and find out how bad my cataracts are–I am pretty much blind in my right eye now.

Turns out I have a stage one cataract in my left eye–the right eye is stage four, which is as bad as they get.  I also found out I have glaucoma, which is sort of a big deal, since this makes you blind forever if it is not treated, and treatment is expensive.

I need at least $10,000 for treatment for the glaucoma and cataracts.  I have no insurance, am too young for Medicare, and am supporting a family of three adults on about $20,000 a year.

If you wish to help–the image below is a Pay Pal link.

Or you may make a deposit right in the FBO account that is set up at the Matanuska Valley Federal Credit Union for donations.  The account number is #990000133618.  The transit routing number is #325272335.  I don’t understand how this works, or even if it does. 

If this is too complicated, you can send a donation directly to Greyfox, 7362 West Parks Hwy #404, Wasilla, AK 99654.

Thank you for your time.  I have an appointment for aftercare for the glaucoma for July 8–right now, I do not know how I will pay for it.  The cost may be as high as $1500 for the initial visit.

Yesterday’s Wednesday Market in Wasilla was extraordinary for the various personal  interactions which went on.  My sweety blogged about one of them.  I am blogging this one at her request.

Towards the middle of the afternoon, after the tour buses had left and things calmed down, a red-headed gal on a bike came up to the stand and started looking at knives.  She wore no make-up and had that sorta blank look that some gingers have, who don’t have much in the way of visible eyebrows or lashes.  Anyway, she seemed to know what she was doing until I saw her testing the edge of a knife by drawing it across her fingertips.

I winced and cringed.  I hate it when customers cut themselves–one gun show, I logged four casualties over the weekend, one of which was me.  Anyway, I showed her the safe way to test an edge, and told her the way she was doing it was a good way to cut yourself.  She smiled, and replied, “I don’t mind, I used to be a cutter.”

I was floored — in shock — and, amused at her matter-of-fact tone, I burst out laughing.  After I apologized, we got into an interesting and serious talk about cutting, drug addiction and other deviant behavior, brain chemistry, that sort of stuff.

At one point, religion snuck  into the conversation — she said something about praying every morning for the strength not to cut herself that day.

A middle-aged Latino lady had been listening in and said “Do you read the Bible?”  She then proceeded to give a little sermon on the evils of cutting oneself and suggested a bunch of Bible verses for the young woman (she turned out to be 21, by the way) to study.

I told the church lady my favorite verse was Leviticus 19:19.  In response to her blank look, I explained that that was the verse which said how it was a grievous sin unto God to wear a garment woven of two different types of fiber. She was not amused.

I went on to add that there was a lot of good stuff in Exodus, too — about when it is proper to sell your daughter into slavery, and when it is okay to murder your own slaves.

Horrified, she asked “Are you Jewish?!”

Need I point out how spectacularly ignorant that remark was?  Bigotry aside, I was quoting the Old Testament, for pete’s sake — that is kinda the Jewish part of the bible.

Anyway, I drew myself up, got her in my sights and replied .”Since you bring it up, no — I happen to be an ordained ULC minister AND a Native American shaman.”  (Both statements are quite true.)

She backed away — mentally making the sign of the cross in my direction, no doubt — stammered “Good luck!” and made her escape.

I’ll cut to the chase–I don’t think racism HAS a future.  But first, I want to define it–for the purposes of this post, racism is “the belief, speech, or actions based on the idea that certain racial or ethnic groups are inherently and irremediably inferior in some moral or intellectual way to some other groups.”  In brief, this idea has no future because it is outmoded; confined to small non-mainstream groups; and  morally and intellectually bankrupt.

By outmoded, I mean antique–an artifact of earlier and less evolved days.  Some apologists for racism like to cite Thomas Jefferson (a slave-owner who fathered children by one of his chattels) and Abraham Lincoln (who believed that blacks were indeed inferior and should be segregated from whites).  These men were products of their times; in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, few people — other than the victims themselves — were fully cognizant of the evils inherent in slavery.  (Granted, slavery–particularly sexual slavery–continues to this day, but in the world at large it is largely underground.)  In those less enlightened times, to be racist–and sexist, for that matter–was be part of the mainstream majority, and such beliefs were held not only acceptable but respectable, to a degree which many educated people of today find ludicrous.

At that time, both the science and religions of the time supported racism.  Today, reading historical scientific and religious arguments for racism is like stepping into a sort of time machine, going back to a time when physicians thought that bloodletting was effective therapy, washing hands was silly, and the use of anesthesia was either totally unknown or a faddish luxury.

So, why does racism even exist today?  Well, old ideas die hard–there are still people who believe that every word of the Biblical myths are literally true; still people who believe that the center of the earth is hollow.  Another thing–racism is fear-based, and there is no lack of fear-mongering going on.  The so-called Low Right does a good job of this, as do some Conservative Christian leaders (who tell their flocks to hate and fear gay people),  as do  politicians who tell us to hate and fear Muslims.   The recession is another factor–people who have lost their jobs often look for convenient scapegoats.

Many racists are simply pathetic white people who need someone to look down on in order to feel good about themselves, as they are incapable of any productive, positive or loving accomplishments of their own.  (Of course, racism is not confined to whites–many Chinese are racists regarding the Japanese and vice versa–and Chris Rock once observed that the most racist people on earth are old black men.   However, the most spectacular manifestations of racism–the thousands of lynchings in the Southern US and the Holocaust–were largely the work of whites.)  Much anti-black racism seems based on the perceived fear of black males supposed sexual prowess and/or imagined propensity for violence.  But there is also an economic aspect.

The ideas of Marx (Karl, not Groucho) have largely been discredited by history, but one remains valid–the economic basis for racial discrimination.  Take the Old South–the rich plantation owners had no doubt that their slaves were their inferiors, but some genuine affection DID exist.  This is in strong contrast to the poor white people in competition with blacks for jobs after the abolition of slavery, whose virulent  and fear-based hatred for blacks manifested itself as violence.

This said, why are there now 946 recognized organized hate groups in the United States, more than ever before?  I think this is largely a collective result of years of fear-mongering, both on the part of politicians pandering to the masses in order to exploit them, and irresponsible media like Fox “News” looking for ratings. 

Another factor, but one which would be enormously difficult to document , is the ending  og the Age of Pisces and the beginning of the Age of Aquarius.