Caregiving
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During the past year, on occasion, I have been hospitalized with chronic pain, pneumonia and anxiety. I was also a patient at a rest home for a number of weeks. This has given me additional firsthand experience, both as a patient and an observer of care giving. The quality of my care at the hospital and the rest home was top notch; however bureaucracy and tradition continue to play too much of a role in people’s lives. Many of our care facilities do not provide top notch care. I am very fortunate to be back leading a productive and satisfying life. I am sure you, many of my readers, and loved ones are not that fortunate.
In Holiday Forever, we challenge the bureaucracy and traditions head on. You will love ‘Naked George’, a medic from the war, who finds his own way to shake the images of bloodied bodies. You will admire Nancy’s strength and courage in her battle to effectuate changes in care giving. Holiday Forever is all encompassing, full of humor, and filled with humorous eccentric behavior. Exploring what medical marijuana may have to offer for the very young and the not so young is an adventure of itself. Holiday Forever is a fun read; it can also enrich and enlighten your life.
Neil @ October 15, 2011
Follow Your Dreams
Posted in: On The Pedestal | Comments (0)
It is not the Apple II, Macintosh, iPod, iMac, iPhone or iPad that define Steve Jobs’ contribution to our lives. These are simply the by-products of Jobs’ quest for beauty. In partnership with Steve Wozniak, tinkering with electronics and rudimentary software, Jobs and “the Woz” were the essence of “flower power” blossoming at the dawn of the personal computer age in the 1970s. In his 2005 commencement address to Stanford graduates, Steve Jobs urged the graduates to follow their dreams, unfettered by the constraints of other peoples’ thinking. We will not reiterate here the various paths that Jobs followed that would brighten the lives of millions of humans. Instead, let us reflect upon his own explanation of what drove him, and what we might do to find fulfillment in our own brief time on this earth:
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
Steve Jobs, June 12, 2005
Thank you Steve.
Cross-posted to The Prytaneum.
thalweg @ October 6, 2011
Facebook Author Page
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For those of you who may be interested in my latest writings, book releases, etc please feel free to join me on my Facebook Author Page….
Click Here to Check it out!
Neil @ September 6, 2011
Holiday Forever (a novel)
Posted in: Renaissance | Comments (0)
Here are some reviews of my novel Holiday Forever, which is available for Kindle from Amazon.com:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Timeless Admonition, November 21, 2010
By SalmoGood literature questions the unquestionable, and Neil Haugerud answers the challenge on his maiden voyage in writing fiction. “Holiday Forever” is a decisive examination of how we warehouse the living in their waning years, as though our own imaginations have, themselves, ceased to engage in the joy of living. The characters are real, the places are real, the heartache is real but disguised in the myth that rural life endures because the close-knit community lends able support to mitigate the suffering of the unfortunate. The story is told with a reverence for diverse ways of living, borne of lengthy observation of social and anti-social behavior. If the characters prove forgettable, their lives are not and will be the subjects of an endless re-telling of the human experience. This writing is a gift of entertainment enshrouding a personal obligation that most of us will experience. If Pasteur was correct in asserting that “chance favors only the prepared mind”, then readers of this novel have Haugerud to thank for encouraging us to anticipate the final chapter in human preparedness.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Holiday Forever author neil haugerud, July 21, 2011
By Elaine Voss, Maple Grove MN.Holiday Forever is a poignant tale lead by 4 strong women, 2 sisters, an orphaned infant and a drill-sergeant type nursing home supervisor; each who overcame hurdles, each very different but each having guts and determination. Their lives are intertwined in a small Minnesota rural community. Among their stories: a nursing home is acquired, the infant, now an adult, becomes the central character. Holiday Forever is the new name and a revolution in how most nursing homes operate begins. Residents are called guests, their rooms change from prisons to HOME, where as any homeowner they are allowed to make changes within the room as they like.. They became involved in everyday decisions and activity. This is a glimpse of Holiday Forever. Fresh and alive. You laugh with them and you grieve with them. But bureaucracy brought it to a close.
The authors’ vivid descriptions of the characters gives them real life; you would recognize each person, if met on the street and you would call them by name. But more importantly the author brings the topic of how we care for persons who need assistance in living, whether our elders or our younger population, with an alternative example for discussion . Do we warehouse or do we provide an environment where living occurs inside of life, active to their ability, instead of living outside of life, waiting for the end of life? Some archaic practices and beliefs should be examined and reexamined.
Post script: As a daughter whose 93 year old mother died 3 months ago in a nursing home, I am grieved that so few options exist. There must be a better way but it will take determination. elaine voss
Your Recent History
Neil @ July 23, 2011
Changes Coming Soon To Renaissance Post
Posted in: Renaissance | Comments (0)
There will be some changes coming soon to RenPost. There will still be blogging, but the frequency and focus will change. The end result will be streamlined, spiffed-up, and better than ever.
More to come.
Phoenix @ July 16, 2011
Lying About Tweets: Mike Parry Shows It’s OK, If You’re A Republican
Posted in: Politics | Comments (1)
Two prominent politicians lied about what they tweeted, and tried to cover it up. One was forced out of politics, the other got a free pass.
The one forced out of politics? A Democrat. The one who got the free pass? A Republican, Mike Parry — who keeps getting free passes and wet kisses from various Minnesota media.
It’s enough to make a cat laugh — or bark, as the case may be.
(Crossposted to Mercury Rising.)
Phoenix @ July 15, 2011
Dayton Offers MN GOP Hobson’s Choice: Protect Rich Or Bust Unions
Posted in: Politics | Comments (1)
As you may have heard by now, the Minnesota state shutdown is likely to come to an end soon, as Governor Mark Dayton offered the state Republican leadership a Hobson’s Choice:
Dayton offered to accept their June 30 budget proposal, which delays school payments and doesn’t tax the rich, on these three conditions:
– They dump all the ALEC-inspired social/policy agenda bullshit (including their own version of Scott Walker’s union-busting bill), crap which they’d spent the entire session pushing and which they’d tacked onto the bill
– They drop their plan to cut state employee numbers by 15%
– They approve a $500 million bonding bill to put people back to work in Minnesota.
In other words, he challenged them to show, once and for all, their true priorities.
And guess what? They’ve tentatively agreed to it.
That’s right, folks: The Republican Party of Minnesota not only jettisoned their union-busting, their stem-cell research ban, their mandatory picture voter ID demand, as well as their anti-stimulus stance and their deficit hawkery, just to make sure Governor Dayton didn’t raise taxes on the richest .03% of the population.
That should tell you something. So does the fact that Michael Brodkorb and other Republican leaders, who would have been filling their Twitter feeds with boasts about making Dayton cave if they really liked this deal, have done no such thing today. They now have to sell this to their freshman Tea Party goons, and that’s going to be difficult.
(Crossposted to Mercury Rising.)
Phoenix @ July 14, 2011
Why Do Conservatives Blame Fannie/Freddie When Banks Are the Real Crash Culprits?
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Why do conservatives and Republicans blame Fannie and Freddie when the banks are the real crash culprits?
That’s the question everyone should be asking. Prominently. On many nightly newscasts, where most Americans can see it.
Unfortunately, it’s seldom addressed anywhere where a majority of the American voting public might see it. Which is a pity, because the answers would be revealing (emphases mine):
The FCIC’s report put the majority of the blame squarely where it belonged: On the shoulders of the Wall Street executives who led their companies straight into the financial abyss. Rather than finding themselves in jail or in bankruptcy
court, you can find them in Sun Valley, Martha’s Vineyard and the Hamptons, living very well indeed off the hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation they Hoovered up during their years of mismanagement at the top.The report’s gutsy and accurate conclusion was not the unanimous view of the commission. Rather, it was endorsed by only six of the 10 commissioners, all Democrats. The four dissenters, who were Republicans, made their views known in two separate reports, which had some good points but went too easy on Wall Street’s behavior.
Now the author of one of those dissenting reports — Peter Wallison, a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute — appears to be on some kind of crazy crusade to rewrite history. He is intent on deflecting any blame
away from Wall Street and its unhealthy incentive system and toward the much-maligned government-sponsored entities, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.“Far from being a marginal player, Fannie Mae was the source of the decline in mortgage underwriting standards that eventually brought down the financial system,” Wallison wrote in a Wall Street Journal column published yesterday. “It led rather than followed Wall Street into risky lending.”
Sure, Fannie and Freddie — and their political cronies in Congress and the White House — had a meaningful role in the origins and the exacerbation of the crisis, as is well documented in “Reckless Endangerment,” a new book by Gretchen Morgenson of the New York Times and Joshua Rosner, a Wall Street analyst. But to pretend that Fannie and Freddie are the sole culprits is a terrible distortion of the truth of what actually
occurred.
So why do Republicans blame Fannie and Freddie for all of the crash? Simple: Because Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are government programs that help people who aren’t already filthy rich. Many of these people happen to have darker skin tones than do most Republicans or their voter base — or their financial base, which happens to be the very same banksters Wallison lets off the hook.
That’s right, kids: It’s yet another wrinkle of the Southern Strategy, wherein Corporate America and its GOP handmaidens cloak bigotry in the code words of finance, and use that bigotry to win elections.
Lo and behold, we find out (via Huffington Post) that Peter Wallison played fast and loose with the confidential information with which Darrell the Car Thief Issa entrusted him, leaking it to various Republicans and other ideological buddies and generally having a good old sleazy time with it while pretending to investigate the causes of the financial crisis. Somehow that doesn’t surprise me in the least.
Phoenix @ July 14, 2011
