Another Viewpoint on the National Debt

I first encountered Fareed Zakaria on ABC's Sunday news show, This Week With George Stephanopoulos. I was struck by both his clarity in thinking and in articulating his thoughts. Frankly, when he left the show, I missed him more than I did George Stephanopoulos, who turned the hosting job for This Week over to Christiane Amanpour last August.

Zakaria was born in India, but came to the U.S. to attend Yale, where he earned his B.A. degree. He later went on to earn a PhD from Harvard. He was formerly the editor for Newsweek International and is currently the editor-at-large for Time as well as the host of the CNN show Fareed Zakaria GPS.

Foreign Policy magazine has begun doing an annual list--one in 2009 and another in 2010--on the Top 100 Global Thinkers. Zakaria was included on both lists.

I say all this as a lead-in to an interview Terry Gross did with Zakaria on Fresh Air this morning. The title of the show was "What Does a 'Post-American World' Look Like?"

Terry asked Zakaria, "... if the U.S. does not raise its debt ceiling, if we end up defaulting on debts, what impact do you think that would have on the U.S. and the global economy?"

Zakaria responded:

"I tend to think it would be catastrophic. And I think that, more importantly, there is a high enough risk here that this is surely a game we don't want to play. What have we learned over the last three years--whether you look at Lehman Brothers and the effect that that collapse had on the world economy? It's that there are these kinds of things that economists call low-probability, high-impact events that you don't want to test. You don't want to see whether this is one of those things that is an unlikely situation, but once it happens could have a huge seismic global effect, because then the cost of dealing with that--the after-effects--is just cataclysmic.

"I think it would be huge. The United States has never defaulted on its debt. It is the leading country in the world. It has the reserve currency of the world, and I think it is madness for us to be doing this when Congress is, in effect, already mandated that we borrow more money. This is what I don't understand. By choosing to spend money at a certain level and setting tax revenues at another level, a lower level, what Congress has implied is we're going to have to borrow the difference, right? So raising the debt ceiling is the logical consequence of Congress's decision to spend a certain amount of money and to tax at a lower level.

"How can you have second thoughts about this when you, Congress, was the one that set these levels in the first place? And besides which, it's unconstitutional. The 14th Amendment very clearly says the validity of America's credit and its debts cannot be questioned. I don't have the exact phrase, but it's about as clear as you can get. And so for people who believe in the Constitution, it is to me, beyond bizarre that they're doing this. And I think that President Obama should if he is forced to assert that what Congress is doing is unconstitutional and simply use his a executive authority to do what he needs to, to make sure that the United States makes good on its debts."

To listen to the entire interview, go here.

e-Book Reader Ownership Doubles in Six Months

The Pew Internet Project began keeping track of e-reader use two years ago in April, 2009.

Today they reported:

The share of adults in the United States who own an e-book reader doubled to 12% in May, 2011 from 6% in November 2010 ...

Both e-book reader and tablet computer adoption levels among U.S. adults are still well below that of other tech devices that have been on the market longer. Cell phones are far and away the most popular digital device among U.S. adults today, followed by desktop and laptop computers, DVRs, and MP3 players.

Go here to read the report.

Finding a Home for Grendel

Okay, I'm back again.

A challenging month. One made worse by my habit of acting like the Florence Nightingale of the animal world. This tendency of mine becomes more pronounced during hot weather. I've picked up a strange dog during June or July for the past three years.

A week after my surgery, on my way home from work, I saw a very large yellow lab on the road. He appeared to be trying to find a specific driver; he kept approaching moving cars near the driver side window.

I got half a mile down the road, arguing with myself. On the mind-your-own-business side: he was huge, didn't have a collar and I knew nothing about his temperament. On the other hand: he clearly was in distress and wanting help, it was dusk and soon to be dark and he was sure to get killed if he continued to stay in the middle of the road.

At the next opportunity, I turned around and headed back. I'd decided my involvement would be determined upon on whether he came when I called to him.

I stopped my car on the shoulder, rolled down my window and called to him.

He came bounding across two lanes of traffic toward me. I opened the door, and the fool animal tried to climb into my Toyota across my lap. I shouted, "No!" and he recoiled.

I climbed out of the car and offered my hand for him to smell. He sniffed once and immediately leaped into the car, settling himself into the passenger seat.

I was appalled. I guesstimated his weight at approximately 100 lbs. My vet later weighed him in at 110. He was so big, he knocked my transmission out of gear on the way home.

The next week was a blur of activity. I christened the behemoth "Grendel" for the monster in Beowulf. He was a mass of contradictions:

• Friendly but not needy. He was content to lie quietly nearby wherever I was.
  
• Obedient but unaware of simple commands. Fortunately, he was VERY food-oriented. He learned "sit" in about twenty minutes.
• Beautifully kept but without a identity chip. I realized pretty quickly he had a nasty ear infection. He was also at least 30 lbs overweight.
• A purebred lab who had been neutered at a very young age.

I took him to my vet to be scanned for a chip, weighed and treated. My very wonderful vet gave us 30 minutes and charged me only $19--the cost of the ear medicine. He told me Grendel was clearly a purebred who had been a house dog. His fur and paws showed no sign of his ever being an outside dog. He hypothesized that Grendel had belonged to an elderly person who overfed and didn't exercise him.

Being a writer, I took that story and ran with it. "An ill person might not have noticed the beginnings of his ear infection. Maybe Grendel's owner died or had to be hospitalized, and a relative put him in the backyard. He figured out how to open my gate in about five minutes. I'll bet he escaped from wherever and got lost."

The vet nodded. "He probably tried to return to his owner's house."

The bad news was that my vet told me Grendel could not be left in my yard. "He has no experience as a yard dog. With his weight, this heat will kill him."

That complicated my life unbelievably. My roommate was already furious. Undeterred by Grendel's size, my little 12-lb. cat took every opportunity to leap out and attack Grendel. The first time I shouted, "No," Grendel figured out his continued residence in my home was dependent upon getting along with this tiny, nasty, spitting creature. He studiously ignored Bob from that moment forward, which only infuriated my little kamikaze feline. Bob would slash at Grendel at every opportunity. Fortunately, the lab's thick fur protected him.

Leaving Grendel inside meant I had section the rooms off so each animal had his part of the house. It also meant I had to come straight home from work to let the dog out. Because of the heat, I confined our walks to 6:15 in the morning and 10:30 at night.

Nighttime was a nightmare. My bedroom became the battlefield. Grendel abandoned his calm exterior at bedtime. He WANTED to sleep in my bed. Of course, my four-poster belonged to Bob.

Like Solomon, I made an executive decision which offered a compromise to all parties involved. Grendel might want to sleep in my bed. I would allow him to sleep beside my bed. The bed belonged to Bob, who spent every night with his little triangular head hanging over the side of the mattress, hoping for a chance to slash at Grendel from above. I slept badly, waking up every couple of hours to see what was going on.

Desperate to get my life back, I hung "Found Dog" signs all over the neighborhood in which I'd found Grendel and knocked on doors, showing his photo to homeowners, hoping for a clue. I haunted the Internet. I contacted local vets. All to no avail. No one knew Grendel, and no one appeared to be looking for him. That only reinforced my belief that his owner had died.

After a week, I switched my efforts from "locate owner" to "locate new owner." I sent emails to a couple of people who belong to large, networked church communities in Dallas. Within two days, I began to do phone interviews of potential new owners. Last Sunday, I surrendered Grendel to a young minister at one of the largest churches in Dallas. He was originally looking for a dog for his sister, but during my home visit when his setter bitch and Grendel fell in love, he began to wonder if he should keep him.

Grendel and Sami played happily together while we watched, smiling. I got up to leave, and Grendel immediately followed me to the door. I kissed him goodbye, and his new owner held the lab tightly while I slipped outside.

Came home and collapsed into my bed with Bob purring contentedly beside me.

A Quick Note

I had my surgery on Tuesday. Arrived at the surgeon's office at 9 AM and was home by 2 PM.

At the moment, my left eye is still nearly swollen shut. Since I have monovision contacts, it is difficult to read without my left eye.

I've been applying ice packs for about ten minutes of every hour and am hoping that tomorrow the swelling will be down enough that I will be back and posting again.

Beginning a Healthy Life

On the weekends, I'm going to start keeping a diary of my efforts to move toward a healthier life style. I want a written record for myself and decided some of you might be interested, too. If not, just skip the weekend blogs.

On March 1, I rejoined Snap Fitness, a local gym that is part of a national chain here. Snap Fitness has several things in its favor:

1. It's not far from my home.
   


2. It's open 24/7, which means I can work out after 9 PM at night--a time when I am wide awake and physically loose.
   


3. I didn't have to sign a year's contract with all kinds of ugly clauses. I go month-to-month for about $35, and I can ask them to not bill me for several months if I know I'm not going to be able to attend.

I decided early on that I would do a mile a day on the treadmill and then mix up other exercises in addition. My internist recommended changing my routine every three weeks to keep my body from settling into a rut. She also recommended working out four or five times a week for 30 to 45 minutes.

After three months, I've found my pattern. Two weeks of the month I do five nights a week and, two weeks of the month, I do four nights a week. Which nights depend on my own schedule and preference. I'm not rigid about it. Right now I'm spending an hour each time I work out. I started at 40 minutes a visit the first month, went to 50 minutes the second month and am now at 60 minutes.

Diabetes doesn't run in my family; it gallops. I am controlled by diet with a pill a couple of times a day. I have made small changes to my diet over this three months. Initially, I started by having oatmeal with cinnamon and blueberries five days a week. Then I added a 10:30 AM snack (usually a Kind bar--they are fabulous--see here) and a 3:30 PM snack (usually an apple and cheese, or a banana and guacamole. I HATE peanut butter).

Lunch is where I concentrate my day's carbs. I'll have a loaded baked potato or--another favorite--Jimmy John's roast beef sandwich with lettuce, tomato and mayo.

The hardest thing for me has been giving up processed foods. I'll talk about that another time.

I started listening to my body more and learned that I NEED to eat between 5:00 and 6:00 PM. I usually have some protein (veal scallopine--the easiest thing in the world to make), or a piece of chicken or beef fajitas. If I'm going out to dinner with friends, I have the same thing.

I like a snack before I go to bed. I don't care if all the experts say you shouldn't eat before you go to sleep. My body demands a snack. My three most common snacks are the Kind dark chocolate and cherry cashew bar, or pineapple cream cheese on Ritz crackers or just grapes.

In three months, I've lost 15 pounds and overall about 12 inches. I do my own measurements so that the gym isn't giving me hooey in an effort to keep me as a member. I've gone down three pants sizes.

This is kind of a sad story to tell on myself, but here it is:

About six weeks into my little program, I noticed lines forming under my rib cage on either side. I realized they were the beginnings of abs. I started calling them my "baby abs." Each week the lines became more pronounced. My abdomen also started hurting almost all the time (largely because, during the day while I was walking or driving, I would suck in my gut and hold it for the count of 30).

This week, I got out of the shower and realized there was a vertical pouchy place in the shape of a diamond between my two horizontal ab lines.

I panicked. I thought, "Oh, my God, I've herniated myself!" Then I stared at it closer and ran to the Internet to pull up a diagram of a set of abs (see here). I quickly realized it was my linea alba making its first appearance. The linea alba is a long strip of fascia--fibrous tissue that runs down the middle of your abdomen, splitting the six-pack into its sections. So now I have a vertical baby ab in addition to my horizontal one.

Of course, I've been pulling up my shirts all week to show my baby abs to my nearest and dearest! My loved ones have been very tolerant.

That's it for this week.

The Book Expo YA Buzz

BookExpo America 2011 took place last week in New York from May 23 to the 28th. One of the most popular sessions is the Young Adult Buzz panel where editors from various houses promote their upcoming books. This year's panel included five editors who summarized their books:

1) Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor
Alvina Ling, editor at Little Brown and Company

Alvina described the book as a story told backward with this tag line: "Once upon a time, an angel and a devil fall in love. It did not end well."

2) Carrier of the Mark by Leigh Fallon
Erica Sussman of HarperCollins

Erica explained that the book begins with Megan moving to Ireland with her father. She learns she carries the power of the element Air. She falls in love with Adam, who carries the mark for Water. She also meets his brother (who has the mark for Fire) and his sister (who has the mark for Earth). Megan and Adam are told that carriers of the mark cannot be together without disastrous consequences.

3) Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick by Joe Schrieber
Margaret Raymo from Houghton Mifflin

Margaret said the tag line for this humorous YA novel is "Ferris Bueller Meets La Femme Nikita." Perry is a senior in high school whose mother persuades him to take a Lithuanian girl named Gobi to the prom. He discovers to his horror that Gobi is really an assassin who has five targets on her hit list for the night.

4) The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin
Courtney Bongiolatti of Simon & Schuster

Mara Dyer is at a sleepover where she and her three friends play with a ouija board. She wakes up in a hospital with no memory of how she got there and why she is not harmed although her friends were killed.

5) Down the Mysterly River by Bill Willingham
Susan Chang of Tor Forge

Susan described this book as a fable about a boy scout who wakes up in a woods where he meets a talking badger, barn cat and bear. The four are chased by a group of hunters known as the Blue Cutters (because of their swords).

It's pretty telling that four of the five books have paranormal themes and three of the five books have female protagonists. If I had to pick one of the five to read it would probably be Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick.

I'll talk about the Adult Buzz session later.

Paranormal Novels Continue to Sell.

There was an interesting article in Friday's Wall Street Journal (WSJ) which reports that the popularity of paranormal genre novels has not escaped the notice of the higher brow literary writers, now trying to cash in on this trend's success.

Following a string of supernatural successes, including last summer's hit "The Passage," a vampire epic by literary novelist Justin Cronin, and the recent surprise breakout "A Discovery of Witches" by Deborah Harkness, novelists from across the literary spectrum are delivering fantasy-tinged narratives.

The article opens with Glen Duncan, described as "a 45-year-old novelist who lives in South London," and whose latest novel, The Last Werewolf will be released on July 12. It turns out that Mr. Duncan "invented Jake [his protagonist, a werewolf] out of desperation. His previous seven literary novels sold poorly, and his agent said the prospects for selling the next one were bleak. 'It was a rather mercenary and practical decision to try to write a straight genre novel,' Mr. Duncan says."


The WSJ goes on to describe four more paranormal novels with literary aspirations. I've written about one of the authors before. On September 22, 2008 here, I described a YA novel by Melissa Marr titled Wicked Lovely which I recommended. Her first adult novel, Graveminder, was released two weeks ago in hardcover. I don't recall seeing it, but plan to go looking for it this week.


Go here to read the Wall Street Journal story which includes a video of the article's writer describing this literary trend.

And, by the way, another YA which I highly recommended here, The Hunger Games, has been optioned as a movie. The protagonist Katniss will be played by Jennifer Lawrence, who was nominated for an Oscar last year for Winter's Bone. Jennifer Lawrence was on the cover of Entertainment Weekly last week with dark braids dressed as Katniss. Filming on The Hunger Games began on May 19 in North Carolina. I've heard Donald Sutherland will play the president, Woody Harrelson will play Haymitch, Elizabeth Banks will play Effie and Stanley Tucci will play Caesar. The Hunger Games was the first in a trilogy which ended last August with the release of the third book, Mockingjay.

The Emperor of All Maladies

As I explained earlier this week, I've been feeling overwhelmed and more than a little anxious lately.

Everyone has coping skills that help them manage the stresses of daily life. Psychologists rate coping skills along a continuum from pathological to mature. I have a variety of defense mechanisms that I fall back on in a Chinese menu kind of way: one from column A, one from column B and another from column C.

When I'm behaving maturely, I tend to use humor to help me manage while, at the same time, I suppress the uncomfortable thoughts and feelings. When the stress increases, I fall back on less mature mechanisms like intellectualization and magical thinking.

This month, I did not pass "go"; I went straight to those neurotic coping skills.

Since I was anxious about having to face yet another Mohs surgery for skin cancer, I fell back on my immature defense mechanisms. First, I upped my exercise routine from five nights a week to seven (thereby magically "undoing" the unhealthy situation by acting in a more healthy manner).

But because on the face (no pun intended) it was cancer that was frightening me, I intellectualized that a book would give me more information on the subject, theoretically increasing my sense of competence and control (while at the same time permitting me to suppress my fears related to my mother's steady deterioration).

Last November, I first heard about such a book during an interview on NPR's Fresh Air. Since that time, the book won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction. The title is The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, and the author is Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee, an assistant professor of medicine at Columbia University.


I remembered the interview clearly and especially a segment in which Dr. Mukherjee was asked to describe what causes a cell to become cancerous. I went back to find that broadcast of Fresh Air, in which he said:

In cells, there are genes that are present whose normal function is to regulate the growth, the metabolism and the cell division of cells. And corruptions of these genes, mutations of these genes, essentially activate or inactivate critical processes that act like accelerators and brakes. So to rephrase this, you can imagine the cell as a molecular machine, and cell division is one of the activities it performs. And there are accelerators and brakes on cell division ...

By mutating genes, if you jam the accelerators or if you mess up the brakes, then the cell doesn't know how to stop dividing and it begins to divide incessantly. And part of that division also creates even more mutations. Sometimes there are genes that can be mutated which can accelerate the mutations of other genes, and this process goes on and on until you have a cell which is now capable of infinite cell division and does not know when to stop dividing. And that's what unleashes a cancer cell. But that said, I think that's just the beginning of an understanding ... there are many, many other features of cancer which are still in their infancy in terms of our understanding.

Two weeks into it, I'm a little more than halfway through the book, which is astonishing to me. I'm accustomed to reading most books--both novels and non-fiction--in a couple of days. However, my desire to understand this subject matter has me taking detours via the Internet to buttress my small store of high school science knowledge.

As an example, I remembered there were three kinds of cells (red, white and platelets), but couldn't for the life of me remember what platelets do (assist in the clotting of blood). And I absolutely did not remember where blood cells are manufactured (in the bone marrow). And I swear to God when I went through school, we were never taught that our immune systems have three major types of lymphocytes that fight infection: T cells (thymus), B cells (bone) and NK cells (natural killer).

Dr. Mukherjee is very thorough in his approach. He describes the history of the study of cancer from its earliest beginnings: a papyrus in which an Egyptian physician who lived around 2625 BC describes a case "having bulging masses on [the] breast that ... have spread over his breast." Under therapy, Imhotep says only "there is none."

The good doctor Mukherjee has a tendency to devolve into what I would describe as "purple prose" through his use of metaphors and similes. I laughed out loud at this sentence: "But Cole now wondered whether Halsted had tried to cleanse the Augean stables of cancer with all the right intentions, but with the wrong tools."

I am, however, struck by his humanity in recounting the story of cancer. He openly addresses the arrogance of physicians who refused to consider any theories of cancer which did not fit their own world views. In the early-1970s when an oncologist at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) proposed a treatment regimen of surgery followed by chemotherapy, no American surgeons or chemotherapists could be located who would agree to such a protocol. As the result of all that hubris, the NCI was forced to sponsor that first clinical trial at the Istituto Tumori in Milan, Italy where "Bonadonna and Veronesi, the only surgeon-chemotherapist pair seemingly on talking terms with each other" agreed to accept an award for the NCI trial. The results of that trial shook "the terra firma" of cancer research. The combined treatment "prevented breast cancer relapses in about one in every six treated women," a stunning victory at that time.

I also sensed Dr. Mukherjee's outrage was genuine when he talked about the medical profession's failure to focus on symptom relief and comfort of the patients who were dying under their care. "The movement to restore sanity and sanctity to the end-of-life care of cancer patients emerged, predictably, not from cure-obsessed America but from Europe."

It is staggering to me to realize how far cancer treatment has come over the last forty years. Just this week, I read a newspaper article about an experimental drug that has killed a "rare, stubborn form of cancer called acute promyelocytic leukemia ... Tamibarotene ... is a retinoid drug that induces [immature] cancer cells to differentiate into mature cells and eventually die."

Bottom line, I'm feeling more optimistic and want to recommend this book to anyone dealing with (or simply interested in) the subject of cancer.

The Next Challenge

I said I'd talk about the couple of things that derailed me earlier this month.

The second thing that threw me off course started one morning while I was washing my face. My fingers brushed a rough spot on the left side of my nose. I picked up my magnifying mirror and squinted at the tiny area of skin. It was barely noticeable, but irregular in shape and scaly. "Oh-oh," I thought.

As I drove to work, I called my dermatologist's office to ask for an appointment. The scheduler said, "You're coming to see us in July. Can't this wait until then?"

"Nope," I said. "I want an appointment this week."

Begrudgingly, she gave me a time for the next morning.

My dermatologist took one look at the spot and called his nurse to assist in a biopsy.

A week later, the nurse called to say they'd be referring me to a surgeon for Mohs surgery. Since I practically have a surgeon on retainer these days, I had no trouble scheduling the surgery.

If you want to know what Mohs is, or what to look for when checking your skin, go here to read an earlier blog on the subject.

I've had multiple skin cancers (both basal and squamous) removed over the years. However, the time between them seems to be getting much shorter. I had a lesion removed in June, 2007 and another one excised sixteen months later in November, 2009. Now eighteen months later, I have a new basal cell cancer. I don't know if it was this lesion's prominent location on my face or the fact that this is the third Mohs surgery I'll have had in four years, but this one bushwhacked me. My anxiety climbed, and my mood tanked.

As usual when I'm feeling out of control, I went looking for a way to re-establish my equilibrium.

I found a solution. I'm pretty excited about it, and I'll tell you all about it on Saturday.

Let's Try This Again

Three weeks ago, I announced I was back and then promptly disappeared again. I figure I owe an explanation.

Two things knocked me off my stride. I'll talk about one today and the other on Thursday.

The first was the need to reorganize my mother's finances to permit her continued residence in an Alzheimer's facility.

Fifteen months ago, my family moved Mom from the home she'd lived in for nearly fifty years to a residential facility (pictured below) devoted to patients with memory loss.


At the time we made the move, my three brothers and I were at varying degrees of acceptance that such action was even necessary. We were deep in discussion (AKA argument) when the police removed Mom from her home and took her to a hospital for evaluation. As you can imagine, this helped to move the conversation along.

The final decision came down to numbers. My youngest brother and I were in agreement that Mom could not return home. Our united front was enough to sway our middle brother. My oldest brother was not convinced, but chose to accept the majority rule.

This is a quote from the assisted living facility's brochure:

The layout is residential by design - small in scale and organized into four self-contained "houses." Each house has its own living room, dining room, kitchen, full bath and laundry. There's also a secured backyard for gardening and enjoying the outdoors.

"House" is a bit of a misnomer. The houses are wings off a central common area. The common area includes a library, hair salon, recreation room, music area, and large activities area.

Each wing has a max of thirteen residents, making the entire facility resemble a living deck of cards with 52 total. And, like a deck of cards, each suit has its own color scheme around which it is organized. The Green House, where Mom lives, has wallpaper with green borders and hints of green throughout the furnishings. Mom has a private corner room and half bath. Here's a photo of a house dining room with its three tables for the residents.


Note the door to the outside. Mom's house has at least three doors to the backyard that are kept unlocked until darkness. Multiply that times the four houses, and you realize just how open the living plan is. I walked out one of the doors early one evening and saw a deer on the other side of the back fence.

Of course, the setup is such that, although the residents are free to go outdoors, they cannot leave the backyard. There's a gazebo, and picnic tables and an old-fashioned porch swing.

One of my brothers--I don't remember which one--described the place as "Disney World for 80-year-olds."

Disney World doesn't come cheap. We're paying over $5,000 a month.

Understand, none of us begrudges the money. We recognize how lucky we are to be able to afford her care. Her occasional bouts of physical aggression and her very strong streak of independence would make it tough for one of us to keep her in our home although that possibility was the one we were entertaining when the police arrived at her house and forcibly removed her. She spent a week in the hospital tied to a bed.

However, when you add in the cost of the cocktail of medications Mom takes daily, we're running through her savings at quite a clip.

My youngest brother, who bears the burden of oversight, called me early this month. We had to do a review of her financial situation and move some money around to make arrangements for the next year of care.

My middle brother, his wife and daughter flew to Florida and spent last week visiting Mom.

She's good. She can hold it together in a social setting and waited until he had dropped his wife and daughter off at the hotel before asking, "Who were they?"

I call Mom almost every morning as I drive to work. I *think* she still recognizes my voice although I'm always careful to identify myself by name. In ten minutes of conversation, we talk about the weather about four times, and she asks me at least that many times how I'm doing.

It's hard to say whether I miss her more while we're talking together on the phone or when we are not.

I'm Back

After two months off, I'm back. Sorry for being AWOL, but I needed some time to myself to regenerate.

I finally accepted that I will NEVER use my gym at 6:00 AM. It's just not gonna happen. I'm now exercising at 10 PM five nights a week, and it's working. I've got eight weeks behind me and am feeling great.

Thought I would start out with some fun.

Here are two clips from the White House Correspondents' dinner last night. The first is President Obama's speech.



The second is Seth Meyers' remarks. Seth is, of course, from Saturday Night Live. You can find his roast of everyone and everything in American politics on YouTube here.

Have a great day.

California Jumps Into the Argument

California has joined those states pushing Amazon to pay sales taxes on Internet purchases made within their borders.

And Amazon is pushing back.

Yesterday, Dow Jones Newswires reported here:

In a letter to California's Board of Equalization, which oversees the collection of property taxes, sales taxes and other fees, Seattle-based Amazon said four bills introduced to the state legislature are unconstitutional because they would ultimately require sellers with no physical presence in California to collect sales tax merely on the basis of contracts with California advertisers.

"If any of these new tax collection schemes were adopted, Amazon would be compelled to end its advertising relationships with well over 10,000 California-based participants in the Amazon 'Associates Program'," wrote Paul Misener, Amazon's vice president for Global Public Policy, in a letter dated Feb. 24.

This is in line with Amazon's previous stance toward other states that have tried to collect sales taxes because the company is operating within their borders.

I've written extensively about this subject before, including here, here and here.

States have gone after Amazon for sales taxes, claiming two different kinds of physical presence:

• Amazon's Associates Program allows Internet users to advertise Amazon on their websites and earn money from any sales that result. When North Carolina, Rhode Island and Colorado argued that this program constitutes a physical presence in their states, Amazon shut down the program in those states. This is, of course, the same strategy the company is employing in California.

• When Texas argued that Amazon's distribution center in Irving constituted a physical presence in the state, Amazon announced the distribution center was owned by its subsidiary, Amazon.com KYDC LLC, and not by Amazon itself ... even though the subsidiary is located at Amazon's corporate headquarters. Amazon announced it would close the distribution center next month if Texas doesn't back down.

I think that the second bullet above is going to become more of an issue in the future. Readers of this blog may recall that on January 31 here, I reported on the conference call between Amazon and its stock analysts. This is the answer from the Seeking Alpha transcript to a question posed by the analyst from Jefferies & Company who asked about the number of distribution centers Amazon had at the end of 2010:

We had approximately 52 at the end of 2010. We added 13 last year. We will add more fulfillment centers this year. We ... aren't saying how many yet because again we're trying to determine what the growth rate will be.

I doubt that the tax dodge of having a "subsidiary" operate the distribution center will continue to hold up as Amazon increases its physical presence around the country.

The open question is whether the states have the courage to face anger from their citizens when Amazon pulls jobs or, in the case of the Associates program, potential money away from people during a tough economy.

My Less-Than-Excellent Adventure

I'm too tired to take on a heavy subject tonight so I'm just going to tell what happened today. This tale will probably give a psychologist pause, but ...

I'm prone to allergies twice a year: hayfever in October and mountain cedar in February. There are years when allergies absolutely lay me low. However, February had seemed mild until very recently. I've had a nasty post-nasal drip which alternated with a pounding sinus headache all week.

I'd soldiered on until today when I had both the headache and stomach issues from the post-nasal drip. I emailed my boss to say I'd be at home, took a handful of meds and went back to bed.

I woke up to the sound of the garbage truck rumbling down my street. Like Pavlov's dog hearing the bell, I responded instantly, leaping out of bed. Grabbing my garbage, I ran out the back door. I flung the plastic bags over my fence to the curb on the street.

Pleased that I hadn't missed trash day, I returned to the house to find my back door locked.

There I stood in my Lanz of Salzburg blue-and-white full-length nightgown and my purple slippers ... without a way inside ... because I had used the spare key stored outside the house when I locked myself out about a week ago and had not yet returned the key to its hidey hole.

My next-door neighbor used to have a key to the house until I recently changed out a key cylinder that had begun to stick in the dead bolt. I'd been meaning to have extra keys made, but hadn't gotten around to it yet.

I was not crazy about the idea of traipsing across the lawn dressed as I was to a neighbor--especially one with teenage boys--to borrow a phone.

I am an impulsive soul. I decided the fastest way to get back into my nice warm bed was to just break a window and worry about the repairs later. I picked up a decorative concrete cat from a flower bed and swung it at the bottom half of my double-hung bedroom window.

The cat bounced off the window.

I should mention that I'd broke into my house once before. I'd replaced the demolished glass pane with shatter-proof glass. I just hadn't realized how strong the new glass was.

I slammed the concrete cat into the window twice more before giving up. I viewed the rear of the house, trying to decide on a new plan.

Replacing the glass in the decorative French doors would be frightfully expensive. My bathroom has horizontal windows only a foot wide and ten feet above me.

That left the guest bathroom. Again the window was rather high--shoulder height for short me--and not really very big. I guessed each half of the double-hung window was about 18" X 22".

But beggars can't be choosers. I pulled a cast iron patio chair over and climbed onto it. Then I slammed the concrete cat into the top half of the window.

The glass shattered in a very loud and satisfying manner. I picked shards of glass out of the window frame. Once it was safe to reach in, I unlocked the window--grateful the alarm wasn't activated--and slid the window open.

The next problem was that the window was still too high and not wide enough for me to climb in feet first. I would have to go through face first, which meant a drop of about four and a half feet on the other side. Oh, well ... in for a penny, in for a pound.

I removed the planter sitting on the window sill along with my large bottle of Vita Bath (Original Spring Green Scent) and stuck my head through.

Fifty-four inches never looked so far. Especially since I would be landing on hard ceramic tile ... head first.

Making like a lizard moving down a wall, I slowly edged through: head, shoulders, chest, waist. I was VERY grateful for the privacy fence behind me. I didn't want to think about the rear view I was offering the world.

Once my hips made it through, I was over-balanced and things speeded up. I tumbled, tucking my head into my chest as I rolled.

Touchdown was painful. I heard a crack which I believe was my left thumb. Somehow my nightgown tore in multiple places, and the tops of my bare feet scraped across the bricks outside the window. I also cut my forehead and scratched my chin on the stray bits of glass on the floor.

But I was inside. I lay on the floor, assessing my injuries while Bob The Cat licked my face. He had been quite frantic watching my assault on his home from the hallway.

I suspected I'd broken my thumb but, like Scarlett O'Hara, decided to worry about it later. I washed my hands and face, put on a warm flannel nightgown, took some Motrin, and went to bed.

When I woke, my thumb was still painful and pretty swollen, but I've broken fingers before. It didn't hurt as much as some have, and I still had a window to fix. The weatherman said the temp would be 39 degrees overnight.

I measured the window: 21" x 16 1/8". Headed to Home Depot, which no longer cuts glass. Grrrr. Went to Lowe's where a teenage boy cut three different panes before he got one right. Came home, slapped the window in--perfect. In less than an hour, I had caulked the window and cleaned up the mess in the bathroom.

Still have to address the extra key situation. The only window left for me to break on the rear of the house is the bottom half of that bathroom window ...

Hey, Rush Limbaugh!!!

I hear you're taking swipes at the First Lady's diet and waist size.

I haven't heard that low-level commentary since I was back in the elementary schoolyard ... when I was maybe eight or nine years old.

Not only were your comments juvenile, they said a lot about how hard up you are for material. Against the ropes, are you? {LOL}

And I'm not going to take the low road I would have taken when I was eight years old. Back then, I would have laughed and said something about the pot and the kettle.

It's frightening how far my Republican Party has sunk into the mud. Sarah Palin's mocking breast milk and here you are, right down there with her.

Yuck! I'm going to take a shower.

If you can't argue ideas, don't get into the debate.

Tools of Change 2011

Last week from Monday to Wednesday (February 14th thru 16th) the Tools of Change for Publishing 2011 took place at the Sheraton New York Hotel & Towers. This was the fifth year that O'Reilly Media presented the TOC.

I headed over to YouTube to see which presentations are offered and found a variety of interviews.

Margaret Atwood was the keynote speaker. Here is the ~30 minute talk titled "The Publishing Pie: An Authors View":

Kevin Kelly, co-founder of Wired did a ~26-minute presentation called "Better than Free: How Value is Generated in a Free Copy World" here:

Kassia Krozser of BookSquare was interviewed. Here's the ~6-minute video:

You can find other interviews and presentations on YouTube by entering TOC 2011 in the search window.

Meet Jane Yellowrock

A couple of years ago, I read Skinwalker, the first book in an urban fantasy series by author Faith Hunter.

The protagonist of Skinwalker is Jane Yellowrock, a Cherokee shape-changer. Hunter's novels have some similarities to Patricia Briggs' Mercy Thompson series. Both have Native-American skinwalkers as protagonists. Both heroines believe they may be the last of their kind.

But there are differences, too. Mercy is an auto mechanic who owns her own shop in the Pacific Northwest where she was raised by werewolves. Jane grew up in a orphan home and works as a killer-for-hire of rogue vampires.

Mercy changes into a coyote, but Jane is able to change into other forms if she has an object to help her suss out the creature's DNA. Her main form is that of Beast, a mountain lion who shares her body. When Beast is ascendant, the plot is told from her point-of-view in an untutored voice with her memories and sensations.

In Skinwalker, Jane is hired by New Orleans' vampire council to hunt down and kill a vampire serial killer. We meet a number of interesting characters: Molly, Jane's best friend who just happens to be a witch; Katie of Katie's Ladies brothel; Leo Pellissier, the Master Vampire of New Orleans; George Dumas, Leo's prime blood servant; and Rick LaFleur, a NO police detective.

I found the Beast sections of Skinwalker a little tiring, but liked Jane and the story enough that I purchased the second book in the series, Blood Cross.

In Blood Cross, Jane is still in New Orleans and has been hired by Leo to hunt down and kill a rogue vampire who is creating new, unchained vampires. Newly-made vampires are insane during their first ten years of existence and must be kept chained to protect both them and humankind.

Either Blood Cross was superior to the earlier book, or I'd gotten more comfortable with the Beast's POV because I thoroughly enjoyed Jane's new outing. I added Hunter's name to the calendar which I keep to track the forthcoming books of a short list of authors.

This past week I read Mercy Blade, the third in the Jane Yellowrock series.

Hunter just keeps getting better. I thought this was the best book of the three. The novel is nuanced: Hunter expands on her world-building, and Jane learns more of her heritage.

Vampires and witches are the only creatures who have "come out" of the supernatural closet. In Mercy Blade, Jane is still on retainer to Leo, and werewolves are about to come out to humans. When they do so, they allege Leo is a murderer.

Leo phones Jane with this instruction: "A persona non grata is encroaching upon my territory ... Meet with him, find out what he knows, and then send him packing." Booger's Scoot is the biker bar on the west bank where Jane goes to find this "persona non grata" and encounters a pack of very unfriendly werewolves.

The action is fast and furious, and I'm recommending this book and the series.

Borders Files for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy

I just reviewed the list of the 200 Borders stores that are scheduled to close. There are seven in North Texas:

1. 10720 Preston Road, Dallas
2. 1601 Preston Road, Plano
3. 2403 S. Stemmons, Lewisville
4. 5615 Colleyville Boulevard, Colleyville
5. 1131 N. Burleson Boulevard, Burleson
6. 2709 N. Mesquite, Mesquite
7. 3600 McKinney Avenue, Dallas

Dallas will retain the store on Greenville Avenue, Fort Worth will keep its store open, and the location at the D/FW Airport will continue to operate along with the stores in Allen and in Arlington.

Of the 28 stores operating in Texas, eighteen will remain open, including all three locations in San Antonio and the four locations in Houston.

You can see the entire list of 200 stores scheduled to close here.

Today's Shelf Awareness reported this morning that:

While Borders plans to close 200 superstores in the next several weeks ... it may close up to 75 additional stores after that.

Don't forget that Borders still operates a lot of Waldenbooks in addition to a fair number of other non-superstores.

Shelf Awareness also said:

Borders estimated that it loses about $2 million a week combined on the stores set for closing.

I'm always sad to see a bookstore shutter its windows but--with numbers like that--it's not hard to see why Borders is taking this action.

So what do all these bookstores closing and Borders filing for protection under Chapter 11 mean?

Well, this is not great news for the publishing industry at a time when publishers are still trying to figure out how to make money in the brave, new digital world. In addition to having fewer venues in which to sell their wares, the Big Six publishing houses are Borders' largest unsecured creditors. You can go here to read Borders' bankruptcy filing. Scroll forward to the list of the 30 largest unsecured creditors. Borders owes Penguin (#1) $41 million, and Macmillan (#6) $11 1/2 million.

A friend called me today to say that this would just escalate the move to e-books. I'm not sure there is a direct correlation between the two although I'm intrigued by the fact that all three Austin Borders are closing. Austin is the Silicon Valley of Texas with a very young, very e-savvy population.

On the other hand, Austin still has five Barnes & Nobles stores.

According to Publishers Weekly here, most of the 200 stores being closed have over 20,000 square feet including a 42,770 sq. ft. operation in Chicago and a 42,600 sq. ft. store on Park Avenue in New York.

But, let's face it, consumers in Chicago and New York are not as likely to be hurt by this the move as those living in more remote locations with less access to bookstores. Those consumers may have to turn to the Internet for their books.

But will they order physical books from Amazon or e-books? Either way, this event is likely to benefit Amazon's business.

Yesterday's Wall Street Journal reported here:

The Ann Arbor, Mich., company's $505 million bankruptcy debt from GE Capital to fund its operations while in bankruptcy comes in many tranches, and includes both a $55 million term loan and a $410 revolving loan ... The filing comes after Borders unsuccessfully sought to avoid bankruptcy by striking a tentative deal with GE Capital for a new $550 million secured line of credit. But the retailer first had to hit certain benchmarks, such as negotiating more favorable store leases with its landlords and finding other lenders to take on $175 million of the credit line.

The fact that GE Capital is willing to risk $505 million suggests that Borders has a least a chance of being able to successfully manuever out of the hole it's dug for itself.

Borders previous management made huge mistakes--not the least of which was handing over their Internet business to Amazon to manage for them. B&N was much quicker in trying to adapt to the new reality of the Internet and digital books while Borders focussed on building more and bigger bricks-and-mortar stores.

Stay tuned ...

Hey, Governor Perry!

I love Texas. I love the people, I love the friendliness, I love the place.

What I don't love about Texas are the knuckleheads the citizenry regularly elects as governors. I couldn't stand George W. Bush and feel the same way about the current guv, Rick Perry. Both men spent their time in office focussing on how to grow their public profiles so they could make a presidential run. Both were described by Texans as "a great guy"; neither impressed me as a governor.

And we all know what a fabulous prez George Bush made. Writer Molly Ivins called him "Shrub" and once said about him, "Everyone knows the man has no clue, but no one there has the courage to say it. I mean, good gawd, the man is as he always has been: barely adequate."

Fast forward to today: Rick Perry is slicker than goose poop, but routinely makes me wince. He's got great hair and little else.

Case in point, on Friday, the Texas governor did an interview with the Washington Examiner:

Gov. Rick Perry, R-Texas, told The Examiner in an exclusive interview that Amazon's decision to leave the state was a result of a wrong decision by the state comptroller, and that he will work with legislators to make sure Amazon
can stay.

This is my open letter to Governor Perry:

Dear Gov. Perry: PLEASE spend some time learning about an issue before immediately knee-jerking to what you believe is a "pro-business" stand.

Texas has a number of great bookstores. You'll be spitting in their eyes if you allow Amazon to avoid paying state taxes while forcing bricks-and-mortars stores to do so.

Amazon is hiding behind a tax dodge. They have created a subsidiary to operate the distribution center in Irving and claim that this means Amazon is not operating in the state. Give me a break.

PLEASE think twice and act once. Don't remind every Texan that you are the successor to George W. Bush.

And for everyone else. Please remember the name Rick Perry.

Publishers Bundling e-Books

Happy Valentine's Day!

Friday's Wall Street Journal had an interesting story by Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg titled "Publishers Bundle e-Books to Boost Sales, Promote Authors."

The article offers an overview of the e-books being bundled by a variety of publishers. Some bundle early books by one author, others bundle e-books by genre (i.e. romance) or by subject.

"'By bundling titles at a discount we're raising their visibility and making them more price-attractive,' says Mr. Klebanoff," chief executive of RosettaBooks.

Mr Klebanoff also says "a bundled price of $9.99 or less 'is definitely in a consumer sweet spot'."

Maja Thomas, Sr. VP of Hachette Digital, explained that her company has begun to bundle titles from an author's series together. She gave the example of three early Michael Connelly e-books being bundled for $17.99, which represents a savings of $1 off each of the three.

Sony Corp. agreed. They indicated that series bundles are selling very well.

On the other hand, Penguin refuses to discount. They put eight of the Sookie Stackhouse e-books together in one bundle and priced it at $55.99

Go here to read the article.

Amazon Strikes Back at Texas

Beginning in May, 2008 here, I wrote half a dozen posts about the kerfuffle between Amazon and a number of states around the U.S. on the subject of collecting state taxes.

Amazon has an "affiliates" program where people advertise Amazon on their Internet sites and then earn sales commissions on each purchase visitors to their sites make at Amazon.

Individual states have been complaining that although Amazon is paying these people around the country who are, in effect, their representatives, Amazon does not pay the states' sales taxes. This gives Amazon an unfair advantage over those bricks-and-mortar bookstores who both contribute to local economies AND pay the sales taxes. Amazon is not playing on a level field.

In July, 2009, I posted here that:

Bloomberg is reporting that the price of Netflix shares jumped on Monday on speculation that Amazon may be planning to buy the mail-order movie
service ...

A security analyst was quoted in the Bloomberg report saying that Netflix is an "unlikely target for Amazon" because it has distribution centers all over the U.S. Those distribution centers would mean that Amazon would have to collect sales tax in each state where one existed.

... Forbes reported that Amazon had "notified associates in Rhode Island and Hawaii that the company was no longer working with them . . . because [those] states have passed laws to collect sales taxes on these transactions." Shortly afterward, Amazon also cut off their associates in North Carolina.

This past October here, I reported on two states--North Carolina and Texas--which were actively pursuing their demands that Amazon pay state taxes. North Carolina argued when Amazon paid their affiliates in North Carolina, that transaction triggered sales tax.

Texas argued that, by operating a distribution center in Irving, Texas, Amazon had a local presence and needed to pay sales taxes. According to the Dallas Morning News:

"Amazon contended the distribution center [in Irving, Texas] was owned by one of its subsidiaries called Amazon.com KYDC LLC, which is located at the same address as its corporate headquarters in Seattle."

Amazon has now struck back at Texas. Yesterday's Wall Street Journal reported here:

Amazon.com Inc. is closing a Dallas-area fulfillment center and canceling a planned expansion of its operations in Texas after the online retailer failed to reach an agreement with the state over taxes.

In an email to staff, Dave Clark, [Amazon's] ... operations chief for North America, said the state's "unfavorable regulatory climate" prompted the decision ... The closure will occur on April 12.

I think Amazon is overplaying its hand. Article I of the U.S. Constitution says that interstate commerce is regulated by the federal government. While the Internet was growing, Congress was reluctant to take any action to harm its burgeoning businesses. Now those businesses are mature, and Internet sales are well-established. It's a different world.

The founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, spent a lot of time in Texas while he was growing up. His grandfather had been the regional manager for the Atomic Energy Commission in Albuquerque. "Pops" Gize retired to his Lazy G Ranch in Texas. Jeff spent a lot of time with his grandfather on the 25,000-acre ranch, learning to fix equipment, dig ditches and brand cattle.

We have signs on our roadways down here that say: "Don't Mess With Texas." Apparently Jeff has forgotten those notices.