And Baby Makes Nine.

Hello, Brigid.

Happy Birthday.

Your mother and I have been waiting for you to arrive.

Welcome home.

Election Day

Benny Napoleon is running for Mayor of Detroit.  He is making the case that until Detroit has a "Law and Order" mayor, a mayor who understands public safety, Detroit will continue to have lots of murders.  Benny is the former police chief for Detroit PD and Wayne County Sheriff.

I can't believe that Benny can say such symbolically racist things as a political candidate.

Benny Napoleon:  Symbolic Racist

I agree that public safety should be important to Detroit citizens.

I guess that makes me a symbolic racist too.

UPDATE:   I've been informed that since Benny has some melanin, he is incapable of being racist, symbolically or otherwise.  Only those without significant levels of melanin can be racist.  How this theory isn't racist itself, has yet to be explained.

UPDATE II:  Mike Duggan has won the mayoral race.  Good luck, Mike.  Hopefully you can help turn around Detroit.

UPDATE III:  Mike Duggan stated that his first priority is reducing response times for emergency calls.  Well Benny,  it seems like Mr. Duggan has the right idea.  Response times for priority one calls is now averaging 11 minutes.  Let's see what happens in six months.

Own a Gun = You're a racist! Symbolically of course.

This is what passes for science?

A published study by K. Obrien, W. Forrest, D. Lynott and M. Daly, has some wonderful statements of "science."  Below are direct pull quotes from their study.

1. "The public health importance of gun reform in the US is clear..."

Really, gun control is a public health issue?  Inanimate objects do not affect public health. Behavior does, smarty pants.

2. "Blacks are disproportionately represented in US firearm homicides...and would benefit most from improved gun controls."

The authors have not studied Chicago and D.C.  365 homicides in Chicago alone this year.  These communities have some of the strictest gun control in the nation, yet remain some of the most violent.

3. "..measures of explicit and implicit racism measures predicted opposition to Obama's health reform.."

Is it safe to assume, that measures of explicit and implicit misogyny measures predicted opposition to Hillary's attempted health reform in the '90s?   It's never about the policy.

4. "There is substantial evidence that whites associate blacks with crime, and especially violent crime." 

See FBI statistics here.  Blacks accounted for 37.9 percent of murders in 2012, 37.7 percent in 2011, and 38.2 percent in 2010.  Blacks account for 13.1 percent of the population per the 2012 census.

The authors think this is evidence of a racist mindset, I'd say the data tell the story.

5. "...conservative ideologies and racism are inherently related..."

Nothing footnoted on this statement.  Unsubstantiated charge that everyone just knows is true, right?  I mean everyone just knows that conservatives are racist.

6. "...simply owning a firearm may lead whites to develop more negative attitudes towards blacks..."

That's right, guns are so evil, just owning one may twist your white mind and make you hate blacks.  No word on how gun ownership affects those of Hispanic or Latino descent.  Again nothing in the study backs this statement up.

7. "There is some experimental research showing that participants who have recently held a firearm produce enhanced salivary testosterone levels and display increased aggression toward others."

Not only does the gun twist your mind to hate blacks, it will turn you into a drooling rage monster.

I saw this the day it was published (Halloween).  I noted that all the authors were from the UK and Australia, two countries that have banned private ownership of guns.  I think they're just jealous that we haven't disarmed ourselves yet.

I forwarded a copy to Momma Fargo and made the prediction that this study will be cited in an effort to paint opposition to gun control as racist.

Didn't take long.  Here's an article from today referencing the LAX shooting.

"As we digest the news of yet another high-profile gun crime, the conversation inevitably comes back to the question of why stricter gun-control laws are so difficult to pass in this country.

There are a variety of explanations, of course, including the political clout of the National Rifle Association. But there are also deeper, psychological reasons why so many Americans would rather endure mass shooting after mass shooting rather than agree to any restrictions on gun ownership.

And one of them, it appears, is ingrained racism."

You see, the only reason you're not submitting to being disarmed is because you're a symbolic racist.  It's not your fault, you're just a victim of your lack of melanin.

“Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”

Well, white gun owners, you are now the target....and how does that make you feel?

Ammunition Supply Chain

Ammunition prices have dropped from last December's panic.  .223/556 was selling for over $1  a round at the peak.  Today, 1000 round bulk quantities can be had for 30 cents a round.  Granted it's steelcased ammo that has been imported, but it is available.

For a slightly higher price, 0.38 cents a round, you can get re-loaded rounds in brass.  Again this isn't pre-panic prices, but they have been stable at this level for about 4 months.

News from last Friday, regarding the Doe Run company closing their lead smelting operation in December will change that.

Those that cast their own, have had difficulty getting lead from other sources.  Two years ago, you could visit any tire store and get their discarded wheel weights.  Panic pricing on new ammo led many to reload, putting more pressure on the secondary market.  This increased pressure from the secondary market, coupled with the closure of the Herculaneum, MO smelter can only increase the price of lead.

What a country.  We've allowed ourselves to become dependent on others for energy, now we're allowing ourselves to become dependent on others for our bullets.

How long will those others accept our currency as payment as we continue to devalue it?

What happens when they don't?

Office Calls - Now on Kindle

My Dad's new book is now up on Amazon.  The Kindle version went live today, the paperback will go live in another day or so.  The story, Colonel, is taken from the book for your free preview.  It happened near the end of our stay in Harlan, Kentucky.

During those two summers in Harlan, our family of six stayed in a two bedroom apartment. We had air conditioning and a color TV with cable!  I think the only station on was TBS.   I got to sleep in the living room with the TV, so as long as I kept the volume low, I could get away with watching TV, in the early morning.  I would watch the Andy Griffith show and have a bowl of cereal.  Once my parents were up, the TV had to go off.

I was kept entertained and out of trouble by reading.  I had finished reading the encyclopedia, and tore through the Hardy Boy's series at an alarming speed.  My Mom, in desperation, put a hard bound copy of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes Mysteries (Complete and Unabridged) into my hands.  I sat in the apartment's recliner with the dictionary on one armrest and Sherlock Holmes in my lap the rest of the summer.  

Now, from my father's perspective, something else that happened that summer.....

Colonel

Many years ago, when I was a resident in family practice at the University of Kentucky, there was great competition among OB/GYN residents, family practice residents, and medical students for delivering babies at the University Hospital.  For this reason the family practice program had made an arrangement with Appalachian Regional Hospital in Harlan, Kentucky for family practice residents to work a six-week rotation there with Dr. Hurlocker, their OB/GYN attending physician.  This would enable us to gain the additional obstetrical experience needed to obtain obstetric privileges once in private practice. 

As I planned to do obstetrics in my future practice, I took advantage of this opportunity for two summers in a row.  The first time, as we drove to Harlan, we were stunned at the growth of the kudzu.  This vine had been imported from Japan by our federal government to be a ground cover for road cuts in the South.  Unfortunately, the vine had become invasive, growing up to a foot a day and now devouring over three million acres!  We saw it encasing telephone poles, power lines, and even entire houses. 

During the two summers we were there, we stayed in an apartment building located between the hospital and a strip mall with a Piggly-Wiggly grocery store.  Throughout the first - and most of the second - summer we were there, most of the people of Harlan would speak little or not at all with us.  We were outsiders, “not from around here”, and the people of Harlan county were very wary of people from the “big city”.  This was understandable given the history of Harlan County, Kentucky, and how the people had been looked down upon, used, and taken advantage of for decades past.  Nonetheless, it made our stay there seem strangely unwelcome.

Not far from the city of Harlan lies the man-made Martin’s Fork Lake, where coal companies had trucked in tons of white sand to make a swimming beach for the people of Harlan.  We did not go there the first summer we spent in Harlan, but the second summer I had to promise to take our four children swimming at the lake.  Several weeks went by, during which I had been very busy with work at the hospital.  The morning of July 4^th, tired from being on-call the night before, I walked back to the apartment only to have my wife remind me of my promise to take the children swimming.  This would be our last opportunity to keep that promise, so on that day we went to the lake. 

Though the Martin’s Fork Lake is only about fourteen miles from town, it took over a half hour to get there on the twisting, winding mountain road.  In addition, huge slow coal trucks often would slow traffic to a crawl.  Finally arriving at the lake, we parked our car under the shade of a tree and walked the children down to the beach.  We spread out our beach blanket, laid down the towels, and the children took off running to the water’s edge.  On such a warm day the water felt really cold, so it took them a while to get in, but soon they were “swimming” with delight.  Of course the two youngest ones could not really swim, so I had to stay close to them to make sure they would be all right.  The older two children were able to swim on their own. 

We had been there a few hours enjoying the coolness of the lake in the summer heat when my daughter, our eldest, ran up to me and said, “Daddy, there’s a little boy that drowned down the beach!”  I replied to her, “Sure.  That’s not such a funny joke.”  She insisted, “No really, Daddy!  There’s a boy that’s drowned!”.  At that point I realized she was in earnest.  I had her watch her two youngest brothers and took off running down the beach.

About twenty yards down the beach I saw two men leaning over a little blonde boy lying face down on the sand.  He was bluish and not moving.  Two men were pushing on his back, then pulling up on his elbows in an attempt to resuscitate him.  As I reached them, I said forcefully, “I am a doctor!  Let me have him.”  They immediately stepped aside and let me work.                       

I turned the boy over on his back and wiped the wet sand off his mouth.  I quickly gave him two rescue breaths then checked his carotid pulse; there was none.  I immediately gave him a firm “thump” on the chest.  Again I checked his pulse, and this time he had one.  I then continued giving him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation for a few minutes until he suddenly and spontaneously began to choke and breathe on his own.  We sat him up and he vomited what seemed like a gallon of lake water and began crying and shivering.  His father, Hank, then wrapped him in a blanket and took him up by their car. 

Someone had already called the ambulance to come from the hospital, but it took half an hour for them to arrive.  Hank’s family had returned to Harlan that summer to visit with his cousin, Jake, who told Hank, “I know all the doctors at the clinic, and he ain’t no doctor.  You oughta put that boy in your car and drive fast as you can to the hospital!”   Hank said nothing, but looked at me with urgent concern in his eyes.  He had just seen his son almost die and was scared.  I took out my wallet and showed him my Kentucky medical license.  I explained to him that I was down for the summer getting extra obstetrical training.  I advised Hank not to try to hurry to the hospital.  As upset as he was, he was liable to go too fast around a curve and run head-on into a coal truck.  I pointed out that his son was breathing, his heart was beating, and although he was frightened and shivering, he was stable.  Hank looked at his cousin Jake and said, “I think I’ll do what the doctor says.”

When the ambulance crew arrived, they were almost shocked to see the young boy sitting up breathing on his own.  The driver told me, “Wow! We have a live one!  In most cases by the time we get here, the victim is already dead!”  They put the young man in their ambulance, covered him with an additional blanket, and began the drive back to Harlan, Hank following in his car, and both going slow enough to be safe.  As they left, we decided we’d had enough swimming at the lake that afternoon.  We would go back to town ourselves, clean up, and begin preparing our holiday dinner.  

After taking a shower to wash off the lake sand, the two youngest boys and I walked over to the hospital to check on the one whose life I had saved.  A chest x-ray showed he had aspirated some lake water into his lungs.  He had been started on an antibiotic and admitted to be watched for a day or two on the pediatric unit.  Again, Hank and his wife thanked me for what I had done, and I assured them I was happy I had the opportunity to be there to help. 

We left the hospital and immediately walked across the three parking lots of the hospital, the apartment building, and the Piggly-Wiggly.  We went inside to pick out hot-dogs, buns, chips, marshmallows, and a cold watermelon for our Independence Day feast.  To my complete surprise, as we pushed our cart up to the cash register to check out, the cashier turned to me and said, “Oh, Dr. Yarbrough!  That was a wonderful thing you did out at the lake this afternoon.  The people around here really appreciate when someone helps one of their own.  We all sure hope you’ll come back here to practice.  We know you’ll be very busy.”  She kept on talking, saying more than she had in two summers!  I couldn’t believe how freely she spoke to me, an outsider, or how fast she had found out what happened at the lake.  That evening we kept going over what had happened.  It was certainly a memorable Fourth of July dinner. 

The next day at the hospital, Dr. Hurlocker explained to me that once an outsider like myself had shown such care for one of their own, the people of Harlan would accept them with open arms.  This, he said, was why the cashier had spoken to me so openly about what I had done that day.  Dr. Hurlocker also confirmed her words that if I were to come back to Harlan, I would have a very busy practice.  Unfortunately, I already had made a commitment to go elsewhere and would not be able to do that.  Yet after the incident at the lake, it seemed I could go nowhere in town without people thanking me for what I had done.  After a while it got to be embarrassing to be thanked so much by so many complete strangers for doing what any decent person should have done in such circumstances.

Weeks later, back at the university, I was called to come to the office of the residency program director.  Usually such a call meant there had been some sort of complaint or problem.  Naturally, I was quite apprehensive as I entered the director’s office, as I had not heard of any problem with my work and could not recall any complaints.  As I entered the office, the director stood up and smiled at me.  Also in his office was a lady I had never seen before.  Apparently, she was from the governor’s office and was there to present me with a certificate stating that I had been named an honorary Kentucky Colonel.  It seems the mayor of Harlan, with his report to the governor’s office about the incident at the lake, had nominated me for this honor.  I was speechless. 

To this day I still have that framed certificate.  Ironically, performing CPR on that little boy was the first time I had ever done so outside of a hospital.  So many times we do it in the hospital unsuccessfully, yet when out deep in the countryside, with no equipment of any kind, I was able to save a young boy’s life with CPR.   Whenever I look at that certificate, I remember that little blonde-haired boy on the beach at Martin’s Fork Lake.

Office Calls

My dad has written another book.  The target date for publication is November 1st.  His first book, House Calls: Stories from 30 Years of Rural Medicine Among the Amish and English, was published this last April.  He had many positive reviews and some negative ones.

The most common critique is that the book was too short.  He took that to heart, and has almost doubled the number of stories in his follow up book, Office Calls.  The initial proof reading and editing has been done and the copy is now in the typesetter's hands. (That's me.)

I'm adding PAGE NUMBERS* and a TABLE OF CONTENTS* and getting the page breaks set for the printed version as well as making the links for the Kindle version.  Why?  'Cause that's how I roll.

He's also given me some pictures to use for the cover.  Careful what you ask for dad, you just might get it!  Shouldn't take more than a couple of weeks to get the typeset proofing done and approved by the author.

As a teaser, here's a picture of my dad picking a story to tell from some old charts.

Dr. Gary Yarbrough reminiscing over a patients chart.

The stories in this book aren't about the humorous, but more about the human part of medicine, and trying to do what is best for the patient as a whole despite the obstacles the legal and insurance industries put in front of the physician.  The obstacles aren't always intentional, but the law of unintended consequences is always in effect.


*Emphasis added for Momma Fargo's benefit.

Shutdown Theatre

 How to be a leader by B. Obama:

1) Spend money and manpower you don't have to shut down open air monuments.

2) Close private businesses that have a lease on public lands but use no Federal manpower resources.

3) Refuse to negotiate with the opposition party.

4) Profit?

In the immortal words of Rachel Jeantel,  "That's real retarded, Sir."

Even the Bison know it's a load of bull.

Just don't ask me what the Fox says.