Thoughts at 50 (Blood Donations) - David Loftus

This morning I made a blood donation at a local American Red Cross drive – my 50th pint, more or less. I started donating blood in either late high school or early college, let’s say age 17 or 18. I made a steady series of donations in my 20s, and again in my early 40s when my employer hosted blood drives in-house and I could not only donate regularly but participate in publicizing the drive on the organization’s Web site and in the local newspaper. There were breaks in between, however, when donating became too inconvenient. Also, for a period of three years I was not allowed to give blood because I had traveled in West Africa and taken anti-malarial medicine.

Some aspects of the experience have changed over the years, and some remain the same. In the 70s and 80s, one could easily be in and out of the donation site or Red Cross collection center in less than 30 or 40 minutes. That time commitment has doubled. The actual donation, when the needle is in my arm and the blood flowing into the bag, takes no longer than it used to (seven minutes, 19 seconds by the clock this morning), but the initial processing has expanded. Intake involves long and often repeated questioning—some of it on a computer laptop, some by a Red Cross volunteer or nurse in person—about my identity, place of residence, travel and infectious history (Been to Africa? Spent a total of 5 years in Europe since 1980? Gotten a tattoo, or ear or body piercing? Sexual contact with an IV drug user, man, or prostitute?) that were not issues in the past, in a process that alone consumes a good 20 minutes. Once, you could fill in a sheet in less than five.

The iron test is also different: now a blood smear on a slide goes into an electronic device called a HemoCue Donor Hb Checker, which turns out a reading in seconds (a solid 16.3, in my case, since I’d taken care to eat several handfuls of raisins the night before—I was rejected for low iron once in the mid-80s and wish to avoid a repeat of that experience). I told the nurse I missed the old test where together we would watch a globule of my dark red blood get dropped into a test tube of dark blue liquid and sink to the bottom to prove the iron levels in my blood are sufficiently high. She said a surprising number of donors have told her the same thing. I guess there was a sort of lottery-like anticipation to the old process, and an excitement at seeing the graphic result of a positive test.

What hasn’t changed so far are my vitals: temperature of 98.2, 64 pulse, blood pressure of 112/62. I don’t exercise, but not owning a car, I do a lot of walking, and I suspect my low blood pressure (which obscures a pesky, somewhat elevated cholesterol count) is at least partly a vestigial remnant of my long-ago distance running career.

I used to think that no matter what else I did, for whatever misguided or self-centered reasons, I could at least assure myself that making a blood donation was doing some good in the world. I’m not so certain of that now: there’s a chance that some of those 50 pints were all but wasted in a futile emergency room attempt to revive an obese heart disease patient or a terminal alcoholic or cancer victim. But like prayer, meditation, or feeding the homeless, the act of donating remains a good thing for me to do. It affirms my membership in the community of the human race and, amid the many blessings of my life, a duty and responsibility to care for the less fortunate.

An American Tragedy Plays Out in Arizona - Jeff Weiss

 As I type this, forensics experts are searching the crime scene that up until today had been an ordinary Safeway store in Tucson, Arizona.  It is now the scene of a gruesome massacre in which (at least) one gunman opened fire at a "Congress on Your Corner" event that was meant to bring the constituents of Arizona's 8th Congressional district closer to their representative, Gabrielle Giffords.  It should have been a friendly, hand-shaking event, but it turned into a bloodbath.  The accused gunman, reported by news agencies to be Jared Lee Loughner, has been described by acquaintances as a "pot smoking loner."  Loughner recently posted a series of bizarre YouTube videos that consisted of  typed rants about mind control and the lack of intelligence of the 8th district.  He eerily refers to himself in the past tense in his YouTube account profile, perhaps a hint of what he had planned to do, and did not expect to survive. 

Is Loughner a madman; someone who is so mentally twisted that he indiscriminately sought out a large crowd - any large crowd - to take the brunt of his violent rage? Or did he carefully select the location where Representative Giffords' event was behind held because of his political beliefs? An Arizona sheriff referred to the state as a "mecca for hatred and bigotry" during a televised press conference about the massacre earlier this evening.  In the past year, Arizona has been the subject of much controversy when Governor Jan Brewer signed the most aggressive immigration law in the nation, one that inspired an incredible amount of shock and horror.  Not long after that, perennial Tea Party spokesperson Sarah Palin published a list of "targeted" Democrats she wanted defeated in the midterm election.  The graphic that went along with the list displayed the cross-hairs of a  gun over those congressional districts.  One of those mentioned by name on that list was Gabrielle Giffords, who suggested this type of action could incite violence. Gabrielle Giffords would go on to win the election on November 2nd.  Two months and six days later she lies in a hospital bed, fighting for her life after a bullet went through her brain - the result of being shot in the head at point blank range.

A total of eighteen people were shot today at the Safeway in Tucson.  Six have been confirmed to have been killed.  Five of them lost their lives at the scene, including federal judge John Roll, as well as Gabe Zimmerman, Rep. Giffords' Director of Community Outreach, who organized today's event. A nine year old girl died later this afternoon at a local hospital.  She had recently been elected to her school's student council and was invited to attend the event by a neighbor who thought she would find it interesting to meet a Congresswoman.

Tonight as a forensic team sifts through the crime scene in Tucson, the parents of that nine year old girl are trying to understand why their child was taken so soon.  Somewhere else, the parents of an accused shooter are trying to comprehend how he got where he is now, and so many others are attempting to make sense of why their lives were changed forever by an unspeakable act of violence this morning.  The obvious hope on this night is for the survival of those injured today, but my additional hope is that even if this proves to be a completely random act that has nothing to do with politics, this will serve as a wake-up call as to just how ugly the political battleground has become, and it will herald a change.

Sturm und Dollars: thoughts for the New Year - David Loftus

What do I hope for 2011? I’d like to see people—all of us—work on our anger.

There’s been far too much yelling, cheap ridicule, and abuse in recent years—much of it in the media, on the floor of Congress, and on the campaign trail; but I fear such well-publicized misbehavior both reflects and encourages similarly casual disrespect toward others in the schools, on the streets, and in the home.

If we could all take a step back, not just today or this week, but every day, throughout the year, and acknowledge how much we are blessed in this country, no matter who we are; how small so many of the things that obsess us truly are in the great scheme of things; and how little anger helps us to find and build solutions to whatever ails us . . . that would be a great thing. Anger is a terrific motivator, of course; it can get us off our duff and focus our energy wonderfully. But to maintain a steady diet of rage, day in and day out, in a never-ending search for enemies and scapegoats and supposed incompetents, is a waste of time and energy. Because ultimately, we are responsible for our own anger: how often we allow our friends (such as those talk show hosts) as well as our reputed enemies to whip it up, how long we hold onto it, and where we direct it.

Chill, folks. We’re still all in this together. The longer we pretend that’s not the case, that it’s all that fellow’s fault over there, the longer we’ll avoid finding a working solution for everybody— not to mention keep driving up our blood pressure and shortening our own life.

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It’s not clear whether the hope I expressed a year ago for 2010 (see below) was realized to any extent. Certainly, the dash of cold water the economy gave most of the country was a strong corrective to some citizens’ drunken spending habits. But it’s hard to tell at this point whether things have actually improved. On the one hand, AOL’s Money & Finance site, www.dailyfinance.com, reported in early December that in October, credit card debt had fallen $5.6 billion, but consumer debt (due to student loans, auto loans, and personal loans) was up to $2.339 trillion. The Cincinnati Business Courier had equally mixed news on Thursday: total credit card debt has been falling for two years, but defaults have peaked and applications for new credit card accounts (2.8 million in September alone) have also risen.

We’re coming off a week of celebratory stories by retailers who say holiday shoppers beat last year’s dreary receipts by a long shot, despite the blizzard that hit the East Coast last week. Online sales reached almost $31 billion ($1 billion total on Cyber Monday alone!), a 13 percent rise over 2009. Total consumer spending during the holiday retail season, Nov. 5 to Dec. 24, hit $584.3 billion this year.

I have only two questions about that: How many of those purchases were made with plastic whose holders had no current funds with which to repay them? And how much of that money is heading straight to new absentee owners of American businesses in the People’s Republic of China?