My little green garden helper.

I have written about these guys in previous posts and they seem to be visible more often. I may have as many as 5 or 6 patrolling at any time. They are not a chameleon but are called a Green Anole – Anolis carolinensis for you Latin lovers! They do change color – the influences on the color change are temperature, background color and mood….I wonder about this mood thing, how do you tell what the mood of a lizard is at the moment? Who studies this sort of stuff? I do have an answer…..my first wife’s uncle was a professor of herpetology at the University of California, Berkley. Dr. Robert C. Stebbins -

Robert C. Stebbins is Emeritus Professor of Zoology and Emeritus Curator
in Herpetology, Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, University of California,
Berkeley. He is the author of numerous books, including

A Field Guide to Western Reptiles and Amphibians and A Natural History of Amphibians. Dr. Stebbins is both author and illustrator. The reason he may know is that he is extremely close to the subject…..to the degree that the illustrations are accurate down to the exact number of scales on the critter! An anecdote that was passed on to me….I can’t actually verify that it is totally true, it was said that Dr. Stebbins was interested in the details of the copulation activities of certain amphibian that he brought the pair to his home and somehow had a alarm of some sort rigged up so when the event occurred he could hop out of bed and make his scientific observation. Yes, I think he might know.

Another one of the bug eating crew hanging around the back of my compost bin.

A Green Anole? Yes, with altered mood or shivering due to a temperature change.

Check these folks out – Kathryn

kiwsparks.wordpress.com

For good macro garden and nature photos and blogging see Bonnie at -

theirisandthelily.wordpress.com/about

Bishop

A statement on the vote issued by union president Andrew Matthews accuses Bradford and Stebbens of “running the agency in a manner that is detrimental to public safety and trooper safety.   He says the union will ask for replacement of the two,

Governor Malloy says the vote is a tactic by the union, and said both Bradford and Stebbins have his confidence.  He said reorganization currently underway in the department will put more troopers on the road and will save money.

Of 794 ballots counted by the union,   752 members voted “no conficence” in Bradford,  and 760 “no confidence in Stebbins.

Matthews charges that consolidation of the Western District dispatch operations has left some trooper radio calls unanswered and some 911 calls from the public unanswered.  He says costs have increased instead of dropping.

And consider this:

Any organization will naturally evolve towards the reduction of risk. The only time it does not is when there is either ignorance (lack of information or inability to think things through) or corruption. We know, evidence shows, that the directions the AHD board’s majority leadership are taking us are increasing our risk (medically, financially). We also know that the facts are available to make better decisions and those in charge have the mental capacity to comprehend those facts and understand the increased—unacceptable by regular business and healthcare conventions—risks their decisions are creating (and for which leaves us [Alameda residents] high & dry, left holding the debt they created.)

It follows then, does it not?, that: we can safely conclude that there is corruption in the AHD board and Alameda Hospital’s leadership and management.

Write the misbehaving Alameda Healthcare District board. Tell them to shape up or ship out:

Jordan Battani, President: JBattani@alamedahospital.org

Robert Deutsch, M.D., 1st Vice President: RDeutsch@alamedahospital.org

J. Michael McCormick, Treasurer: Mmccormick@alamedahospital.org

Steward Chen, D.C., 2nd Vice President: SChen@alamedahospital.org

And support Mr. Elliot Gorelick’s work on the AHD board. His evidence-based discussions—the first rational discussions ever at the AHD that I can tell—are significant towards helping us understand what’s really going on. And what’s been going on since the inception of the AHD in 2002 (and the hospital by itself before that), is not on the up and up.  Not even close. Never has been apparently. (You’ll remember the gaming of the emergency medical systems [ambulance] protocols since the early 1980s through last year [2010!] to ensure revenue-bringing acute cases be brought to the hospital….despite the fact that other hospitals were medically the correct choice and contemporary medical standard for care all of those years!)

Elliott Gorelick, Secretary: EGorelick@alamedahospital.org

Bookmark and read regularly: Mr. Gorelick’s blog is Notes from the Hospital

Emily Lamond

Getting into the setting is one aspect; one must get close enough to the events and the people to be able to identify and understand them. But, once inside, one must remain sufficiently removed from the setting to be able to analyze it objectively (103).

It seems to me that ethnography is more like horse shoes and hand grenades than a precise, black-and-white science, and so the claimsmaking that comes of it must be more reserved and cautious than in other forms of research. Stebbins illustrates this throughout by continuously prefacing his claims and examples with “my own experience.” Although an ethnographer, anthropologist, or participant observer can neither fully engage nor disengage from the research subjects, and is caught between subjective and objective understanding of them, I wonder, how else could we come closer to understanding an alien society? As with languages learned as an adult, there will always be some barrier between the outsider and the member of the community (returning to Shaffir) that prevents complete, objective (and complete, subjective?) understanding.

- Stacey Redick

But their focus these days is spending our tax dollars in ways that doesn’t benefit most of us…..but does appear to benefit one particular board member and his practice: Dr. Deutsch.

The closed session meeting tomorrow morning…. is apparently to further discuss expansion businesses focused on the geriatric patient population and, in particular, long term care.

Yes, we all know that long-term care can be (emphasis on ‘can’) a profitable thing right now. But so is URGENT CARE.  ALL Alamedans can use urgent care, and would benefit from this far more than keeping a mediocre Emergency Department open, particularly since 80% or so of the cases, perhaps more, seen at the ED are urgent care cases….yet those going there are paying ED prices.  RIDIC.

Alameda Healthcare District Board Member Elliott Gorelick has asked that the “reports for August financials be available before next Wednesday’s special meeting so that the adherence (or lack of adherence) to the 2011/12 budget can be evaluated as part of the process of assessing the credibility of the plans that will be presented in closed session.”  They haven’t been made available. Which means they probably do not meet the criteria for fiduciary responsibility, again. When will they? And who in this city thinks the way our tax dollars are used and the strategies of the District makes sense?!

So here’s tomorrow’s meeting. If you have a mind, go speak it—give them a piece of it—before they go into closed session early tomorrow morning:

~~~~~~~~

City of Alameda Health Care District Special Board Meeting

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

7:30a: Closed Session

9:00a: Open Session

Location: Alameda Hospital (2 East Board Room)

~~~~~~~~

There’s no Public Comment section on the meeting’s agenda, but they have to allow the public to comment before they go into any closed session, so go for it.  Please.

I don’t know where this photo was taken, but I think it’s really nice.

And here’s a side view of the porch:

I just found out the other day that after my Mom was first married and before the kids started coming along, she used to visit Great Grammie (Dad’s Grandmother). Mom said she was really nice to her, and Great Grammie would go about doing her work while my Mom was visiting with her. After she moved from Myrtle’s home, she went to live with my Grandmother for a while. Here she is visiting at my parents’ home at Christmas time in 1968:

I really like this photo because it is one of the only photos we have of her where she is smiling. Plus it is the house I grew up in, and the view from the picture windows was phenomenal! Oh, and you can see the profile view of Myrtle Hunt as she is sitting in the chair.

After she moved out from her daughter’s home, she then moved to Vermont to live with her son, my Great Uncle Martin Stebbins. This is where she died at the old age of 91.

Here’s an excellent example of what I’m talking about. These are my great-grandparents Henry and Henrietta Stebbins in 1908, their son Martin Stebbins and Grammie, Helen Stebbins, as a baby (Henry and Henrietta had just lost a daughter, Alice Stebbins, which I’ll post about later):

Henry Stebbins Family 1908 Hosted on Zooomr

Here’s the back of the photo with my Mom’s handwriting:

Henry Stebbins Family 1908 back Hosted on Zooomr

Zooomr is hosting these photos tonight as Flickr was temporarily down.

Here’s the official Marriage Certificate:

Here’s a card from Rev. E. G. Lusk:

Here’s the Announcement of their Wedding:

Here’s their Engagement Announcement dated August 1, 1927 folded together:

And opened up:

This one was taken at Watkins Glen in 1914:

I remember Grammie Fry saying that you could twist her hair around a finger and it would stay in a ringlet.

Much more on Grammie later on!