Elderly Woman Blogs Herself to Death...and No One Notices!

By Si Dunn

That grim scenario is happening somewhere in the world right now. Indeed, millions of us are blogging at this very moment and attracting perhaps 10 readers each, if we're very lucky.

The World Wide Web supposedly connects us all to each other. We somehow feel that we are now "in touch" with the universe as we blog and Tweet and update our FaceBook and MySpace pages.

Some people, however, are pouring their very hearts and souls into their blogs and Web pages at this moment, and no one is paying any attention to them at all.

Well, at least they have a way to cry out for help, you might be thinking.

Which leads, naturally to: What about the millions (billions?) of people still living in lonely--and non-electronic--isolation? How do they cry out for help and get noticed, if everyone else now is staring at screens or walking (and driving!) with handheld devices held up to their faces?

We can't fix everyone's problems. Many of us can't fix anyone's problems, much less all of our own.

Yet maybe, just maybe, if we step away from our keyboards and put down our handheld devices for a few minutes this challenging Christmas season, we can help bring a bit of comfort and perhaps a bit of joy to someone somewhere.

You may be feeling overwhelmed at all of the needs now surging out there--so overwhelmed that you'd rather just sit at your computer, send everyone on your email list an electronic Christmas card and be done with the holidays.

Don't turn away; don't turn inward. Take time--just a little time--each day for the next few days to do something for someone else, someone less fortunate than you. Then, after the holidays, don't stop. Even if you can do nothing else except tip a waitress an extra dollar or donate an old lamp to Goodwill or help an elderly neighbor rake her leaves. Anything helps; even small gestures matter.

Yesterday, in just a few minutes' time, I mailed some Christmas money to a laid-off relative, then I created a donation bag containing five shirts, two pairs of pants and two pairs of shoes and took the bag to a nearby drop-off kiosk.

I still have plenty of shirts and pants and shoes left. But people much less fortunate than I am may receive my donation and be grateful to have something different and good to wear to a job interview or to a Christmas dinner at a church potluck--or to just get through another winter day with a little more hope.

Today, I will pare down and donate a few more things that have lost their charm for me yet are still good enough to help others. And I will give a few bucks to a local food bank. (Every one of them in America now needs a bailout, because so many people in need are showing up at their doors.)

Of course, what I'm doing and feeling good about today adds up exactly to diddly-squat on the cosmic scale. I know that. And I don't let it get me down. I did something, and I will do something more.

Individually, we can't fix everyone's problems. We can't save the economy. We can't stop the flood of layoffs and foreclosures. The list of We can'ts is absurdly long. Yet, we can do something. (Yes, we can!) We can help someone. The old and shopworn saying is still very much true: Every little bit helps.

We should not try to hide from the overwhelming enormity of the current economic disaster and think that all we can do about it is whine--and blog.

"Whoso stoppeth his ears at the cry of the poor, he also shall cry himself, but not be heard." (Proverbs 21:13.) "He that giveth to the poor shall not lack: but he that hideth his eyes shall have many a curse." (Proverbs 28:27.)

Get up from your screen for a while. Do something tangible now. Donate something; send something; give somebody or some organization a little of your time, attention, effort and--if possible--money.

"Send portions unto them for whom nothing is prepared." (Nehemiah 8:10.)

Then, once you are back at your screen again, if you happen across someone crying out in a blog or on a message board for help and attention, offer a hopeful reply, if you can. Let them know that someone out here has heard them and has understood what they are trying to say. That may be just enough to help them make it through another hard day, another personal crisis, or another week of isolation and loneliness.

"Thou shalt open thy hand wide to thy brother, to thy poor, and to thy needy, in thy land." (Deuteronomy 15:11.)

Even if you have to use the World Wide Web (and ridiculous shock-jock headlines such as "Elderly Woman Blogs Herself to Death...and No One Notices!") to help do it....

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Welcome to the Depression

By Si Dunn

West Texas is the wrong place to be driving while listening to the latest job-loss figures, the latest appeals for bailout money, and the latest--deeply gloomy-- prognostications from learned economists.

Parts of Highway 287 between Decatur and Amarillo seem like the surface of Mars. Rugged, uninhabited land for miles and miles; low hills in the distance.

What looks like patches of snow in some fields turns out to be cotton left unpicked because of falling demand and weakening prices.

Now and then, a house appears along the highway--windowless, holes in the roof, abandoned years ago. Its nearby barn is missing boards and shingles and leans precariously toward collapse. Or, it has already fallen into a rotted, weatherbeaten heap.

At dreary rest stops along the highway, signs implore people heading into the restrooms to "Watch Out for Snakes."

It's too cold for rattlesnakes on this early December day. But there is plenty of wind sweeping tumbleweeds across the road. A big one suddenly rolls and hops into my grille and hangs there like a small, dead Christmas ornament in the 70-MPH slipstream.

The seemingly unending land occasionally gives way to small towns along the highway. I pull into one to get gas and stuff the tumbleweed into the pumpside trash can. Nearby, almost every building in the small business district is abandoned. Some were boarded up decades ago, in a previous economic downturn, and never reopened. But some of the newer buildings sport fresh plywood or empty windows festooned with "For Sale" or "For Lease" signs. Even a church building is for sale.

In one small town not far from Amarillo, however, there is one small sign sign of hope along the road. A restaurant advertises: "Now Hiring Smiling Faces."

But as I pass the sign, an economist being inteviewed on a newscast predicts the unemployment rate--already at 6.7 percent--will surpass eight percent in 2009.

The restaurant probably pays $2 an hour plus tips. And there won't be many big tippers among the farmers, ranchers and oilfield workers now watching their incomes fall like meteorites. Will one of them soon become one of the "smiling faces"?

Meanwhile, what will the hundreds of thousands of newly unemployed do, now that their jobs in the financial industry, manufacturing, telecommunications, automobile sales and housing construction have gone away?

They can't all be "smiling faces" at small-town restaurants. They can't all build roads and bridges and clean up parks in a 21st-century rehash of the Works Progress Administration. Where else can they work? Will they now pack up their cars and head west, like 1930s Okies, looking to take away jobs from the illegal immigrants now working in California's agricultural fields?

Another news report on the radio describes an increasing number of two-parent families moving into homeless shelters, because Dad and Mom both have lost their jobs and worn out their resources and the resources of their relatives. The homeless shelters now are desperate for financial help, but companies and individuals are cutting back, because their incomes have fallen.

As I reach Amarillo, I turn off the radio and check into a motel. At the restaurant next door, I eat a small meal. I am the only customer in the place. The dozens of tables, booths and counter chairs are starkly empty. The three waitresses stand and look out the window, hoping for more customers to come in. To have something else to do besides straighten napkin holders and check salt shakers, they occasionally drift by and ask me if my meal is okay and if I need anything.

When I finish, I leave them each a $3 tip. It is all I can do.

In my motel room, I tune the radio to a classical music station. I lie down and let Mozart wash over me. It cleans away some of the day's gloom.

It is all I can do. All I can do.

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While the National Economy Burns, Bush Fiddles with Killing Endangered Species

By Si Dunn

Companies are collapsing, unemployed workers are streaming out onto the streets, and Americans are losing their houses and burning through their savings in hopes of surviving the current recession that may turn into a depression.

So what is the Bush Administration now doing about these crises that have occurred on its watch?

Killing endangered species.

According to an Associated Press report at the CBS News website: "Animals and plants in danger of becoming extinct could lose the protection of government experts who make sure that dams, highways and other projects don't pose a threat, under regulations the Bush administration is set to put in place before President-elect Obama can reverse them."

The rules have to be published by Nov. 21--tomorrow. Otherwise, once President-elect Barack Obama is sworn in on January 20, he could quickly undo the new regulations.

Among other things, according to the AP report, "The rules eliminate the input of federal wildlife scientists in some endangered species cases, allowing the federal agency in charge of building, authorizing or funding a project to determine for itself if it is likely to harm endangered wildlife and plants.

"Current regulations require independent wildlife biologists to sign off on these decisions before a project can go forward, at times modifying the design to better protect species."

The AP likewise noted: "The regulations also bar federal agencies from assessing emissions of the gases blamed for global warming on species and habitats, a tactic environmentalists have tried to use to block new coal-fired power plants."

Clearly, harming the national economy, the national reputation and the American people is not enough for the scurrilous hacks who comprise the Bush Administration. Now, on their way out, they want to finish off a few endangered species, too, just for "good" measure.

There may be no way to immediately stop this latest outrage--just one in an incredibly long string of outrages--generated by the outgoing Administration. But perhaps the incoming Congress will have the courage to overturn Bush's new "gotcha" rules by using the Congressional Review Act, a law that allows review and rejection of new federal regulations.

Two months and counting.

There is still plenty of time for new political mischief and outright political retribution by the outgoing Bush Administration. But the nightmare of the worst--the worst--Administration in modern American history is, thankfully, at long last coming to a close.

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Bail Out the Hurricane Ike Victims--NOW!

By Si Dunn

Two months after Hurricane Ike slammed into Texas' Galveston Bay area, many people are still waiting for help from the Federal Emergency ("You're doing a heckuva job, Brownie!") Management Agency (FEMA).

Coastal residents who live and work in fishing communities especially have been hit hard and remain caught up in a vortex of federal buracracy and red tape that has delayed the arrival of the infamous FEMA trailers. According to the Dallas Morning News, at least 2,000 families are still without FEMA trailers in areas devastated by Ike.

"People's lives are literally stacked up on the side of the road," Anahuac, Texas' mayor, Guy Jackson, told the Morning News.

Still Stuck in the Mud

On tiny Oak Island, for example, what once was a bustling fishing community "is now a giant mud flat, dotted with cheap tents and interrupted by heaping mountains of debris," according to Morning News reporter Emily Ramshaw.

In a few cases, FEMA trailers have been delivered but must remain padlocked until inspectors show up and okay them for occupancy. So some families are having to keep living in tents right next to trailers that are supposed to be helping them.

Meanwhile, their houses, jobs and belongings have been swept away, and they are trying to restart their lives literally from nothing.

Many Americans generously have donated food, clothing and other items to Hurricane Ike's victims, and this assistance has reached even remote locations such as the Oak Island community, which is settled by Vietnamese and Anglo commercial fishing families.

But, too often, the federal government still can't seem to organize a one-car parade when it comes to delivering disaster relief. We are supposed to be the world's greatest and most capable nation. Yet what kind of great and capable nation forces its disaster victims to camp in the mud for two months until somebody "official" shows up with a clipboard?

Can't Others Help?

And why wait for FEMA? Surely there are Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine and Coast Guard personnel in need of training in debris removal, reconstruction and taking care of refugees--just as our military units are doing overseas. Why can't more of our stateside military help here now and get that training?

The State of Texas has provided some relief, but more aid must be forthcoming from the federal government. According to the Morning News, Gov. Rick Perry has asked for additional federal aid to fund costly removal of Hurricane Ike debris. But a month after making the request, Gov. Perry--a Republican--still has received no response from fellow Texan George Bush's FEMA.

Many private relief agencies have been doing what they can to provide assistance, but their resources are limited and their roles often are constrained by the very federal government that is still printing out and stacking up forms to deal with Hurricane Ike, which blew ashore in September.

Show Them the Money

The private relief agencies need more cash donations as soon as possible to help the victims of Hurricane Ike, the recent wildfires in California, and many other calamities, past, present and future. These private agencies, such as the American Red Cross, often have online sites where donations can be made.

Contributions frequently can be targeted to one specific need or disaster area. But you may have to follow a procedure that is less convenient than simply entering some credit-card digits online. For example:

"If you wish to designate your donation to a specific disaster," the Red Cross website points out, "please do so at the time of your donation by either contacting 1-800-REDCROSS or mailing your donation, with the designation, to the American Red Cross, P.O. Box 37243, Washington, D.C. 20013."

A dollar, five dollars, ten, twenty. Anything you can afford to give in these economically troubled times can help private agencies provide a measure of comfort and relief to those facing the holidays and winter with much bigger worries.

As for FEMA, the Obama-Biden Administration hopefully will figure out how to kick it into gear again, so its good people can start reclaiming--and redeeming--their battered and troubled agency.

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How One Dollar Can Help the Stupid Economy

By Si Dunn

Most of us can't battle layoffs. We can't bail out banks or corporations or sectors of the economy. Some of us think we can't do anything except stock up on canned goods and water and hide in the attic or basement until the current bad times blow over.

Two hot news flashes for the attic hiders and basement bunker-ites: (1) Things are gonna be bad for a long time; and (2) things are gonna be even worse if you try to hide from the recession.

No, you can't battle layoffs. You can't bail out banks or corporations or economic sectors. But you can help a few people save their jobs. And, in doing so, you will help lighten the load for their families and their families' families.

Tip a waitress or waiter or your barber an extra dollar today. Put an extra dollar in the church collection plate. Buy a birthday card or get-well card from a little, locally owned gift shop. Donate an extra dollar to a charity or a school fundraiser. Add an extra dollar to your kids' allowance or your grandkids' birthday envelope--and forget the usual admonitions to save it. They'd rather spend it anyway.

If there is something inexpensive you have been wanting to buy for your house or your car or your yard or your favorite hobby, buy it now. But don't spend every penny at your local big-box retailer that can still afford to undercut every Mom-and-Pop shop in your town. Go to the little shop in your neighborhood, instead, and willingly pay a dollar more than you would at the big shrine at the edge of town.

Your individual dollar makes no big difference to Wal-Mart or AIG or Bank of America. But to somebody trying to earn a living with a bicycle repair shop or a hair salon or a one-truck lawn service or a tiny hardware store, that dollar can have direct impact on keeping the doors open and keeping at least one person or a small handful of people employed and working.

If each of us keeps doing a little bit--a dollar here, a dollar there--to help out, the recession can be shorted and many jobs and households at the heart of our economy can be saved. But we will have to sustain the effort and keep doing it for a long time.

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Undecided? Just Take a Harder Look Around You

By Si Dunn

My mind was made up long ago. I wanted Hillary Clinton to win, and I wanted Barack Obama to be Vice President. I was hung up on the narrow notion that experience trumps almost everything else.

When Hillary lost, it took me a while to warm up to Barack Obama. But the more I watched him and listened to what he has to say, the more I realized that the man is the leader we need for these greatly troubled and hugely challenging times.

John McCain has served his country with honor and distinction. But now is not the time for Republican solutions, particularly narrow-minded neoconservative solutions. The Republican Party has splintered into factions and completely lost its compass. It may take years to rebuild itself, or it may spin off into two or more political parties.

At a time when Americans are fearful for their familiess, their jobs, their retirement savings, their homes and the very future of this great nation, the current Republican leadership keeps railing about tax cuts, socialism, abortion and 1960s radicals.

As a result, John McCain and Sarah Palin seem to be harping at us from other dimensions and other planets. They want us all to just sit on our little piles of money (if we still have any) and not let any of it get (horrors!) spread around.

Government? Hey, don't need it. Taxes? Evil! Don't need 'em. Change? The economy is fundamentally sound, you betcha. Especially if the wealthy get to keep their tax cuts forever and ever, amen. Iraq? There is only one victory, and that is the victory where we stay there for up to a hundred years and keep blowing up people and goats and things until somebody important says: "Okay, okay, you win! Thank you very much!"

We need experience and leadership in Washington. But more importantly, we need someone with the ability and courage to tell us that we have to make a few sacrifices and do a few things to help our nation out over the next few years. That may include paying a few taxes to help fund government services. And it may include--horror of horrors!--spreading a little of our money around to help our less-fortunate neighbors.

After 9/11, George Bush looked out over a nation angered and ready to fight back. Americans were motivated and eager to do their part for a war effort. Our fearless leader seized that moment and told us all to go out and...shop.

Huh? Fight Al-Qaeda and the Taliban with American Express? Just party hardy and pretend they don't exist? Have the difficult and painful lessons of World War II already been forgotten?

Now we are in a major economic crisis, and the Republicans are raging against government spending--the very spending that they exploded to unbelievable levels. Yet government spending on infrastructure and other job-creation programs may be almost the only tool left for resuscitating the economy.

The Republicans have had their time and opportunities for economic and social experiments, and they have made an utter mess of things. Now they want four more, or even eight more, years to create an even bigger disaster.

Just look around and take a hard look this time. Our nation is in peril on several fronts, and the party that has lead us to the precipice now wants your permission to take us all over the cliff to complete ruin.

Stand up, fight back and say "Hell, no! We won't go!" to the Republican Party in its present, bastardized form.

Barack Obama and Joe Biden can lead us away from that precipice and toward better and more sensible times. And they'll ask for--and need--our help.

Many of us are ready to be be part of the solution, even if it means making some personal and financial sacrifices on behalf of our country. We are patriotic Americans, not just mindless shoppers looking for the next sale on tax cuts.

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Okay, More About UFOs! And Ghosts!

By Si Dunn

I have been blogging for more than a year, and the postings that have drawn the biggest readership have dealt with UFOs and ghosts, not with Obama, Biden, McCain and Palin or the economic meltdown.

So, enough politics for now. I've voted early. And enough about the economy for now. I've gone out and spent a few hundred bucks. I've done about all that I can do to keep the national and global economies afloat. Now it's up to you and everyone else.

UFOs! Ghosts!
So let's move on to what Dateline: Oblivion's readers really want: UFOs and ghosts.

One of my first blog postings last year dealt with the time I saw a UFO very clearly in broad daylight. Here's a link to it.

Even earlier than that, however, I saw a UFO in daylight during a 1952 flying saucer "flap." (That's what they used to call outbreaks of frequent UFO sightings.) I was eight years old at the time, riding in an uncle's car as we drove along a straight, flat highway in Southern Mississippi, probably heading from Laurel to Hattiesburg. Most likely, it was summer, because that's when my family used to make driving trips from Little Rock to Hattiesburg to visit my mother's relatives.

Suddenly, the car started bucking and the car's engine started sputtering. My uncle pushed in the clutch to try to keep the motor running. Just then, a light-colored, disc-shaped object bigger than the car streaked silently overhead, following the highway. It quickly disappeared as we watched it through the windshield.

As soon as the UFO was gone, the car's engine quit sputtering, and we resumed driving. I don't remember what was said after that. I'm sure my uncle and my father had heard about flying saucers. I doubt that they filed a report. But I still remember the disc zooming straight down the road toward Hattiesburg and disappearing from sight in just seconds.

As for Ghosts...
Have I ever seen a ghost? I think so. The day after my father's funeral, as I was leaving Little Rock to return to Texas, I saw a man hitchhiking right at the edge of town. He looked exactly--exactly--like my father, and he looked right at me as I slowed my car.

Something, however, told me to not stop, so I didn't. I drove past the man and continued down the road. In my rearview mirror, I could see him watching me as I drove away. He seemed to keep watching me for a long time.

What might have happened if I had stopped and picked him up? Was he really my father's ghost? I have no idea. But I have never been sorry that I didn't stop.

I think it was a sign or a message. Or maybe it was a test, something about letting go and getting on with life. If so, I think--I hope-- I passed it.

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