Treat your parents as you would like your children to treat you

Mom's high school graduation photo, 1950

Over the past two weekends, my sister, my brother, my sister-in-law, and I have been getting our mom and her cat  moved into an assisted-living apartment. Much to her dismay.

Mom is an independent soul who is not exactly a social butterfly. She’s lived in the same small house in the same small town in Iowa for the past thirty years, quite happily. But over the past couple years her “independent” living abilities have diminished.

A couple years ago, a minor auto accident made Mom’s vehicle undrivable and the policeman investigating took her license away. This led to a dependence on others, especially my brother, to transport her.  She became increasingly isolated. No church, no out-of-town visits, no grocery shopping. COVID, of course, exacerbated this.

Sadly. Mom’s cognitive abilities have been in significant decline as well. Her memory is very poor. She began leaving the door to her house open and “critters” had been getting in eating the cat food on the kitchen floor. She started to become lost on neighborhood walks. Her diet seemed to consist of peppermint candy and raisin bread, despite getting Meals on Wheels. A lifetime reader, she now spends her days doing Word Search puzzles. The house was not clean.

Mom’s move was made imperative by my brother’s plan to stay in his wife’s home in the Philippines over the winter. Having carried more than his share (along with his wife) of Mom’s care, he deserves the break from the winter weather.

 To be frank, Mom resisted the move, insisting that she could fend for herself and her neighbors could help her when needed, crying or losing her temper when the subject was raised. While she does indeed have generous neighbors, we felt neither they nor social service workers “looking in on her” were a good option. She said little (and only lost her temper twice), as we checked out the new apartment the weekend before last and moved her belongings in last weekend. 

The small apartment has a kitchenette with space for a fridge, microwave, and toaster plus a kitchen counter for dining. The living room has a large window through which she can view her bird feeders and on which the cat can sprawl. The bedroom is just large enough for a twin bed. The bathroom has a walk-in shower and room for the litter box. All meals are provided and she gets personal services as needed. I think I could live there. 

So she and her cat are now residents. So far she seems rather happy, but I am sure adjustment will take some time. We are hoping she will take advantage of the activities, group meals, and house-keeping the residence provides. That she makes friends. That the cat does not escape.

This has been difficult, I have to admit. Not just for Mom, but for my siblings and me as well. We were raised to “honor our parents” and Mom gave us little reason, as I remember, not to do so. Except fixing liver and onions. Making one’s parent sad, angry, and confused, even for their own safety, is depressing, to say the least.

My lesson from this has been to think hard about how I will react to my own children’s requests/demands that I change my living arrangements when my own faculties decline (even more than they already have).  They know my long-held hope is that I will be killed falling from a cliff when hiking (he died with his hiking boots on), but the odds of that may not be good. I simply hope I go to my great reward before slipping into total senility. And if not, that I am a reasonable person to the end.

Any reader suggestion on how to ease these sorts of transitions?

Moving day 

Google knows all, sees all

 In our latest update, Google Maps teams up with Google Calendar to make it even easier to get where you need to go. Starting today, Android users worldwide will start to see their Google Calendar events on Google Maps. So whether you're heading to a family dinner or getting subway directions to a birthday party, you can now quickly and easily access your events directly from the map. (September 30, 2016)

The entry in my GoogleCalendar simply read “6:30am Pick up Heidi”. Nothing in the location field, nothing in the description field. The calendar Heidi shares with me read “Leave for airport 6:30am”.

So I was a little surprised when I started the car and synced  AndroidAuto to find the first choice of location in GoogleMaps was Minneapolis-St Paul Airport. The second choice was the name of the park where I will be meeting a buddy for a hike later today. (My calendar did include this event with the location field filled in.)

I have another hike scheduled for tomorrow morning. I am guessing that park’s name and location will soon be a choice as well.

Now, only seven years after the announcement that Maps and Calendar will be synced (see above), did I realize just how much Google really does know about me. Duh.

I’ve realized for a long time that Amazon and Google and Facebook are experts at target marketing that is based on the searches I do and links I click. As I search for good travel packages for this winter, my Facebook feed is full of ads from travel companies - most I’ve never heard of. I do get a chuckle now and then when some algorithm had apparently had too much to drink and sends me links to feminine hygiene products or the like. Doesn’t happen often, but it makes me glad there are still human pilots in the cockpit of the jets in which I am a passenger.

I use GoogleMaps almost daily when I give my rides to people as a volunteer for a non-profit. Finding their homes, the location of medical clinics, and addresses of needed pharmacies is far easier watching the screen on my car’s dashboard detailing each turn.

I do have passengers (most older even than me!) who are skeptical about the use of GoogleMaps, sometimes insisting that I am taking the “wrong” route. I explain that while my “AI Overlord” does not always show the most direct route to a place, it always provides the fastest route. It knows things like road closures, construction zones, and traffic snarls that we humans alone are unlikely to predict.

For me, this is a pretty good example of the trade-off between privacy and efficiency. Yes, Google knows me and can target market me and can read my calendar to see where I am traveling. It is the world in which we live, making awareness of such dilemmas more important than ever.

The professional approach to book censorship

Books have been the target of censorship for a very, very long time. (A good summary can be found in The history of book bans in the United States, National Geographic, April 24, 2023 and for a world view Bannings and Burnings in History, Freedom to Read.) Attempted book removals in schools and school libraries were always of some concern to me during my 40 year career as a school librarian and library coordinator.

One flare-up happened in 2007 with the publication of the children’s book The Power of Lucky which won the American Library Association’s Newbery Award. The discussion around it led me to think a little deeper about censorship, banning, selection, and professional librarians’ responses to challenges in their libraries In a column called Don’t Defend That Book, August/September 2007. I wrote:

The discussion over the Newbery Award winning book The Power of Lucky flared last spring on LM_Net, the AASL blog and, I am sure, in meetings, phone conversations and e-mails throughout the country. Some librarians went nuts (pun intended) over the author using the word scrotum in this children’s book. 

I found it less upsetting that an anatomically correct word was used in a kiddie book and that book was given a prestigious prize, than that so many professional librarians seem to have lost the fundamental understandings of selection, reconsideration, in loco parentis, and intellectual freedom. Perhaps the controversy was a timely wake-up call at the beginning of this school year that we all need to brush up on some of these concepts. 

What troubles me is that our professional colleagues are trying to defend a single title rather than defending a fair and open process for selecting and retaining any instructional material in our schools. Quite frankly, if a school decides to remove Lucky or any other book from its library or classrooms, so be it. If it decides to block every Web 2.0 resource because it can’t discriminate between MySpace and a professional blog, so be it. If it decides that Zeffirelli's movie Romeo and Juliet not be allowed because it shows a glimpse of Olivia Hussey's breasts, so be it. 

So long as due process has been followed in making the decision…

While I can't imagine the circumstances under which I would do so, I sort of like knowing that as a citizen I can request that ill-chosen materials be removed from my public school. Harrumph!

The column goes on to list what due process looks like.

As a citizen I have the right to my opinions and values about schools should be teaching and libraries should be making available. In fact, a conscientious citizen really ought to think, communicate, and discuss such things.  

What a professional librarian should not do, however, is disregard the fact that diverse values should have a voice and formal means of challenging the inclusion of materials in public schools and libraries. I know, I know, the people on the opposite end of my end of the political spectrum are nut jobs. Actually people at the extremes of either end of the political spectrum are nut jobs.

But written selection and reconsideration policies are societies safeguards against radicals both left and right. Have your opinions about what kids should see and read - but respect the process that puts materials in libraries and keeps them there.