It's cut so far back in her department that she is
the only one actually doing anything, this having
been at one time one of the most important
manufacturers of blood-processing equipment in the
world.

A similar story to Kodak's.... I hope she ends up ok...

I've been encouraging her to look for another
situation - she's honest, hard-working, and
bright, so there has to be a job for her
someplace.

was choose the old-fashioned pension option when given the choice to
move to something more modern... And he also clarified that a lot of
what we did wasn't done consciously, just the way we lived...

An excellently self-preservational way of behaving.

We grew up learning how to live on fairly little, and didn't change much
from that... ;)

Understood. I've seen much of the spectrum and can
revert to the one end without pain. Some people,
though, cannot.

Efficiency is not everything and amounts to
cruelty in a lot of cases.

Indeed... as in just about everything, there's a balance there...

As far as I can tell, the proper balance is
way farther from the efficiency side than the
business schools would have you believe. Even if
someone functions at, say, 1/10 efficiency, s/he
should still be allowed to work, i.e., contribute
to society in a small but meaningful way.

Agreed. It's also an argument to keep the sheltered workshops open...
giving people work to do that helps them feel as though what they do has meaning... A friend at church, now retired from one, was proudly telling
that they used to make/assemble the tops for the reusable water
bottles... maybe a small job, but it gave satisfaction to him...

What has impressed me about the more socialistic
or totalitarian economies is that - strangely -
the people at the very low end of the spectrum
are given meaning that those higher up may not
have. Give your rubbish collector a spiffy hat
and jacket and tell him he's a valued member of
society, and you've saved one person. Capitalist
societies have so far been not so great at that.

With Wegmans, it somewhat depends on which store you are in... the one
we shopped at for many years before they decided to close it catered to
the more modest clientele, and had fewer of the high end options but
more of the reasonable ones... But we've found that we don't do any
better at any of the other places in our area... most either have much inferior products for not that much less, or are pricing things about
the same as Wegmans... For a while, Richard was taking one of our

A clever shopper can do well at the lesser
stores, even perhaps Tops. What Wegmans does
is take the uncertainty out, but I still think
at a not insubstantial monetary cost.

friends grocery shopping, mainly providing the transportation and the brawn... so he'd take her to the stores she wanted to go to... and when
she fussed that this or that wasn't up to her standards, he'd look at
it, agree it wasn't as good as it should be, and at least think to
himself that it was more generally better at Wegmans... at one point, he finally mentioned that to her, and when they did go to a Wegmans, she
agreed that it was much better, and for about the same price... Agreed
that for brand names one might do a little better, especially when
things are on sale, somewhere else, but even that hasn't always been the
case here...

On the whole, I'm pretty happy with Wegmans
and hope it continues with its generally fair
business practices.

I was pretty good at keeping the diet unskewed... not being too rigidly committed to only shopping sales... if something I wanted wasn't on sale anywhere, I still might get it... ;)

The educated consumer can balance things; it is the
less adept and those unfamiliar with the principles of
home economics that one worries about.

A lot of what I learned was by doing... not from being actively taught
it... so I'd think that others should be able to at least pick up
basics... Granted, I probably learned a fair bit by going with Daddy
when I was growing up... And we've tried to educate others that we've
taken shopping as well... including our son, when he went off to college
and was finally ready to pay attention... (G)

I was going to say, just because we can do
it doesn't mean others can. I have a friend
who is by no means dumb - Smith undergrad, two
master's degrees - who is continually astonished
when I can cook reasonably tasty dishes without
consulting lots of references. She's flummoxed
by such simplicities as "pint's a pound the world
around" even without the revision for accuracy
"pint's a pound the world around except when it
isn't," which would cause too much tsouris
altogether.

I've lately mostly had the experience of the older ones that have
learned, along with younger ones that pay attention and listen... Unfortunately my older docs that I loved have retired, and at least one replacement isn't shaping up all that well...

The obvious but somewhat inconvenient and possibly
distressing solution is to shop for a new doc.

Indeed. I have an appointment with that one's NP next week... I'm
planning to explore what other options might be in that practice, but am
also starting to think about checking around other places... lots of
doctors to choose from, but I doubt that many will measure up to what
I'm accustomed to now.... Definitely inconvenient, and, yes, to some
extent, somewhat distressing...

Latest wundernews is that my California doc has
failed to call in my refills to the Massachusetts
pharmacy. This points to a possibility of two
weeks without the essential lifegiving meds. H'm.

It's distressing, because on top of the known
eyesight issues and the mild cataracts, there is
something else going on that the doctors can't
find (and so therefore it doesn't exist).

Is it a brain issue...? They should check that, too... Also there's
some less common things that lurk in the back of the eye to cause
problems... I know Daddy ended up with something like that....

I'm not ready for the neurologist yet but
am reading oliver Sacks books.

Risotto Milanese
categories: main, Italian, side, rice, historical value only
servings: 6

5 Tb butter
1/2 c onion chopped fine
1 c rice
2 1/2 c boiling beef stock
1/8 ts powdered saffron
1/2 c fresh grated Parmesan

Wilt onion in 3 Tb butter in a heavy saucepan.
Add rice and cook until golden, about 5 min.

Arir in boiling broth and saffron and cook,
uncovered, until the rice is done, 20 to 25 min.
If necessary, add more liquid. When the risotto
is cooked, all the liquid should be absorbed,
but the rice should not be dry.

Mix in remaining butter and sprinkle with cheese.
Sherve hot.

Mayburn Koss, New York Times 4/5/1959
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