by Caroline Porter
2. Stop worrying about and discussing bodily functions. We are getting obsessed with our health. I can say this because I have been in pain with a pinched sciatic nerve for over a month, and am either going to get it fixed or have to live with it rest of my life. To say nothing of my hands beginning to look like monkey paws. Just from watching people close to me go through medical procedures, I'm sick of most doctors and their myopic, hands off approach to health.
3. Get a job. I'm at the age when I'm supposed to be retiring, but that's neither attractive nor financially sensible. I'll be a great employee for someone because they won't have to provide benefits. I already get Social Security and Medicare. If someone would like to pay for my supplemental health insurance, that would be nice. I've worked outside the home for 32 years, all but 13 for someone else.
4. Tell the city council the truth, that the management of Bunker Links golf course is probably why the business is a financial failure, that the men running it are unfriendly, sometimes downright rude, and play favorites. The same people always get the best tee times and exclude newcomers. If we want to see how a public golf course is successful, visit Gibson Woods in Monmouth. That golf pro is friendly, helpful, has a great personality and makes a golf day fun. He is a promoter and master of marketing. HELLO!!
5. Buy my tombstone and make the video to be shown at my funeral, of me telling my favorite jokes and stories. Be sure to include some good jokes about Republicans.
6. Have the guts to hit the streets in protest of this orchestrated war with Iraq. U.N. inspectors have found nothing to indicate the existence of weapons of mass destruction there. The whole world is in an upheaval because of the dangerous foreign policy of the Bush administration. If you read the book Bushisms, given to my husband for Christmas, you would be scared to death. What will it take to wake us up? Body bags, no doubt.
7. Start to attend county board meetings. Seems the county board is regressing to former days when few board members received background information ahead of time about important agenda items until the meeting and then were expected to take immediate action. Hopefully, the days are gone of a rubber stamp board following the dictates of a few.
8.. A tip for Maytag workers: Ask the Chamber of Commerce what businesses and services are needed in this area and ask for help getting start-up money to start your own business. Then employ some of your friends. Another tip: form a commune with other families, buy some land, build shelter and grow your own food, share responsibilities and resources. That's what I would do, and may yet some day. Early tribes did it and it worked very well until ''civilized'' people came along and ruined a whole way of life.
9. Encourage waiters and waitresses to form labor unions. In the meantime, tip well.
10. Stop feeling responsible for my grown children. So I wasn't a perfect parent. Tough toenails.
Caroline Porter is a freelance writer from Galesburg who can be reached at cporter@galesburg.net. Other columns can be read online at www.thezephyr.com.