Tuesday, April 25, 2006, 19:13
Isn't It Ironic?
Three times as an adult I have had my hearing tested. And each time, the technicians have told me that I have some hearing loss in my left ear.
I know that, I tell them. I had lots of ear infections when I was a kid.
My dad used to tell me I came by the ear infections honestly because he, too, suffered from ear infections while he was growing up.
When I was a kid, people did not take their children to the doctor for every ear infection that came along. Either the parents did not have health insurance to cover the office call and the medicine, or else they simply could not afford to pay for it themselves.
In either case, even if parents took the child to a doctor, antibiotics were not prescribed as a matter of course. Far fewer antibiotics were available, and an ear infection was not seen as something life threatening.
Nowadays, people tend to take their children to the doctor for an ear infection, and when they do, antibiotics are prescribed to help the infection clear up. Many people have health insurance to cover the doctor visit and the prescription, or if they are so poor that they cannot afford health insurance and they can't afford to pay for the doctors and the medicine, a government program will help them out.
So, it was with a certain amount of surprise that I learned through a news segment on television that thousands of children and teenagers are suffering from hearing loss.
The damaged hearing is not the result of ear infections, though. It is from the use of iPods.
Young people are plugging the iPod devices into their ears and are turning up the volume to 85 percent or 100 percent. It is the equivalent, as I understand it, of standing right next to a speaker at a rock concert or standing right next to a jet engine that is revved as high as it will go.
It's one thing for children to suffer hearing loss because medical care was not available or because their parents could not afford to pay for the medical care.
It is quite another thing for children and teenagers to be going deaf because they have a device that plugs into their ears and plays music which their parents bought for them to keep the kids occupied and out of mom and dad's hair. Or a device that is purchased for children and teenagers simply "because everyone has one."
Isn't it ironic that the people who can afford medical care and medicine for their children so the kids don't grow up with hearing loss as a result of ear infections are providing their kids with the very device that is robbing them of their hearing?
Of course, many teenagers buy the iPods for themselves because, let's face it, teenagers are more interested in going to their jobs after school and on weekends and earning money to pay for a car and insurance and an iPod and a cell phone and whatnot than they are in doing their school work and being kids for as long as they can be kids.
Call me old-fashioned ("you are hopelessly old fashioned" -- thank you) but I thought parents had an obligation to be parents until their children are adults. That is, I thought parents had an obligation to monitor their children's activities and to help their children stay safe.
Then again, the reality is that many parents are too busy working to pay for the bigger-house-than-they-need, the SUVs, the cell phones, the iPods, the clothes and the computers and the flat-screen televisions and all the rest to have time to monitor their children's activities.
And maybe that's the real irony: we Americans, as a society, young and old, are drowning in a sea of consumerism -- and we don't even know we need a life preserver.
LeAnn R. Ralph
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Monday, April 24, 2006, 18:25
Who IS That Man?
I did not hardly see my husband all weekend. And when he did finally come home at 8 p.m. Sunday evening, Randy was so covered with grease and oil and grit and grime and field dirt that I didn't hardly recognize him.
It started Friday evening when he went over to a friend's place to help get the plows and tractors ready for plowing 25 acres for the Foods Resource Bank project in our parish. (The total acreage for the whole parish is 35 acres, but 25 of the acres are in our neighborhood.)
Randy left again on Saturday morning about 9 a.m. and I didn't see him again until 7 p.m. They managed to plow 10 acres Saturday afternoon.
On Sunday, right after church, the men left with the tractors and plows (3 tractors, 3 plows and 1 tractor and disk) to do the 15 acres that's a couple of miles from our place.
I went out to the field and took many pictures. Some of the pictures will be used for the newspaper and some will be used for brochures and whatnot.
Here is one picture of Randy plowing with a 560 Farmall. We have a 460 Farmall. The 560 belongs to a friend of ours who has donated 10 acres of his land for the project, as well as the use of his equipment for the other acreage.
I noticed when I was out in the field that the soil is dry already. In early spring, it ought to be moist. But when the field was turned over, the soil was more dry than moist. This does not bode well for a good crop of corn to be sold for the Foods Resource Bank, not unless we get lots of rain regularly and not just a few showers here and there.
While I was up at the field, I also noticed that two ponds across the road are nearly dry. The ponds have less than half the water they normally have. And at this time of year, the ponds should be full. But they're not. It is disconcerting to see ponds that are dry when they should be full of water.
But, at least the fields on this side of the parish are plowed. Time will tell if any kind of a crop will grow (it all depends upon the rain that falls this summer).
On the way back, a trip of about five miles from our friend's place to the field, Randy blew a tire on the tractor. Thank goodness he made it along the main road all right and was able to turn off before he got down to the rim. Once he turned the corner, he had park the tractor on the side of the road until help arrived. Then they had to change the tire.
I am glad I did not know until afterwards that he had blown a tire!
Click here to see more pictures from Plowing Day on the website Randy made this morning.
LeAnn R. Ralph
Comments -- To e-mail comments, click on the contact link on the right -- or you can also copy and paste in the address line of your e-mail and replace the (at) with @: bigpines(at)ruralroute2.com
