free Goldfish

  My pond has too many goldfish and I need to trim the school down by about 20 goldfish.  They are orange, orange and white, and one white one.  If you know of a good home for these fish let me know.

Bood sugar is always what you eat

  It is common belief that if one's blood sugar reading is high they must have eaten to many sweets but that isn't necessarily so.  Salt can raise your blood sugar too but so can stress, medicines and, believe it or not, not eating at all.  I missed 5 meals Monday and Tuesday to prepare for a medical procedure but still recorded my highest glucose reading in over six months.  Thursday I was feeling bad, had a high fever (104) chills and was shaking so bad I kept covered with three blankets.  I'm not used to not feeling well  so I hoped it would go away but yesterday I found myself in the ER.  My temperature was 103.9 when I first got there but after treatment it dropped to 99.
    I had taken my wife to lunch Thursday and felt find but the illness set it shortly thereafter (there is no connection)  Of course I missed my evening meal, and didn't eat anything all day and the only liquids I took was water.  Last night after getting home I did have a serving of sugar free pudding to take with my medicine.  My reading this morning was 488.
  My doctor told me that if one's blood sugar drops to low at night that their body will often covert stored energy to glucose and possible giving one a higher reading in the morning even though no food was consumed during the night.  I think that may be why my reading is so high.   I've lost 6 pounds this week due to fasting and sickness.  I believe my body has converted the stored fat into glucose thereby raising my blood sugar.  Add on stop of that stress, and the effects of the medication and it is understandable why it is so high.

The way it was: the transition years

  I was watching a special about the murder of Sam Cooke, a popular singer back when rock and roll first began.  That special brought back memories of what it was like growing up in the fifties and sixties and what it was like when America was transitioning from a "sperate but equal" status to integration.  The law, especially in the South, called for Negroes, as was the proper name back then, and Whites to be kept separate in business and schools but yet to be treated as equals.  It didn't even work in theory, let along in practice.
  I didn't meet my first black person until I was thirteen and I was fascinated with her.  She was young (in her twenties) and beautiful.  I was sixteen when I meet my second black person, a man named Junior Dula, who was my supervisor at my job with the recreation department for the city and an ex football player for the Redskins.  He was one of the nicest people I ever met.
   The first time I encountered black people my age was during the school year following the summer I worked with Mr. Dula,  As we rode the school bus through downtown we would pass a group of black children walking to school..  Some of the other kids would yell derogatory things at them.  I asked the kids why they did that and they said "because they're black."   That didn't make any sense to me.
  The first time I was really affected by prejudice is when I went to the Saturday matinee.  I wanted to sit in the balcony   but my friends told me it was for colored only.  Then I started to get a drink of water from the water fountain and again was stopped and told it was for colored only.  I didn't understand why I wasn't allowed to sit where I wanted to and get a drink of water if I needed one.  I thought it wasn't fair to me but when I complained to the theater staff they informed me that blacks had to sit in the balcony because it was hotter up there and that they had no access to the fountain sodas and candy counter.  I didn't think that was fair either.
  I grew up near the black high school and I remember how hard the football team had to practice.  I even went to one of their games and saw some of the most athletic displays I had ever witnessed.  When the talk began about integrating the school the year after I graduated, I wondered just how awesome our football team was going to be.  I was really disappointed when I saw my first game after integration.  The few blacks that were on the team were bench warmers.
  I was told it was because the blacks didn't want to join the team but I didn't buy into that because if they didn't want to play they would not have worked twice as hard as the white high school players did.  
  I was hopeful that after integration that the white kids would finally learn  just how nice black people were and blacks would have been appreciative of the better schools and better opportunities.  Maybe we can finally start to appreciate each other, celebrate our differences, and cherish each others contributions and abilities.  It wasn't to be and over fifty years later it still hasn't come to be.