By Renie Stag Smith

The A-lunch teachers bustled around the rectangular table in the middle of the small, austere teacher’s lounge, jostling for their regular seats while at the same time opening lunch boxes, microwaving leftovers, plopping coins into the vending machines. In between wolfing down bites during the twenty-minute lunch, they caught up on their latest happenings.

Olga, sitting at one end of the table, was aquiver with some news.  “I just got a call before school; my Golden Retriever is getting delivered today!”

“Oh, how exciting!” said Sally, sitting directly across from me. “Is it male or female? Where did you find the breeder?”

“Oh, no,” Olga replied, “it’s not a new puppy. It’s our dog who died recently. We had him sent off to be freeze-dried and he’s coming home.”

“Freeze-dried?” my eyes got bigger and my eyebrows shot up quizzically. I shouldn’t have, but I looked across the table to Sally after I said this.  Her eyes were as incredulous as mine.

“My husband and I just couldn’t part with Goldie; he was so much a part of our lives.  We couldn’t bury or cremate him. We looked into traditional taxidermy, but it would just be his skin stretched out over artificial filler.  So, we sent him off to New Jersey to be freeze-dried. He’s been out there for about four months and we can’t wait to see him today!”

Sally asked the next obvious question, “What are you going to do with him?”

“Oh,” Olga gushed, “we have his doggie bed set up by the hearth, just waiting for him! The company who did it sent us pictures and he looks just like he did when he was alive!”

I’m not normally a cruel person, nor do I usually make fun of a sad situation, but the thought of Olga awaiting her bundle of freeze-dried dead dog was just too much for me to take. “So, Olga,” I said with as straight a face as I could muster, “does the company decide on the pose that the dog will have for all eternity or did you and your husband get to decide?” as I modeled several of what I considered very real dog stances, “Sitting up, head tilted to one side? Lying on stomach, with paws crossed in front or to the side? Lying on side, head up or down? Standing on all fours with little rollers under his paws so that you can wheel him out for a daily walk?” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Sally’s shoulder’s start to shake as she tried to contain her laughter.

In all seriousness, Olga said, “Oh, we got to decide! We have Goldie lying down on his stomach with the paws crossed in the front. It was a difficult decision.”

“I can imagine…”

Sally regained her composure somewhat and asked in a tightly-constrained voice, “Olga, wasn’t this expensive? I mean, couldn’t you have taken part of the dog and had him made into something more enjoyable, like a diamond ring like they do with human cremains? Then you could wear him and get enjoyment out of him that way?” as she dangled and jostled her tennis bracelet in the air.

“Oh, no! That’s just morbid!” Olga exclaimed.

–Renie

In Part 2, find out how Renie deals (in her own twisted way) with the concept of Freeze-Dried Dog

Yesterday was President’s Day and we’re continuing the celebration with some facts about Washington and two GREAT interviews about Lincoln.  Dr. Don Elder joins us to talk about Lincoln and the Civil War, and James L. Swanson talks about the Manhunt for Lincoln’s Killer.  Fascinating stuff on Life and Other Matters!

Click 0n the player below to listen to the show

We welcomed back Scientific American editor Judith Horstman to talk about love, sex and the brain. Can love be an addiction? Is there a difference between the brains of men and women? Why DO we fall in love! And is do men REALLY have a second brain? The answers will surprise you!

Click on the player below to listen to the show

About Judith Horstman:

Judith Horstman is an award-winning journalist who writes about health and medicine for doctors as well as the general public. She has been a Washington correspondent, a journalism professor, a Fulbright scholar, and has written and edited in just about any medium including newspapers, newsletters, special health publications, radio, video, the Internet, annual reports and books.

Her journalism career spans 40 years. In 1986, she was awarded a Knight Science Journalism Fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From 1988 to 1994, she taught journalism at Keene (N.H.) State College, Oregon State University, Santa Clara (Calif.) University, and in Budapest, Hungary, where she was awarded back-to-back Fulbrights to set up the American Journalism Center and lecture at universities throughout Eastern Europe. While living in Hungary, she wrote the text to a book of photographs by Pulitzer prize-winning photographer Tamás Révész, Open Air (available at Amazon.com).

She has edited health articles and books for TIME Inc. Health, including Dr Koop’s Self-Care Advisor, worked as an editor and writer for the Stanford University Medical Center News Office, and written for the Harvard Health Letter and Johns Hopkins White Papers. She was a consultant and editor for a website dedicated to ALS (amytrophic lateral sclerosis) that she helped establish; and contributed as an editor, consultant and writer to a website on lupus (systemic lupus erythematosus, or SLE).

For many years she was a contributing editor for Arthritis Today, the magazine of the Arthritis Foundation, for which she wrote well-regarded book, The Arthritis Foundation’s Guide to Alternative Therapies.

For more about Judith, please go to her website: www.JudithHorstman.com

By Renie Stag Smith

Did you ever wonder how obscure you truly are when you are out and about people?

When my children were young, I told them that since we lived in a small town of about 37,000, they had to be very careful about what they did in public, as it would always get back to me.  They might not recognize everyone around them, but most of the adults would know them and would love to let me know what transgressions they were involved in.  They didn’t believe me until one by one, an adult tattled.

“Renie, I saw Jenn at Dave’s coffeehouse at two o’clock in the morning.  Isn’t that way past her curfew?” and off I’d go to find out why Jenn was at a coffeehouse instead of at the girlfriend’s house she was supposed to be spending the night with.

“Renie, I saw JW get pulled over by the police while he was driving the Corvette.  He was probably going too fast again!” and off I’d go to find out if he’d gotten another ticket for unsafe driving.

“Renie, I saw Jade with too many people in her car for the type of license she has.  She was going to lunch from school and I counted five people in the car.” And off I’d go to remind Jade that on the provisional license she had, she could only have one other under-aged person in the car.

Unless we are the famous and have paparazzi following us around snapping our picture constantly, we don’t expect people to notice us or recognize us when we are out of town or out of the country.

Yet, we should.  According to a recent University of Milan experiment using Facebook, we know many more people than social scientists at first thought, and in reverse, they know us!  Instead of the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, these social scientists have discovered that we are but 4.74 degrees away from knowing every one of the almost seven billion people on the planet!

So what happened recently shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did.

Last Friday night, my husband and I were in a city about 300 miles south of our hometown on a business trip.  Since it’s a much larger city, the dining establishments are more varied and we took the advice of a local resident on deciding where to eat.  Several times as we were enjoying our meal, a young man walked slowly by our table and looked us up and down.  The third time, he finally stopped and asked, “Aren’t you Jade’s parents?”  In this far-away town, we were connected to him through just one degree of separation.

That might not seem too outrageous, as our state is a sparsely populated one.  However, something that happened to one of my friends made me pause.  A few years ago, she and her husband traveled to Australia.  As they sat down to eat breakfast at the hotel coffee shop their first morning, they were greeted by about twenty people calling their names.  Most of these people were acquaintances they’d met in New Zealand on a mission trip the previous month but sitting with them were two close friends of theirs from their hometown! None of them knew any of them were going to be in Australia and none of them realized they knew the others.   It is a small world after all (thanks, Walt Disney and the exhibit you created first for the New York World’s Fair)!

What should we do with this new knowledge from the University of Milan that we are closer to many others in the world than we first thought? I’m sure that some will use it for self-or business-gains. Some will use it for political gains.  However, I think we should use this knowledge to become more aware of the people whom we can influence positively to make this world a kinder, gentler place.

Just do what I cautioned my children to do many years ago:  behave and be nice to any and all – you never know who’s watching!

–Renie

By Renie Stag Smith

The last load of clothes that I had put into the washing machine to cycle through the numerous rotations of wash, rinse, repeat were ready to get plucked out of the drum and dumped into the dryer to finish the weekly, monotonous task of doing the laundry.

But as I reached into the barrel to pick the towels up, they were dripping wet. Not just a bit sodden, they were clumped-up masses of waterlogged material that weighed hundreds of pounds with the water that hadn’t been wrung out properly.  My washer had stopped working properly. I called the repairman.

“Ms. Smith, I got some bad news for you,” he said after only ten minutes of looking at my machine.  “Looks like your transmission’s shot. So’s your spin tube. And your wheeliemabob that holds the whatchamacallit needs to be replaced, too. You’re lookin’ at about $700 dollars of repair at the least.”

Seven hundred dollars??? The machine hadn’t cost me that much new, just five years ago!

Rather than invest that much money into a contraption that wasn’t likely to last more than a few more years, I decided to purchase a new washing machine. Online I went to look for sales, product descriptions, consumer ratings, and life spans.

It seems the life span of a washing machine, much like most major household appliances, has decreased rapidly as our human life spans have increased, exponentially!  According to the Internet, the average life span of a new washing machine purchased in 2011 is ten to fourteen years.

My first washing machine was a used one and it lasted twenty-three years. My second lasted ten. My third, five.

Household appliances, like many other goods, are now produced with built-in obsolescence. What this means is that manufacturers actively build their products to quit working or to become less stylish within a certain time frame. They deliberately use cheap components that will wear out or choose colors that will fade in popularity with time. Consumers will replace those goods when they no longer work or are not as attractive. The producers hope that the buyer will have product loyalty and choose to purchase a new appliance from their line and not from an opponent’s.  Thus, they are almost assured of a continuing cycle of sales year in and year out.

Now, I don’t have a total aversion to planned obsolescence.  After all, if companies didn’t continually improve on their lines’ functions, we wouldn’t have the computers, the phones, or the automobiles we have now.

Sweeping, grand improvements have been made on all of these products, not just in technical, but also in stylistic ways that make them more appealing to the consumer. I once had a computer/printer combo that took up half of my study; I certainly like this little laptop that I’m working on now much better.  I used to own a portable car phone that was housed in a black bag bigger than a shoebox; I certainly like my little cell phone with Internet capabilities that I use now much better.  I used to own a car that didn’t have electric windows, ABS braking system, anti-theft devices, heated seats, and an incredible stereo; I certainly like my little Mazda6 now much better.

However, a washing machine is just a washing machine! It fills itself with water, agitates the clothes, drains the tub, fills again, rinses, and repeats. It hasn’t gone through major renovations in years. It isn’t usually in a part of the home that most people see, so it doesn’t need to be manufactured in new-fangled colors or with chrome accents. It isn’t a major source of home injuries so that structural improvements need to be made (according to injuryprevention.bmj.com most injuries reported to emergency rooms are from boys leaping off the machine, not getting caught in it).

It doesn’t need to have built-in obsolescence.  So, I’m having a difficult time understanding why my washing machines keep wearing out and I have to keep purchasing new ones!

I’m hoping that this new washer will last at least as long as the Internet predicts; but with my track record, I’ll be lucky if it doesn’t break down next week.

–Renie

A recent fire that destroyed the homes of 12 families got the girls to thinking about what really matters.  What would you take if you could only take one thing from your house as it burned?  What items could you live without on a regular basis?  And is it time to purge things that are only taking up space and aren’t contributing to your life?

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We go back to the Seventies this week on the show, as I dig through a box from my high school and college days.  We discuss the concepts of streaking, rap groups and women’s lib.

Plus, Renie shares a story of sexual harassment from when she went to college and Sherri tries her hand at a quiz about electronics.

Click on the player below to listen to the show

Things we talked about on the show:

Hippies DO still exist!  Click here for a list of where to find Hippie Havens throughout the US!

Have an interest in streaking?  There’s a whole SITE dedicated to it!

Here’s a comprehensive article on the history of the Women’s Lib movement.

Want to know more about radio licenses issued by the FCC? Click here.

Say… why not take a practice test of the Element 9 endorsement?

Think you might want to drive fast? Here are some tips

By Renie Stag Smith

Made in China.  Made in China.  Made in China.

No matter the print type, these three words have struck a discordant chord in one of my dear friend’s body.  At a recent get-together, she announced that starting January first, she was boycotting anything that she possibly could that was made in China.  After much interrogation, she stated that it wasn’t political, she wasn’t an ideologue, but she was tired of a foreign nation being so prevalent in her home. She does have a point; the latest trade figures from the Office of the United States Trade Representative (http://www.ustr.gov/countries-regions/china) show that the US imported $365 billion of goods from China in 2010 alone.   She is going to try to purchase only USA-made products wherever possible, but especially avoid purchasing those from China.  She isn’t crazy.  I admire this retired English teacher greatly, and although I made fun of her (and possibly made her a little mad!) that evening, I decided that perhaps her goal isn’t such a bad one.  So, I thought that I would try to emulate her.  As best I could.  That lasted all of one day.

When I came home from the annual sleep-over at her house, I found my first challenge in shopping for products made in the USA.

The sheets on my bed were getting a bit threadbare and past their prime.  You know what it’s like (don’t pretend you don’t!), when in order to change the sheets, you have to pull one end of the mattress corner up on your knee as your foot wedges between the mattress and box spring to stretch the tight, shrunken cotton sheet over the edge of the bed.  The natural fiber puckers and scrunches as you grapple and wrestle it into position. You move clockwise around the rectangular bed and do the same with each corner. When you finally let the last corner go and the bed top falls back into position, the four corners of the bed top are arced towards the center because the sheet is so tight.  When it’s time to get into the newly-made bed, you do so with trepidation and caution; you know that this sheet is ready to rip open, to rupture with a vengeance at the first opportune time. Sometime during the night while you are fast asleep, the sheet finally bursts like an overripe watermelon.  A fissure appears with the morning light and you know it’s time to go sheet-shopping.  No more putting it off because if you do, you’ll have a tangled tussle with those sheets before the next sunrise.  Not a pretty experience or a pretty sight!

Linen shopping is a confusing adventure.  I wanted to pick out the right sheets for optimum comfort for all four seasons. I wanted the right thread count of those linens, but also the right structure and steadfastedness. I researched sheets on the Internet until I thought I was an expert.  Thread count of 300 was the best as long as it was single-ply (double-ply, while listed as 600 count was just 300 count with a tag-along). Egyptian cotton was superb, although pima or supima was fine.  Percale was better than sateen. The higher the yarn size, the smoother the feel. I was armed with sheet knowledge! And off I went…

Store after store disappointed me. The thread count was inflated. The cotton wasn’t pure. The yarn size was less than 40 instead of over 80. And always that ubiquitous label, “Made in China.”

I decided to shop on the Internet.  There I found several companies who specialize in USA-made, 300 threat count of single-ply Egyptian percale cotton.  Unfortunately, I’d have to take out a bank loan in order to purchase them.

I eventually caved and revisited one of the big box bed and bath stores.  I purchased the “Made in China” sheets.  I’m sorry, TB, but I did try to buy American-made.  But this American just couldn’t afford it and I did need the sheets.

I’ve been having cravings for Chinese Fried Rice lately. Wonder why…

–Renie

The girls discuss the practice of photoshopping: has it led us to expect a new, unattainable, norm?  Or is it just giving us that little “boost” we all need about our looks?  And even if we know something is photoshopped, do we really internalize that it’s not “real?”

And isn’t photoshopping kinda like putting on makeup?  Are we being hypocritical?  When is it too much?  And does it matter if we don’t look like our photo when you see us in person?

Click on the player below to hear the show

• Photoshop Disasters: www.PhotoshopDisasters.com
• Photoshop of Horrors: www.jezebel.com/photoshop-of-horrors/

By Renie Stag Smith

“You must be very proud every time you see this in the stores!” said one of the smartest eight-year olds I know.

She was talking about our family’s product. We have produced a powdered enchilada sauce since way before I became part of the family and it is sold to grocery stores around the region.

She and her younger brother had heard how we manufactured it, but had never been old enough to see the operations until that day. My granddaughter was enthralled with the process. And those drops of wisdom poured from her little lips.

Her one little sentence made me think.

How many of us are truly proud of what we do? How many of us have that glow of satisfaction in a job well done?

It seems that lately, fewer and fewer of us do.

Today, more often than not, sourness is the order of the day.  Surly clerks who don’t want to wait on clients but would rather throw dagger glances at them as they stand firm talking to other surly clerks.  Frenetic fast food servers who take orders with a scowl and then throw food, change and snarls at the customers.  Public servants who point and gesture to “take a number” machines with glares and then dare you with their countenance to ask questions before your number is called. Not even politeness and smiles from the customer can melt their hostility at doing a task they don’t find rewarding.

I don’t see the pride in a job well done as often as I once did, and so it warms me thoroughly when I come across someone who does his/her duty with a genuine grin and gratitude, with an intrinsic satisfaction of doing a good job.  I usually take the time to thank those peoplefor helping me out and comment on how they seem to enjoy what they are doing.

I answered my granddaughter with, “Yes, I am very proud! On the way home, I’ll take you by the store and you can see where our product is sold.” As we stood in front of the store’s display where our wares are, her little chest puffed out with pride at being a part of this family’s tradition and work ethic.

I take pride in what I do and I hope it shows.

Do you?

–Renie