BUCKNACKT'S SORDID TAWDRY BLOG
We should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive & well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate, bier or wein in hand, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WHOO-HOO, WHAT A RIDE!!!!!!"
MY mother, my mom, my Mutti, died Easter morning, 20 APRIL 2025 at the Hillside Medical Lodge in Gatesville, TX. After dad died in 2017 mom went downhill pretty fast and she was at Hillside the last few years of her life. When I saw mom the day before she died I was sitting on her bed holding her hand and telling her it wouldn't be long and we would all have new, perfect bodies and she was going to be able to see and to move around and wouldn't have any more pain and wouldn't be confused...she squeezed my fingers so I know she was hearing and understanding me. When I had to leave I kissed her, told her I loved her, told her thanks for being my mom and then "See ya later", and she squeezed my fingers. I miss mom a lot but at least I know I will see her and dad and other family and friends in heaven and that will be a beautiful, glorious eternity of happiness and rejoicing in Heaven!
Rose Aleta Schwanke passed into the presence of Jesus on Easter Sunday, April 20, 2025 at Hillside Medical Lodge in Gatesville, Texas. Rose was born Oct. 5, 1934, in Warren, Pennsylvania to Ralph Irvine and Jennie Lynn Irvine (Smith). On Aug. 16, 1952, Rose and Wayne Carl Schwanke were married, and that union endured nearly 65 years until Wayne’s death in January 2017. Rose was employed at Sylvania in the first few years of her marriage, and went on to work at the Watson Home and Warren General Hospital as a Nurse’s Aide for several years, finishing her career there as a Home Health Aide, which she loved.
In 1971 Rose and Wayne moved from Warren to Scandia into the home they built together. In the nearly 47 years they lived in Scandia, Rose served on the diaconate and was a Sunday School teacher at Scandia Covenant Church, and a member of the Ladies Auxiliary at the Scandia Volunteer Fire Department. Her favorite pastimes were gardening and birdwatching. Rose also enjoyed traveling and an occasional Riesling.
Rose was preceded in death by her parents, brothers Guy Carlton Irvine, Ronald Irvine; sisters, Midge Irvine, and Lynn Merrylees, husband, Wayne; grandson, Kyle Wayne Wadsworth; great grand-daughter, Sophia Rose Wadsworth; great grand-daughter Shayde Elizabeth Smith; and son-in-law, Richard Wadsworth Jr.
Rose is survived by her brother Ralph (Patricia) Irvine, daughters, Sheila Wadsworth, Jennifer (Ted) Marston, both of Colorado, sons, Craig, of Ashburn, Virginia, and Kirk (Janice) of Gatesville, Texas, 10 grandchildren, and 17 great-grandchildren, and several nieces, and nephews.
Celebration of Life for Rose will tentatively be held Sunday, July 27 in the afternoon in Scandia, Pennsylvania at the Scandia Fire Hall.
In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to Guiding Eyes for the Blind at 611 Granite Springs Road, Yorktown Heights, NY 10598. Or at GuidingEyes.org.
MY beloved mom, Rose Aleta ( Irvine ) Schwanke died peacefully in her sleep on Easter morning, 20 APR 25 at the Hillside Nursing Home in Gatesville, TX, she was 90 years old. I will post an obituary as soon as it is available.
FIRST time back on line at home since right after Thanksgiving, I just had a lot more important things to do in December than get on line......Here is a good way to start posting again, with articles from the Washington PostOptimist.......
The poet's beloved "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" entered the public domain at midnight on New Year's Day along with a huge cache of other previously copyrighted material.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other female House members — nearly 90 percent of whom are Democrats — represent a new era in the historically male-dominated Congress.
The cast of "A Christmas Carol" at Ford’s Theatre decided to collect donations for the Homeless Children’s Playtime Project. The result was extraordinary.
MOMMA black bear and her three (yep, THREE cubs) came to visit at Mom's house in Scandia, Pennsylvania this afternoon. My brother Kirk said Smiley, mom's little mutt dog was out on the deck when all of the sudden he was barking and snarling and charged off the deck. Kirk came out it time to see momma bear treeing her cubs and then she turned, stood up facing Smiley and was growling. Kirk was out on the deck screaming for Smiley to come back to the house because that bear would kill him with one good swipe of her paws (the cubs in the picture are just a little bigger than Smiley) and he finally did come back t the house unharmed. Kirk said they went back into the house and momma got her cubs out of the tree and they eventually wandered off into the woods.
MY Mom has been legally blind for years, she has glaucoma. One of her eyes is dead, she sees nothing with it. Over this past year she has lost most of her sight in her other eye, now she can only see shapes and variations of light. We thank God for the treatment and care she has received since MAY this year from Dr Sabita Ittoop, if it wasn't for her aggressive treatment of and actual concern for my Mom she would be totally blind by now. I strongly recommend anyone with glaucoma to consider contacting Dr Ittoop at Glaucoma Consultants of Washington if you are going blind from glaucoma and / or are not satisfied with the care and treatment you are receiving. These articles from +NPR give me hope for my Mom, I got goosebumps when I heard the first one while getting ready for work. They also make me a bit angry because if a minority of radical religious fanatics had not stopped funding for research using embryonic stem cells maybe my Mom would not be as blind as she is, maybe she would have sight in both her eyes. My siblings and I will be checking this out as a possible treatment for our Mom as she has said she is willing to participate in clinical trials.
Isabella Beukes, of Santa Rosa, Calif., has been legally
blind for more than 40 years. An experimental treatment derived from
embryonic stem cells seems to have enabled her now to see not just color
but also some shapes.
Tim Hussin for NPR
Scientists are reporting the first strong evidence that human embryonic stem cells may be helping patients.
The
cells appear to have improved the vision in more than half of the 18
patients who had become legally blind because of two progressive,
currently incurable eye diseases.
The researchers stress that
the findings must be considered preliminary because the number of
patients treated was relatively small and they have only been followed
for an average of less than two years.
But the findings are
quite promising. The patients had lost so much vision that there was no
expectation that they could benefit, the researchers say.
"I'm astonished that this is working in the way that it is — or seems to be working," says Steven Schwartz, a UCLA eye specialist who led the study, which was published Tuesday in the British medical journal The Lancet. "I'm very excited about it."
Other researchers agreed the work is preliminary, but also highly promising.
"It really does show for the very first time that patients can, in fact, benefit from the therapy," says Dr. Anthony Atala, a surgeon and director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine at Wake Forest University.
"That allows you to say, 'OK, now that these cells have been used
for patients who have blindness, maybe we can also use these cells for
many other conditions as well, including heart disease, lung disease and
other medical conditions,' " Atala says.
Human embryonic stem
cells have the ability to become any kind of cell in the body. So
scientists have been hoping the cells could be used to treat many
diseases, including Alzheimer's, diabetes and paralysis. But the study
is the first human embryonic stem cell trial approved by the Food and
Drug Administration that has produced any results.
"It is really a very important paper," Atala says.
The study involved patients suffering from age-related macular degeneration and Stargardt's macular dystrophy,
the two leading causes of adult and juvenile blindness in the developed
world, Schwartz says. The diseases destroy a person's central vision.
"Whatever
you're looking at is gone — whether it's faces, or reading or food on a
plate, or whether something is a step or stripe," Schwartz says. "It's
very, very difficult to perform activities of daily life that we, you
know, don't even think about."
Working with Advanced Cell Technology Inc.
of Marlborough, Mass., Schwartz and his colleagues took human embryonic
stem cells and turned them into the kind of cells that are killed by
these diseases — retinal pigment epithelial cells. Then, they infused
between 50,000 and 150,000 cells into the retinas of the patients.
"What
we did is put them into patients who have a disease where those
particular cells are dying; and we replaced those dying tissues with new
tissue that's derived from these stem cells," Schwartz said. "In a way
it's a retinal transplant."
No one expected the cells to help any of these patients see
better, because the study was designed mostly just to see if doing this
was safe. Researchers were concerned the cells could destroy whatever
vision was left or lead to tumors in the volunteers' eyes. So Schwartz
picked patients whose eyes were so far gone that they weren't risking
losing any vision. That also meant that there was little hope the cells
could help either.
"We did not expect to help these patients, and they did not expect to be helped," Schwartz says.
Some
patients experienced side effects from the procedure itself and from
the drugs they had to take to suppress the immune system, but none of
the side effects were considered serious. The cells themselves have
produced no safety problems so far, the researchers reported.
And,
surprisingly, many of the patients did start to see better, according
to the report. Ten of the 18 patients can see significantly better. One
got worse, but the other seven either got better or didn't lose any more
vision.
"These are patients that didn't see better for 30
years and all of a sudden they're seeing better," Schwartz says. "It's
amazing."
The patients include a graphic artist who could
suddenly make out the woodwork carved on a piece of furniture in her
bedroom, an international consultant who regained the ability to walk
through busy airports without help, and an elderly rancher who's riding
his horse again, Schwartz says.
"He couldn't see things like a
barbed-wire fence or whether in the distance a stray cow was under a
tree," Schwartz says. "And six months after the transplant he's back to
running his cattle again. And he can, in fact, see a snake on the ground
or sort of tell whether a distant shadow is a cow or something else. So
it's made a big difference for him in his life."
Isabella
Beukes of Santa Rosa, Calif., has been legally blind for more than 40
years. But within weeks of getting the cells, she started to see better.
She could make out the cursor on her computer screen and the color of
her clothes. Today, she can hike the hills near her house all by
herself.
"The improvement, I mean, from where I was coming is
just, it's very, very significant for me. I think it's fantastic,"
Beukes says. "I just think to be part of groundbreaking research work is
amazing."
Just being able to see well enough to to hike the hills
around her Santa Rosa home by herself is a huge improvement, Beukes
says.
Tim Hussin for NPR
The research is controversial, however. Embryos are destroyed to get the cells, and some people think that's immoral.
"The
problem we have with embryonic stem cells is simply the fact that you
have to destroy a young human being to get embryonic stem cells," says David Prentice,
senior fellow for life science at the Family Research Council, an
advocacy group. "We would reject the idea that any human being be
destroyed for experimental purposes."
For his part, Schwartz
says he's just trying to help blind people see better. But he cautions
that this work is still at a very early stage.
"I don't want
patients to come in to their doctor saying, 'Hey, I heard about the stem
cells on the radio and I'd really like to get that treatment done, and
what do you think?' " he says. "It's not ready. Maybe in a few years.
Maybe not. We have to wait and see. The jury is way out still."
Schwartz
has continued treating more patients using larger doses of cells and
trying it on patients who haven't lost as much vision to see if that
works even better. He has also expanded his study to Boston, Miami,
Philadelphia and London.
For the first time, scientists are reporting that human embryonic
stem cells may be helping treat patients — in one instance, the cells
seem to been enabling some blind people to see better.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
For
the first time ever, scientists are reporting that human embryonic stem
cells may be helping treat patients. In the medical journal The Lancet,
researchers describe how the cells seem to help restore eyesight to
some blind people.
NPR's Rob Stein has the details of the first study to demonstrate that embryonic stem cells could alleviate human suffering.
ROB
STEIN, BYLINE: Human embryonic stem cells can be turned into any kind
of cell in the body. So scientists have been hoping they could treat
lots of diseases. But no one's done a careful study to find out if
that's true until now. Steven Schwartz at UCLA tried using stem cells to
help people suffering from two types of incurable eye diseases.
STEVEN SCHWARTZ: These represent the two leading causes of adult and juvenile blindness in the developed world.
STEIN:
They're called age-related macular degeneration and Stargardt's macular
dystrophy. They don't make people totally blind, but they destroy
everything but peripheral vision.
SCHWARTZ: Whatever you're
looking at is gone whether it's faces or reading or food on a plate or
whether something's a step or a stripe. It's very, very difficult to
perform activities of daily life that we, you know, don't even think
about.
STEIN: Here's what they did. Schwartz and his colleagues
took human embryonic stem cells and turned them into the kinds of cells
that are killed by these diseases. Then, they infused tens of thousands
of these cells into the retinas of 18 patients.
SCHWARTZ: What
we did is put them into patients who have a disease where those
particular cells are dying. And we replaced those dying tissues with new
tissue that's derived from these stem cells. In a way, it's a retinal
transplant.
STEIN: The study was designed mostly just to see if
doing this was safe. There were big worries the whole thing could
backfire. The cells could destroy whatever vision was left or turn into
horrible tumors in the volunteer's eyes. So Schwartz picked patients
whose eyes were so far gone that they weren't risking losing any vision.
But that meant there was little hope the cells could help patients
either.
SCHWARTZ: We did not expect to help these patient. And they did not expect to be helped.
STEIN:
It's been nearly two years since the first patients got the cells. And
so far, there are no signs of any safety problems. And to everyone's
surprise, a lot of the patients did start to see better. Ten of the 18
patients can see a lot better. One got worse, but the other seven either
got better or didn't lose any more vision.
SCHWARTZ: These are patients that didn't see better for 30 years, and all of a sudden, they're seeing better. It's amazing.
STEIN:
There's a graphic artist who could suddenly make out the woodwork
carved on a piece of furniture in her bedroom, an international
consultant who eventually regained the ability to walk through busy
airports without help, and an elderly rancher who's riding his horse
again.
SCHWARTZ: He couldn't see things like barbed wire fence
or whether in the distance a stray cow was under tree. And six months
after the transplant, he's back to running his cattle again. And he can,
in fact, see a snake on the ground or see a barbed wire fence from his
horse or tell whether or not a distant shadow is a cow or something
else. And so it's made a huge difference for him in his life.
STEIN:
Isabella Bewkes (ph) of Santa Rosa, California has been legally blind
for more than 40 years. But within weeks of getting the cells, she
started to see better. She could make out the cursor on her computer
screen, the color of her clothes. Today, she can hike the hills near her
house all by herself.
ISABELLA BEWKES: The improvement, I mean
from where I was coming, is just - it's very, very significant for me. I
think it's fantastic. I just think to be part of groundbreaking
research work is amazing.
STEIN: This research is
controversial. Embryos are destroyed to get the cells. Some people think
that's immoral. For his part, Schwartz says he's just trying to help
blind people see better. But he cautions that this work is still at a
very early stage. He's only treated a few dozen patients altogether so
far and followed them for just 22 months.
SCHWARTZ: I don't want to increase suffering by creating expectations that can't be met.
STEIN:
Other researchers agree that these findings need to be considered
preliminary, but they say the results so far are really promising.
Anthony Atala is at Wake Forest University.
ANTHONY ATALA: It's
really a very important paper because it really does show for the very
first time that patients can in fact benefit from the therapy that
allows you to say OK, now these cells have been used for patients who
have blindness. Maybe we can also use these cells for many other
conditions as well, including heart disease and lung disease and other
medical conditions.
STEIN: Schwartz has continued treating more
blind patients using bigger doses of cells and trying it on patients
who haven't lost as much vision to see if that works even better. He's
also expanded his study to Boston, Miami, Philadelphia and London. Rob
Stein, NPR News.
NPR
transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and
accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final
form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that
the authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio.
I remember when my older sister Sheila was in high school she was sent home for wearing jeans (this was around 1968 or '69 in rural Warren County, PA). My family is working middle class. Both my parents worked, Dad days, Mom nights, nothing was handed to them or us but we were (are) loved and never lacked for anything. And our clothes, while not the latest fashions, were clean and not ragged. So when the school called and woke Mom up (she had worked the night before) telling her she had to come get Sheila because she was wearing jeans, Mom went to the high school and told the principle and everyone in the office that Sheila's jeans were clean, were not obscene, didn't have holes in them, and until the school started buying Sheila's clothes she would be wearing what she had in her closet. Sheila stayed at school that day and the office never called our parents again about what we were wearing to school. A students clothes should be clean and shouldn't be obscene (no swear or racist words, no images of those words or sexual acts, no nipples poking through a shirt, skirts so short when a girl sits it's a porn shot, no pants so tight you know just what a guys junk looks like or you can read a girls "lips"). But students, girls especially, need to be protected from some of these fanatical purist who probably would mandate some sort of "christian burka" as a dress code for their female students. Get used to being told what to do you young ladies in school. Today they are telling you what to wear. In a few years, if not all ready, you'll be told what you can and can't do with your own body. From +AlterNet .....
Around
the country, teenagers are organizing protests after administrators
have made them wear ‘shame suits’ or mandated hemlines.
September 26, 2014 |
A spate of revolts against school dress codes appears to be gaining
momentum across the United States, with students staging walkouts and
other protests to complain at the way girls have been “humiliated” and
forced to cover up.
A vocal campaign has emerged after recent incidents angered students
in New York, Utah, Florida, Oklahoma and other states, with some
accusing schools of sexism and so-called “slut shaming”.
The protests have spawned a hashtag, #iammorethanadistraction, and
expressions of support from some parents who say the application of
dress codes can be capricious and unjust.
“I do think these protests are a trend and I think it’s a good
trend,” said Ruthann Robson, a City University of New York law professor
and author of Dressing Constitutionally: Hierarchy, Sexuality and
Democracy.
The mass walkouts showed that dress codes related to public policy
and were not just confined to individual students and schools, she said.
“Such resistance points out the larger structural issues. There is a
problem here of state power getting confused with matters of good
taste.”
The recent protests have coincided with the resumption of the school
year but the controversy is not new. In March a group of middle-school
girls in Evanston, Illinois picketed their school for the right to wear
leggings. In August a school superintendent in Oklahoma allegedly referred to “skanks” with inappropriate clothing, prompting calls for her resignation.
Previous dress code battles have focused on issues such as the length
of boys’ hair or sagging trousers. The current round centres on girls
revealing skin or wearing figure-hugging attire such as leggings or yoga
pants.
Schools have expressed concern such attire could “distract” other
pupils and responded by sending students home or obliging them to wear
oversized, baggy “shame suits”.
Since such punishment predominantly affects girls some commentators think it could violate Title IX, the federal law that ensures non-discrimination in educational environments.
There were laws against indecent exposure but some schools went
further by decreeing what was and was not good taste, said Robson. “Just
because someone wears something that we consider bad taste doesn’t mean
the state should mandate.”
In the most recent backlash about 100 pupils walked out of Bingham
high school in South Jordan, Utah, on Monday to protest the turning away
of female classmates from a homecoming dance last weekend.
