In the United States, it is Memorial Day weekend, a three day weekend where some Americans will honor the war dead. It is also considered to be the first weekend of the summer.
The Panda Bear is trying to be upbeat and not mind that so much of the weekend will be catching up on chores. She and Mr. Panda got their hair cut and they went to a thrift store and bought some second hand clothes(The Panda Bear is Ms. Cheapo and can get some good buys second hand clothes). Clothes shopping is something that the Panda Bear sees as a chore since she feels her free time is limited but might enjoy it if she were retired and had money.
However, let us get to the main object of the post. As some readers may know, the Panda Bear broke her wrist on slipping on the ice this winter. This winter was very bad in the Boston area and the Panda Bear knows at least five other people who injured themselves because of the snow. Interestingly enough these injuries occurred very near where the people lived so traveling long distances was not an issue in causing these injuries. The Panda Bear on February 1, slipped on a hill when she was leaving work on a bad snow day. Her work did not let the work out early but because she lived in the town where she worked she believed the commute was not an issue.
The hill she fell on is very heavily travelled, very slippery and hardly ever plowed for the snow. The Panda Bear found out after she fell that this strip of land was maintained by the town. She has gotten a lawyer to make a monetary claim against the town for a slip and fall accident and she will sue the town if they refuse to come to a settlement.
The focus of this post will be on the pain and suffering issues around falls and injuries(In fact, the Panda Bear will be shortly discussing with her lawyer her pain and suffering and trying to come up with a monetary amount of her suffering). Though the Panda Bear is doing better and out of both a cast and a splint, she feels she is still recovering from the injury. She has gotten used to working at a slower pace and still feels it is as still an effort to do certain things. She has a new respect for people who have experienced more difficult traumas and difficult the work can be to recuperate to recover from an injury. The Panda Bear is fortunate in that she was able to go back to work(though on a reduced schedule) and not lose any pay.
Her injury impaired her ability to do things at home and prepare food. She was surprised how moody she got during her injury but the being in a cast effects the ability to eat, sleep and exercise. She is used to going to the YMCA to swim and do Yoga but she was not able to these activities and her overall fitness level and energy has declined. She has found that many people who injury their wrist, arm, or shoulder injury their good side form overuse. The Panda Bear developed trigger finger in both of her thumbs from overuse(fortunately,it getting better). The Panda Bear is not asking for her readers sympathy but for them to feel that there is some human suffering when public safety is not properly maintained.
The town where the Panda Bear lives and works is not poor. The town requires both residents and business to shovel the walk areas in front of their areas and enforces these regulations with a heavy hand. However, the town does not follow its own requirements. The hill that the Panda Bear fell is a very heavily trafficked area. The Panda Bear knows of one other person who fell and slipped on that hill on the ice in a previous winter who also broke her wrist.
In her next post on Monday(she will post on another matter on Thursday), the Panda Bear will ask why does government get away with imposing rules on people but does not follow them itself. She will discuss the apathy and fear she has found in getting the town to do its job of proper snow maintenance in a country that supposedly is the freest country in the world.
Monday, May 30, 2011
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
The Panda Bear on Stresses of Modern Life
The Panda Bear took a stress management course tonight where she worked. The Panda Bear is in what modern times the medical profession would call an anxious person. However, the Panda Bear prefers the earlier medical term "Neurasthenia" which meant nervous exhaustion to the term anxiety. When the Panda Bear gets nervous she will feel overwhelmed with things she has to do and no time to do it. She has learned to say no to certain activities and work at a slower pace.
The Panda Bear Blog was a recent source of anxiety to the Panda Bear. She started it on impulse about two months ago as a hobby. While she enjoys learning about blogging, she feels overwhelmed about all the things she has to learn. Experts give different kinds advise on how to write blogs. She panics at not having a clear enough blog focus. On some intellectual level, the Panda Bear knows her fears are irrational. It would not be tragic if her blog were a failure and no one read it.
Blogging is an example of how technology can creates new forms of stress. Before blogging, there was no blogging anxiety.
Technology can also creates stress is that it increases the pace of modern life. One of the Panda Bear's favorite books on stress was written in 1881 called American nervousness : its causes and consequences, a supplement to Nervous exhaustion (neurasthenia) (1881) written by neurologist called George Beard. He described how the telegraph, light bulb, pocket watch and newspaper were making life more stressful for Americans. George Beard makes the telegraph seem very much like the world wide web of the nineteenth century. He states:
The telegraph is a cause of nervousness the po-
tency of which is little understood. Before the
days of Morse and his rivals, merchants were far
less worried than now, aud less business was trans-
acted in a given time ; prices fluctuated far less
rapidly, and the fluctuations which now are trans-
mitted instantaneously over the world were only
known then by the slow communication of sailing
vessels or steamships ; hence we might wait for
weeks or months for a cargo of tea from China,
trusting for profit to prices that should follow their
arrival ; w^hereas, now, prices at each port are known
at once all over the globe. This continual fluctua-
tion of values, and the constant knowledge of those
fluctuations in every part of the world, are the
scourges of business men, the tyrants of trade —
every cut in prices in wholesale lines in the smallest
of any of the Western cities, becomes know^n in less
than an hour all over the Union ; thus competition
is both diffused and intensified. Within but thirty
years the telegraphs of the world have grown to
half a million miles of line, and over a million
miles of wire — or more than forty times the circuit
of the globe. In the United States there were, in
1880, 170,103 miles of line, and in that year 33,155,991
messages w^ere sent over them.
Sometimes, The Panda Bear finds the modern 24 hour news cycle stressful. When the news gets to be too sad she has to turn it off. George Beard described how the daily newspaper made life more stressful for people in the nineteenth century. He states.
Little account has been made of the fact that
the old world is small geographically. The ancient
Greeks knew only of Greece and the few outside
barbarians who tried to destroy them. The dis-
covery of America, like the invention of printing,
prepared the way for modern nervousness; and, in
connection with the telegraph, the railway, and the
periodical press increased a hundred-fold the dis-
tresses of humanity.
The sorrows of any part of the world, many
times greater geographically than the old world
as known to the ancients, through the medium of .
the press and the telegraph are made the sorrows of
individuals everywhere.
The burning of Chicago — a city less than half a
century old, on a continent whose existence was un-
known a few centuries ago — becomes in a few hours
the property of both hemispheres, and makes heavy
drafts on the vitality not only of Boston and New
York, but of London, Paris, and Yienna. With
the extension and complexity of populations of the
globe, with the rise and growth of nations and peo-
ples, these local sorrows and local horrors become
daily occasions of nervous disorders.
Our morning newspaper, that we read with our
breakfast, has the history of the sorrows of the whole
world for a day ; and a nature but moderately sym-
pathetic is robbed thereby, consciously or uncon-
sciously, of more or less nervous strength.
The Panda Bear is not a Luddite. She loves the computer. She thinks that people should be aware that technology "improvements" can be making life more fast-paced.
The Panda Bear Blog was a recent source of anxiety to the Panda Bear. She started it on impulse about two months ago as a hobby. While she enjoys learning about blogging, she feels overwhelmed about all the things she has to learn. Experts give different kinds advise on how to write blogs. She panics at not having a clear enough blog focus. On some intellectual level, the Panda Bear knows her fears are irrational. It would not be tragic if her blog were a failure and no one read it.
Blogging is an example of how technology can creates new forms of stress. Before blogging, there was no blogging anxiety.
Technology can also creates stress is that it increases the pace of modern life. One of the Panda Bear's favorite books on stress was written in 1881 called American nervousness : its causes and consequences, a supplement to Nervous exhaustion (neurasthenia) (1881) written by neurologist called George Beard. He described how the telegraph, light bulb, pocket watch and newspaper were making life more stressful for Americans. George Beard makes the telegraph seem very much like the world wide web of the nineteenth century. He states:
The telegraph is a cause of nervousness the po-
tency of which is little understood. Before the
days of Morse and his rivals, merchants were far
less worried than now, aud less business was trans-
acted in a given time ; prices fluctuated far less
rapidly, and the fluctuations which now are trans-
mitted instantaneously over the world were only
known then by the slow communication of sailing
vessels or steamships ; hence we might wait for
weeks or months for a cargo of tea from China,
trusting for profit to prices that should follow their
arrival ; w^hereas, now, prices at each port are known
at once all over the globe. This continual fluctua-
tion of values, and the constant knowledge of those
fluctuations in every part of the world, are the
scourges of business men, the tyrants of trade —
every cut in prices in wholesale lines in the smallest
of any of the Western cities, becomes know^n in less
than an hour all over the Union ; thus competition
is both diffused and intensified. Within but thirty
years the telegraphs of the world have grown to
half a million miles of line, and over a million
miles of wire — or more than forty times the circuit
of the globe. In the United States there were, in
1880, 170,103 miles of line, and in that year 33,155,991
messages w^ere sent over them.
Sometimes, The Panda Bear finds the modern 24 hour news cycle stressful. When the news gets to be too sad she has to turn it off. George Beard described how the daily newspaper made life more stressful for people in the nineteenth century. He states.
Little account has been made of the fact that
the old world is small geographically. The ancient
Greeks knew only of Greece and the few outside
barbarians who tried to destroy them. The dis-
covery of America, like the invention of printing,
prepared the way for modern nervousness; and, in
connection with the telegraph, the railway, and the
periodical press increased a hundred-fold the dis-
tresses of humanity.
The sorrows of any part of the world, many
times greater geographically than the old world
as known to the ancients, through the medium of .
the press and the telegraph are made the sorrows of
individuals everywhere.
The burning of Chicago — a city less than half a
century old, on a continent whose existence was un-
known a few centuries ago — becomes in a few hours
the property of both hemispheres, and makes heavy
drafts on the vitality not only of Boston and New
York, but of London, Paris, and Yienna. With
the extension and complexity of populations of the
globe, with the rise and growth of nations and peo-
ples, these local sorrows and local horrors become
daily occasions of nervous disorders.
Our morning newspaper, that we read with our
breakfast, has the history of the sorrows of the whole
world for a day ; and a nature but moderately sym-
pathetic is robbed thereby, consciously or uncon-
sciously, of more or less nervous strength.
The Panda Bear is not a Luddite. She loves the computer. She thinks that people should be aware that technology "improvements" can be making life more fast-paced.
The Panda Bear on the Typewriter
The Panda Bear likes the typewriter. At the risk of dating herself, her first job was typing insurance forms for a major insurance company which she did for three and a half years (talk about routine job). However, she got a lot of awards and promotions for this work made her feel good about very good about herself even though the job was routine.
She was using the typewriter today at work to complete the form. It made her feel so nostalgic completing forms on a typewriter!! There is one typewriter in the office. People were making fun of her at work for using such an obsolete device. However, it is still not possible to word process all forms. The Panda Bear has terrible handwriting and thinks some forms still look more professional when they are typed. Also for people who are good at typing, it is much faster to type then to hand write. (The Panda Bear knows some people who can do sixty words per minute on the old fashioned manual typewriter). She wishes offices had more typewriters.
She was using the typewriter today at work to complete the form. It made her feel so nostalgic completing forms on a typewriter!! There is one typewriter in the office. People were making fun of her at work for using such an obsolete device. However, it is still not possible to word process all forms. The Panda Bear has terrible handwriting and thinks some forms still look more professional when they are typed. Also for people who are good at typing, it is much faster to type then to hand write. (The Panda Bear knows some people who can do sixty words per minute on the old fashioned manual typewriter). She wishes offices had more typewriters.
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
The Panda Bear Blog on the Panda Bear
The Panda Bear has gotten more nervous about her blog in reading about blogging. When she started the blog, her goal was to emulate some great writers and essayists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (i.e. Franklin , Blake, Swift, Poe , Washington
However, the Panda Bear has been reading that to attract readers her blog must attract a “niche”. The closest type of blog that the Panda Bear Blog aspires to be like are the mothers’ blogs. However, the Panda Bear is not a mother nor will she ever be one. Also, she is also not very domestic. What the Panda Bear likes about the “mother’s blogs” is that they can be very general and cover different aspects of life.
Instead the Panda Bear aspires to be an “office blogger” or the average working person working some variation of working nine to five in an office. She feels the voices of these people are not heard because they don’t have much time to write.
When the Panda Bear decided to call her blog “The Panda Bear Blog”, it was in part because the author wanted to remain anonymous. However, a big reason she decided to call herself the Panda Bear was that the Panda Bear was an alter ego for writer. The Panda Bear is in some ways a real person but in some ways she represents the average person struggling with life.
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