Update on my knee (McKenzie exercises)

It's been a while since I posted, so I want to tell you, yesterday I went to my favorite park and walked for 50 minutes!!

so I am about 96% back to where I was before I got torn meniscus in March 2014.

I've been doing McKenzie exercises 3-4 months, and I totally credit them with my recovery.
I still do them every 2 hours or so (when I'm at home).
http://www.spine-health.com/wellness/exercise/what-mckenzie-method-back-pain-and-neck-pain

I am so happy to be able to walk.

Now I have another thing, don't know if it is related, but it is same leg. (right)
When I drive - even only 20 minues - my leg hurts.
and when I get out of car, I have to walk it off. I feel stiff, but the more I walk, the better I feel.

anybody else have this?

when I drove to my father's, a 40-minutes drive, I stopped every 15 minutes - and walked for 15 minutes.
someone suggested this is sciatica.
The pain goes up and ends in my right buttock.
I haven't looked it up yet.

A friend recommended a pillow that Bed,Bath sells - it has a cutout, is supposed to relieve pressure on the spine.
I will try that.

Just found out that my 72 year-old friend broke her hip!

She was visiting Mexico and is in a Mexico city hospital.
which is not reassuring.
Much as the US health system is flawed, for a broken bone, it is where I would wish to be.

Anyone here ever have a broken hip?
I don't know what happened. still trying to get details from her boyfriend, and find out how I can - if I can - speak to her.

She is healthy, I know that will aid her recovery, and I hope her immune system is strong to resist hospital-borne antibiotic-resistant infections.

Why we need another Clinton in the White House

Just before the New Hampshire primary, Bill Clinton famously flew back to Arkansas to personally oversee the execution of a mentally impaired African-American inmate named Ricky Ray Rector. The “New Democrat” spoke on the campaign trail of being tougher on criminals than Republicans; and the symbolism of the Rector execution was followed by a series of Clinton “tough on crime” measures, including: a $30 billion crime bill that created dozens of new federal capital crimes; new life-sentence rules for some three-time offenders; mandatory minimums for crack and crack cocaine possession; billions of dollars in funding for prisons; extra funding for states that severely punished convicts; limited judges’ discretion in determining criminal sentences; and so on. There is very strong evidence that these policies had a small impact on actual crime rates, totally out of proportion to their severity.

There is also very strong evidence that these policies contributed to the immiseration of vast numbers of black (and also white) Americans at the bottom of the economic ladder, according to the well-known conclusions of journalists, academics and other criminal justice experts. Federal funding for public housing fell by $17 billion (a 61 percent reduction) under Bill Clinton’s tenure; federal funding for corrections rose by $19 billion (an increase of 171 percent), according to Michelle Alexander’s seminal work, “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.” The federal government’s new priorities redirected nearly $1 billion in state spending for higher education to prison construction. Clinton put a permanent eligibility ban for welfare or food stamps on anyone convicted of a felony drug offense (including marijuana possession). He prohibited drug felons from public housing. Any liberal arts grad with an HBO account can tell you the consequences for poor, black American cities like Baltimore. As Alexander writes, “More than any other president, [Clinton] created the current racial undercaste.”

While it’s true that it was Bill who, as president, was ultimately responsible for these decision, Hillary was nonetheless a famously involved First Lady on political matters — a reputation she’s shown willingness to capitalize on in her new campaign. According to a 2013 Wall Street Journal report, Hillary has “signaled she would use the 1990s as a selling point if she jumps in the race, making the case that, as first lady, she was part of an era that found solutions to the same sorts of political difficulties that bedevil present-day Washington.” That legacy includes Bill Clinton’s “War on Drugs,” whether you like it or not.

As recently noted by Reason.com, Hillary actively lobbied for the aforementioned criminal justice reforms as First Lady and, as a New York senator, voted to expand grants that dramatically scaled up police involvement in anti-terror and homeland security efforts. She also said things like this, in support of a crime bill that would impose draconian new sentencing provisions:

“We need more police, we need more and tougher prison sentences for repeat offenders. The three strikes and you’re out for violent offenders has to be part of the plan. We need more prisons to keep violent offenders for as long as it takes to keep them off the streets.”

Does anyone watch Last Tango in Halifax?

I loved the show when it first started.

recently I missed an episode or two -- and when I came back -
there are whole story lines that I know nothing about!
someone lost a baby, different relationships, it seems now like a soap opera to me.

too much weird stuff
(and I don't mean lesbian marriage)

Black clergy draw parallels: Baltimore and Palestine

The struggle for social justice on the streets of Baltimore was likened to the struggle of the Palestinian people by two speakers at a recent conference exploring ways that black Christians and the African-American church can respond to the suffering and discrimination experienced by Palestinians living in Israel/ Palestine.

Reverend Hagler:

"This is what we as black people and people of color are having to deal with all the time, is white folks telling us that racism doesn’t exist, or that we should get over it, or “You got a President in the White House who is black, and so it can’t be that bad. What are you all complaining about?” But historically, always racism has been justified as being something that is non-existent and therefore people of color must be hallucinating about it.

When Indians talked about being pushed off their land, what were they talking about? Right? They were the violent folks, and the folks who settled the lands were the peaceful folks just trying to advance civilization.

And when black people say they’re having heartburn about what takes place in their community or what takes place on the job, everybody is saying “Now why are you such a malcontent?”

And what I’m getting at here is that we cannot see what’s going on in Palestine because Palestine is another racist paradigm, where folks want to deny that it exists."


-http://mondoweiss.net/2015/05/parallels-baltimore-palestine#sthash.rOetpBDa.dpuf

Pacifica network will have a discussion of Greek referendum at 3 pm EST

you can find a Pacifica network near you on the radio, or listen online.