I Was Prescient

Back in the spring I wrote, while riffing on ethanol, about hand sanitizer. I had just attended a TIPS training, the training where they teach people who work in the hospitality industry how to identify and handle people who have had too much alcohol. Since I was also thinking about fuel alcohol, ethanol, at the time, it's not surprising that I ran across the article about the prison inmate who got loaded on Purell. I predicted then that children would end up getting drunk on hand sanitizer, either on purpose or because they licked it off their hands.

Turns out both things have happened, and I can thank the person who got to this site by Googling "how much purell to get drunk" for leading me to these stories.

Two little girls, at least, have ended up at the ER after eating hand sanitizer. One swigged it during an unsupervised visit to the bathroom. Another licked it off her hands at daycare. The second case was particularly frightening as the parents had no idea what was going on -- they picked up a sick kid from daycare and went to the ER. Their daughter could barely sit up in the chair and was having trouble focusing her eyes. The ER doctors could not figure it out until the preschool teacher questioned the other kids and heard about the hand sanitizer.

There are at least two other potential hazards associated with hand sanitizer. At Rant Your Head Off, we find a story about a new urine test to determine if recovering alcoholics are still firmly on the wagon. The test detects alcohol metabolites at very small levels, so small that it appears that a few people may have lost their jobs because of their hand sanitizer use.

And there's this one, from a comment on the NY Times "Freakonomics"blog:

Anyone know whether the stories of hand sanitizers combusting when sparked by static are true? The hospital I work for circulated a memo to that effect. Great-we already have to worry about contracting MRSA, HIV, HepB, and various other nasties at work-now we need to worry about hand fires??
Should’a gone into teaching….
D. Cheryl, R.N.

You know it's a bad day at work when your hands catch fire.

Meanwhile I'm reading Michael Pollan's An Omnivore's Dilemma. The first part of this book is all about corn. He attributes the rise of food engineering to our nations ongoing glut of corn, which we can produce cheaply as long as we can keep synthesizing nitrogen fertilizer from fossil fuels. During our nation's first glut of corn, in the mid 19th century, the excess was converted to alcohol, whiskey, a form that was easily transported and sold to city dwellers. Modern day liquor laws have made that sort of trade impossible today, so corn is converted to a host of other products that are recombined into engineered food. It does make me wonder if hand sanitizer was invented to solve a human need for sanitizing, or to create another market for corn products?

I've got to start writing more about the restoration of the constitution and the rebirth of democracy and common sense. If my predictions are going to come true, after all, I might as well make some really good ones.....

Leelanau Children's Choir

Anna in her choir regalia

Anna sang this weekend in two choir concerts, then again at the Leland Methodist Church this morning. They sang a lot of familiar songs, and some new ones as well. My favorites were the John Ritter carol "Rejoice and Be Merry," and "Gesu Bambino," sung by Allison Wodek, a choir graduate who returned as the guest soloist.

It was different to hear the choir sing in Northport, as this is the first time that they have ever used microphones. Although it is a bigger venue, I think I'd rather be challenged to listen, and maybe miss a few lines, than to have to compensate for the sound coming from the sides while the singer is in front of me.

I remind myself of that old curmudgeon in John Gardner's wonderful novel October Light, who grouses that if the angels were to descend from on high in this day and age, we couldn't hear them through the endless loop of amplified carols. At least I think that's what he wrote -- that book was "pruned" from Leland Library's shelves a few years back, as nobody (except me?) checked it out.

Ah, well. Choir endures. There were some exciting young voices this year, and the boys continue to stake out their own space in what used to be a girl dominated group. I look forward to their 15th anniversary spring concert, and I look forward to having all of my kids home this Christmas, with all of their music.

A Thermostat Poll

Over Thanksgiving, I spent the a few days taking an informal poll of the people at home and at work, asking the question: "Where do you set your thermostat?"

The range of answers was interesting, as was the range of thought that had gone into the decision. A good many people just automatically said "68," as if there were no other alternative, much the way they said "72" when I was a kid, before the energy crisis of the 1970's. The people who heat with wood, of course, have no thermostats, or they leave the thermostat on the backup heat set really low --45 or so-- and sit closer to the stove if they are cold.

People who have electric baseboard heat know that their heat is pricey, but they make up for it by only heating the rooms that they are actually using and turning the rest off. People with fuel oil furnaces are facing a 22% jump in fuel costs this year, but most of the people I talked to have already switched to natural gas or (in the remote areas) propane. Propane has also risen in price, by 16% according to today's newspaper, but nobody mentioned this.

One woman told me that her mother complained and wouldn't stay to visit if the thermostat was below 70. Parents of young toddlers were the most likely to set the thermostat at 68 despite worrying about the cost. As the ages of the kids rose, the setting of the thermostat dropped. One smart dad said that he starts out the winter with the thermostat at 65, but dials it down one degree a week until the kids get used to wearing socks and sweatshirts and he can run closer to 60 as a daytime normal. (He still turns it up to 65 for the hours worth of "getting up and getting dressed" time in the morning.)

Among the people heating with natural gas, one guy was keeping his thermostat at a whopping 78, for economic reasons. He shares the heat bill with the larger apartment in his building and pays one third; the neighbors of the monthly bill. Nate calculates that they only way to make sure that he's not subsidizing his neighbors is to turn the heat up high enough that his neighbors subsidize him. He has to strip down to his underwear to be comfortable, but he thought that wearing a sweatshirt around the house, as I do, must be awfully constricting. They also split the electric bill in a similar way, so in the summer, Nate cranks the AC up and wears clothes.

Most people turn the heat down at night, and a few mentioned how much they liked a gadget that I had never heard of, an electric mattress pad that preheats the bed and keeps the foot of the bed warm, even if you move your feet to a different spot.

The winners of my informal poll were Shelagh and Jordan, who had still not even turned their heat on as of Thanksgiving. Living on the south side of the apartment building and with their neighbors all turning the heat up, they found that the place stayed reasonably warm without it. "Around bedtime the temperature goes down to 60," said Jordan, "but we just go to bed."

Liz, the environmental science major, lives in an old dormitory with steam radiator heat. Although she turned her radiator completely off, she was still opening her window to cool the place as the radiator in the hall, with no shutoff valve, cranked out heat like nobody's business. I sent this article about radiator maintenance. It turns out you're supposed to bleed the radiators and level them, to keep the steam flowing more evenly, otherwise some rooms heat hotter than others, and the super ends up cranking up the heat to suit the coolest areas, while the people in the hottest areas open windows. Based on my own poll, I'm thinking that the problem is not the temperature, but how people think about the temperature.

These past few days it has gotten cold and windy. Hearing the furnace turn on every half hour sounds like wasting money to me, but such is winter.

Things I Didn't Know About Park Passes

I was trying to find a way to buy Sleeping Bear park passes online, to give as Christmas presents.

I didn't know that we could have bought park passes at the Leland Harbor all summer. We put off buying a new pass because the drive to Empire seemed so far.

I didn't know that Seniors (age 62 and over) could get a lifetime pass to all National Park fee areas for only $10. What a deal!

I didn't know that you could earn a park pass by volunteering at the National Lakeshore.

I still have to drive at least to the Dune Climb to buy passes. $20 gets you into the park, and all its great beaches, for one year.

The Christmas Shopping Post

The turkey and its stuffing are gone. It it snowing and blowing and the cars are sliding down the hill and into the ditch in front of the Kingdom Hall. The news anchors are keeping us breathlessly posted on the progress of "Black Friday" and "Cyber Monday", much as they kept us breathlessly updated on each wave of toy recalls a few weeks ago.

I was thinking that I was glad that I didn't have any little kids who were writing letters to Santa, requesting the latest in TV advertised trash. I asked some of the people at work what they were doing about toys for kids this year. "Well, I guess we'll just buy some toys, let them lick 'em, and see if they pass out," was one response. Another said: "Blocks. Can't go wrong with plain wooden blocks."

I realized that I had always struggled to fight the toy advertisers. I had, in fact, perfected a whole folklore about Santa and toy advertising, first published here two years ago. It went something like this:

The toys you see on TV are not really good toys. In the commercials they look like fun toys, but those kids aren't really playing. Those kids are actors and they are just pretending to have fun. Sometimes they are really good actors so the toys look like they're amazing --but if you get those toys they don't do what the commercial made it look like they do. The plane doesn't really fly. The doll doesn't really eat. They break, or the batteries run down, or there are so many pieces that it takes longer to clean up than it does to play.

Santa only brings toys that are going to be fun for a long time. He doesn't like toys that break or get their pieces lost. He likes to bring toys that can be whatever you need to pretend. He likes sturdy toys, and books that are good enough to read over and over. The people that make TV toys have to spend so much money to make those commercials that they don't have enough money left to make really good toys; that's why Santa won't put those toys in his sleigh.

It was a nicer world when the worst thing a toy could do was break or be boring. These days we have to look at toys as potential poison or potential recalls. Many of my coworkers are turning to electronics in their quest for safe toys. This scares me, too, as the "edutainment" of younger and younger children is a huge uncontrolled experiment on developing brains.

Over the years I have sought to replace seasonal shopping with other experiences. Music has played a huge part, as we devote a good deal of time to preparing for the Leelanau Childrens Choir concerts, as well as church services. The girls like to organize informal carolling parties, as well, using the holidays as an excuse to walk around the neighborhoods at night, maybe accepting a cookie or two.

We also cook a lot, making batch after batch of cookies, pies and sweetbreads. We also put together batches of oatmeal cookie mix and homemade baking mix, to give as presents. We sew polar fleece hats and mittens, make catnip toys, build birdhouses. When my kids talked about what they wanted to get for Christmas, I always asked them about the gifts they hoped to give.

Somehow, it all worked. Anna was one of the last kids in her class to give up the idea of Santa. Despite buying less and less, we seemed to have an abundance that convinced her. "There must be a Santa," she told me last year, "because you and Dad couldn't possibly afford everything that we have."

Furnace Chicken

Every year we hold out as long as we can before we turn the furnace on. It's usually a damp, cold day during the 3rd week of September when we cave the first time and turn it on for a day or two. This fall has been unusually warm, hot even, and sunny. If the house is 50 degrees in the morning, it will warm up to 56 when I open the curtains on the south side and cook a little bit. If I work outside for a while in 50 degree weather, then 56 seems quite warm when I come back in.

We finally caved and turned the heat on November 4th this year. I did it because we were going to visit Liz in Chicago for a few days, and I was too grateful to my brother for agreeing to live here and care for our menagerie to make him play our furnace game. As it turned out, that weekend ushered in the other kind of late fall weather: dark, damp, windy and cold. No more warming the rooms up with sunshine; we have been lucky these past few weeks if we can see to read a recipe at noon without turning on a light.

Still, the thermostat is rarely above 60, or 55 if there is only one person home. At night we turn it down to 50. I'm annoyed by the sound of the furnace kicking in all night long, and we have plenty of blankets. We close the doors to upstairs and heat up there only minimally. Anna must be turning into a teenager, because she rarely begs to turn the heat up anymore and she hangs out alone in her room regardless of the temperature.