Prepare for some supercar tears, as a road-legal McLaren P1 LM has smashed the infamous Nürburgring Nordschleife lap record. Stealing the production car lap record crown from Lamborghini – something the Italians are unlikely to be pleased about – the exceedingly limited-edition coupe shaved not just tenths of a second but full seconds from the previous lap time of 6:52.01. … Continue reading
I was ill prepared for my mother’s decline. She lived alone until she was 96 and refused to let me get her home health care help. My husband and I did everything we could so she could live comfortably at home.
And then she fell.
It wasn’t the first time, or the last time, but it was the fall that changed everything. Statistics show one fourth of Americans over 65 fall each year and the results can be devastating and life changing. Women, often with kids and lives of their own, become the primary caregivers and decision-makers when a parent has an accident.
My mom―so strong-minded, stubborn and commanding―could no longer walk on her own or care for herself. After 6 weeks in rehab I brought her back to her home and had to face a new reality: She could no longer live alone. Ambulettes to doctor appointments, a stair lift to get her up to her bedroom, and 24 hour live-in care were her new life.
I promised her long ago that I would never put her in a nursing home, and I nearly quite ran myself into the ground that first year trying to keep my word. But over time, once I got the right caregiving team in place, I was able to deal with the day-to-day running of her life as the aids in her home cared for her needs and kept her safe.
We made it through the first two-plus years and she turned 99 years old in March. I survived the role reversal and trauma of the crisis her fall created in our family system. Here are some of the things I learned and discovered trying to navigate through eldercare.
1. It’s like going to a new country. You will find yourself in terrain never traversed before. It is especially hard when you are new at caregiving — as many of us are — and perhaps more accustom to your parent taking care of your needs. It may be extremely uncomfortable, painful, and traumatic — for all involved. And it is not a country you really every wanted to be in but there you are. You must adjust to the language and customs of that world, and a new way of being in relationship to your parent.
2. The workload is enormous. Caring for an elderly parent becomes a second job — or a third, or fourth job if you have a job, a family, kids, and other responsibilities as most of us do. Or it is a first job when you jump in to deal with a crisis and then have a hard time getting out and back to your life as you knew it. People say the parent becomes the child. But this nothing like caring for a child. This is caring for a full-sized person who has a life, a personality (something a really strong one!) and the needs of an adult. This person is not as easy to lift as a child. Caring for an aging parent involves caring for an entire life—dealing with their bills, banking, medical care, insurance, home care, end-of-life care, managing the staff in their home or dealing with a facility.
3. One person usually does the lion share. A good friend of mine told me that when her mom became less capable, she and her two siblings all moved permanently to Florida to care for her with their respective mates. “It takes three of us,” she said. Sadly, most families cannot or do not pool together to share the workload. The person closest, and most able or willing, often ends up with it by default. It can tear families apart so try to find a way people can contribute in a way they are able, and do what you can to avoid resentments because when your parent is gone, your siblings are all you got. That is not to say the main caregiver will not get resentful. We have to honor that feeling, too, rather than stuff it down.
4. Fear that a parent will die on your watch is overwhelming. Most of us are terrified a parent will die, under normal life circumstance. When that person is under your care and you are responsible for health decisions, it can be very scary. Especially if you are caring for that person in their home or your home. Calls have to be made to experts, research on state laws have to be conducting, and you absolutely have to know your mom or dad’s final wishes. The natural thing to do is call an ambulance if someone seems sick, dizzy, weak, or appears to be having a stroke or heart attack. Or has had an episode that has rendered them unconscious. But what if your parent has a health directive of DNR – do not resuscitate — under any circumstance. How can you not call an ambulance? Most of us will instinctually react by doing all we can to keep our parents alive, but that may not always be their finish wish.
5. Anticipatory grief can grip you. When a parent becomes injured or too sick to care for themselves, it’s a shock. The worry that a parent will die can be overwhelming, especially if you are called to prepare for it medically and logistically. Anticipatory grief lives beneath the surface and is the grief over what is to come. It can make you deeply sad and cause depression. We may not even know what’s causing because we think we have nothing to grieve over if a parent is still with us. It is best to recognize it, address feelings and fears, and have a good cry (on a regular basis if need be). Seek professional help as needed.
6. You are nearing the end of a road long traveled. The most awful revelation is that your parent’s life is fading, coming to a close, and that is a hard thing to let in. You’ve know that person longer than anyone in your life and whether the relationship has been wonderful or seriously flawed, this has an impact on adult children.
7. When you find good home care attendants honor them. The person caring for your parents becomes one of the most important people in his or her life. And this person is integral to every day as well as every emergency. This person becomes like family. A good, professional home care attendant who has a good work ethic, and realizes their main and only job in your parents’ home is to care for that person, is key to peace of mind for you and your family. Thank them regularly.
-Laurie Sue Brockway
Have you learned a special lesson while caring for an aging or ailing parent?
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A team of lawyers challenging President Donald Trump’s travel ban in Detroit asked a federal judge there to compel the Trump administration to turn over a memorandum that former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani is believed to have written in support of the travel restrictions.
U.S. District Judge Victoria Roberts had already ordered Department of Justice lawyers to come up with the document by last Friday, but the government offered “a laundry list of objections” and refused to comply, according to a motion filed Friday by a coalition that includes the Arab American Civil Rights League and the ACLU of Michigan.
The motion was filed a day after a federal appeals court in Richmond, Virginia, largely upheld a national injunction forbidding the Trump administration from enforcing the travel ban, which a majority of judges found “drips with religious intolerance, animus, and discrimination.”
Since the White House rolled out the first travel ban in late January and a watered-down version in March, courts across the country have prevented it from going into effect, concluding that the executive order is likely unconstitutional.
The plaintiffs in the Michigan case believe Giuliani’s memo is “central” to their similar argument that Trump and his team crafted the travel ban with the intent to discriminate against Muslims — a claim that, if proven, would mean the government violated the Constitution’s prohibition on expressing disfavor for a religious group.
“The Government is engaged in a shell game to keep the Giuliani Memo out of reach of Plaintiffs and the Court, variously resorting to breathtaking assertions of presidential immunity, threats of future claims of privilege, and bizarre contortions of normal discovery practice, all while refusing even to search for a single document or respect this Court’s May 11 Order,” read the challengers’ motion.
A number of judges, including those who ruled against the travel ban on Thursday, have taken notice of a Fox News interview — conducted one day after Trump signed his original executive order — in which Giuliani said Trump consulted with him on how to “legally” enact the Muslim ban he promised during his campaign.
“Giuliani was quite clear that the President wanted to enact a ‘Muslim ban’ and had assembled a commission to study how to create a ‘Muslim ban’ legally,” wrote U.S. Circuit Judge Stephanie Thacker in a concurring opinion agreeing that statements made after a president takes office are relevant to the case.
In a strange twist earlier this week, Giuliani told a judge in an unrelated New York case that he played no role in crafting and drafting the executive order banning travelers from several predominantly Muslim nations from entering the country — an apparent contradiction that could raise suspicions for Judge Roberts, who is handling the dispute over the memo.
Jason Raofield, an attorney with the legal team trying to get hold of the memo, suggested in an interview that the government’s claim the document is beyond their reach and had no bearing on the content of the executive order is an attempt on Trump’s end to take them for fools.
“How gullible does he think we are, and what is he hiding?” Raofield said.
A ruling from Roberts is expected in the coming days or weeks, as is another ruling in a separate travel ban challenge brought by the state of Hawaii.
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Some news organizations have beefed up their ranks with conservative voices since the 2016 presidential election, a response Hillary Clinton said is misguided.
“The cable networks seem to me to be folding into a posture of, ‘Oh, we want to try to get some of those people on the right, so maybe we better be more, quote, evenhanded,’” Clinton said in an interview with New York magazine published Friday.
Author Rebecca Traister described how Clinton’s “brow furrows” upon mention of climate changes skeptics Bret Stephens and George Will recently joining The New York Times and MSNBC, respectively.
“Why…would…you…do…that? Sixty-six million people voted for me, plus, you know, the crazy third-party people,” said Clinton, who won the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes. “So there’s a lot of people who would actually appreciate stronger arguments on behalf of the most existential challenges facing our country and the world, climate change being one of them! It’s clearly a commercial decision. But I don’t think it will work. I mean, they’re laughing on the right at these puny efforts to try to appease people on the right.”
Clinton also jabbed at The New York Times for recently launching a feature encouraging people to “Say Something Nice” about President Donald Trump: “I never saw them do that for me.”
Looking back on the 2016 race, Clinton said she “underestimated” the impact of WikiLeaks publishing unflattering emails from members of the Democratic Party. The U.S. intelligence community has since concluded that Russian hackers stole the messages.
Emails dripped out daily in October in a fashion that was “innocuous, boring, inconsequential,” Clinton said ― yet people “played like it was some breathless flash.” She said conservative media outlets amplified the contents of the emails, but added that the mainstream press played its own role in giving the documents outsize attention.
“Look, we have an advocacy press on the right that has done a really good job for the last 25 years,” Clinton said. “They have a mission. They use the rights given to them under the First Amendment to advocate a set of policies that are in their interests, their commercial, corporate, religious interests. Because the advocacy media occupies the right, and the center needs to be focused on providing as accurate information as possible. Not both-sides-ism and not false equivalency.”
Read Traister’s full piece here.
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You may not think it, but there’s a direct relationship between plunging your chopsticks into that white, quart-sized box of cheaply priced Chinese food — and a laborer diligently driving a spike to lay the railroad tracks that became the gateway to the American West.
May, which is Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, marks the anniversary of the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad. It was largely built by Chinese immigrants from 1864 to 1869, working at a grueling pace for less money than white workers. And these labor practices have an impact today on how much we’re willing to pay for Chinese food ― rooted in a perception that Chinese labor is inherently “cheap,” historians say.
The earliest Chinese restaurants in America were created for Chinese railroad laborers, who were under contract and lacked negotiating power as they laid tracks from Omaha, Nebraska, to Sacramento, California ― cutting through the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada. With Chinese laborers earning an estimated two-thirds of what white workers made, owners had to keep restaurant prices low, Beatrice Chen, programming vice president at the Museum of Chinese in America, explained to HuffPost.
The mainstream American consumer mindset is that there is a ceiling to how much we’re willing to pay for Chinese food.
“This perception of Chinese restaurants has stuck, even though high-end Chinese restaurants in Asia are common and popular,” Chen said. “The mainstream American consumer mindset is that there is a ceiling to how much we’re willing to pay for Chinese food, even if they are made with the same fresh ingredients and intricate cooking techniques as say, French or Japanese cuisine.”
The railroad also laid the foundation for perceptions of Chinese people themselves. White workers at the time were unionizing, and were less willing to work for lower wages. Railroad executives had been skeptical of the aptitude of Chinese workers, but the laborers set out to prove them wrong, Chen explained.
“This led to the general perception that Chinese were willing to work for lower wages and were job stealers,” she said.
But what was perceived as a robotic work ethic might have just been survival, Beth Lew-Williams, an assistant professor at Princeton specializing in Asian American history, told HuffPost in an interview in December. She pointed out a discriminatory labor system within the railroad.
Chinese were paid less, given the worst strenuous jobs. People against the Chinese saw this as revealing of their innate nature.
“It was a race-based dual wage system at the time,” Lew-Williams said. “Chinese were paid less, given the worst strenuous jobs. People against the Chinese saw this as revealing of their innate nature. That Chinese were fundamentally ‘cheap’ labor and designed to do this back-breaking labor.”
On top of negative perceptions, Chinese contributions were largely erased through history. Chen said that of the 17,000 railroad workers, 15,000 were Chinese, though estimates vary. A photo below of the final stake being driven into the track at Promontory Summit, Utah, would have people believe they didn’t contribute at all.
“I hope that telling and disseminating American history told from Asian American perspectives will illuminate that Asian Americans are not necessarily quiet (per the stereotype), but rather, Asian American history/stories and perspectives tend to be silenced in the mainstream,” Chen said.
Following completion of the tracks, the U.S. implemented the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, stemming further immigration of Chinese laborers. It was the first major law that banned a group’s immigration to the U.S. based on ethnicity.
“The Chinese were originally seen as racially unassimilable,” Lew-Williams said. “They could not become Americanized. They were simultaneously racially inferior, backwards, savage heathen ― and in some dangerous ways ― superior.”
The act was technically repealed on Dec. 17, 1943, allowing 105 Chinese visas per year. The measure was largely seen as an attempt to maintain U.S.-China relationships against Japan during World War II.
In 1965, the Immigration and Nationality Act fully reversed exclusionary practices, which some historians say was meant to prop up Asians as the “model minority” during the Civil Rights movement ― sending a message to other minority groups.
Much has been written about the dangers in grouping together Asian Americans as a model minority monolith and erasing the experiences of immigrants. Peter Kwong, a former Asian American studies professor at Hunter College, pointed out that the struggles of the original Chinese Americans have persisted.
“Because some Chinese people succeeded doesn’t mean working-class Chinese have the same capability and upward mobility. It’s a class issue,” Kwong told HuffPost in an interview before he died in March.
It may be that food is the easiest lens through which to view such thorny topics as class, race, social mobility and how much value we place on a given culture.
If you take price as a surrogate for prestige … there are some cuisines we are willing to pay for and some we are not willing to pay for, and that is related partly, I think, to how we evaluate those national cultures and their people.
Krishnendu Ray, a professor of food studies at New York University, has written about the topic, and said that we might simply hold less veneration for food from certain countries that we see as less well-off.
“If you take price as a surrogate for prestige … there are some cuisines we are willing to pay for and some we are not willing to pay for, and that is related partly, I think, to how we evaluate those national cultures and their people,” Ray said in Voice of America.
Eddie Huang, owner of Baohaus and a host on Vice, often talks about how mainstream appreciation of food and culture remain a barometer for how conditional your status is as a foreigner, and of your stock value in America.
Huang has expressed dismay that immigrants like his parents feel they have to work harder just to achieve the same pay as non-immigrants. And thumbing his nose to any such established expectation, Huang has said in the past:
“I sell Taiwanese gua bao for a full f**king price in America.”
Read more from HuffPost on Asian Pacific American Heritage Month.
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There is only one warrior Conan, and he was played by Arnold Schwarzenegger in the 1980s. Unfortunately for the late-night host of the same name, there is not the same level of fear struck in the hearts of opponents when they hear the name Conan O’Brien.
So you can imagine that Wonder Woman Gal Gadot felt pretty confident going into a training session with Coco.
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After a slight delay, the first official Friday the 13th game since 1989 is available today on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. If you want to jump right into the action at Camp Crystal Lake, though, you might have to wait for Friday the 13th: The Gam…
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