Holiday Forever (a novel)
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Here are some reviews of my novel Holiday Forever, which is available for Kindle from Amazon.com:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Timeless Admonition, November 21, 2010
By SalmoGood literature questions the unquestionable, and Neil Haugerud answers the challenge on his maiden voyage in writing fiction. “Holiday Forever” is a decisive examination of how we warehouse the living in their waning years, as though our own imaginations have, themselves, ceased to engage in the joy of living. The characters are real, the places are real, the heartache is real but disguised in the myth that rural life endures because the close-knit community lends able support to mitigate the suffering of the unfortunate. The story is told with a reverence for diverse ways of living, borne of lengthy observation of social and anti-social behavior. If the characters prove forgettable, their lives are not and will be the subjects of an endless re-telling of the human experience. This writing is a gift of entertainment enshrouding a personal obligation that most of us will experience. If Pasteur was correct in asserting that “chance favors only the prepared mind”, then readers of this novel have Haugerud to thank for encouraging us to anticipate the final chapter in human preparedness.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Holiday Forever author neil haugerud, July 21, 2011
By Elaine Voss, Maple Grove MN.Holiday Forever is a poignant tale lead by 4 strong women, 2 sisters, an orphaned infant and a drill-sergeant type nursing home supervisor; each who overcame hurdles, each very different but each having guts and determination. Their lives are intertwined in a small Minnesota rural community. Among their stories: a nursing home is acquired, the infant, now an adult, becomes the central character. Holiday Forever is the new name and a revolution in how most nursing homes operate begins. Residents are called guests, their rooms change from prisons to HOME, where as any homeowner they are allowed to make changes within the room as they like.. They became involved in everyday decisions and activity. This is a glimpse of Holiday Forever. Fresh and alive. You laugh with them and you grieve with them. But bureaucracy brought it to a close.
The authors’ vivid descriptions of the characters gives them real life; you would recognize each person, if met on the street and you would call them by name. But more importantly the author brings the topic of how we care for persons who need assistance in living, whether our elders or our younger population, with an alternative example for discussion . Do we warehouse or do we provide an environment where living occurs inside of life, active to their ability, instead of living outside of life, waiting for the end of life? Some archaic practices and beliefs should be examined and reexamined.
Post script: As a daughter whose 93 year old mother died 3 months ago in a nursing home, I am grieved that so few options exist. There must be a better way but it will take determination. elaine voss
Your Recent History
Neil @ July 23, 2011
Changes Coming Soon To Renaissance Post
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There will be some changes coming soon to RenPost. There will still be blogging, but the frequency and focus will change. The end result will be streamlined, spiffed-up, and better than ever.
More to come.
Phoenix @ July 16, 2011
Lying About Tweets: Mike Parry Shows It’s OK, If You’re A Republican
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Two prominent politicians lied about what they tweeted, and tried to cover it up. One was forced out of politics, the other got a free pass.
The one forced out of politics? A Democrat. The one who got the free pass? A Republican, Mike Parry — who keeps getting free passes and wet kisses from various Minnesota media.
It’s enough to make a cat laugh — or bark, as the case may be.
(Crossposted to Mercury Rising.)
Phoenix @ July 15, 2011
Dayton Offers MN GOP Hobson’s Choice: Protect Rich Or Bust Unions
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As you may have heard by now, the Minnesota state shutdown is likely to come to an end soon, as Governor Mark Dayton offered the state Republican leadership a Hobson’s Choice:
Dayton offered to accept their June 30 budget proposal, which delays school payments and doesn’t tax the rich, on these three conditions:
– They dump all the ALEC-inspired social/policy agenda bullshit (including their own version of Scott Walker’s union-busting bill), crap which they’d spent the entire session pushing and which they’d tacked onto the bill
– They drop their plan to cut state employee numbers by 15%
– They approve a $500 million bonding bill to put people back to work in Minnesota.
In other words, he challenged them to show, once and for all, their true priorities.
And guess what? They’ve tentatively agreed to it.
That’s right, folks: The Republican Party of Minnesota not only jettisoned their union-busting, their stem-cell research ban, their mandatory picture voter ID demand, as well as their anti-stimulus stance and their deficit hawkery, just to make sure Governor Dayton didn’t raise taxes on the richest .03% of the population.
That should tell you something. So does the fact that Michael Brodkorb and other Republican leaders, who would have been filling their Twitter feeds with boasts about making Dayton cave if they really liked this deal, have done no such thing today. They now have to sell this to their freshman Tea Party goons, and that’s going to be difficult.
(Crossposted to Mercury Rising.)
Phoenix @ July 14, 2011
Why Do Conservatives Blame Fannie/Freddie When Banks Are the Real Crash Culprits?
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Why do conservatives and Republicans blame Fannie and Freddie when the banks are the real crash culprits?
That’s the question everyone should be asking. Prominently. On many nightly newscasts, where most Americans can see it.
Unfortunately, it’s seldom addressed anywhere where a majority of the American voting public might see it. Which is a pity, because the answers would be revealing (emphases mine):
The FCIC’s report put the majority of the blame squarely where it belonged: On the shoulders of the Wall Street executives who led their companies straight into the financial abyss. Rather than finding themselves in jail or in bankruptcy
court, you can find them in Sun Valley, Martha’s Vineyard and the Hamptons, living very well indeed off the hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation they Hoovered up during their years of mismanagement at the top.The report’s gutsy and accurate conclusion was not the unanimous view of the commission. Rather, it was endorsed by only six of the 10 commissioners, all Democrats. The four dissenters, who were Republicans, made their views known in two separate reports, which had some good points but went too easy on Wall Street’s behavior.
Now the author of one of those dissenting reports — Peter Wallison, a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute — appears to be on some kind of crazy crusade to rewrite history. He is intent on deflecting any blame
away from Wall Street and its unhealthy incentive system and toward the much-maligned government-sponsored entities, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.“Far from being a marginal player, Fannie Mae was the source of the decline in mortgage underwriting standards that eventually brought down the financial system,” Wallison wrote in a Wall Street Journal column published yesterday. “It led rather than followed Wall Street into risky lending.”
Sure, Fannie and Freddie — and their political cronies in Congress and the White House — had a meaningful role in the origins and the exacerbation of the crisis, as is well documented in “Reckless Endangerment,” a new book by Gretchen Morgenson of the New York Times and Joshua Rosner, a Wall Street analyst. But to pretend that Fannie and Freddie are the sole culprits is a terrible distortion of the truth of what actually
occurred.
So why do Republicans blame Fannie and Freddie for all of the crash? Simple: Because Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are government programs that help people who aren’t already filthy rich. Many of these people happen to have darker skin tones than do most Republicans or their voter base — or their financial base, which happens to be the very same banksters Wallison lets off the hook.
That’s right, kids: It’s yet another wrinkle of the Southern Strategy, wherein Corporate America and its GOP handmaidens cloak bigotry in the code words of finance, and use that bigotry to win elections.
Lo and behold, we find out (via Huffington Post) that Peter Wallison played fast and loose with the confidential information with which Darrell the Car Thief Issa entrusted him, leaking it to various Republicans and other ideological buddies and generally having a good old sleazy time with it while pretending to investigate the causes of the financial crisis. Somehow that doesn’t surprise me in the least.
Phoenix @ July 14, 2011
GOP Sends O’Reilly to Battle Bachmann
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Republican bigwigs fear a Michele Bachmann candidacy almost more than they fear taxing the rich.
This was shown yet again by FOX News mainstay Bill O’Reilly’s adversarial treatment of Bachmann when she was on his show Monday night:
Bachmann refused to directly address any of O’Reilly’s tough questions, prompting the visibly frustrated conservative host to role his eyes, audibly sigh, and finally laugh in Bachmann’s face when she invoked her “titanium spine.” Noting that the Republican leadership understands the need to raise the debt limit, O’Reilly chided Bachmann, saying, “You are the renegade here.”
Whoa! Not only is he ripping into Bachmann, he’s also telling FOX viewers that the debt ceiling must be raised. Guess Boehner and McConnell, on orders from the Wall Streeters who will be hurt first and worst in event of a default, have asked FOX to both try to explain fiscal reality to teabaggers thus far sheltered from it AND to try and hamstring Bachmann before she achieves her goal of becoming the next Tom DeLay: a powerbroker with access to the wallets of the religious right and thus the ability to run primary candidates against Republicans she doesn’t like.
(Crossposted to Mercury Rising.)
Phoenix @ July 13, 2011
Publicly Funded Jobs: Best Road to Economic Recovery
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Something to bear in mind as we see our president, eager for corporate millions to fill his 2012 coffers, largely agree with Republicans that the New Deal is icky and needs to be destroyed:
The need for direct public job creation efforts is greater today than at any time during the past seven decades. With a national unemployment rate that recently exceeded 10 percent and severe economic distress in hard-hit communities and population groups, a new federal initiative that puts jobless individuals immediately to work must be a central element of any strategy for restoring economic growth and responding to pressing human needs in 2010 and beyond. Public service employment (PSE) and transitional jobs (TJ) programs that use time-limited, paid work as the centerpiece of efforts to assist the unemployed offer tested and urgently needed models for combating the current recession and advancing longer-term workforce development goals.
The absence of recent experience and a corresponding program infrastructure to support the large-scale creation of publicly funded jobs presents daunting challenges, particularly in light of the rapid implementation necessary to improve employment conditions over the next year. Nonetheless, the history of federal job creation programs since the 1930s suggests that these challenges are not insurmountable. In many respects, the reluctance of key policymakers to launch a new PSE program this past year was rooted in a fundamental misreading of past research. Past experience provides ample evidence that public job creation can be undertaken quickly and effectively, with acceptable costs, manageable levels of substitution or displacement, and clear benefits to participants and their communities (Briggs 1981).
This paper makes the case for a multiphase approach to public job creation, beginning in early 2010 with “fast-track” efforts to support specific PSE projects launched by local governments and developing in 2011 and succeeding years into a more sophisticated strategy for combining publicly funded jobs with education or training for individuals facing major barriers to labor market entry. Innovative TJ programs now operating throughout the nation can provide key building blocks for, and guide the development of, a permanent public job creation program, one that can respond to changing economic circumstances while addressing the serious employment problems that persist throughout the business cycle.
To quickly ramp up program capacity and develop program infrastructure across the nation, a coherent federal strategy and focused investment are needed. In addition, to avoid a repeat of the current policy conundrum in future economic downturns (i.e., limited program capacity or infrastructure at times of greatest need), the policy goal should be to create a permanent PSE program that responds to changing needs across the business cycle. During recessionary periods, the program would play a countercyclical role. As labor markets tighten during periods of recovery, the program would support transitional jobs with a greater focus on hard-to-employ individuals who would otherwise be shut out of the labor market and have a goal of placing participants as soon as possible into unsubsidized employment. Appropriations levels for the public job creation initiative could be adjusted annually in response to changing levels of need, but it is essential that a program authorization and some local capacity remain in place over time.
Go read the full report over at The Urban Institute.
Phoenix @ July 12, 2011
Murdoch Empire Crumbling As New Phone Hacking Allegations Stream Forth
Posted in: Politics, Propaganda - News | Comments (10)
Things are going from bad to worse for Rupert Murdoch as the phone hacking scandal revelations start coming at an accelerated pace:
– Rebekah Brooks, former editor of the now-shuttered Murdoch tabloid News of the World and during whose editorship the phone hacks occurred, is on the hot seat publicly for what looks like her cheerfully callous attitude, especially towards the sacked NotW staff, most of whom had nothing to do with the phone hacking. She’s also a figure of interest for the police, who will soon be questioning her about her role in the scandal. Meanwhile, the redundant employees left her a final series of bons mots, buried in the crossword puzzle of the last edition.
– Now, one would think that if Murdoch was going to throw anyone to the wolves to save his empire, it’d be her. But noooo: Instead, reports the Financial Times, Murdoch may well be preparing to sacrifice Les Hinton, the current chief executive of Dow Jones and a Murdoch employee for 52 years — that’s nine more years than Rebekah Brooks has been alive — to try and save both her and his son James Murdoch, who is the current chairman and chief executive of News International and who has been linked to the phone scandal sufficiently as to endanger the planned takeover of UK TV channel BSkyB if he’s allowed to hang around.
– Oh, and even as he was jetting to London to personally oversee the defense of his tottering realm, he was hit with a blast from this side of the Atlantic, courtesy of the UK Mirror:
…[Murdoch] flew straight into another storm as it was claimed 9/11 victims may have had their mobiles tapped by News of the World reporters. And there was more bad news when it was revealed nine reporters allegedly at the centre of the phone scandal and claims of police corruption could face jail, along with three officers.
After he spent time at News International’s Wapping HQ in East London, 80-year-old Mr Murdoch held crisis talks with Mrs Brooks, 43 – who denies any knowledge of the Milly phone tapping – at his home in Mayfair.
The pair chatted behind closed doors as a former New York cop made the 9/11 hacking claim. He alleged he was contacted by News of the World journalists who said they would pay him to retrieve the private phone records of the dead.
Now working as a private investigator, the ex-officer claimed reporters wanted the victim’s phone numbers and details of the calls they had made and received in the days leading up to the atrocity.
A source said: “This investigator is used by a lot of journalists in America and he recently told me that he was asked to hack into the 9/11 victims’ private phone data. He said that the journalists asked him to access records showing the calls that had been made to and from the mobile phones belonging to the victims and their relatives.
“His presumption was that they wanted the information so they could hack into the relevant voicemails, just like it has been shown they have done in the UK. The PI said he had to turn the job down. He knew how insensitive such research would be, and how bad it would look.
“The investigator said the journalists seemed particularly interested in getting the phone records belonging to the British victims of the attacks.”
– Oh, and remember, the News of the World isn’t the only Murdoch property that’s accused of phone hacking — the Sun is as well.
Phoenix @ July 11, 2011
