Jennifer and Mike's Wedding

Our little Jennifer is all "grow'ed" up. She married a great guy, Michael James Brown. Mike is a welcome addition to our family. "He fits right in." The wedding was BEAUTIFUL.

There was dancing, man, was there dancing. Of course, the Cardona boys were in form.

And of course, there was LOVE !!!

More pictures to follow, but for now.....

Love from the Cardona's

Wedding Bells

Jennifer and Mike were married last night. A great time was had by all. More pictures, video and stories later.







Brandon found the DJ's hat collection.





So did his mom, Lola, I mean Lisa.

SNL

Saturday Night Live is really no longer funny. I rarely watch it anymore but every once in a while it captures the spirit of the old shows.

Darrell Hammond does a great Jesse Jackson.

Comb-Overs

This started out with a comb-over entry but quickly got out of control.

I was sitting in church last month when my favorite comb-over brother sat a few rows in front of me. Our church has stadium type seating so I was right above him. As I desperately tried to concentrate on the sermon, all I could think of was what went through this guy's mind as he got ready that morning. It had to go something like this:

"OK. I know I'm almost totally bald but let's see I can the use the remaining strands of hair I have to fool my friends, family and total strangers again".

Brother, you're fooling no one except yourself.

As the oldest cousin I feel it's my responsibility to warn the younger ones.
Don't do it.

They will put pictures of you on the internet.



Even if you're young. Don't do it.



Even if you're famous. Don't do it.



Take it from your aging, follically challenged, cousin and brother... Don't do it.

You need proof? A short history on my hair.

I started out with the coolest hair. I looked like a young Elvis.
By the way, check out the cock-a-doddle-do on Dave's head.
He looks like a young Kramer.



These 3 pictures are probably the happiest days of my hair. Shiny, somewhat straight and healthy. " ...lustrous hair was very important to me."

5th and 6th grade.





I'm the one on the left, for my non-family readers.



This was the beginning of the end. The year was 1968. I was in 7th grade and my hair began to betray me. It could have hormones or maybe it was the 60's but my hair had started an all out revolution.



This is not a mug shot but they should have thrown my hair in jail. Out of control. 10th grade.




Same year, I think. Trying to take back control of hair gone wild. Poor attempt.




A year later. No better. But look at me wrong and I'll kick your ass.




1974. The hair is in all out rebellion mode. I could hardly put the cap on.




1976. What can I say? I loved disco. Lots of blow drying in a feeble attempt to control the monster.



Same year. I had a girl tell me she didn't like my John Travolta look so I went back to my SuperFly look.




All I can say here is: married, two kids, a mortgage and I wasn't even 25 yet.
Your hair would do crazy things too.



Which leads us to today.



I had a friend once say I look better without hair. Well, after all the pain and heartache it's given me I say "Good riddance!".

I leave you with a picture of the beautiful human being responsible for my hairline, Papa Gume, taken when he realized his hair was gone and not coming back.



Dance, baby, dance. Wear it proud.

Living Old

Frontline is one of my favorite documentary TV shows. PBS, and by extension Frontline, usually has a politically left tilt. The US is regularly shown at it’s worse, “big business” is typically portrayed as evil and heartless and war is viewed and presented as political blunders instead of the necessary evil it is. Frontline is probably one their most balance shows. You can actually watch them online here. Here are the ones I'd recommend:

- Hand of God
- A Hidden Life
- Can You Afford to Retire?
- Secret History of Credit Cards
- Living Old

I just finished watching Living Old last week (on TV). You can watch it online in 6 ten minute segments. It was one of the most sobering shows I've ever watched on aging. It provoked sadness and laughter but more than that I came away with many questions and burdened with decisions I'll have to make as a child of aging parents and discussions I'll have to have with my own children as an aging parent myself.

Here's the opening line of the show:
For the first time in American history, "the old old" -- those over 85 -- are now the fastest growing segment of the U.S. population. Medical advances have enabled an unprecedented number of Americans to live longer, healthier lives. But for millions of elderly, living longer can also mean a debilitating physical decline that often requires an immense amount of care.

Hers are other excerpts:

"We're on the threshold of the first-ever mass geriatric society," says Dr. Leon Kass, chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics from 2002 to 2005. "The bad news is that the price that many people are going to be paying for [an] extra decade of healthy longevity is up to another decade of anything but healthy longevity. … We've not yet begun to face up to what this means in human terms."

Vast numbers of our elderly are living lives that neither they nor their families ever prepared for or imagined. Through the perspectives of the elderly, their families and the doctors and nurses who care for them, "Living Old" explores the modern realities of aging in both urban and rural America. The hour-long documentary takes viewers on an intimate and powerful journey that raises new and troubling concerns about what it really means to grow old.

For millions of Americans, living longer means coping with multiple chronic illnesses, increasing frailty and prolonged periods of dementia, which may last for years and sometimes even decades. Only one in 20 people over the age of 85 is still fully mobile, and roughly half will develop some form of dementia. "Everything started to go at 82 years," says Rose Chanes, now 96 and in assisted living. "I don't hear, I don't see. … You've got to be crazy to call it a blessing to live like this. … I call it a curse."

For the elderly and their families, the emotional toll is often severe. "With my mother, it's been a slow process, but in the last few months, … things have escalated," says Mary Ann DiBerardino, whose parents, married for 68 years and both in their 90s, now share a room in a nursing home. Her father has advanced Parkinson's, and her mother has Alzheimer's. "It's difficult some days when I'm not sure if [my mother] doesn't eat because perhaps she's forgotten how to use her utensils," says DiBerardino. "Or does she not know how to swallow? I keep trying to fix things, and even though my head says I can't, your heart wants to fix everything. Even with my nursing background and caring for [the] elderly and terminally ill, nothing has prepared me for taking on the role of caring for my mother."

In an attempt to lessen the burden on families and to ensure that their wishes are fulfilled, many elderly write advance directives, such as living wills, powers of attorney and do-not-resuscitate orders. "But the fact of the matter is, it's really impossible to describe all of those circumstances that one is going to face," says Dr. Kass. "[And] it's simply not true that we can know in advance how we ourselves will feel about many of these things once we find ourselves not 45 and fit, but 75 and viewing life with a different lens."

Decisions about life-prolonging treatments are also becoming increasingly complex. "My son … asked me to sign a paper that would authorize termination in case of [a] hopeless-looking condition," says Estelle Strongin, a 94-year-old practicing stockbroker. "And I said, 'No, I'm not signing that.' There are a lot of cases where doctors have said this patient has three months to live, and they've lived 30 years." When asked why so many of the elderly are signing such documents, Strongin responds that they sign because they do not want to see their children suffer. But, she adds with a laugh, "I said to them, 'I don't care—suffer.'"

As the nation ages, many believe that our health care system, with its focus on treatment and cure, is woefully ill-equipped to handle the new realities of long-term care. "Nobody's bothered to think about what the repercussions are of trying to keep people alive longer and longer," says Dr. David Muller, dean of medical education at Mount Sinai School of Medicine and co-founder of Visiting Doctors, a program that provides primary care to homebound elderly in New York City. "[It's] another bypass surgery, another transplant, … without anyone worrying about 'Well, what's next?'"

With families smaller and more dispersed than ever before, and more doctors choosing medical specialties over family medicine, many fear that the country is on the brink of a national crisis in care. "One out of five people are going to be older adults," says Dr. Jeffrey Farber, a geriatrician at Mount Sinai, "and there's not really anyone trained to care for them."

As our parents (and our children) age, I would really encourage you to watch this show. It's a good idea to start the discussion now.

Ross The Intern - AC/DC and Tom

My apologies to Steve Irwin, may he rest in peace, but if this guy doesn't remind me of Tom.

Tom: Do you remember that video we did when I was living up there? Dave and Chick had made a video from Florida poking fun of us up north and we retaliated by creating a revenge video. In one spoof you come in as AC/DC, the game show host, teaching us how to play Dave's favorite party game, Rabbit. Now I know where you got your character from.

Extreme Makeover

There's always a danger in criticizing a do-gooder but this show always made me feel uncomfortable. My blue-eyed beauty enjoys this show but I could never sit through the whole thing. I came across this commentary that pretty much nails it for me:

The gist of my comments were that I consider EMHE a socially unethical show, despite the show’s desire to portray itself, and its cast-members, as altruistic super-heroes, building needy people homes out of the goodness of their hearts. Considering that the main product that television companies sell is an audience, rather than a television show, my criticism centrally rested upon my own assumption, a good assumption if I do say so myself, that families chosen to receive new homes are, at least in part ..., on how large an audience their story will attract for their advertisers. In this vein, I asked whether the ends justified the means, and as with all questions of this nature, I answered that it depends on which ends and which means. If the ends are that a needy family gets a new house, and the means are a television network provides them with one, then maybe I could answer in the affirmative. However, I don’t think it is so simple. I think that the ends can very well be that advertisers make a lot of money through the means of exploiting the plight of needy families.

Here's more.

Comments are open for discussion.