Sample Articles: February-April 2005

The Pickle Jar

Author Unknown

The pickle jar, as far back as I can remember, sat on the floor beside the dresser in my parents’ bedroom. When we got ready for bed, Dad would empty his pickets and toss his coins into the jar. As a small boy, I was always fascinated at the sounds the coins made as they were dropped into the jar. They landed with a merry jingle when the jar was almost empty. Then the tones gradually muted to a dull thud as the jar was filled. I used to squat on the floor in front of the jar and admire the copper and silver circles that glinted like a pirate’s treasure when the sun poured through the bedroom window. When the jar was filled, Dad would sit at the kitchen table and roll the coins before taking them to the bank. Taking the coins to the bank was always a big production. Stacked neatly in a small cardboard box, the coins were placed between Dad and me on the seat of his old truck.

Each and every time, as we drove to the bank, Dad would look at me hopefully. “Those coins are going to keep you out of the textile mill, son. You’re going to do better than me. This old mill town’s not going to hold you back.”

Also, each and every time, as he slid the box of rolled coins across the counter at the bank toward the cashier, he would grin proudly. “These are for my son’s college fund. He’ll never work at the mill all his life like me.”

We would always celebrate each deposit by stopping for an ice dream cone. I always got chocolate. Dad always got vanilla. When the clerk at the ice cream parlor handed Dad his change, he would show me the few coins nestled in his palm. “When we get home, we’ll start filling the jar again.” He always let me drop the first coins into the empty jar. As they rattled around with a brief, happy jingle, we grinned at each other. “You’ll get to college on pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters,” he said. “But you’ll get there. I’ll see to that.”

The years passed, and I finished college and took a job in another town. Once, while visiting my parents, I used the phone in their bedroom and noticed that the pickle jar was gone. It had served its purpose and had been removed.

A lump rose in my throat as I stared at the spot beside the dresser where the jar had always stood. My Dad was a man of few words and never lectured me on the values of determination, perseverance and faith. The pickle jar had taught me all these virtues far more eloquently than the most flowery of words could have done. When I married, I told my wife, Susan, about the significant part the lowly pickle jar had played in my life as a boy. In my mind, it defined more than anything else how much my Dad had loved me.

No matter how rough things got at home, Dad continued to doggedly drop his coins into the jar. Even the summer when Dad got laid off from the mill and Mama had to serve dried beans several times a week, not a single dime was taken from the jar. To the contrary, as Dad looked across the table at me, pouring catsup over my beans to make them more palatable, he became more determined than ever to make a way out for me. “When you finish college, son,” he told me, his eyes glistening, “you’ll never have to eat beans again……unless you want to.”

The first Christmas after our daughter, Jessica, was born, we spent the holiday with my parents. After dinner, Mom and Dad sat next to each other on the sofa, taking turns cuddling their first grandchild. Jessica began to whimper softly and Susan took her from Dad’s arms. “She probably needs to be changed,” she said, carrying the baby into my parents’ bedroom to diaper her. When Susan came back into the living room, there was a strange mist in her eyes.

She handed Jessica back to Dad before taking my hand and leading me into the room. “Look,” she said softly, her eyes directing me to a spot on the floor beside the dresser. To my amazement, there, as if it had never been removed, stood the old pickle jar, the bottom already covered with coins. I walked over to the pickle jar, dug down into my picket, and pulled out a fistful of coins. With a gamut of emotions choking me, I dropped the coins into the jar.

I looked up and saw that Dad, carrying Jessica, had slipped quietly into the room. Our eyes locked, and I knew he was feeling the same emotions I felt. Neither one of us could speak.

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Legal Aid

Preparing for End of Life AARP survey shows most haven’t prepared Advance Directives.
By D. Marlane Porter, Attorney at Law

Last year’s controversy in Florida Supreme Court regarding the Terri Schiavo case has focused America on crucial issues for end of life decisions. Perhaps the biggest news from the case, is the lack of preparation by most Americans when it comes to the end-of-life issues.

An End of Life survey of AARP members 50 years of age and over noted that a little over one-half (55%) of respondents have an Advance Directive, such as a living will or a health care power of attorney. While 60% have spoken with family about end of life wishes, only 23% have spoken with a lawyer.

The preparation of Advance Directives – living wills, medical powers of attorney, and HIPAA authorizations – is key to avoiding emotional turmoil and legal battles later. There is nothing more heart-wrenching than watching a family battle advocacy groups, the courts, and the media to determine their loved one’s unstated wishes.

Advance Directives include three primary documents:

1. A Living Will is a statement of how an individual would like to be treated in the event that he or she is unable to make decisions regarding the use of life-sustaining medical treatment.

2. A Health Care Power of Attorney is the teeth of the living will. It authorizes an individual to communicate a client's medical instructions and make medical decisions upon the individual’s incapacity.

3. A HIPAA Authorization Form authorizes your health care power of attorney to access an individual’s medical information from health care providers.

Recently enacted federal law has created stringent penalties for health professionals who violate patient privacy by releasing information without written authorization, making this an all-important document. Choosing an Agent for Health Care Decisions The choice of agent is critical when creating Advance Directives.

The agent should be an individual who is, or can learn to be, comfortable with medical treatment options and the consequences of medical decision-making. Ideally, the agent reviews the document, discusses its terms with the individual and agrees to accept this responsibility.

Cases like the Schiavo case in Florida echo a warning to all Americans – from eighteen to one hundred and eighteen – to get their affairs in order and avoid a potential legal battle. Every individual has a right to determine how they live out their last days and owes it to their family to express those wishes. Failure to act can lead to anguish as families are left to sort through the emotional, legal, and moral ramifications at a time when they are most vulnerable.

Taking the step to contact an elder law attorney will allow an individual the opportunity to identify and remedy these issues before they become a problem for the ones we love.

D. Marlane Porter is an estate planning and elder law attorney and member of NAELA (National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys).

For more information about this article or specific elder law issues, call 480.464.7024 or email marlane@porterlawgroup.com

(Portions of this article provided by and reproduced with permission of National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys.)

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Heart Disease Risk Factors Rooted in Childhood

American Heart Association

Lifestyle factors that increase the risk of heart disease in adults begin to take hold in childhood and, possibly even before birth, according to two studies reported in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.

In one study, Boston researchers found that about two-thirds of 1,960 adolescents studied had at least one risk factor for heart disease, and almost 10 percent had a cluster of factors known as metabolic syndrome.

In the other study, British and Australian investigators looked at parental and early-life characteristics and their association with blood pressure in 5-year-old offspring.

The children of women who smoked during pregnancy had higher blood pressure compared to children of nonsmokers, and parents’ weight also influenced blood pressure. Breast-feeding was associated with a lower blood pressure.

Collectively, the findings suggest a need to start heart disease prevention efforts early in life, rather than after risk factors have become well established. “The impact of these data may be far reaching,” said lead author Sarah de Ferranti, M.D., M.P.H., in the cardiology division at Children’s Hospital of Boston. “[Medical] practitioners should be aware of the clustering of metabolic abnormalities in children, and affected children should receive risk-reducing interventions.”

The metabolic syndrome is defined by the presence of multiple heart disease risk factors: impaired fasting glucose, high blood pressure, low HDL, elevated trigylcerides, and obesity (measured by waist circumference).

A person who has at least three of the risk factors meets the criteria for the diagnosis of metabolic syndrome. The metabolic syndrome has been studied extensively in adults, but far less in children and adolescents.

Researchers adapted the criteria for adult metabolic syndrome to children, and then applied them to participants aged 12 to 19 years in the third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES III), conducted between 1988 and 1994.

Overall, 63.4 percent of the children and teenagers had at least one metabolic abnormality, said senior author Nader Rifai, Ph.D. Nearly one-third (31.2 percent) of overweight/obese adolescents had the metabolic syndrome.

The most common risk factor was a low level of HDL (good) cholesterol, seen in more than 40 percent of boys and girls. About 30 percent of adolescents had elevated levels of triglycerides, another type of blood fat, and between 20 percent and 30 percent of adolescents had a waist circumference that met the definition of obesity. Additionally, 9.2 percent met the criteria for metabolic syndrome (three or more risk factors), which occurred almost equally in boys (9.5 percent) and girls (8.9 percent), and in older (8.3 percent) and younger (10.3 percent) adolescents.

The distribution of metabolic syndrome by ethnic group was Mexican-Americans – 12.9 percent, non-Hispanic whites – 10.9 percent, and non-Hispanic blacks – 2.5 percent. These percentages for adolescents are similar to those reported in adults from the same ethnic groups.

Because metabolic syndrome is closely related to diabetes and obesity, the “results are not surprising in view of the high and rising rates of obesity and type 2 diabetes mellitus in U.S. children,” de Ferranti said. In the second study, Debbie A. Lawlor, M.B., Ch.B., Ph.D. (consultant senior lecturer in epidemiology, department of social medicine, University of Bristol, United Kingdom) and colleagues reviewed parental and early-life factors that influenced blood pressure in children at age five.

Interest in blood pressure at such an early age comes from the recognition that high blood pressure is a major risk factor for heart disease, and blood pressure in adults tends to follow the same pattern seen in childhood. Previous studies of blood pressure in childhood have tended to involve relatively few children, used different types of study designs, and produced inconsistent results. The study involved more than 8,500 Australian women and their offspring enrolled in the Mater-University (Queensland, Australia) study of pregnancy and outcomes.

The investigators evaluated a variety of variables for their potential influence on childhood blood pressure. The factors included ethnicity, smoking history, mother’s height and weight, father’s body mass index, family education, income and a variety of other factors. At age five, 3,864 offspring were examined. Children of women who had smoked throughout pregnancy had a systolic blood pressure (the first number in a blood pressure measurement) that was about 1 millimeter of mercury (mm Hg) – or point – higher at age five, compared to children whose mothers did not smoke during pregnancy. A comparison of women who quit smoking during pregnancy with those who continued, suggested that quitting during pregnancy could prevent the adverse effect on offspring blood pressure.

A mother’s age was associated also with higher blood pressure. A child’s systolic blood pressure was 0.7 mm Hg higher for every additional five years of age in women at the time they gave birth, Lawlor said. Breast-feeding for at least six months was associated with lower blood pressure.

Other factors associated with blood pressure were the mother’s weight and height, the father’s weight, and the child’s weight, height, and body mass at age five. The findings have implications for childhood prevention strategies that might yield benefits into adulthood, the investigators concluded. “Since childhood blood pressure tracks into adulthood, interventions aimed at early life risk factors – quitting smoking during pregnancy, breast-feeding, prevention of obesity in all family members – may be important for reducing the population distribution of blood pressure, and thus cardiovascular disease risk,” said Lawlor.

For more information about the content of this article or other questions or information regarding heart disease or stroke, call the American Heart Association at 602-414-5353, 800-AHA-USA1, or visit
www.americanheart.org or www.strokeassociation.org.

De Ferranti’s and Rifai’s co-authors are Kimberlee Gauvreau, Sc.D.; David S. Ludwig, M.D.; Ellis J. Neufeld, M.D., Ph.D.; and Jane W. Newburger, M.D., Ph.D.

This study was partly funded by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. Lawlor’s co-authors are Jake M. Najman, M.D.; Jonathan Sterne, Ph.D., B.Sc.; Gail M. Williams, Shah Ebrahim, M.D.; and George Davey Smith, M.D.

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A Fresh Start

By Irene Stillwell, Executive Director Arizona Senior Olympics

It’s traditional, at the beginning of a new year, to make resolutions, set goals and to determine to be better in some particular way. Then, Spring comes along and many of those resolutions are out the window!

Unfortunately, most of us set our goals unrealistically, and we are soon disappointed in ourselves when we fail to meet those goals in the time we think is appropriate.

Fitness goals are particularly susceptible to this disconnect from reality. People who have been sedentary for many years often think that, once they decide to get fit, that decision will be enough to propel them to success. However, getting fit is not a single decision, but rather a thousand decisions made day after day. When starting a new health or exercise habit, it’s wise to set small, short, attainable goals.

These goals should actually be easy at the start. Begin with something you know you can do. Feed your confidence to succeed with little successes, no matter how small. After a few weeks of small achievements, you’ll be ready to move the bar up and try something slightly harder. This kind of growth is very slow, but it enables you to accumulate the confidence you need to renew and build your daily resolve.

Here are some suggestions for small goals to get you started:

1. Walk around the block where you live every day for a week.
2. Do 10 arm curls with 3 lb. weights every day for a week.
3. Do a dozen leg raises every day for a week.

Remember, you are purposely starting very small and moving forward very slowly. Take a lesson from nature and know that renewal is within you. Give no attention to the failures of the past and begin again, taking it slow and sure.

For more information about fitness, contact Arizona Senior Olympics at 602-534-3500 or visit our website at
www.seniorgames.org