Lech!

lech1Lech. In Poland you would know that there were two Lechs – some sort of mythical hero founder of the country as well as a ciggie smoking ship builder who led the freeing of the nation, won the Nobel and then made them cringe a little with his rough manners when they made him President. A little confusingly for the 1991 backpacker, it is also a brand of beer.

I like Lech. They were sitting on the Lenin Shipyards’s walls when I was in high school convinced others, Ronnie and Leonyd, were going to find a way to glaze us all. It it were not for Lech, along with the only Pope I will ever know just as “the Pope”, I would not have ended up in Poland, married who I married and had the life that has followed. Lech’s political movement, Solidarity, was officially recognized by the government 25 years ago today. Here’s a pre-posted scene from the 1991 parade for the first national day of celebration of the freeing of Poland. It’s all about good flags:

lech2

My Hits Of 1981

Twenty four years since high school ended and undergrad began. I sometimes wonder that, with the passing of time, that moment in my life is as distant as 1957 was to it. Ancient history I would have said then.

Anyway, someone has created a internet meme-thingie about the songs in the top 100 you really liked by showing them in bold and Michael picked it up for 1987 and John for (I think) 1976. In response, here are my notes from top ten of 1981:

1. “Bette Davis Eyes”, Kim Carnes – awful

2. “Endless Love”, Diana Ross and Lionel Richie – awful

3. “Lady”, Kenny Rogers – really awful

4. “(Just Like) Starting Over”, John Lennon

I had the 45 and gave it to a Beatles fan a couple of years ago. John Lennon’s death greatly affected me and my pals in the middle of our grade 12. It also spawned the ditto band show “Beatlemania” that people watched in Canadian rinks.

5. “Jessie’s Girl”, Rick Springfield

I actually liked this one. But, then again, I watched General Hospital after school. Synth, rocky guitar and the saucy lyric.

6. “Celebration”, Kool and The Gang

really awful and made worse when the committee girls at school played it about 12 times during what was billed as a “new wave dance”.

7. “Kiss On My List”, Daryl Hall and John Oates

I really only came to appreciate them as something I could stand around 1983.

8. “I Love A Rainy Night”, Eddie Rabbitt

Yee. Haa. Yet I recall driving around Truro singing the song on a summer evening between the end of one school and the start of another.

9. “9 To 5”, Dolly Parton – beyond redemption. Cow pie.

10. “Keep On Loving You”, REO Speedwagon

The soundtrack of my life…errr…I meant this really sucked if only for encouraging Richard (“Dickie”) Marks in the years that followed.

Click here for my entire top 100 list for 1981 if you really need to.

Slow

The internets are slow this morning as am I from an achy soccer-wracked corps. Why does the web slog sometimes so that my high-speed is like ice station #17 bad dial-up? Radio silence much of the day as we are off to the 3rd and 1st birthdays party of the neices.

Health Record Privacy

Here is an interesting couple of paragraphs from a US Court of Appeals case, Douglas v. Dobbs, Key, And District Attorney’s Office For The Twelfth Judicial District (US CA, 10th),
on privacy in relation to health care records:

The scope of personal matters protected by a right to privacy has never been fully defined. Supreme Court decisions “make it clear that the right has some extension to activities relating to marriage, procreation, contraception, family relationships, and child rearing and education.” Roe v. Wade… Because privacy regarding matters of health is closely intertwined with the activities afforded protection by the Supreme Court, we have held that “there is a constitutional right to privacy that protects an individual from the disclosure of information concerning a person’s health.” … We have previously applied this right in the context of an employer’s search of an employee’s medical records, Lankford v. City of Hobart…and in the context of a government official’s disclosure of a person’s HIV status. A.L.A. v. West Valley City…

Although we have not extended the “zone of privacy” to include a person’s prescription records, we have no difficulty concluding that protection of a right to privacy in a person’s prescription drug records, which contain intimate facts of a personal nature, is sufficiently similar to other areas already protected within the ambit of privacy. See, e.g., Griswold v. Connecticut…. Information contained in prescription records not only may reveal other facts about what illnesses a person has, but may reveal information relating to procreation ­ whether a woman is taking fertility medication for example ­ as well as information relating to contraception. See Eisenstadt v. Baird…(“If the right of privacy means anything, it is the right of the individual, married or single, to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or beget a child.”); Stidham v. Peace Officer Stds. & Training…(providing that disclosed information “must be highly personal or intimate” in order to receive constitutional privacy protection); Doe v. Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority…(holding that “[a]n individual using prescription drugs has a right to expect that such information will customarily remain private.”). Thus, it seems clear that privacy in prescription records falls within a protected “zone of privacy” and is thus protected as a personal right either “fundamental” to or “implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.”…

Anything in there you do not agree with?