Dancing Upside Down

Loopy & Droopy!

This teacher obviously never had to go through a neuropsych evaluation!

I cannot believe how tired I am still today!  Yesterday I was toast.  Just non-functional the whole day.  I was unbelievably exhausted.  Today I am better but I am still doing silly things our of sheer fatigue. 

I am especially disappointed with this response because I thought I had done so well fatigue-wise.  When I had been tested in September I was so tired after 2 hours of testing that I tipped back the seat in my truck and slept for 45 minutes.  This  Monday the test was something like 4-5 hours of actual testing time and we took an hour lunch break in the middle.  At the end of the testing I still felt good enough to go and run some errands.  I was not at all expecting this delayed effect!

Thank you to Marty Bucella for the use of this cartoon and others. 

Neuropsych Evaluation

On Monday, I had a Neuropsych Evaluation; a day-long series of tests to more definitively pinpoint the problem areas of my brain function. By the end of the test the Neuropsychologist was telling me how excellent Harborview's Cognitive Rehabilitation Unit is and that I will be in good hands there, etc.  It was obvious to both of us that the day of testing had highlighted some serious gaps. We will meet again in two weeks to go over the results. 

As I left the building and headed out to my truck, I was just hit with this huge:

"Damn! This really is for real!"

Of course I do know it is "for real".  I have been looking forward to getting this evaluation for months because it is supposed to be a "holy grail" of tests for brain injury.  The information gleaned from the tests will determine the next steps in cognitive rehabilitation and other related treatment. 

I just didn't want to be there; being the me I am now walking out of that office door.  I still want to wake up and find that this is all a dream and that I really am a happy, healthy, successful project manager making a good living. The reality of it; the immensity of it; difficulty of it; the financial effects of it; etc. ... It is a lot to take in.

Punzi Scams & Investors' Dough

This cartoon is by Craig Marks. Try as I might, I could not link to him to give him due credit. He apparently writes an occasional Opinion column for the Akron News.

Ponderings on the Madoff Scam

And just Whose Responsibility is Due Diligence?

I am finding this whole Bernard Madoff scam fascinating.  Sad in some ways, instructional in others, and interesting in most. 

I find it especially interesting because back in the 1980’s a large group of friends in Colorado got hooked into an “investment opportunity” with M & L Business Machines which turned out to be a major Ponzi scam.  

To a large extent I think I can imagine Madoff’s roll in this in the beginning.  The desire to be seen as important, successful, beneficent, etc.  I even would bet that originally he had no plans for this to be a Ponzi scam (which is significantly different from the M & L scam). Madoff wanted to look good and good returns did that.  I am fairly sure he was initially planning that “someday soon" he was going to make "the big one"; the trade or investment that was going to be huge and make up for his losses. 

But ego feeds the ego.  Once he was on his way to building the image he had always wanted he was never able to stop playing the game and everyone, himself included, became more and more trapped.  I think he has known it to be a Ponzi scam for years, even decades, but I wonder if he really thought it was going to collapse.  Denial is a powerful force!

“How could this happen?” is a question rocketing around the news rooms and internet.  I am finding it fascinating to look at it for myself and in a bigger sense.  This is such an “educational opportunity”!

First, just on the practical side of things – there is no way at all that I believe that Madoff was in this entirely alone.  He was the main guy and is the “fall guy” but there is no way this huge of a scam was accomplished without others in his company knowing that there was something dreadfully wrong and deciding to play along.  I sincerely wonder if we will ever know all the players.  But the main interest for me is how it happened in a bigger sense and what I can learn from it.

The first lesson in Investments 101 is to diversify.  Investopedia defines diversification as A risk management technique that mixes a wide variety of investments within a portfolio. The rationale behind this technique contends that a portfolio of different kinds of investments will, on average, yield higher returns and pose a lower risk than any individual investment found within the portfolio.”

Why did organizations and individuals who know this rule lose so much in Madoff’s scheme?  Two reasons.  The first is that the products that Madoff’s company offered appeared to be quite diversified.  An individual and even a manager could have put all of their funds into Madoff’s products thinking they had a “diversified portfolio”.  

The second reason is a little more sticky.  It involves a responsibility of following things through in detail, due diligence.  

How many people reading this (if anyone is!) truly know where your IRAs are invested?  Yes, back when I had a retirement portfolio (pre injury) I could have told you that I used UBS Financial and the name of my financial advisor.  I possibly could have mentioned the name of a couple of the mutual funds too.  But beyond that?  I barely took any notice of what stocks were held and traded within the funds.   The returns were good and I trusted my investment planner.  I passed off the responsibility of detailed due diligence to my investment manager.  

In the Madoff case it appears that the responsibility of due diligence was passed down the line over and over:

Investment firms that did business with Madoff have also been sued. New York University said it lost $24 million in investments managed by Madoff, according to a lawsuit filed Dec. 23 in New York state court in Manhattan against fund manager J. Ezra Merkin and his Gabriel Capital LP fund and Ariel Fund Ltd. The school alleged Merkin invested NYU’s money with Madoff without telling investors or performing proper due diligence.

In a separate proposed class-action against Merkin, who is also the chairman of auto lender GMAC LLC, Harry Susman, a lawyer for The Calibre Fund, alleged he misled investors by claiming to have put investor money in a “diverse portfolio of securities.”

"Madoff Must Reveal All Assets by New Year’s Eve, Judge Rules”  by Eric Larson

Exactly whose responsibility is it in these above cases?  Exactly who did not perform proper due diligence?  When is it okay to pass off the job of due diligence to someone else?  There are going to be many a jury deliberating just such a topic in years to come!

Okay, so the question of Diversification morphs into the Responsibility of Due Diligence.  

Another lesson to take away from this is that the definition of Diversification needs to be broadened.  Investment Diversification must also include diversification among fund managers and companies not just “within the portfolio”. 

I think that is the thing that amazes me the most in seeing some large institutions and charities lose so much money; that they placed all of their funds – tremendous amounts – in the hands of one single fund manager . . . who then invested all of it in Madoff.  

I think I will end this post here since it has gotten so long and look at other aspects of “How could this happen?” in some future posts.

Madoff & Greed by Tweed

How sad that a "Boss Tweed" cartoon drawn and published in 1871 is so very current for todays times.  "The Brain" was drawn by Thomas Nast.  It was published by Harper's Weekly on October 12, 1871. 

Recipes & Gardening

I love cooking.  I have decided that anytime I mention something that I have cooked in a post I am going to try to post the recipe as well.  I hope my dear readers will try them out and find them to their liking.

I am also going to post gardening tips for some of the vegetables, fruits, and herbs used in the recipes from time to time.  I am hoping to use this blog as a place to share this information and also to accumulate it for my own use.

Roasted Parsnip Soup

Chef's Table featured chef Mary Cleaver.*

Makes 8 to 10 serving

For SPICED OIL:

INGREDIENTS

• 1 cup olive oil
• 1 tablespoon cumin Seeds, crushed
• 1 tablespoon coriander seeds, crushed
• 1 teaspoon aleppo pepper** (see below for substitution)
• ½ teaspoon smoked paprika
• 1 teaspoon fine sea salt

SPICED OIL PREPARATION: Mix all ingredients in a sauce pan. Heat over medium heat stirring constantly for about 5 minutes. Set aside.  Allow to cool completely then strain and set aside until ready to use. 

For ROASTED PARSNIP SOUP:

INGREDIENTS:

• 2 ½ pounds parsnips, peeled and diced (I do not have a scale so I used about 12 cups)
  
• 1/2 cup olive oil
  
• Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
  
• 10 cups vegetable stock
  
• 1 medium yellow onion, diced
  
• 8 to 10 cups vegetable stock, warmed
  
• 2 teaspoon toasted whole cumin seed, ground (original recipe called for only 1 tsp.)
  
• 2 teaspoon toasted whole coriander seed, ground (original recipe called for only 1 tsp.)

SOUP PREPARATION:

Preheat oven to 450 F. Toss the parsnips with ¼ cup of the olive oil, salt, and pepper in an oven proof roasting pan. Add 2 cups of the stock, cover, and cook until most of the liquid is absorbed, about 20 to 25 minutes. Uncover and roast until the liquid is absorbed and the parsnips are a deep golden brown, about 10 minutes.

Dry roast cumin and coriander seed in a small pan stirring constantly. Set aside and allow to cool.  Grind using a mortar & pestle or spice grinder.

Heat the remaining ¼ cup of olive oil in a heavy bottomed saucepan. Add onions and sauté until translucent, about 8 minutes, then add cumin and coriander. Saute for about 5 minutes or until the spices are fragrant, then add the remaining 8 cups of warmed stock and the braised parsnips to the pot. Bring to a boil and simmer about 5 minutes. Remove from the heat and carefully puree the soup until smooth.  (I highly recommend an immersion blender here but you can do it in a blender in batches.) Adjust seasoning and serve with a drizzle of spice oil.

*Most of this Parsnip Soup recipe is taken from ABC's Chef'sTable website however, I have also added my cooking notes.

**Aleppo Pepper is a dark red, robust, sweet and sharp chili pepper from the Aleppo region of Syria, with moderate heat that doesn't overpower its fruity flavor. With a high oil content, dried crushed aleppo pepper has a deliciously deep, aromatic flavor, with a bit more heat than paprika. It is delicious in chili, grilled chicken breast, steak or chops. Aleppo Pepper is attractive to sprinkle on potatoes, deviled eggs or chicken/tuna salads. In Syrian cuisine it is used for many dishes, especially soups, salads, and fish.  Subsitution:  Ancho peppers OR 4 parts sweet paprika plus 1 part cayenne pepper

"Shoulding" on myself

Tonight I am having a hard time being positive.  I feel really badly about that.  Almost guilty; okay . . . skip the actually; I feel guilty.  I feel I should do better than this.  I find myself lacking. 

I am having trouble being positive because I have had a long day and question how I have spent it.  One of the big problems I have from the brain injury is that I pretty much lack an ability to prioritize.  I literally am not able to figure out what is more important than something else.  Therefore I worry that whatever I have spent time doing might have been the "wrong" thing; that it was something far less important and than something else that I did not do.

I also feel frustrated at how long things take me.  I went into the kitchen around noon thinking I would quickly get some parsnip soup going but one thing led to another to another and everything took far longer than I had thought . . . I literally spent the rest of the day and evening in the kitchen! The good news of what I accomplished is that I used up half the huge parsnips I have had since August and all of the apples I had harvested.  I had been keeping the parsnips and apples out in my "Root Cellar" (also known as a plastic tub!) and had had to bring them in because of this freezing weather. At the end of this cooking craziness I had parsnip soup, vegetable soup stock (made from the parsnip trimmings & apple peelings), and fixed "doctored up" chutney that had not turned out well at first.  I doctored the chutney by making a huge batch of applesauce that I added to the original mixture.  The end result is a chutney that tastes good but Wow! do I ever have a lot!!  I will have chutney to give as gifts for the next two years!!  Hmm . . . wonder if it is legal to donate to an auction? 

The other thing that fed into the inadequacy feelings came from an email I received from a friend tonight, sent to a whole group of us.  This friend was in a horrific accident in early September.  He had to have multiple vertebrae rebuilt and fused, and had/has other injuries as well.  He is recovering well but it is still a slow process.  His emails are so even keeled but overall positive. He has studied Buddhism the whole time that I have known him - which is over 20 years - and it shows in his emails and his approach to the whole situation.

So then, yet again, I find myself lacking.

My voices have taken up their chant that "I should" just be able to overcome this head injury; that if I only had the right outlook, attitude, or behavior the problems would just melt away.  From there it is a short leap to feeling that it is my fault that I am in this hole, and out come all the mental clubs to beat me up once again.

The reality is that it is these very same voices that actually got me into the predicament that I am now in.  They were so loud, so convincing, so strong that they not only enabled, they caused the denial that carried me down this long slippery slope.

Stoke of Insight

On December 10, 1996, Jill Bolte Taylor woke up to discover that she was experiencing a rare form of stroke, an arterio-venous malformation (AVM).  As a brain scientist, she realized she had a ringside seat to her own stroke.

This talk is a first person account of the difference between the right and left brain hemispheres.  Taylor watched as her brain functions shut down one by one: motion, speech, memory, self-awareness ...   Amazed to find herself alive, she spent eight years recovering her ability to think, walk and talk.  As a brain researcher she was able to observe, and now convey, the hemisperes operate separately and how we ourselves can choose to use both sides more effectively and in balance.

Taylor has become a spokesperson for the possibility of coming back from a brain injury stronger than before.  She has written a book detailing the shutting down of her brain and what she needed to recover completely.  The book, titled “My Stroke of Insight,” serves as a guide for recovering brain function.

Journey to the Center of the Brain

This is an excellent talk by brain expert, Vilayanur Ramachandran.  He gets a standing ovation at the end for good reason!  He is a great speaker. 

In this talk he discusses the research being done using specific brain injuries to map the brain but also goes into some fascinating rehabilitation techniques that he has developed.  Especially amazing is the use of the mirror box for the treatment of phantom pain and also for use in stroke rehabilitation.

Vilayanur Ramachandran is the director of the Center for Brain and Cognition at the University of California, San Diego, and an adjunct professor at the Salk Institute. He is the author of Phantoms in the Brain, the basis for a Nova special, and A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness; his next book, due out in January 2008, is called The Man with the Phantom Twin: Adventures in the Neuroscience of the Human Brain.  Newsweek magazine named him one of the "hundred most prominent people to watch in the next century".

I am curious to hear about work using the mirror boxes for stroke patients.  If readers know about stroke rehab being done using mirror boxes, please post a comment.