Donations That Give 100-percent

'Tis the Season, again, to celebrate our bountiful and beautiful blessings by giving to others less fortunate than ourselves.  Last year I made this an annual column in support of charity and good will toward men (and women).  In that spirit, here are some tips on how best to donate.

It is just the beginning of December and I've already seen the urban legend that details the salaries of all those 'greedy CEOs' of some of our largest and most known charities.  Well, be advised that the message is not only false, but horribly outdated. The people named in the message have long since gone their separate ways, and the salaries cited are far from what they actually earned while they were heads of those charities. 

However,there certainly are a lot of expenses involved with some well known charitable organizations that eat up our donations before they ever get to the intended recipients. If you care to see what percentage of donations get to those in need, charitynavigator.org is one of several online sites that rate them. Another one is the Forbes website, and a third, and possibly the best of the three is Guidestar.org because it actually has its own tips for choosing a charity. 

Here are some neat ways to provide for those in need and feel good about doing it on a personal, hometown level.  You don't even have to donate through a charity, so there is no middle man in many cases.

Most department stores have a layaway plan that enables people to pay for Christmas gifts in increments.  However, people who have to purchase in that fashion are likely doing so because they aren’t able to afford payment in a lump sum. 

You can aid people anonymously on a selective basis to pay off their layaway purchases.  Don’t just blindly pay on someone’s layaway account, but try to do some investigation (perhaps with the department manager) as to what is on layaway and to whom the gifts will go.  Maybe the manager will have some useful input as to the financial situation of some of the people who have gifts on layaway.  In one case cited in an article I read, the person in need was one of the store employees who had recently lost her husband and was providing for several kids.

Of course, there are other ways that you can donate so that some little boy or girl will get a gift.  The best ones I can think of are the United States Marines’ Toys for Tots program and the Angel Tree (Salvation Army) that is usually in the vestibule of Wal-Mart, Kmart or Target stores. And there is always the red kettle and bell ringer of the Salvation Army. Donate to these programs if you want to donate but cannot afford a large amount.

Another way to make your donation count is available at most grocery stores.  The local food banks that feed the homeless and needy have suffered from the economic woes we’ve experienced in recent years. When you check out with your food items, you can also donate in increments to the food banks.  For as little as $5 you can provide a full meal to someone who might otherwise have slipped through the cracks and either isn’t eligible or has not applied for assistance. A lot of our disabled vets are in this category for one reason or another.

If you go to McDonalds and get change for your purchase, put it in the glass box in front of the cash register and it will go to the Ronald McDonald House, another worthy cause. The proceeds are used to give comfort and care to sick children and their families and provide temporary living quarters for those who do not reside in the area where hospital care is given.

Don't forget that all donations to qualified non-profit charitable organizations can be used as deductions from your taxable income if you use Schedule A for itemized deductions. (Get a valid receipt from the organization, if the donation is $250 or over.)  My wife and I do not use Schedule A anymore, so that means we are not able to take advantage of that tax break.  It doesn't make us less willing to give, but it is an incentive for some people.  We've even found a way to bestow the tax break on our children.

I give each of my adult kids a cash gift with the suggestion that they pass that gift on to their own favorite charities.  Since both of them do itemize deductions, they will also be able to use the deduction to reduce their taxes for 2014.  Those charitable gifts will give three ways:  1) I know that I've given a significant sum to charity, 2) My children have also donated and, 3) There is a tax break for them on April 15th of 2015.  It is a win-win for all and it is perfectly legal.

Whatever the gift, if you are blessed with some spare cash and want to make a difference, I cannot think of a better way to do it than to use one of these vehicles to donate and get the biggest “bang for the buck.”

And remember that charity doesn’t have to be a Christmastime activity. As the song, The Secret of Christmas concludes, “...it’s not the things you do at Christmas time, but the Christmas things you do all year through.”

Haunted Pillar Aftermath

If you read last week's column and you watched American Super Natural in The Weather Channel last Sunday night, you might be able to follow the topic of this column.  You see, there is a follow up to my experience with the Haunted Pillar of Augusta

I related that I touched the pillar while we were there, but that was a little white lie, so I shouldn't have brought the curse upon myself.  Well, at least I haven't died or gotten deathly sick or had any of those other supernatural events happen directly to me.

However, on Sunday night while the program was in progress on television we were under a thunderstorm warning with predictions for high winds and heavy rainfall.  We did hear the rain and wind, but I thought no more about it until we woke up this morning and looked out the windows.

This is what we saw.

The leaves brought down by the late night storm covered everything, including roofs of the houses two blocks from the forest behind our house.  My wife had used our leaf blower on Saturday to clear all that leaves from our driveway and patio, so all of this was brand new fall.

Here is what my house and car looked like after the storm.  You can't see them all, but

there are leaves plastered to the side of the house, the windows and the pillars out front as well.

On the local newscasts later in the day there were reports of wind damage, including roofs and siding that same off buildings in Augusta. It wasn't a tornado, but there was definitely "a mighty wind" that struck simultaneously with the airing of the program.

Was it the curse of Haunted Pillar that brought about this mess?  Maybe not, but then, my daughter lives only a few miles from here, and they didn't even know there was a storm in the area.  Their house, which also has lots of trees behind it, had no such litter around it.  Spooky!!!

One more thing . . . I wrote about seeing spirits near the Haunted Pillar in the previous WW Column, but I didn't explain about them.  If you watched the show Sunday night you might have seen that the store across the street from the Haunted Pillar is a liquor store.  They have plate glass windows and lots of spirits there, so it isn't uncommon to see them from the pillar.

In case you missed American Super Natural last Sunday night, "Augusta's Tornado Talisman" is being shown again at Midnight on Tuesday, December 2nd on The Weather Channel.  If you have the ability to record it, you can still see it.  Michael Wolff, our trolley tour guide, is featured prominently in the show.

The Haunted Pillar of Augusta

I recently went on a nighttime tour of downtown Augusta, Georgia on the HistoricTrolley Tour of Augusta.  Well, actually my barbershop quartet performed on the tour, but we were also treated to the sights and accompanying history of the city.

We learned about the Great Fire of Augusta in 1916, which burned most of the downtown district.  We also got to know about the "Resurrection Man" of Augusta and why there is a mass grave in the Cedar Grove Cemetery which contains the bones of approximately 600 of his post-mortem victims,. And we visited the statue of one of Augusta's favorite sons, singer James Brown, who was born and raised here in less-than-favorable conditions..

One of the stops along our tour route was the boyhood home of our 28th President, Woodrow Wilson, which shares the claim to his childhood with Columbia, SC, some 70 miles distant.  Actually, Wilson (1856-1924) was born in Staunton, VA and his family moved to Augusta in 1860 and then on to Columbia in 1871, so all three cities have title to 'his boyhood home' claims.

One of the highlights of the tour is the Haunted Pillar that stands at 5th and Broad Streets.   I'm not going to attempt to write a complete (?) history of the pillar, but the link above is there if you care to read it.  Alternately, you can just read the sign pictured below, which marks where the Lower Market once stood.

The story we heard from our tour guide, Michael, is that a preacher, also known in those days as an "exhorter", came to Augusta and stood in the marketplace to spread the gospel. His unrepentant audience got quite annoyed and they soon surrounded him and backed him up against one of the support pillars for the building. The preacher leaned on the pillar and put his curse on it,. He also is said to have predicted that, "...a great wind will come and destroy this structure and the only thing left standing will be this pillar."

Well, according to legend, the "great wind" didn't arrive until several years later. In 1878, a tornado, then called a cyclone, came tearing into Augusta from the west. It cut a zigzag swath through the city and eventually came to the Lower Market, where it proceeded to tear asunder the whole building with the exception of the pillar where that preacher had proclaimed the curse. 

The pillar was moved from its location in the center of the square to the corner where it now stands, but it is said that those who moved, or even tried to move or tear it down in subsequent years met with fatal accidents including being struck by lightning, auto accidents and even a bull dozer falling off its trailer and crushing the offending would-be mover.

Even today there are those who believe that the pillar is still haunted and anyone going near it is cautioned not to touch it.  While our tour group was there, someone shouted from across the street, "Don't touch it!"  It really is fascinating.

If you want to read a more complete history just click on the link above, but you can also learn about it on The Weather Channel.  Tomorrow night, Sunday, November 23, there will be an entire segment on the Haunted Pillar of Augusta at 10 PM on American Super/Natural.  Either tune in, or record it for future viewing, but I know you'll enjoy it.

If you ever come to Augusta, be sure to book one of the Trolley Tours as part of your visit.  There are several theme tours, but most of them involve the strange places and events that shaped the early history of the city.  Even the natives of Augusta should take at least one tour to learn all of the interesting facts and legends about the second oldest city in Georgia.

Just for the record, I did touch the Haunted Pillar and even had my picture taken there with the quartet and the tour narrator, but I'm still here, maybe because I didn't try to move it.  And by the way, even if you are a non-believer, you can still see spirits near the Haunted Pillar. I was there and I swear that I saw some.

A 35-year-old Mystery Solved

I recently read a book titled Airframe, written by the late Michael Crichton. It is a work of fiction, but Mr. Crichton used some factual incidents to highlight his fictional story. One of those concerned AA191, a DC-10 that crashed with total loss of life shortly after takeoff from O'Hare Airport in Chicago enroute to Los Angeles in May of 1979. 

When I read that chapter, I was transported back thirty-five years and learned in the space of three pages the final NTSB findings on the causes of the accident.  Until this week, I had never known what those findings were.

Do I believe author Crichton was writing the accurate story?  Since the book is a work of fiction, I can't say for certain, but I do know that he was known for his very thorough research of factual matters so, yes, I do believe his account.

So, what brought down not only American flight 191, but also the company that built the airplane?  That's right, according to Crichton, McDonnell-Douglas never sold another DC-10, nor any other wide-body airliner after that accident, and the production line was only ten years old at the time. I don't want to plagiarize, but I will try to summarize the accident.

Since I am not a pilot, I am not sure that my terminology will be correct.  For instance, the cockpit controls are sometimes referred to as the console, panel or pedestal, and that steering wheel the pilot and first officer use can be the yoke, the column or the stick.  I believe the terms are interchangeable, but if I'm wrong about that, I trust you jet jockeys will forgive my error.

Initially, the accident was blamed on poor maintenance procedures by American Airlines in that the company ignored warnings and advisories from the manufacturer about the removal of engines with the pylons attached. Pylons are those vertical structures that hold the engine to the wing.  Continental Airlines had  discovered cracks in the pylons when their mechanics removed the engine-pylon assembly as a unit.  This was reported to AA, but it was never acted upon to change the procedure.  That fact was critical, but not fatal.

When the left engine-pylon separated from the wing, it immediately shut off power to the Captain's side of the flight console.  It also disabled the audible stall warning system and the stick shaker, a visual warning that the airplane is going into a stall attitude.  The Captain then became a spectator to the subsequent events.

This is where is got weird.  The DC-10 was built with redundant systems, so it should have been able to withstand the catastrophe and the crew should have been able to gain control, turn the plane around and land back at O'Hare Field. The secondary cause of the accident was an event cascade of errors and wrong choices.  None of those backup systems was activated by the crew, and the First Officer even worsened the odds for survival.

The Flight Engineer, the third man in the cockpit, could have thrown a switch on his panel and restored power to the Captain's pedestal, but for some reason, he didn't do that. Of course, the whole sequence from rotation (liftoff) to impact took only about thirty seconds, so maybe there just wasn't enough time to diagnose the problem and react.

The First Officer did not have a stick shaker, it was an optional item on the left side of

the console which American Airlines had turned down, so he was unaware of the true situation.  He didn't have visual perspective on the engine separation, so he did the exact opposite of what he should have - he decreased power instead of increasing it.  That boosted the stall effect and the plane banked into the lighter left wing, rotating a full 180 degrees onto its back before it impacted the ground.  The results were catastrophic!  273 passengers and crew perished that day.

American immediately grounded all DC-10s.  The final National Transportation Safety Board report was not released until seven months later after extensive investigation. The fact that it was released just four days before Christmas on December 21st only added to the mystery, because few people if any paid any attention to the accident summary.  Until this past week, I was completely unaware of it.

The final chapter on this story is that the DC-10 was phased out of all commercial service over the next few years.  It was still used extensively by Fedex for freight transport and by the USAF as a mid-air fueling platform, but as a passenger plane, it was finished by the middle of the next decade. 

I must confess that I rode in the DC-10 on many occasions, and it was a beautiful aircraft not deserving of the fate that befell it due to a single accident that was no fault of the manufacturer, but rather attributable to a series of poor choices over a thirty-second span.  The DC-10 was built to withstand the events that occurred that fateful day, but for unknown reasons, the action to prevent the crash was never initiated.  It cost dearly in lives and spelled the beginning of the end for McDonnell-Douglas.

The Tragedy We Live With

I recently watched a video of Glen Campbell singing his last song, I'm Not Gonna Miss You in a poignant, but recognizable voice. (You have to watch an ad to get to the video, but be patient.)   And it really is his last song, because he has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease, and his memory is apparently fading fast.  The song is from his recently released film, I'll Be Me, which chronicles his disease and his life before Alzheimer's.

With a title like that, you wouldn't know that it's a love song, but it is, and I'll explain why it is in the column today.

While watching the video and listening to the very meaningful words, I was reminded of my mother-in-law, who was never said to have Alzheimer's, but did suffer Dementia, literally the same thing as far as I'm concerned.  She spent the last ten years of her life in a nursing home, but most of that time she had no idea where she was.

One of the effects of Alzheimer's Disease is that you lose all of your memory, including that of your relatives and friends.  Each time we visited Marge, she became more confused as to who we were, and she would refer to Judy as her sister or her mother at times.  Of course, eventually she didn't know either of us and it really became painful to visit her in those times.

One thing Marge did retain was the memory of her husband, Judy's father, who died several years prior to his wife of over 60 years.  In fact, even while Marge was losing her ability to call us by name, she would often greet us with, "Oh, you just missed Lyle. He left for work a few minutes ago."  Yes, she seemed to always have a continuing life with Lyle, even though he had passed on years before. 

I think that is what Glen Campbell's song refers to in the title and the lyrics. Even though his friends and relatives are no longer in his memory. he will not have to grieve over losing them, just as Marge never grieved over losing Lyle.  In some peculiar way, that is a blessing of Alzheimer's, if one can count it as such.

Mr. Campbell, arguably one of the best Country/Western singers and guitar players ever, was admitted to an Alzheimer's clinic earlier this year, so I'm Not Gonna Miss You will truly be his last song. It is reminiscent of Eric Clapton's song, When I See You In Heaven, written and sung by him after the accidental death of his young son.  Yes, listening to it might bring a tear or two to your eye, but both are songs of hope, not sadness.

Best Senior Joke Ever

I'm not really out of ideas, but I saw one of the most ironic and funny jokes about old people this week, and I just have to share it.  It's been around on the Internet for at least ten years, but I hope you'll like it as much as I did.

Now that food has replaced sex in my life, I can't even get into my own pants.

Since food was mentioned, have you noticed that, despite the fact that we are becoming the world's most obese people, the fast food chains are advertising even bigger meals with more and more calories?   Heck, you don't even have to ask to be "super-sized" anymore . . . everything you buy comes in twos or in a double something.

It reminds me of a guy I worked with once who was about five sizes too large to begin with, but he came to work one day and said that he bought that 5-for-$5 deal at Arby's and complained that he had trouble eating all those roast beef sandwiches for lunch.  Well, Duh!

I went into McDonald's for my senior coffee this morning, and on the breakfast menu they advertised a "Big Breakfast" that consisted of scrambled eggs, three pancakes, sausage, hash browns and a large biscuit.  Total calories for that monster - 1,090.  You need to walk for over five hours to work off all those calories. It also has 2150 grams of sodium, a real heart stopper. But what person that eats one of those meals exercises afterwards.  And we wonder why there are so many people who need those motorized wheelchairs to go shopping at Wal*Mart.

Okay, as long as I'm in a cantankerous frame of mind, I may as well get something else off my chest.  I am really saddened by the deterioration of the English language used by our media people on radio and television.  Few can even pronounce the letter 'w' when they give their station call letters - it comes out sounding like 'dub-wool-you'.  Then there are words that are almost always mispronounced.  Examples: asterick for asterisk; effisode for episode; comfterble for comfortable (there are FOUR syllables in that word); nucular for nuclear; ekscape for escape.  There are many more, but those five are ones that really stick out.

As Porky Pig used to say at the end of the cartoon, "Th-the-ah, th-the-ah, th-that's all, folks!" My rant is done, and I hope I entertained you with the little joke to make up for it.

Oh, and don't forget to set your clocks back before you go to bed tonight.  Yes, we're going to gain an hour of sleep.  You know the saying - Spring forward-Fall back.

Missing Money

This column deals with a benefit that 99.9% of eligible beneficiaries either do not know about, or do not take advantage of, and hence, lose a lot of money through no fault of their own.  If you choose not to read it, shame on you.

I recently received my annual letter from my former employer, from which I retired in 1995, to inform me that my retiree health coverage is noncreditable.  What that means is that it is not usable as a replacement for Medicare Part D prescription drug coverage.

The fact is that my prepaid, and therefore premium-free, retiree coverage cannot be used to replace my premium-based Medicare Part D coverage, for which my wife and I pay $1,217 annually.  However, the same letter reminds me that my retiree coverage coordinates benefits with Medicare Part A, B, C and/or D. 

If you are 65 or older and you do not have one of the Advantage plans that coordinates

all Medicare costs,  you  might also have a supplemental plan that has coordination of benefits with Medicare, and that is the reason I wrote this column. 

My supplemental Health insurance plan with United Healthcare guarantees that once I have satisfied the annual deductible of $150 out-of-pocket, any further health care costs will be covered at eighty percent up to $5,000.  My maximum expense is limited to $1,150 of the first $5,000. Beyond that amount different rules and provisions apply, but they don't concern most of us, so I won't go into them here.  Most supplemental health plans are set up in this fashion, so yours is probably similar to mine.

When you visit your doctor, when you are hospitalized, or when you are sent to a clinic for a procedure or test, the bill is first sent to Medicare for payment.  Then it is submitted to your supplemental insurance company for further payment before the unpaid balance is sent to you for payment.

The same billing sequence does not hold true for prescription drugs, though.  They are paid directly from your chosen insurer under Medicare Part D to the supplier of the drugs, and you pay the co-pay amount, usually at time of delivery at the drugstore.  No third party participation takes place.

Why is that important?  It is possible that your supplemental insurer would reimburse you for part of the out-of-pocket costs, and that can be a sizable amount.  If you take any of the non-generic drugs which are always very expensive, you might have to pay up to fifty percent of the cost each time you refill the prescription.  And when you get into the 'donut hole', that stage above the co-pay ($2,850 by 2014 rules; $2,960 in 2015), you pay full cost for those drugs. Your supplemental insurer may cover part of that cost, but you must submit the claim to them to get reimbursed. 

Your next question should be, "How do I do that?"

I'll use my own Medicare Part D provider - Humana Healthcare - and my Medicare supplemental insurance provider - United Healthcare - as my examples, but you should substitute your own insurers. Here is a step-by-step procedure you can follow to claim your reimbursement:

• I call Humana and requested an annual Summary of all Prescription Drug orders.  No matter how many drug stores or mail order providers I used, they will all be summarized at Humana for me in date sequence.
• When I receive the summary in the mail from Humana, I prepare an envelope and a short letter to United Healthcare with my UHC member number, requesting that UHC determine any reimbursement amount and mail me a check for that amount. I send that to United Healthcare.
• When I receive the check from UHC, I deposit it into my bank. It is not taxable income.

It is that easy, but it might be even easier for you.  You might be able to download the annual summary online from your Medicare Part D provider. You should only perform the above steps once per year after the preceding calendar year has expired, so it will likely be done in January or February.

In case you don't think it is worth all that time and effort to collect the reimbursement,

the last time I submitted the Rx summary to United Healthcare, I received a check for almost $2,400, and that was for just one year of prescriptions.  Of course, I have eight prescriptions and two of them are very expensive Stage 3 level drugs.  I usually enter the coverage gap known as the 'donut hole' in June because of those expensive prescriptions.

I'm not going to promise you that you'll get a ton of money back, and some insurers will not go back more than two or three years, but you really should look into it.  You might be pleasantly surprised.

For those of you who are not yet eligible for Medicare, I urge you to find some way to reference this column when you reach age 65, because nobody else is ever going to tell you about this benefit, especially not your health insurer, since it will cost them money

to do so.