THE ARTICLE BELOW WAS IN THE CITRUS TIMES YESTERDAY, REGRETABLLY, ANZEL PASSED TODAY, WE GOT THE WORD AT WORK ABOUT 4:45  P.M.

A fighting spirit clashes with new foe

The activist steps into another arena after appearing often on ballots and at meetings.

By BARBARA BEHRENDT, Times Staff Writer
Published September 25, 2006

	[Times photo: M. N. Golden]
	Ansel Briggs, 67, reads a get well card at Seven Rivers Regional Medical Center. In July he was diagnosed with stage-4 sqamous cell cancer. He and his wife of six years, Harriett, have been battling not only Ansel’s cancer, but insurance companies and doctors.

Here’s a summary of the many battles of Ansel Briggs:

Public service

Briggs ran for school superintendent three times.

- In 1996 he earned 468 votes running as a write-in candidate.

During that race he adopted an eye-catching campaign slogan.

Briggs learned that the law didn’t allow voters to bring anything with them into the voting booth.

Thus the slogan: Vote Naked.

- Four years later, Briggs ran as an independent and earned 5,491 votes, or 9.85 percent of the total. Some speculated that Briggs cost incumbent Pete Kelly a second term.

- In 2004, Briggs again ran with no party affiliation earning 6.19 percent of the vote, a total of 4,074 ballots.

He said that was his last run.

Briggs said the “bully pulpit” that candidates enjoy allowed him to “point out things that other people didn’t want to talk about.”

- In 2001, as Crystal River sought a replacement for City Manager David Sallee, Briggs applied. He didn’t make the short list.

Education

- A longtime critic of the School Board on a myriad of issues, Briggs fought for several years to save the old Lakeview School in Hernando from the wrecking ball.

In 1999, the school district gave the building to the county. Now it’s a community center.

- Briggs wanted the school district to offer meaningful alternative programs for students who did not succeed in the regular classroom setting.

He has said that a vandalism of his property in 1995 sparked his strong interest in turning around the lives of at-risk youths. He researched the vandals and found out that, despite their past bad behavior, they had gotten no special help.

Briggs also floated the idea that the school district move its alternative school, the Renaissance Center, to the old Brown Schools site in Lecanto rather than buying land and building a new school.

The Brown Schools site, off County Road 491, eventually became the county’s center for community and veteran services; the new Renaissance Center was built at the Lecanto school complex.

- Briggs criticized school officials for their use of a technique called “timeout,” primarily because the space allocated in the old Lakeview school for a timeout’ area was a tiny cubicle tucked inside a classroom.

“This is deprivation. … We use this to deprive people of their dignity,” he complained.

- Briggs spoke out against the practice of paddling students for discipline purposes, argued that the public should have more opportunities to address the School Board on critical issues, advocated for support workers in the school district in discipline cases, criticized a district official for banning a well-known poem, and pushed for critical district policies to be posted on the district’s computer Web site so everyone could have access.

- During the contentious discussions in 2001 over the format of the opening prayer at School Board meetings, Briggs said he would like to lead a prayer in the tradition of his faith, the Indian traditions of the Toltec.

He was not invited to do that.

County, consumer and social issues

* Briggs spoke against the need for the extension of the Suncoast Parkway.

* After his mother was involuntarily committed for psychological evaluation in 1994, Briggs fought for changes in the Baker Act.

His mother had been in a daytime program for Alzheimer’s patients when officials decided she needed an evaluation. Briggs, her caregiver, was not immediately notified.

-Briggs questioned state damage disclosure laws after he purchased a mobile home that he learned – too late – had been flooded in the 1993 no-name storm.

He complained about the county’s lime rock road paving and code enforcement procedures, and fought for a business owner whose pawnshop was negatively affected by delayed county construction for months longer than planned.

- Briggs also advocated for residents about planned developments in their community and spoke out in favor of preservation of historic structures.

- In keeping with his concerns for young people, Briggs wrote to the governor and the Judicial Qualifications Commission protesting what he considered a harsh sentence for Adam Bollenback. The teen was sentenced to 10 years in prison for a theft of a six-pack of beer.

“I think it’s unethical for a judge to “break the spirit” of anybody,” he said.

Barbara Behrendt can be reached at Behrendt@sptimes.com or 564-3621.

I will try to run for BOCC district 2, if I can come up with the filing fee, click here to go to our CANDIDATE SITE

I haven’t posted to this blog in quite a while, just have been experimenting with other blogs out there. There are really a whole lot of sites out that offer this service. This one and Yahoo 360 seem to be about the best, at least in my opinion. I’ve had my good days and bad since the operation. There has been trouble with the blood pressure going up. I’m on about 4 different types of bp meds now, which in of itself doesn’t sound too good to me. My arthritis hasn�t improved, well, maybe a little, but really hard to discern. What with all my aches and pains it�s really hard to know which pain is caused by which problem. Guess if one of the pains turns out to be the ONE, then I�ll know for sure. Can�t seem to find myself a wheelchair van. Money is the main problem, and finding one in my price range, which is about 0 to 3000.00 is next to impossible. So I continue to go back and forth to work by putting my chair on the back of the car, on a manual ramp and off to the office everyday. Boy I thought life was rough when I was younger, at least then, I had hopes of getting better, that thought process doesn�t exist today.

23 mm is the size of the valve they implanted in my aortic valve on Aug. 22, 2005, thats nearly an inch.

Sunday afternoon, a little before 2 PM. One of my cardiologists was in earlier and said everything is still a go. Scheduled to have open heart surgery Monday, Aug. 22, 2005. They are suppose to replace the Aortic Valve and also perform a bypass on the Aortic side of the heart (I believe). The doctor said he would order something for me to sleep tonight. Dr. Sastry, the surgeon, is suppose to be real good. He also does heart transplants. He belongs to a group of surgeons, who have an office in Brandon and Bayonet Point, FL. My cell phone number is 352-228-1343. Corl’s is 352-228-2378.

It’s Saturday morning. I’ve been up since 330 am. That’s the last time they took my BP. Had some pain in my chest last night. If I recall correctly, I’ve never have been able to take beta blockers without experiencing some type of heart discomfort. They insisted that I take one around noon yesterday, a form of low pressure, or something like that. I took it, but around 7 pm I began to feel the discomfort. I informed the nurse, which could have been a mistake, because she mentioned that if it continued I would have to be placed in the icu. That wouldn’t due because Corl would not have anyplace to stay then. I’m in a private room now and she has been able to stay with me during this hospital incarceration. Monday’s not that far off, but I’m feeling less and less confident of a favorable outcome.

Well, after several delays it would appear that Monday is the blast off day. I will be glad when it is over. Trying to keep gun-ho over such a long period of time is draining. They should be picking me up sometime between 6 and 6:30 AM.
The mistake my nurse caught today was with one of my pills that I take in the morning. It’s a blood pressure pill, the sheet said I should be taking a 75mg pill. I actually didn’t know the mg. She went out and checked, my pill should be a 25mg. It doesn’t exactly build your confidence. I guess that is why they call this a teaching hospital. A few of the other mistakes that I am aware of are: they had someone else papers in my file, the doctor asked me why I was on cumidine (sp), I told him I believed I wasn’t, that is when he discover someone Else’s papers in my file; they picked me up and took me downstairs for some tests which had never been ordered, fortunately I didn’t take them. I just sat in the hallway down there for about a half hour when a guy (transporter) came and picked me up to take me back upstairs. I told him I hadn’t had anything done to me yet, so he swung me around and went back to check. There weren’t any orders for me to have any tests!

Well, the saga continues

They wheeled me down to the operating room, was all prepared, they shaved my chest, gave me injection to relax me and I was awaiting the big cut. However, they woke me and said that they had decided to postpone the operation because of the blood that was present in my urine sample this morning. So off back to my room to await more exposure to radiation, in more tests, that I fear may generate cancer, because of the many, I mean thousands of x-rays that I have experienced in my lifetime. None of the doctor’s seem to appreciate the circumstances that I have described to them in regards to this manner and always insist on further exposure to radiation, either through x-rays, and or, cat scans (one of the most potent forms of radiation exposure). I fear that they may have put me over the limit, initially, from all the tests before concluding I needed bypass and aortic valve replacement. Possibly that is why blood appeared in my urine.

They now tell me, that in all likelihood, I won’t be having the operation until Monday. That is presuming the tests for why I had blood in my urine turn out ok. And I fear that they will not. I am contemplating signing out of the hospital and going home.

Well, some bad news folks. I’ve been laid up for over a week, had some chest pains a couple of weeks ago. I went to the Doctor who fixed up my lovely wife, Corl. Dr. Joseph Idicula, who has a office in Spring Hill, Fl. I had a echocardigram there and had an appointment made to have a stress test there, later on also. However his machine got hit by lighting and that was delayed. In the meantime, I went to work on a Monday and had chest pains, off and on, most of the afternoon. So, Dr. Joe told me to go to the emergency room at Oak Hill Hospital in Spring Hill, FL. I stayed there 3 or 4 days, had a stress test and a catherization and was told I would have to have an aortic valve replacement and a bypass. I’ve been at Tampa General having a few more tests and am schedule to be operated on Wednesday, Aug 17, 2005. I have been told because of my bone condition that it is a high risk operation. So if you don’t see any posts after a few weeks, you’ll know I didn’t make it.

Someone sent me the following in an email, thought it contained many wisdoms, that should be perserved:

Advice From an Old Farmer

Your fences need to be horse-high, pig-tight and bull-strong.

Keep skunks and bankers and lawyers at a distance.

Life is simpler when you plough around the stump.

A bumblebee is considerably faster than a John Deere tractor.

Meanness don’t just happen overnight.

Forgive your enemies. It messes up their heads.

Do not corner something that you know is meaner than you.

It doesn’t take a very big person to carry a grudge.

You cannot unsay a cruel word.

Every path has a few puddles.

When you wallow with pigs, expect to get dirty.

The best sermons are lived, not preached.

Most of the stuff people worry about is never going to happen anyway.

Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.

Live a good, honorable life. Then when you get older and think back,
you’ll enjoy it a second time.

Timing has a lot to do with the outcome of a rain dance.

If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging.

The biggest troublemaker you’ll probably ever have to deal with watches
you from the mirror every morning.

Always drink upstream from the herd.

Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad
judgment.

Letting the cat out of the bag is a whole lot easier than putting it
back in.

If you get to thinking you’re a person of some influence, try ordering
somebody else’s dog around.

Live simply. Love generously. Care deeply. Speak kindly. Leave the rest
to God.