Wednesday, March 7, 2012
WE'RE THE FIFTY PERCENT
Monday, March 5, 2012
Small, and Hard, and Full of Meanness
I am so tired, all of the time. Each national news cycle brings with it exhaustion that reaches to a cellular level. Each candidates' debate, latest spew of hatred from the talk show hosts or the candidates themselves, act of environmental destruction, most recent episode of school student-on-student violence and death - each rape, murder, child abuse atrocity on the local news, makes the darkness drop a thicker curtain over my heart, my brain, my ability to get up and make the coffee of another new day.
Then, I find a slim volume of Mary Oliver's poetry that I haven't seen before, although it's been around for a while (Red Bird), and read myself to sleep for several nights. In the midst of nature poems, both sorrow and delight, poems of loneliness and longing for her departed partner of many years, I find this - lines that briefly and perfectly sum up the world in which we live. A world in which we must constantly work, though exhausted, to somehow keep our hearts soft, open, full of generosity and hope. To care about the quality of life for people, all people, dogs, and rivers. To be both loving and fierce.
Of The Empire
We will be known as a culture that feared death
and adored power, that tried to vanquish insecurity
for the few and cared little for the penury of the
many. We will be known as a culture that taught
and rewarded the amassing of things, that spoke
little if at all about the quality of life for
people (other people), for dogs, for rivers. All
the world, in our eyes, they will say, was a
commodity. And they will say that this structure
was held together politically, which it was, and
they will say also that our politics was no more
than an apparatus to accommodate the feelings
of the heart, and that the heart, in those days,
was small, and hard, and full of meanness.
Then, I find a slim volume of Mary Oliver's poetry that I haven't seen before, although it's been around for a while (Red Bird), and read myself to sleep for several nights. In the midst of nature poems, both sorrow and delight, poems of loneliness and longing for her departed partner of many years, I find this - lines that briefly and perfectly sum up the world in which we live. A world in which we must constantly work, though exhausted, to somehow keep our hearts soft, open, full of generosity and hope. To care about the quality of life for people, all people, dogs, and rivers. To be both loving and fierce.
Of The Empire
We will be known as a culture that feared death
and adored power, that tried to vanquish insecurity
for the few and cared little for the penury of the
many. We will be known as a culture that taught
and rewarded the amassing of things, that spoke
little if at all about the quality of life for
people (other people), for dogs, for rivers. All
the world, in our eyes, they will say, was a
commodity. And they will say that this structure
was held together politically, which it was, and
they will say also that our politics was no more
than an apparatus to accommodate the feelings
of the heart, and that the heart, in those days,
was small, and hard, and full of meanness.
Friday, March 2, 2012
On a Call to Action
It’s a disturbing time to be anything but a white, right-leaning male in this country. The Right Wing have taken on gays (of either gender), immigrants (read “Mexicans”), minority voters, non-Christians, “liberals” of any stripe; and now—women. Evidently they believe there are not enough civil rights to go around, and they aim to hoard them all for themselves.
I would like to warn them that women are not a small voiceless minority whom they can disrespect with impunity. We do not look kindly upon a group of over-entitled buffoons seeking to roll back our rights fifty or sixty years. And we vote.
What better time to reinvigorate an editorial vehicle called “Women On…”?
For millennia, men asserted their dominion over women through the sex act. Sex was about men getting it however, whenever and wherever they wanted it, and about women dutifully accepting this, and the consequences associated therewith. Unfortunately for the male of the species, at least in the industrialized world, science did him a dirty turn about mid-way through the last century--in the form of The Pill and other self-administered female birth control, and the legalization of safe clinical abortion. Suddenly it was possible for women to have sex however, whenever and wherever they wanted it, no longer chained to the “consequences” any more than men were.
Women were handed the keys to their shackles by the Sexual Revolution, and have not looked back. Much to the chagrin of those who preferred the status quo, and who have been pouring herculean efforts into stuffing that genie back into the bottle. These good ole boys may be dinosaurs, but they are not going to go down easy. They intend to reassert male dominance in our society, and as has been the practice of desperate men for centuries, they have conscripted “God” onto their side of the battlefield. God is, after all, just one of “the guys,” isn’t He? We liberated women are not, at long last, enjoying the freedom to realize the potential conferred upon us by the Creator. We’re subverting the will of “God.”
Like it or not, the birth control/abortion issue has become America's litmus test of the status of women’s rights in our society. Many women, including myself, are not wholly comfortable with this fact. In 1973, as a naive, sexually active and not-nearly-cautious-enough eighteen-year-old, I might have considered the option of abortion had I got “caught.” But that was at the very dawn of the Sexual Revolution. We didn’t have much of the science, experience and resources that are available to today’s young women. And the stigma assigned to unwed motherhood was ugly and strong. The concept of making the “problem” go away was considerably more attractive than the alternative.
But there have been changes over the past four decades--in education, in the availability of more solid science, and in the undeniable reversal of society’s attitudes toward unwed mothers. If I was a young woman NOW, I probably would not consider abortion as a preferred or valid method of birth control. Be that as it may, it is still not up to ME to dictate what another woman does with her body under her own personal circumstances. And if I don’t believe myself to be possessed of enough enlightenment to make this judgment, I sure as hell don’t buy that the government is.
So when MEN in or aspiring to elected office begin unabashedly spouting garbage about the State violating women with unwanted, invasive, medically unnecessary procedures for purely political reasons, my hackles raise higher than a flag on the Fourth of July. And when denying women access to free or insurance-covered birth control is perverted to become defense of some patriarchal cult’s “Religious Rights,” I don my gloves and come out swinging. Especially when any and all treatment associated with male sexual function/dysfunction is obligingly covered gratis, with a wink and a smile.
Sorry, guys. Regardless of the societal consequences—positive or negative—wrought by the Sexual Revolution, that boat done sailed. Going backwards, taking away civil rights, is never a viable—not to mention politically expedient—course of action. Especially when dealing with a “minority” group that arguably includes half the members of the human race.
We have what we have. And we are NOT giving it back.
A question…a challenge, if you will. To all the women who used to write here. What are your thoughts on the most recent attack upon us, the women of America? Can you share them here?
I would like to warn them that women are not a small voiceless minority whom they can disrespect with impunity. We do not look kindly upon a group of over-entitled buffoons seeking to roll back our rights fifty or sixty years. And we vote.
What better time to reinvigorate an editorial vehicle called “Women On…”?
For millennia, men asserted their dominion over women through the sex act. Sex was about men getting it however, whenever and wherever they wanted it, and about women dutifully accepting this, and the consequences associated therewith. Unfortunately for the male of the species, at least in the industrialized world, science did him a dirty turn about mid-way through the last century--in the form of The Pill and other self-administered female birth control, and the legalization of safe clinical abortion. Suddenly it was possible for women to have sex however, whenever and wherever they wanted it, no longer chained to the “consequences” any more than men were.
Women were handed the keys to their shackles by the Sexual Revolution, and have not looked back. Much to the chagrin of those who preferred the status quo, and who have been pouring herculean efforts into stuffing that genie back into the bottle. These good ole boys may be dinosaurs, but they are not going to go down easy. They intend to reassert male dominance in our society, and as has been the practice of desperate men for centuries, they have conscripted “God” onto their side of the battlefield. God is, after all, just one of “the guys,” isn’t He? We liberated women are not, at long last, enjoying the freedom to realize the potential conferred upon us by the Creator. We’re subverting the will of “God.”
Like it or not, the birth control/abortion issue has become America's litmus test of the status of women’s rights in our society. Many women, including myself, are not wholly comfortable with this fact. In 1973, as a naive, sexually active and not-nearly-cautious-enough eighteen-year-old, I might have considered the option of abortion had I got “caught.” But that was at the very dawn of the Sexual Revolution. We didn’t have much of the science, experience and resources that are available to today’s young women. And the stigma assigned to unwed motherhood was ugly and strong. The concept of making the “problem” go away was considerably more attractive than the alternative.
But there have been changes over the past four decades--in education, in the availability of more solid science, and in the undeniable reversal of society’s attitudes toward unwed mothers. If I was a young woman NOW, I probably would not consider abortion as a preferred or valid method of birth control. Be that as it may, it is still not up to ME to dictate what another woman does with her body under her own personal circumstances. And if I don’t believe myself to be possessed of enough enlightenment to make this judgment, I sure as hell don’t buy that the government is.
So when MEN in or aspiring to elected office begin unabashedly spouting garbage about the State violating women with unwanted, invasive, medically unnecessary procedures for purely political reasons, my hackles raise higher than a flag on the Fourth of July. And when denying women access to free or insurance-covered birth control is perverted to become defense of some patriarchal cult’s “Religious Rights,” I don my gloves and come out swinging. Especially when any and all treatment associated with male sexual function/dysfunction is obligingly covered gratis, with a wink and a smile.
Sorry, guys. Regardless of the societal consequences—positive or negative—wrought by the Sexual Revolution, that boat done sailed. Going backwards, taking away civil rights, is never a viable—not to mention politically expedient—course of action. Especially when dealing with a “minority” group that arguably includes half the members of the human race.
We have what we have. And we are NOT giving it back.
A question…a challenge, if you will. To all the women who used to write here. What are your thoughts on the most recent attack upon us, the women of America? Can you share them here?
Friday, January 20, 2012
Photo Friday
Haven't posted a Friday photo in awhile, and it's still Friday. So here it is:
A sharp-shinned hawk who regularly visits my backyard feeders...and NOT to eat the seeds.
A sharp-shinned hawk who regularly visits my backyard feeders...and NOT to eat the seeds.
Thursday, January 19, 2012
The Real Danger of TMI
"Television has proved that people will look at anything rather than each other." -- Ann Landers
This quote appeared on my Google home page this morning. I loved Ann Landers. I read her faithfully starting when I was about eleven years old. Eppie Lederer was a no-nonsense gal. Her down-to-earth sensibility and dry humor cut through the inflated drama of her readers’ concerns, re-prioritized their “it’s all about me!” perspectives and pointed them in the direction of common sense solutions to their problems. And I find her pronouncement on the dominant technology of her day succinct and prophetic.
I wonder what she would have thought about today’s technology? The technology that has chained any person under the age of thirty to a smart phone, iPad, laptop and/or MP3 player. Personal electronics have become as necessary as breathing to an entire generation. The obsessive dependence upon these things carries Landers’ assessment to a whole new level. Cel phone/text technology has proved that people would rather communicate with anyone rather than present company. And will slavishly employ these tools to save themselves from what must be a fate worse than death, since they will risk death to avoid it—being alone in the silent company of their own thoughts.
Human beings are complicated animals, prone to mystifying and contradictory behavior. We kill for pleasure while we prohibit “murder” on moral grounds. We enslave others while rigorously defending our own unqualified freedom. We crave community and reject it at the same time; how else to explain a pack of kids walking down the street with their noses glued to their phones instead of talking to each other? How else to explain the drive to accumulate hundreds of social media “friends,” yet not have one other person in the world who KNOWS you? I am mystified. I doubt that I’ll ever understand it.
Over the past hundred years, humans have run wild with the idea of creating technologies that will “shrink” the world. Information that once took weeks to cross the continent now travels in less than the blink of an eye. Images are instantaneous, and they are everywhere, accessible at any time. But I wonder if we’ve really done ourselves any favors. We’ve become media junkies. But I’m afraid our hunger for input has outstripped our ability to process it properly. It’s coming at us so fast that there’s no time to discern truth from lies, fact from fantasy. We select the information we choose to assimilate and construct our own individual versions of reality. As a result, the technology meant to draw the world together is actually pushing it apart.
Each of us has created our own individual sovereignty. The information we assimilate, the realities we create serve mostly to separate us from one another. Instead of 196 countries in the world, there are 7 billion. In many ways, we are infinitely farther from each other than we were before all this technology endeavored to bring us together. It’s true, and getting truer, that thing which Ann Landers identified half a century ago.
We would rather look at anything than each other.
This quote appeared on my Google home page this morning. I loved Ann Landers. I read her faithfully starting when I was about eleven years old. Eppie Lederer was a no-nonsense gal. Her down-to-earth sensibility and dry humor cut through the inflated drama of her readers’ concerns, re-prioritized their “it’s all about me!” perspectives and pointed them in the direction of common sense solutions to their problems. And I find her pronouncement on the dominant technology of her day succinct and prophetic.
I wonder what she would have thought about today’s technology? The technology that has chained any person under the age of thirty to a smart phone, iPad, laptop and/or MP3 player. Personal electronics have become as necessary as breathing to an entire generation. The obsessive dependence upon these things carries Landers’ assessment to a whole new level. Cel phone/text technology has proved that people would rather communicate with anyone rather than present company. And will slavishly employ these tools to save themselves from what must be a fate worse than death, since they will risk death to avoid it—being alone in the silent company of their own thoughts.
Human beings are complicated animals, prone to mystifying and contradictory behavior. We kill for pleasure while we prohibit “murder” on moral grounds. We enslave others while rigorously defending our own unqualified freedom. We crave community and reject it at the same time; how else to explain a pack of kids walking down the street with their noses glued to their phones instead of talking to each other? How else to explain the drive to accumulate hundreds of social media “friends,” yet not have one other person in the world who KNOWS you? I am mystified. I doubt that I’ll ever understand it.
Over the past hundred years, humans have run wild with the idea of creating technologies that will “shrink” the world. Information that once took weeks to cross the continent now travels in less than the blink of an eye. Images are instantaneous, and they are everywhere, accessible at any time. But I wonder if we’ve really done ourselves any favors. We’ve become media junkies. But I’m afraid our hunger for input has outstripped our ability to process it properly. It’s coming at us so fast that there’s no time to discern truth from lies, fact from fantasy. We select the information we choose to assimilate and construct our own individual versions of reality. As a result, the technology meant to draw the world together is actually pushing it apart.
Each of us has created our own individual sovereignty. The information we assimilate, the realities we create serve mostly to separate us from one another. Instead of 196 countries in the world, there are 7 billion. In many ways, we are infinitely farther from each other than we were before all this technology endeavored to bring us together. It’s true, and getting truer, that thing which Ann Landers identified half a century ago.
We would rather look at anything than each other.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Health Care Wins Another One
I came across an article on CNN.com which, on the surface, seemed more or less unremarkable.
Ohio Couple Pleads Guilty in Son’s Cancer Death
It is a terse quarter-page report on a couple who “denied” their son medical treatment for what turned out to be Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Apparently, the boy suffered from recurring swollen glands in his neck and on and off flu-like symptoms. The lymphoma went undiagnosed; the parents treated him with over-the-counter cold medicines. He died. He was eight years old. This was in 2008. This week, the parents pled guilty to plea-bargained manslaughter charges.
On the surface, you want to condemn these people as the sorriest excuses for parents. The news story paints them in a terrible light. You imagine this boy lying in bed, wasting away, in terrible pain (because to the average American, dying of cancer = excruciating pain), begging to be taken to the hospital, while the parents, crying “poor mouth,” callously turn their backs on him and let him die.
But something about this whole scenario just smelled like a three-days-dead herring. And the stink got into my brain and would not go away. Who were these people, really? Were they religious zealots? Were they cooking meth in their bath tub? Were they out buying flat screen TVs and ipads while their son languished in pain? If ever eleven lines published on a national news site cried out for back story, these did. Here was a situation that was doubtless composed of layer upon layer of deep emotion, wrenching loss, shock and shared culpability. There was no way the story could be done justice by a brief, and obviously biased, report of the final outcome. Almost four years later.
So I decided I would dig a little deeper.
On the website of the Cleveland PlainDealer, I found a few archived stories. All of them basically repeated the same damning piece of “evidence:” While the little boy was ill, supposedly in pain and “begging his parents to take him to a doctor,” the couple paid $87 to have a pet dog treated for fleas. On the surface, that sounds pretty bad. But, I wondered, where was the REAL damning evidence? Where was the list of frivolous luxuries for which they laid out cash, rather than take their sick boy to a doctor? Where was the evidence of involvement in drugs or domestic violence or welfare fraud? None of what I dug up—which wasn’t much, and yet was reported in such a way as to assure any reader would assume the worst about these folks—told me that evil or avarice caused this couple to act the way they did.
What—or who—convinced a county coroner to rule this death a homicide? And who or what then took the story to the media, so these folks would be convicted without a trial by a public provided with only the sketchiest and most sensational details of a family’s tragedy?
At the Huffington Post, the story was fleshed out some. HufPost included some quotes from the oldest daughter, now 18, and some rebuttal of prosecutors’ accusations by the defense lawyers. According to the sister, the boy’s episodes of swollen glands did not seem to bother him all that much. The thought that he might have cancer never entered anyone’s mind. The family had once gone to a “free” clinic for medical help, but left when they were informed they would have to pay. A family services caseworker told the parents that the lumps on the boy’s neck looked like swollen glands, but they should hold off until they received financial assistance before getting him checked out. Oh…and the mother’s lawyer asserts that the sensationalized flea treatment was actually paid for by the grandparents, to whom the dog belonged . Okay…so here is a conglomeration of “facts” designed to swing our opinion in the opposite direction. Obviously not the full story here, either.
Where are the answers to the real questions? Were the parents unemployed? Underemployed? Was there no health insurance available to them? The Cleveland PlainDealer alleges that the couple’s six children under 15 did not attend school. Is this true? If so, why not? We’re told the family moved to Cleveland three weeks before the boy died. Why? Was there employment available there? Did they lose their home and have to move in with relatives? Did they think moving to the city would put them closer to the services they needed for their family, including medical care and social assistance that was actually helpful?
In the end, I have no basis upon which to judge this couple. I have no idea what their circumstances really were. I only have conflicting pictures in my mind planted by incomplete and biased reporting. I suspect these parents were probably ignorant and overwhelmed (six kids under fifteen?!) and possibly even negligent. But I also have the deeply troubling suspicion that forces far beyond their control have exploited their family tragedy for purposes having nothing to do with truth, justice, or dedication to the protection of our society’s helpless children.
Because here is the reality that I have trouble reconciling: We live in a country where medical services are doled out or withheld based on ability to pay. We live in a country where medical insurance is routinely denied to people who might actually incur medical expenses, where insurance companies drop paying clients like a hot rock when they become ill, or deny coverage for certain conditions or procedures based on not much more than a whim.
If a patient’s condition deteriorates to the point of untreatability while the doctors, HMO’s and hospitals iron out the details of who is going to pay, no one goes to jail. If a senior citizen suffers a stroke because she has to make a choice between eating and filling five expensive prescriptions, no one is led away in handcuffs. If a man dies because he couldn’t afford health insurance, and by the time he was sick enough to go to an emergency room it was too late to help him, no one calls the cops. But two average citizens whose child died because, for whatever reason, they did not buy into the mess that is American health care today, are going to jail.
Let us understand the world in which these Ohio parents live. The times when it was a no-brainer to trundle your sick kid over to the family doctor are long gone. These days, there’s a maze of forms and co-pays and procedures and protocols and months-out appointments with two or three different providers before you eventually are seen by some specialist you don’t know and probably doesn’t care enough about you to piss on you if you were on fire. And it’s entirely likely that you’ll receive inferior care—or no care at all—if you can’t cough up big bucks. In advance.
Over the past three decades, our society has actively encouraged a deadly metamorphosis in the practice of healing the sick. Medical treatment has gone from a right to which a thriving society entitles every member, to nothing more than a consumer commodity. A commodity to which a premium price tag has been attached. In 21st century America, nothing less than cold-hearted greed dominates the allotment of the procedures and medicines which heal our bodies or help keep them healthy. American Health Care has deteriorated into a complicated maze of high costs, insurance rules and legal wrangling that has nothing to do with either “health” or “care.” It’s all about the money.
So is it any wonder that these parents in question might have been so cowed by the process and the likelihood of rejection that they chose to self-diagnose and treat their son’s symptoms as best they could at home? Especially since those symptoms seemed to come and go, and the thought of cancer never entered their minds? Who thinks their eight-year-old has cancer? Really? And say these parents had taken their son to the emergency room which a county official insisted (after the fact) would have taken the boy and treated him regardless of their financial situation. Can we say for certain, given today’s medical protocols, that the boy would have been properly diagnosed? Or would he have been given a prescription and the admonition to see his family doctor for a follow-up and sent on his way? If this had happened and the boy died anyway, who would be going to jail?
Anyone who wants to sit in judgment of these folks needs to walk a couple of miles in their shoes. Those of us who grew up in the 50’s and 60’s did not face those roadblocks when it came to obtaining medical help, neither when we were kids nor when we were raising our own children thirty years ago. Medical care may not have been as “advanced” as it is today, but at least it was accessible. And medical insurance was provided by your employer. For free.
We don’t have medical care in this country any more. We have Health Care. And it is big business. Make no mistake: Health Care will contrive to make examples of folks who either can’t or won’t buy into it. Health Care might hide in dark corners armed with fistfuls of cash or promises or threats, to perhaps nudge a county coroner to create a crime where none exists; or pressure a district attorney to pursue prosecution against people who have the audacity to believe they have a choice when it comes to purchasing medical treatment. Health Care would think nothing of taking a family’s personal tragedy and mercilessly exploiting it for its own purposes.
Possibly this is not what happened in this case. We’ll never know, will we? But we must not be naïve enough to believe it can’t or doesn’t happen. It’s all too possible. All too conceivable.
In any case, a society which allows medical treatment to be dispensed on the basis of who can pay (and how much), which allows power over life and death to rest in the hands of third parties who handle the cash flow with obvious disdain for the needy, has no business punishing any private citizen whose personal choice has produced a tragic outcome. Either a society values life, or it doesn’t. Either it charges all persons and entities with the responsibility of caring for the most helpless among us, or it cannot legitimately charge anyone.
A boy died. A boy who could have been healed with proper medical treatment, received in a timely manner. That is an abomination. It is not my purpose here to absolve the parents and chalk this one up to the vagaries of free choice. My point is that they never should have had to make the choice. Parents should never, ever be put in a position where they are too afraid, intimidated, confused or ignorant of Health Care to receive healing for a child. Health Care failed this boy. Health Care failed these parents.
But Health Care is not going to jail. The parents are.
Justice has not been served. It has been used. To serve Health Care.
Ohio Couple Pleads Guilty in Son’s Cancer Death
It is a terse quarter-page report on a couple who “denied” their son medical treatment for what turned out to be Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Apparently, the boy suffered from recurring swollen glands in his neck and on and off flu-like symptoms. The lymphoma went undiagnosed; the parents treated him with over-the-counter cold medicines. He died. He was eight years old. This was in 2008. This week, the parents pled guilty to plea-bargained manslaughter charges.
On the surface, you want to condemn these people as the sorriest excuses for parents. The news story paints them in a terrible light. You imagine this boy lying in bed, wasting away, in terrible pain (because to the average American, dying of cancer = excruciating pain), begging to be taken to the hospital, while the parents, crying “poor mouth,” callously turn their backs on him and let him die.
But something about this whole scenario just smelled like a three-days-dead herring. And the stink got into my brain and would not go away. Who were these people, really? Were they religious zealots? Were they cooking meth in their bath tub? Were they out buying flat screen TVs and ipads while their son languished in pain? If ever eleven lines published on a national news site cried out for back story, these did. Here was a situation that was doubtless composed of layer upon layer of deep emotion, wrenching loss, shock and shared culpability. There was no way the story could be done justice by a brief, and obviously biased, report of the final outcome. Almost four years later.
So I decided I would dig a little deeper.
On the website of the Cleveland PlainDealer, I found a few archived stories. All of them basically repeated the same damning piece of “evidence:” While the little boy was ill, supposedly in pain and “begging his parents to take him to a doctor,” the couple paid $87 to have a pet dog treated for fleas. On the surface, that sounds pretty bad. But, I wondered, where was the REAL damning evidence? Where was the list of frivolous luxuries for which they laid out cash, rather than take their sick boy to a doctor? Where was the evidence of involvement in drugs or domestic violence or welfare fraud? None of what I dug up—which wasn’t much, and yet was reported in such a way as to assure any reader would assume the worst about these folks—told me that evil or avarice caused this couple to act the way they did.
What—or who—convinced a county coroner to rule this death a homicide? And who or what then took the story to the media, so these folks would be convicted without a trial by a public provided with only the sketchiest and most sensational details of a family’s tragedy?
At the Huffington Post, the story was fleshed out some. HufPost included some quotes from the oldest daughter, now 18, and some rebuttal of prosecutors’ accusations by the defense lawyers. According to the sister, the boy’s episodes of swollen glands did not seem to bother him all that much. The thought that he might have cancer never entered anyone’s mind. The family had once gone to a “free” clinic for medical help, but left when they were informed they would have to pay. A family services caseworker told the parents that the lumps on the boy’s neck looked like swollen glands, but they should hold off until they received financial assistance before getting him checked out. Oh…and the mother’s lawyer asserts that the sensationalized flea treatment was actually paid for by the grandparents, to whom the dog belonged . Okay…so here is a conglomeration of “facts” designed to swing our opinion in the opposite direction. Obviously not the full story here, either.
Where are the answers to the real questions? Were the parents unemployed? Underemployed? Was there no health insurance available to them? The Cleveland PlainDealer alleges that the couple’s six children under 15 did not attend school. Is this true? If so, why not? We’re told the family moved to Cleveland three weeks before the boy died. Why? Was there employment available there? Did they lose their home and have to move in with relatives? Did they think moving to the city would put them closer to the services they needed for their family, including medical care and social assistance that was actually helpful?
In the end, I have no basis upon which to judge this couple. I have no idea what their circumstances really were. I only have conflicting pictures in my mind planted by incomplete and biased reporting. I suspect these parents were probably ignorant and overwhelmed (six kids under fifteen?!) and possibly even negligent. But I also have the deeply troubling suspicion that forces far beyond their control have exploited their family tragedy for purposes having nothing to do with truth, justice, or dedication to the protection of our society’s helpless children.
Because here is the reality that I have trouble reconciling: We live in a country where medical services are doled out or withheld based on ability to pay. We live in a country where medical insurance is routinely denied to people who might actually incur medical expenses, where insurance companies drop paying clients like a hot rock when they become ill, or deny coverage for certain conditions or procedures based on not much more than a whim.
If a patient’s condition deteriorates to the point of untreatability while the doctors, HMO’s and hospitals iron out the details of who is going to pay, no one goes to jail. If a senior citizen suffers a stroke because she has to make a choice between eating and filling five expensive prescriptions, no one is led away in handcuffs. If a man dies because he couldn’t afford health insurance, and by the time he was sick enough to go to an emergency room it was too late to help him, no one calls the cops. But two average citizens whose child died because, for whatever reason, they did not buy into the mess that is American health care today, are going to jail.
Let us understand the world in which these Ohio parents live. The times when it was a no-brainer to trundle your sick kid over to the family doctor are long gone. These days, there’s a maze of forms and co-pays and procedures and protocols and months-out appointments with two or three different providers before you eventually are seen by some specialist you don’t know and probably doesn’t care enough about you to piss on you if you were on fire. And it’s entirely likely that you’ll receive inferior care—or no care at all—if you can’t cough up big bucks. In advance.
Over the past three decades, our society has actively encouraged a deadly metamorphosis in the practice of healing the sick. Medical treatment has gone from a right to which a thriving society entitles every member, to nothing more than a consumer commodity. A commodity to which a premium price tag has been attached. In 21st century America, nothing less than cold-hearted greed dominates the allotment of the procedures and medicines which heal our bodies or help keep them healthy. American Health Care has deteriorated into a complicated maze of high costs, insurance rules and legal wrangling that has nothing to do with either “health” or “care.” It’s all about the money.
So is it any wonder that these parents in question might have been so cowed by the process and the likelihood of rejection that they chose to self-diagnose and treat their son’s symptoms as best they could at home? Especially since those symptoms seemed to come and go, and the thought of cancer never entered their minds? Who thinks their eight-year-old has cancer? Really? And say these parents had taken their son to the emergency room which a county official insisted (after the fact) would have taken the boy and treated him regardless of their financial situation. Can we say for certain, given today’s medical protocols, that the boy would have been properly diagnosed? Or would he have been given a prescription and the admonition to see his family doctor for a follow-up and sent on his way? If this had happened and the boy died anyway, who would be going to jail?
Anyone who wants to sit in judgment of these folks needs to walk a couple of miles in their shoes. Those of us who grew up in the 50’s and 60’s did not face those roadblocks when it came to obtaining medical help, neither when we were kids nor when we were raising our own children thirty years ago. Medical care may not have been as “advanced” as it is today, but at least it was accessible. And medical insurance was provided by your employer. For free.
We don’t have medical care in this country any more. We have Health Care. And it is big business. Make no mistake: Health Care will contrive to make examples of folks who either can’t or won’t buy into it. Health Care might hide in dark corners armed with fistfuls of cash or promises or threats, to perhaps nudge a county coroner to create a crime where none exists; or pressure a district attorney to pursue prosecution against people who have the audacity to believe they have a choice when it comes to purchasing medical treatment. Health Care would think nothing of taking a family’s personal tragedy and mercilessly exploiting it for its own purposes.
Possibly this is not what happened in this case. We’ll never know, will we? But we must not be naïve enough to believe it can’t or doesn’t happen. It’s all too possible. All too conceivable.
In any case, a society which allows medical treatment to be dispensed on the basis of who can pay (and how much), which allows power over life and death to rest in the hands of third parties who handle the cash flow with obvious disdain for the needy, has no business punishing any private citizen whose personal choice has produced a tragic outcome. Either a society values life, or it doesn’t. Either it charges all persons and entities with the responsibility of caring for the most helpless among us, or it cannot legitimately charge anyone.
A boy died. A boy who could have been healed with proper medical treatment, received in a timely manner. That is an abomination. It is not my purpose here to absolve the parents and chalk this one up to the vagaries of free choice. My point is that they never should have had to make the choice. Parents should never, ever be put in a position where they are too afraid, intimidated, confused or ignorant of Health Care to receive healing for a child. Health Care failed this boy. Health Care failed these parents.
But Health Care is not going to jail. The parents are.
Justice has not been served. It has been used. To serve Health Care.
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
LIES, INJUSTICE AND THE UNAMERICAN WAY
My sister bless her heart is probably more conservative than mom and I are. She posted a link on my Facebook page this morning and I followed it. Went looking through the postings and found something that I did not need to see on the day before Thanksgiving. But, the cartoon looked familiar. I'd seen something like it within the last couple of days. I was right. The original cartoon with Jim Morin's byline was published in the Eugene Register Guard yesterday. The Miami Herald probably published it the 20th. It didn't take long for someone to photoshop it, take out Morin's byline and come up with this: abomination is the kindest term I can come up with.
And this is the website I found the second cartoon on. Ironically they use the name Truth, Justice and the American Way. You'll have to scroll down a bit to find this posting but feel free to leave your opinion.
Cross posted in Walking With Hope. But, when I see stuff like this, hope looks a long, long, way away.
Monday, November 21, 2011
In Anticipation of Thanksgiving...
Thursday is Thanksgiving, and I have much for which to be thankful. There are the usual, major things, beginning with a great family, and good health. And then there are the everyday, material things...enough food to eat, a roof over my head, a job. Cool weather...it seems like just yesterday we were sweltering in Dallas, in the Endless Summer, but tonight I'm bundled up in my gameroom, glad to be inside, because outside there is a driving, cold rain beating against the roof and windows. I haven't turned the heat on yet, and the house is decidedly cool, but I'm cozy in my footed, one-piece pajamas, snuggled beneath a throw and a comforter.
I'd planned to take PTO this week, because I very much need the break, and taking 3 days PTO to get 9 days off in a row is my kind of bargain spending. But today, Monday, I ended up working a horrendously long day, because I simply had too much work to not spend today working. Which means this was yet another day that I also didn't get to go test drive cars. It has now been a month since I totaled my Honda Fit in a fender bender in the parking lot at Target, and I'm still in a rental car. I have to find a new car this week. It's not a lack of trying on my part, but since dealerships are closed on Sundays, and since I work long hours Monday through Friday, my test drives have been limited to Saturdays, one of which I was down and out with a stomach bug.
I hate to admit it, but all of this had me feeling rather sorry for myself, until I read a letter in one of the car forums where I've been lurking, seeking advice on the purchase of a car. I felt incredibly spoiled, reading that letter. It was from a woman just a little younger than me who was asking for advice about buying a car. She was trying to decide between 2 cars, and asked if anyone on the car forum could advise her which would be the better deal.She still had a teen at home, although she said she would soon be an empty nester, and the car was mostly for going to the grocery store and doctor appointments. Each of the cars she was considering had 100,000 miles on them. The dealer had told her that one of them had been in an accident, but she wisely read the Carfax report, and it had, in fact, been in two accidents. Both of the cars needed some very basic repairs that the dealer was working on. She wrote that her absolute limit was $7,000, and added that she hated haggling.
A couple of guys from the forum gave her some very sound advice. One of them said that from the descriptions she'd provided, she ought to be able to get either car for about $5500, and not have to pay more than that. He steered her toward Edmunds, and told her in no uncertain terms not to tell the dealer that she hates haggling. One of the other guys told her what sort of repairs would be routine on both of the cars, considering their age.
It's true that she and I have very different needs insofar as cars are concerned. I gather she lives in either a small town or a community with excellent public transportation, since by her own description, she only needs a car for light, occasional driving. I have a daily commute of over a hundred miles, a combination of city and highway driving. In the 3 1/2 years that I owned my Fit, I put just under 80,000 miles on it. So I need a reliable car with good gas mileage. This is one of the reasons I look at new cars: I know they lose a couple thousand dollars in value the moment they're driven off the lot, but the standard warranty on small cars (the only sort of car I'm considering) is 3 years or 36,000 miles, whichever comes first, and with the driving I do, 36,000 miles will always come first, specifically, about 18 months after I've made my purchase. It doesn't make sense for me to get a car with a lot of miles, that's already beyond the warranty.
And yet I feel guilty, contemplating the purchase of a new, or almost new car, when there are so many people out there like this woman, hoping for a bargain in a car with a 100,000 miles on the engine. We take so much for granted...
cross posted at Talking to Myself
I'd planned to take PTO this week, because I very much need the break, and taking 3 days PTO to get 9 days off in a row is my kind of bargain spending. But today, Monday, I ended up working a horrendously long day, because I simply had too much work to not spend today working. Which means this was yet another day that I also didn't get to go test drive cars. It has now been a month since I totaled my Honda Fit in a fender bender in the parking lot at Target, and I'm still in a rental car. I have to find a new car this week. It's not a lack of trying on my part, but since dealerships are closed on Sundays, and since I work long hours Monday through Friday, my test drives have been limited to Saturdays, one of which I was down and out with a stomach bug.
I hate to admit it, but all of this had me feeling rather sorry for myself, until I read a letter in one of the car forums where I've been lurking, seeking advice on the purchase of a car. I felt incredibly spoiled, reading that letter. It was from a woman just a little younger than me who was asking for advice about buying a car. She was trying to decide between 2 cars, and asked if anyone on the car forum could advise her which would be the better deal.She still had a teen at home, although she said she would soon be an empty nester, and the car was mostly for going to the grocery store and doctor appointments. Each of the cars she was considering had 100,000 miles on them. The dealer had told her that one of them had been in an accident, but she wisely read the Carfax report, and it had, in fact, been in two accidents. Both of the cars needed some very basic repairs that the dealer was working on. She wrote that her absolute limit was $7,000, and added that she hated haggling.
A couple of guys from the forum gave her some very sound advice. One of them said that from the descriptions she'd provided, she ought to be able to get either car for about $5500, and not have to pay more than that. He steered her toward Edmunds, and told her in no uncertain terms not to tell the dealer that she hates haggling. One of the other guys told her what sort of repairs would be routine on both of the cars, considering their age.
It's true that she and I have very different needs insofar as cars are concerned. I gather she lives in either a small town or a community with excellent public transportation, since by her own description, she only needs a car for light, occasional driving. I have a daily commute of over a hundred miles, a combination of city and highway driving. In the 3 1/2 years that I owned my Fit, I put just under 80,000 miles on it. So I need a reliable car with good gas mileage. This is one of the reasons I look at new cars: I know they lose a couple thousand dollars in value the moment they're driven off the lot, but the standard warranty on small cars (the only sort of car I'm considering) is 3 years or 36,000 miles, whichever comes first, and with the driving I do, 36,000 miles will always come first, specifically, about 18 months after I've made my purchase. It doesn't make sense for me to get a car with a lot of miles, that's already beyond the warranty.
And yet I feel guilty, contemplating the purchase of a new, or almost new car, when there are so many people out there like this woman, hoping for a bargain in a car with a 100,000 miles on the engine. We take so much for granted...
cross posted at Talking to Myself
Monday, October 31, 2011
On Hounds From Hell
This morning, I drove over to the dike to take a walk and talk to the wildlife. I had taken about a dozen steps along the graveled earthen ridge when I looked up to see a twenty-pound Jack Russel terrier about thirty yards ahead, crouching at his owner’s feet. Then, like lightning, he took off, snarling, hell bent for leather—right at me. The male half of the young couple who I assumed to be in charge of the dog (or not) laughed, made a half-hearted attempt to call off his mutt, and then just ambled forward as if nothing in the world were amiss; while I—fearing for my ankles or my butt or whatever part of my flesh the crazed little mongrel might decide to sink his teeth into—waved my arms, stamped my feet and hollered in my best “Bad Dog” mom voice, “No! Get out of here! Bad dog!”
The dog veered at the last second and trotted off into the weeds behind me. Unconvinced that the attack had been aborted, I turned to keep an eye on the little bastard; and out of the corner of my eye, ascertained that a second terrier had broken away from the people and was now also hurtling down the gravel path at me. The young couple strolled amiably toward me and looked slightly amused as I reprised my screaming, hand-waving, foot-stomping act, in two directions now, as by this time I was badgered from before and behind. I looked up angrily at the inexplicably unfazed young couple, who were by now about fifteen feet away.
“Maybe you should put a leash on these dogs!” I sputtered, still dancing and clapping to keep their pets a safe distance from my ankles.
The amiable expression disappeared from the young man’s face and he sneered at me, “Get over it!” Two leashes dangled limply from his hand.
In the ensuing few moments, he got control of his animals; acting all the while like I was some kind of head case for being so upset by his cute little dogs. Once he had the little devils safely tethered, I moved to go around the party and continue my now completely ruined walk. The young man was still looking at me like I was out of my mind.
“I have no problem with cute little dogs,” I informed him. “But when a dog comes charging at me with his teeth bared, that is not a good thing.” And I walked on.
Last I heard, he was whining something about, “Yeah, look at him!” As if his dog were so adorable and so inoffensive he could not possibly frighten a sane person.
WTF is it with people and their dogs?
I have a dog. I love my dog. But she’s A D.O.G. Not an animated stuffed animal. Not a child. Not a cute, cuddly four-legged package of fur with all the rights, privileges, needs and cognitive powers of a small human being. She doesn’t need to come into stores and restaurants with me. She doesn’t need to ride in airplanes, taxis, trains or city busses. She doesn’t need to come to crowded outdoor (or indoor!) events so she can be with me and “play” with the other dogs. She would, in fact, HATE doing any of those things and, though she does not like to be left at home, she is a lot happier there, in her familiar surroundings, than she would be if I dragged her everywhere I went.
And I would no sooner take her to one of those dangerous, germ-infested encampments of canine gang psychology—the “Off-Leash Dog Parks”—than I would incarcerate her in a cell in a dirty kennel and lace her water bowl with distemper virus.
I treat my dog like a dog. We go for rides, we go for walks, we play ball, she gets doggie treats. I don’t feed her from my dinner plate, because I don’t want her to get fat and ill—obesity is mortally dangerous to dogs. She doesn’t sit on the furniture and she doesn’t sleep in my bed. We take her to the vet, we keep her clean, we keep her free of fleas. And we love her. We cherish her, protect her and discipline her. Most people in our circle understand that our dog is a member of our family and is pretty damned spoiled. But she’s still a dog. And we respect that.
Dog owners have gone completely around the bend. They get a dog because they demand that something unconditionally love and be totally dependent upon THEM. Then they attach the poor animal to themselves by an impossibly short umbilical, insisting that the dog wants and needs to go everywhere and do everything the owner does. Not one millisecond of thought is wasted on the dog’s actual needs or preference. Or what might or might not be good for it. Humans have the bigger brains (theoretically.) Why are we not using them to understand how to truly enhance our pets’ lives, rather than building fantasies about how much they love us and need to be with us every minute of every day? Trust me—that kind of sick dependency does not come from the dog.
Then there is the subset of people that believes that controlling a dog in any way is somehow cruel or repressive. The relationship between humans and canines is not one big “Born Free” moment, people. We haven’t gone out into the woods, captured dogs and forced them into servitude. Thousands of years ago, humans and canines hammered out a mutually beneficial relationship. Each species has adapted behaviors to grease the wheels of the relationship; but though we’ve been in partnership for millennia, communication and bonding between the two species is imperfect at best. An uncontrolled dog can still pose a threat to humans…this is even more true since we have chosen to play god and breed dogs for aggressive behavior.
Dogs are pack-oriented animals. A dog’s behavior toward its pack is not an indicator of how it will treat strangers. To eliminate the fear that an encounter will end in bloodshed, dogs need to be under control when there is a chance of them coming into contact with non-pack members. If the human does not have verbal control over the dog, there had better be some kind of physical restraint used. This is known as a leash. It is not a torture device. It protects both humans and canines from the unpredictability of their behavior toward each other.
But we’re not concerned about our pets’ welfare, are we? We just want to puff ourselves up with that feeling of largesse and magnanimity we get when we let our companion run free and unfettered. And don’t nag us about the well-being of other people! If they’re frightened, intimidated or attacked by our pet, they need to “get over it.”
So now, I will either have to stop taking my walks when there is any chance that some fool with an unleashed dog is going to be claiming the territory, or I’ll to have to pack an umbrella, a walking stick, a can of mace or a grenade to ensure that I can complete my relaxing encounter with nature without fear of puncture or mutilation.
Yeah. Right.
Cross-posted at Coming to Terms...
The dog veered at the last second and trotted off into the weeds behind me. Unconvinced that the attack had been aborted, I turned to keep an eye on the little bastard; and out of the corner of my eye, ascertained that a second terrier had broken away from the people and was now also hurtling down the gravel path at me. The young couple strolled amiably toward me and looked slightly amused as I reprised my screaming, hand-waving, foot-stomping act, in two directions now, as by this time I was badgered from before and behind. I looked up angrily at the inexplicably unfazed young couple, who were by now about fifteen feet away.
“Maybe you should put a leash on these dogs!” I sputtered, still dancing and clapping to keep their pets a safe distance from my ankles.
The amiable expression disappeared from the young man’s face and he sneered at me, “Get over it!” Two leashes dangled limply from his hand.
In the ensuing few moments, he got control of his animals; acting all the while like I was some kind of head case for being so upset by his cute little dogs. Once he had the little devils safely tethered, I moved to go around the party and continue my now completely ruined walk. The young man was still looking at me like I was out of my mind.
“I have no problem with cute little dogs,” I informed him. “But when a dog comes charging at me with his teeth bared, that is not a good thing.” And I walked on.
Last I heard, he was whining something about, “Yeah, look at him!” As if his dog were so adorable and so inoffensive he could not possibly frighten a sane person.
WTF is it with people and their dogs?
I have a dog. I love my dog. But she’s A D.O.G. Not an animated stuffed animal. Not a child. Not a cute, cuddly four-legged package of fur with all the rights, privileges, needs and cognitive powers of a small human being. She doesn’t need to come into stores and restaurants with me. She doesn’t need to ride in airplanes, taxis, trains or city busses. She doesn’t need to come to crowded outdoor (or indoor!) events so she can be with me and “play” with the other dogs. She would, in fact, HATE doing any of those things and, though she does not like to be left at home, she is a lot happier there, in her familiar surroundings, than she would be if I dragged her everywhere I went.
And I would no sooner take her to one of those dangerous, germ-infested encampments of canine gang psychology—the “Off-Leash Dog Parks”—than I would incarcerate her in a cell in a dirty kennel and lace her water bowl with distemper virus.
I treat my dog like a dog. We go for rides, we go for walks, we play ball, she gets doggie treats. I don’t feed her from my dinner plate, because I don’t want her to get fat and ill—obesity is mortally dangerous to dogs. She doesn’t sit on the furniture and she doesn’t sleep in my bed. We take her to the vet, we keep her clean, we keep her free of fleas. And we love her. We cherish her, protect her and discipline her. Most people in our circle understand that our dog is a member of our family and is pretty damned spoiled. But she’s still a dog. And we respect that.
Dog owners have gone completely around the bend. They get a dog because they demand that something unconditionally love and be totally dependent upon THEM. Then they attach the poor animal to themselves by an impossibly short umbilical, insisting that the dog wants and needs to go everywhere and do everything the owner does. Not one millisecond of thought is wasted on the dog’s actual needs or preference. Or what might or might not be good for it. Humans have the bigger brains (theoretically.) Why are we not using them to understand how to truly enhance our pets’ lives, rather than building fantasies about how much they love us and need to be with us every minute of every day? Trust me—that kind of sick dependency does not come from the dog.
Then there is the subset of people that believes that controlling a dog in any way is somehow cruel or repressive. The relationship between humans and canines is not one big “Born Free” moment, people. We haven’t gone out into the woods, captured dogs and forced them into servitude. Thousands of years ago, humans and canines hammered out a mutually beneficial relationship. Each species has adapted behaviors to grease the wheels of the relationship; but though we’ve been in partnership for millennia, communication and bonding between the two species is imperfect at best. An uncontrolled dog can still pose a threat to humans…this is even more true since we have chosen to play god and breed dogs for aggressive behavior.
Dogs are pack-oriented animals. A dog’s behavior toward its pack is not an indicator of how it will treat strangers. To eliminate the fear that an encounter will end in bloodshed, dogs need to be under control when there is a chance of them coming into contact with non-pack members. If the human does not have verbal control over the dog, there had better be some kind of physical restraint used. This is known as a leash. It is not a torture device. It protects both humans and canines from the unpredictability of their behavior toward each other.
But we’re not concerned about our pets’ welfare, are we? We just want to puff ourselves up with that feeling of largesse and magnanimity we get when we let our companion run free and unfettered. And don’t nag us about the well-being of other people! If they’re frightened, intimidated or attacked by our pet, they need to “get over it.”
So now, I will either have to stop taking my walks when there is any chance that some fool with an unleashed dog is going to be claiming the territory, or I’ll to have to pack an umbrella, a walking stick, a can of mace or a grenade to ensure that I can complete my relaxing encounter with nature without fear of puncture or mutilation.
Yeah. Right.
Cross-posted at Coming to Terms...
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
A CHRISTIAN NATION?
This was on Facebook the other day, but I lifted this from another blog. What can I say? We have candidates outdoing themselves to prove their bona fides to the Christian Right, with a self described faith that has no resemblance to what I grew up with. And doesn't even seem to be in the same universe as the material I've been reading.
Back in the eighties Bill Moyers did several programs on religious subjects, including what has some to be known as Christian Reconstruction or Dominionism. I dug out my old tape the other day. As far as these folks are concerned this country's religious heritage began and ended with the Puritans and John Calvin. No mention of the Quakers, Anglicans, Catholics or any other groups who also settled this country. And I'm discovering that when it comes to some the rights we take for granted; access to a jury, freedom of religion, separation of church and state, you can thank the Quakers.
Enough for now before I thoroughly depress myself.
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