Medical bruohaha needs context

A letter I am sending today to the local paper

To the editor:

The News Times and Connecticut's various versions of television news have repeatedly run stories that illegal immigrants are costing Danbury Hospital $4 million in unpaid bills. The figure has been cited over and over again. Any reporter and any thinker worth his salt knows a figure without context can be a little like holding a dime up next to the moon on a dark night or looking at one line from a drawing. Could be the side of a skyscraper. Then again it could be the side of a jelly jar.

There are two numbers without which the $4 million dollar figure is completely meaningless. It is necessary to know the total amount billed out for medical care (both paid and unpaid) by the same hospital during the same time period - and also how much was spent by that hospital covering for medical care for uninsured and UNDERINSURED American Citizens.

Then there must be a comparison - what percentage of the total billed out for medical care does that $4 million represent? And what is the percentage of the total for the unpaid bills of citizens? Give us context and then we'll know how to consider that $4 million. I suspect we are whining about the jelly jar when we should be furious about the skyscraper...

ADENDUM - As of Dec, The Danbury News Times never chose to print this. They never even called to confirm the letter sender as is usual at most newspapers.

the wild roar of this day

        The trees are tossing in a fit of false-March on this wild morning. Though it was quite cold earlier now it is a balmy 50 degrees.  Some November.    Around here, at least the oak trees sport  a lovely copper cast, while  many leaves are merely brown.
        I live on the upper-lip of I-84 and I still can't get over the continual wind. Walk straight across our small backyard, scale the fence, and keep going for 20 feet and there is a sudden drop-off where the highway cuts through. You can't see it from here, but there's  an ever present background hum. When the air temp is changing, the wind tends to push through the i-84 canyon rattling all the trees on both embankments.

I see on the Nature Geezer blog there is a page about the winds of autumn.

Cat woman lives!

Truthism - crazier than other isms?

It's tragic how people's ideas can clash.

On Youtube on my SingingMist channel, (Now thePuzzledDragon channel) I have a "Got Christmas Dread " video. Someone left a comment on it, that Religion and Science were bullshit and should be junked infavor of Truthism.

When I visited the website indicated on Truthism, I found about six pagse of of circular bushwhacking before it finally got around to the crux of it - an emphatic belief that the planet is controlled by "Reptilian Overseers." And of course you can see these reptiles only under the influence of meditation or hallucinogenic drugs. Imagine that.

I thought that was crazy enough, but then an equally strange thing happened. One of my regular viewers told the "truthist" person to get outta dodge with his "filth" I replied with some notes about free speech - but shortly after the fellow's account was suspended. I guess that was considered spam? His comments had vanished. I thought well, I will just start over again. And I deleted all the comments on that video.....

Funny how one man's truth is another's ridiculous fantasy - how one man's free discourse is another's filth. When talking about the religion, the storyline always gets crazy no matter what faith is under discussion. How outlandish is a virgin birth or people rising from death or the whole world being carried on a giant turtles back? It seems like no one is able to think of these crazy notions as psychological metaphor. No wonder we are bumping each other off at a frantic pace over religion. Maybe that's man's tragic flaw - his penchant for us-and-them self-delusion.

-- Mar Walker

The pre-christmas bleak

The holidays are sure a time of greatly varying mental states. Some of it is very sweet, On the other had there are the choking bitters. Thanksgiving starts the Christmas season. Mostly I could live without a lot of the Christmas doings. I like the music and the pretty lights. Gifting is for the birds though.

My friend Rich just left. He is usually a veritable Christmas elf. But he has recently lost his job, his car, his apartment and his dog in the span of three or four months. Yet somehow he borrowed a car from his sister-in-law to drive down from Brattleboro on the spur of the moment to visit a few folks he knows down here. He was subdued today. Probably needing to be near people, and remembering better times.

He is lucky that he has a brother with a cabin and so he has a roof over his head for a while. I am another nar do well that is lucky to have a roof.

This past weekend I have been watching Christmas specials which I cannot believe are already on the air. I get more melancholy with each one. A couple of weeks after Christmas all this heart-warming stuff evaporates leaving a crop of crime shows in its stead.

For now though, It seems though, that when you feel sad, it's best just to feel it. Never run from it or try to drown it. If it's not clinical Just suffer through. If you feel each thing as it comes, it doesn't come back to haunt you later.

merry.

Where falling off a chair can lead....

My uncle, my father's younger brother, fell of a chair while he was setting the clock back a few weeks ago. (This not one of my fictional "uncle" stories which are based on other uncles. This is more of a journal entry.) This uncle broke a knee cap and shattered the top of the leg bone. He is an internet Junkie, and had to spend eight days without his computer in a rehab facility. OMG!!!!

In any event he's home now, but cannot climb the stairs to the upstairs room where his computer was located. So, this morning, his son David and I came over and dragged the whole setup downstairs where he is living in the firstfloor den. Dave strung the 50 feet of phone wire and carried the heavy components down the stairs, while I hooked it all back together again.

When we left he had 19 email messages to investigate and the whole word of forums and message boards on a DSL thread. I have never seen a happier man, not even one who had recently won the lottery.

Thankful? Yup! Thankful the diner was open!!!

For the very first time this year, my mother and I celebrated our Thanksgiving in a diner. Not a fancy restaurant but a simple humble diner.

She is almost 80 now and has never once eaten out on Thanksgiving - until this year. In the old days sometimes there were 30 people from Mom's side of the family who arrived for this holiday meal at her sister Pearl's house. Later it was  her daughter, my cousin Linda who made the meal.

Things change though. Some relatives moved, died, grew up, became estranged. My father died in 1984. In the last few years, Thanksgiving has been smaller. With a cousin or two and their children, either been at mom's, or at my cousin Denise's house near Hartford.

This year, Denise went to see her grand-babies in PA, with whom she is utterly obsessed. Their mom is prego again and sickish, not fit to travel. Dense and her husband passed through yesterday on their way to the grandbaby palace. They stopped here for lunch. we had ham and cheese and bagels. But that left Mom and I all on our own for THE meal on Thursday.

Somethings never change - nobody ever suggests that I cook anything. (Prudent choice...) So, today we went to Elmer's Dinner. She had the turkey special with cream of Turkey soup, I had the turkey special with a salad. It came with mashed potatoes, apple stuffing, candied yams, greenbeans and carrots, coffee, and pudding. They cooked it and took away the dirty dishes.

When we eat with the family there are six or seven deserts, and left-overs for weeks - months if you count the freezer! Thanksgiving is normally a caloric high-fat disaster. NOT THIS YEAR. We had a successfully moderate day foodwise. We didn't eat the potatoes, scrapped off the gravy. I did enjoy the apple stuffing and the pudding. The salad was great too. The Turkey was tender and hot and I would do it again in a heartbeat.

In the parking lot on our way out, we passed a family arriving for their meal - a middle-aged husband and wife, a wild ten-year old child, and an elderly couple. The older gent was a bit wobbly, grey-headed and all dapper in a black and white modern art sweater and sun glasses, but his wife looked out of it, and was maneuvered deftly into a wheel chair. Life does have its necessities. So today, I am thankful for diners.