Doctor's Office - Dial one for an emergency...

I was six years old and passed out. Mom called our family physician, who came to the house, examined me, diagnosed heat exhaustion and recommended rest in a darkened room, cool compresses and avoiding direct sunlight.

I was 20 and getting married in college. Mom found a reputable gyn man, made an appointment for me for a birth control consultation so I could finish college.

I was in my 30s and 40s and called my doctor's office and made an appointment when a health need arose.

Today, I call my doctors office, get voice automation and a selection of choices - Dial 1 for an emergency; dial 2 to renew a prescription; dial 3 to leave a message that might or might not result in a return call. To get an appointment takes a minimum of 2 weeks (for an emergency). Otherwise go to the emergency room.

Mom is now 96 years old. She does not have an answering machine or voice mail. A highly intelligent woman, nevertheless she is technologically challenged. When she calls her doctor's office, she gets confused by the maze of automated choices. The evaluations she receives after her appointments suggest she can access her records online. Mom has never used, let alone owned a computer. Her solution? She writes her doctor a letter and mails it. When he calls back, she might not be home. She is a very active 96 year old, frequently on the go.

Not too many individuals her age live alone and independently. But there must be others out there. Folks who grew up in an age when the family doctor made house calls; when the telephone was used for emergencies; when automation was a unique assembly line procedure used to produce Model T Fords. There does not seem to be a great deal of room in our society for folks like her. Folks that face the terrible decision of giving up their cars in the face of fading capabilities, but who are still very capable of taking care of themselves. Folks who like to make trips not just to the doctor or the grocery store, but to their favorite restaurants, friends, the library, the hairdresser or masseuse. Folks who do not want to reside in Assisted Living Facilities or Nursing Homes or Elder Communities, but find such decisions forced upon them by the exigencies of day to day survival.

In the meantime, she writes a letter to her doctor to avoid his automated telephone system and struggles to face the reality that a mini-stroke may have changed her life forever and robbed her of the rituals that make her life livable.

Thanksgiving - not so much for the "small people"

Unless you live in the antiquated Commonwealth of Massachusetts, renowned for its archaic "blue laws," if you are one of the "small people,"  Thanksgiving Holiday is probably not for you.

The major retailers continue a tradition of creeping closer and closer to the actual holiday for opening their doors to the onslaught of Black Friday shoppers. The earlier the opening hour, the more likely a retailer's employees will be forced to work on the holiday itself.

Then again, who ever said holidays are for everyone? If you live in Massachusetts, finding an open store for that forgotten item that absolutely must grace your holiday table will be a frustrating exercise in futility. Everywhere else in our great nation, you simply run out to your local supermarket and pick it up. Sure this means the less fortunate among us must work on our nation's most family oriented holiday (I do not count Christmas because of its religious orientation), but so what? The people who truly matter (me, myself and I) will get to enjoy the holiday, celebrate family and eat the turkey like true Americans.

We already have decided that Presidents' Day, Memorial Day, July 4, Labor Day, Veterans' Day are for shopping. Why not Thanksgiving? After all, it practically breaths down the neck of Christmas - the day we devote to the celebration of consumerism. And absolutely nothing should get in the way of that.

Work on small people, so that the more fortunate among us can bask in the glory of the celebration of Thanksgiving. You live to serve. Unless, of course, you happen to live in Massachusetts.

Am I a NIMBY? You Betcha!

Most of my adult life I have listened to disparaging remarks about the "Not in My Back Yard" crowd or "nimbys." Nimbys are accused of wanting all the benefits of industrialization and technology but fighting tooth and nail against using their own areas to produce the products or dispose of their refuse. No smokestacks. No factories. No cell phone towers. No dams. No pipelines. No high tension electrical wires. No exploitation of natural resources. No landfills.

In the meantime, mountaintops have been dumped into savagely polluted valleys in West Virginia and Kentucky, toxic high tech waste has been exported to poor nations, carbon  spewed into the atmosphere, plastics and chemicals have created massive dead zones in our planet's oceans.

Now our fresh water supplies and the very stability of the ground we stand upon are under assault from hydrofracking.

The strongest voices against environmental contamination and alteration frequently come from local opposition - the nimbys. If our only hope is to save our environment tiny little pieces at a time - the nimbys may be our court of last resort. Are they guilty of hypocracy? To some extent. But in the absence of leadership on our state, national and international levels, the movement to stop destroying our environment has to start somewhere.

When it comes to destroying the environment, MY BACK YARD is the planet Earth we all share.

OWS - It's over, Right?

Around 2 a.m. this morning the NYPD began clearing the Occupy Wall Street Ziccotti Park site. Although some film coverage exists, it is scanty. News media was blocked access to the site as were protesters attempting to enter the area. Below are three links I was able to find.

ABC news: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_osX6JWdvU
Russia Today: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpq-moDIkl8
AlJazeeraEnglish: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2pVafxS8ZU

Protesters were informed they could return after the site had been cleaned. The tents and equipment were loaded onto trucks and removed.

At roughly the same time an Occupy Albany site was cleared in the state capital. Over the past week or so, encampments throughout the country have been cleared in roughly the same manner. The procedure of initiating the evictions during the small hours of the night appears to work well from the police standpoint.

I guess this ends Occupy Wall Street. With winter coming on and officialdom cracking down, surely now the protesters will give up and go home and everything will return to "normal."

Or not.

Occupy Wall Street Should... .

Hanging out on Reddit and scanning online news services, I have been struck by a familiar refrain. Lots and lots of bloggers, media outlets and pundits are offering lots and lots of advice to Occupy Wall Street.

Occupy Wall Street should support Election Reform... . Occupy Wall Street should appoint a leader. Occupy Wall Street should support this agenda... . that agenda.... my agenda... . this pundit's agenda... . that celebrity's agenda... . should define its agenda... .

Republicans try to cast the movement as a "Democratic Party" phenomenon. Democrats appear to think the movement is theirs for the taking. Afterall, where else can they go? Does THAT sound familiar to anyone?

President Obama gives vague, unclarified nods in the movement's direction, without taking a position. Does THAT also sound familiar?

Every organization from the ACLU to organized labor to Moveon.org to the Americans for Prosperity (co-opters of the Tea Party movement) either wants a piece of this action or wants to marginalize it.

To date the movement has resisted these attempts. I hope it continues to do so. I believe the movement's power lies in the fact it is unaffiliated with any of the woefully compromised institutions that have brought us to this unlovely place. Why? Because in the meantime it is highlighting the very real problems our society faces and the very real perpetrators of disfunction that landed us here.


The problems we face cover a wide spectrum of global economic, environmental, technological,  humanitarian challenges. None of them can be solved by sound bytes or politically correct truisms. Only a hard, slogging, cooperative effort has a hope. Kudos to Occupy Wall Street for avoiding the easy answers to date.

Do the 99% envy the 1%?

The assumption of the 1% is that everyone shares its values and wants what it has. On a theoretical level many of us probably do. On a day-to-day basis, we are about providing for our families, finding jobs that pay living wages and living free from fear that a layoff or an illness will strip us of everything.

The folks I know don't mind working hard - they do it every day. They just want a share in the fruits of that labor.

Health Insurance Costs Continue to Soar

Yesterday I opened a notice from my company's health insurance provider. It announced the "state-approved" increase in coverage costs for 2012 - almost $100 a month per policy. In December I enter "Medicare World" and will be paying for Medicare Part B. The company insurer is aware of this and has lowered the monthly charge for my coverage - a paltry $40 a month. The new rate means my coverage will only cost about $50 more a month (not including the new monthly cost of Medicare Part B).

I intend to go with a more reasonably priced Medicare Advantage product. I just don't understand why the company's carrier offers such a lousy deal.

Goodbye Finger Lakes?

The fight to prevent/permit hydrofracking has come to one of the most beautiful corners of New York State - the Finger Lakes Region.

Will hydrofracking do for the Finger Lakes, what mountaintop removal did for Appalachia?

Mountaintop removal: http://www.nrdc.org/energy/coal/mtr/?gclid=CJmMhLKzmqwCFQM75QodTjjjOA

The Finger Lakes: http://www.fingerlakes.org/