Poem to the Heart

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receive.

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Introducing Our New Surgeon General - Real Hope for Real Health Care

Published on Saturday, July 18, 2009 by CommonDreams.org
Oysters for Health Care
by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship
This is a story of health care and two Americans; a tale of two citizens, if you will.
This week, Regina Benjamin was nominated by President Obama as our next surgeon general, charged with educating Americans on medical issues and overseeing the United States Public Health Service. She was the first African American woman to head a state medical society, a member of the board of trustees of the American Medical Association and last year was named the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation genius award.
But more important, she's a country doctor, a family physician along the Gulf Coast of Alabama, serving the poor and uninsured -- white, black and Asian. After Hurricane Katrina destroyed her clinic -- the second time a hurricane had done so -- she mortgaged her own home to rebuild it. The day it was to reopen, a fire burned the clinic to the ground. Moving to a trailer, Dr. Benjamin and her staff never missed a day of work.
Stan Wright, the tobacco-chewing mayor of Bayou La Batre, the small shrimp-fishing community in which Dr. Benjamin practices, told National Public Radio, "She'll do whatever she's gotta do to make sure everyone's taken care of."
Benjamin will no doubt bring that same ethic to the fight for health care reform. When President Obama announced her nomination in a Rose Garden ceremony Monday, Dr. Benjamin said, "These are trying times in the health care field, and as a nation, we have reached a sobering realization. Our health care system simply cannot continue on the path that we're on. Millions of Americans can't afford health insurance or they don't have the basic health services available where they live."
Although the clinic has not been able to give Dr. Benjamin a salary for years -- Mayor Wright says she's owed over $300,000 -- she buys medicine for her patients out of her own pocket.
In fact, many of the folks in Regina Benjamin's bayou town are so poor that sometimes she's paid with a pint of oysters or a couple of fish. She's fine with that. And she makes house calls.
Now meet H. Edward Hanway, the chairman and CEO of CIGNA, the country's fourth largest insurance company. At the beginning of the year, CIGNA blamed hard economic times when it announced the layoff of 1100 employees, but it reported first quarter profits of $208 million on revenues of nearly $5 billion. Mr. Hanway has announced his retirement at the end of the year, and the living will be easy, financially at least. He made $11.4 million in 2008, according to the Associated Press, and some years more than that.
That's a lot of oysters, although he lags behind Ron Williams, the CEO of Aetna Insurance, who made $17.4 million last year, or John Hammergren, the head of McKesson, the biggest health care company in the world. His compensation was $29.7 million.
Here's the difference. To Dr. Regina Benjamin, health care is a public service, helping people in need with grace and compassion. To Ed Hanway and his highly paid friends, it's big business, a commodity to be sold to those who can afford it. And woe to anyone who gets between them and the profits they reap from sick people.
That's what Wendell Potter, the former CIGNA executive turned health care reform advocate, told us on last week's edition of Bill Moyers Journal.
"Just about every time there has been significant legislation before Congress, the industry has been able to kill it," he said. "Yeah, the status quo works for them. They don't like to have any regulation forced on them or laws forced on them. They don't want to have any competition from the federal government, or any additional regulation from the federal government. They say they will accept it. But the behavior is that they will not."
As we reported last week, that behavior includes spending nearly a million and a half a day to make sure health care reform comes out their way. Over the years they've lavished millions on the politicians who are writing and voting on health care reform. Now it's payback time.
Proposed legislation finally is coming out of House and Senate committees, and Thursday's Los Angeles Times reported "signs that the debate was moving into a more bruising phase in which insurance companies, hospitals and others fight to shape the details of legislative provisions that affect them."
It's going to get ugly, especially now that some Democrats, according to ABC News, are contemplating new taxes on health insurance and pharmaceutical companies to help pay for reform, perhaps as much as $100 billion worth.
In other words, no more Mister Nice Guy. Those TV commercials you've been seeing from the health care companies about their generosity and miracles of modern medicine are about to change, as the opposition shifts gears from charm to alarm. It's the war against the Clinton health care plan all over again.
This time, don't let them scare you. "It should not be this hard for doctors and other health care providers to care for their patients," Dr. Regina Benjamin said when she was nominated this week. "It shouldn't be this expensive for Americans to get health care in this country."

Private Property Vs. The People

A while ago I was following the events happening in the nation's larget urban farm, the South Central Farm; 14 acres of homegrown greens and community right smack dab in the middle of the concrete jungle of LA. A source of healthy, nutritious food tended mostly by poor people of color for 12 years, its fate was sealed in a backroom deal after which the people were violently evicted, and the gardens bulldozed. They did not go without a fight however, and their story is one worth knowing. Self-sufficiency is not for the idyllic and feeble-hearted - it is something we will likely struggle for, and perhaps even shed tears and blood for. Indeed, some already have.

Please watch this trailer. It is filling my soul with trembling, it is sending chills down my spine. For some of us, food is a novelty, we fulfill a primal urge with it, but not much else. For others, food is about dignity, it is about justice, it is about strength in community.

A community showing will be announced soon pending the film's arrival in DVD form or otherwise.

Hiking In the Redwoods with the Little Ones

Last week, my daughters and I were down for the count with some nasty flu. As if that weren't bad enough, we spent most of our time watching the tv and being indoors the whole time. I was so fed up with sickliness and boobtubing, that on Sunday, I told my girls to put on some good shoes cuz we were going hiking. Littlest is only 17 months, so this was going to be her first hiking adventure. But I was more than confident; I often say that I want to put a pedometer on her because I swear that she walks at least a couple miles a day. What more natural thing then to set her in front of an open path and let her be on her way.

Oldest and I were dealing with petty riffs between us and i thought that a nature walk may help to restore calm, rekindle the creativity bug, and give us something bigger than ourselves to focus on. It took some time...and sometimes all seemed futile when petty gripes persisted even amongst the neutral space that is nature...but I have faith, and time and nature are the optimal healing agents.

So it went, we walked along fern-lined ledges, walked alongside the gurgling, then rushing, then subdued creek, overturned rocks, threw them into the water, spotted cool creatures, watched flying fairies, found walking sticks, did silly stretches, raced, watched littlest fall, get a face full of dirt, then smile about something not two minutes later. Spotted tiny fish, pet a banana slug, felt the zoom of a zipping dragonfly. Concocted magic potions, raced leaf boats, found many squarish rocks.

It felt really good to get out and feel the world again.

!ojo! Beware the Marketing of TODs

Along the El Camino, there are many empty and bare lots (and increasingly, storefronts) like this one, not really serving any particular purpose except to hope to attract the attention of a developer with deep pockets. The fence also serves no particular purpose except to symbollically uphold the increasingly primitive concept of "private property" while being a pathetic deterrent to bored and rebellious, fence-jumping suburban teenagers.

When I drive by them, they stir my imagination. There are many people living in apartments just behind and around this lot, and I am sure that some would enjoy raising veggies and herbs, or maybe sitting under a shade tree watching a mother bird tend her spring chicks, or perhaps creating and installing a peice of amateur public art. But whoever is trying to bank off this parcel, is counting on the imagination of something current and trendy: transit-oriented development.

My environmental self is all for TODs, but aren't there enough units in the background and homes right behind that could count as such? I know providing free garden or open space may not be much of an attractor as far as making money is concerned, but it may go along way toward bringing peace of mind, tranquility and some community to the cooped-up residents nearby. It might be better than a view full of plaster, glass and more walls, i'm just saying.

Providing some greenery would be a hedge against this:

and this:

and this playful-looking little gas station:

and if you're curious about what an urban garden could look like go here, here and here.

Perhaps zoning regulations don't permit urban gradening on this particular lot yet, but here is an example of a zoning code from the city of Cincinatti permitting the change to an "Urban Garden District." If you are interested in the parceling of more space toward urban gardening, I highly suggest you take a look at it.

This isn't a dream, it is part of the journey toward our new reality. In the meantime, the city can keep counting on the developer being attracted by this fancy lightpost:

and the abandoned fountain will keep dreaming of more dignified days....

Happy ENERGY Independence Day!!!

Ahhh, wide open spaces. who says there aren't any left. In the spirit of independence, I'll tell you that I see them all around me. They're just usually paved over, walled up, fenced out, and built on.

Today we headed over to an impromptu (well, it was announced only the day before) neighborhood 4th of July parade. My daughter and I got so excited, that we spent the better part of yesterday preparing some simple props for ourselves. I was going to go as a zero-emissions vehicle, she was going to decorate her bike with pinwheels to symbolize windmills and I wanted to dress up my 1 year old as a victory garden. Alas, my oldest got really sick all of a sudden, and altho things didn't turn out quite as planned, we still managed to drive there (she's really sick) and then walk the few blocks to where everyone was gathered. The streets were blockaded and there were zero cars. Funny, our walk toward the gathering spot began on the sidewalk and then like an AHA! moment, I said to my daughter, hey, let's walk on the street and then were quite excited to do so.

Here's the parade getting started, quite a good turn out I thought. Most people were walking but we still had some sideline cheerleaders to wave to!

This little baby was smiling the whole time.

Families taking back the streets!

Can you imagine if our built environment favored this as the norm rather than the exception: commuting, family-style....

These little ones were definitely in spirit. I think for next year tho, we could use some more music, noise-making, costumes, etc. for the older children and big kids (er, adults) -- I can't wait!

Some things overheard:

• "I didn't know so many children lived in this neighborhood."
• "This is a good way of getting to know some of our neighbors."
• "How come we never see this many children on a regular day?"

I, for one, was surprised so many small children lived in this neighborhood. But when will the AHA! moment come for everyone else. The one that knows, that streets should be for the enjoyment of people and children- the facilitation of living well, happily and healthily, and not for the transport of our isolating, polluting, wide, open-space hogging cars.

Budgeting on the Home Food Front

Here we are again, the budget is a mess, the Crats and Pubs can't agree on cutting or taxing (whatever happened to compromise?) and the effects of all this will go to where it always hits the hardest: the economics of the home.

Cash-strapped families see our own budget towards basic neccesities losing buying power, which is theoretically fine when most of our disposable income goes toward fueling the ecological nightmare that is blind consumerism. But when our budgets are rapidly ceasing to cover even basic necessities: food, healthcare, rent/mortgage, education, that's when mom and dad, and even the kids get creative. When the doors of the formal economy close, we turn around and begin to open our eyes to the informal economy behind us: our own communities, the free goodies found in nature, and the skills/hobbies many of us retain.

Look around your neighborhoods right now.

The bounty of spring is upon us: the reds and blushes of peaches, plums and apricots catch your eye as you drive by them.


Lemons reach toward you, their branches arching over wooden fences.

Tomoatoes are beginning to ripen, strawberries have been trickling in, the peas have spent their pretty flowers and tender pods are forming. Urban food production has been quietly relegated to backyards, but no longer, more and more suburbanites are tearing up their water-guzzling front lawns and bringing the bounty to where we all can see and appreciate it.

My friend Dennis has been delighting the nearby schoolchildren with ginormous sunflowers and orange, peek-a-boo pumpkins in the fall for the past few years now and he said it best: "For twenty years, I have never gotten one compliment on my lawn. Now, people stop and look and we begin talking about growing and they give me compliments on the vegetables and other things we are growing instead."

After we talked gardening a bit, he sent me home with some tender yellow, squash blossoms (mmm, quesadillas con flor de calabaza!) and some green, spiky cucumbers. Growing, sharing, learning - that's what it is all about.

For more salacious front-yard gardens, check out this hilarious post from fabulous mamas at the Green Phonebooth blog.