Vaya Con Dios

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It was 1953. I was thirteen and feeling my burgeoning hormones. I would tell my folks that I was going to confession and, instead, meet my friends at a soda shop with a juke box, located a few blocks away, where the owner let us get together in a back room. We closed the door and played “spin the bottle.” That was where I got my first kiss from a boy — to the music of Les Paul and Mary Ford.

Mary Ford passed away in 1977, and by then I was listening to the Moody Blues and Judy Collins. Mary Ford and Les Paul were divorced long before then. I don’t remember hearing anything about her passing, but

Les Paul died today.

Moody Blues and Judy Collins. Here no longer young, but, like Les Paul did until age 94, they can still move an audience.

hey you anti-universal health care people!

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Wake up! You’re being manipulated by those who can afford to pay for their own most expensive health care.

From here, where’s there are more links to truthful information.

Top Five Health Care Reform Lies—and How to Fight Back

Lie #1: President Obama wants to euthanize your grandma!!!

The truth: These accusations—of “death panels” and forced euthanasia—are, of course, flatly untrue. As an article from the Associated Press puts it: “No ‘death panel’ in health care bill.”1 What’s the real deal? Reform legislation includes a provision, supported by the AARP, to offer senior citizens access to a professional medical counselor who will provide them with information on preparing a living will and other issues facing older Americans.2

If you’d like to read the actual section of the legislation that spawned these outrageous claims (Section 1233 of H.R. 3200) for yourself, here it is. It’s pretty boring stuff, which is why the accusations that it creates “death panels” is so absurd. But don’t take our word for it, read it yourself.

Lie #2: Democrats are going to outlaw private insurance and force you into a government plan!!!

The truth: With reform, choices will increase, not decrease. Obama’s reform plans will create a health insurance exchange, a one-stop shopping marketplace for affordable, high-quality insurance options.3 Included in the exchange is the public health insurance option—a nationwide plan with a broad network of providers—that will operate alongside private insurance companies, injecting competition into the market to drive quality up and costs down.4 If you’re happy with your coverage and doctors, you can keep them.5 But the new public plan will expand choices to millions of businesses or individuals who choose to opt into it, including many who simply can’t afford health care now.

Lie #3: President Obama wants to implement Soviet-style rationing!!!

The truth: Health care reform will expand access to high-quality health insurance, and give individuals, families, and businesses more choices for coverage. Right now, big corporations decide whether to give you coverage, what doctors you get to see, and whether a particular procedure or medicine is covered—that is rationed care. And a big part of reform is to stop that.

Health care reform will do away with some of the most nefarious aspects of this rationing: discrimination for pre-existing conditions, insurers that cancel coverage when you get sick, gender discrimination, and lifetime and yearly limits on coverage.6 And outside of that, as noted above, reform will increase insurance options, not force anyone into a rationed situation.

Lie #4: Obama is secretly plotting to cut senior citizens’ Medicare benefits!!!

The truth: Health care reform plans will not reduce Medicare benefits.7 Reform includes savings from Medicare that are unrelated to patient care In fact, the savings comes from cutting billions of dollars in overpayments to insurance companies and eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse.8

Lie #5: Obama’s health care plan will bankrupt America!!!

The truth: We need health care reform now in order to prevent bankruptcy—to control spiraling costs that affect individuals, families, small businesses, and the American economy. Right now, we spend more than $2 trillion dollars a year on health care.9 The average family premium is projected to rise to over $22,000 in the next decade10—and each year, nearly a million people face bankruptcy because of medical expenses.11 Reform, with an affordable, high-quality public option that can spur competition, is necessary to bring down skyrocketing costs. Also, President Obama’s reform plans would be fully paid for over 10 years and not add a penny to the deficit.

I’m looking at the photos that b!X took and posted on Flickr of the emotionally charged gathering in Portland OR regarding the health care issue. We are, indeed, a country manipulated into being divided. What a shame.

toe dipping

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I finally have begun dipping a couple of toes into the waters of life — at least the waters that are not to deep, since I can’t swim.

I have sent poems in to two contests being held by regional poetry reviews. They are old poems, but they might be good enough.

I have enrolled in a four-week poetry workshop based on the Amherst Writers and Artists Method. It’s a start.

I took my first water aerobics class today — just the thing for elder women, and there are a bunch of us. My plan is to go twice a week.

It’s a start — at loosening up my social skills, my once writing talent, and my tight back muscles.

It’s just too easy to just hang around here and be entertained by my 7 year old grandson. Here’s what I mean.

I need to create the life I want to have at 70 (which is only 7 months away). It’s a start. And it’s about time.

as above, so below

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Early in my marriage, I tried to grow some house plants and they all died. My once-husband used to say that I could kill plastic plants.

I grew up in a city-space house devoid of greenery. What did I know.

Later, when my own nuclear family moved into a house on a rural hillside, I started a garden. About the same time, I joined a writers workshop. Things started to grow, inside and out.

Today, the jade plant I’ve been nurturing for years is on its last leggy legs. Even the ivy in the hanging planter is drying up. My garden outdoors is wilting. This blog hasn’t been faring much better.

And so I’m on a quest for a Fall writer’s workshop. I need to get that green thumb moving, need some seeds, fertilizer. Need to stir that dirt, above and below.

I fall down, I get up

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It’s a wonder I haven’t broken any bones.

This last trip was yesterday during my (driving) trip to visit my friends in Albany.

Not too long ago, the friend in whose house I was staying had her front entrance redone — semicircular brick steps bordered by more bricks and beautiful plantings. She had joked about perhaps needing to put up a railing for her “elder” friends, and I assured her that I was still able to navigate.

That is, unless I’m talking on my cell phone and looking down through my progressive lenses while navigating.

So, after tripping and rolling into her geranium bed (never dropped my cell phone) and scraping my forearm, I got up, climbed into my car, and continued on to visit another friend in Troy. (fodder for yet a whole other post)

I’m home now, can’t take a deep breath without getting a sharp pain somewhere between my breast and shoulder. I will call the doctor tomorrow.

I fall down, I get up.

I really have to start doing one thing at a time.

2 skills, 1 talent

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I figure that a skill is something you learn and a talent is something you are born with.

Over my employed years, I developed all sorts of skills, but I still maintain that the two most practical and useful skills — ones that I learned more than a half-century ago — are sewing and typing.

At one time or another I have earned money because I was able to do each, and, as years went by, both skills became essential to fulfilling various creative urges.

My writing has always been dependent on my typing, since I think too fast to write things down by hand. I wind up not being able to read my writing. And editing?! Well, why use anything but a computer?

Tonight, I finished lining one of my crocheted bags so that I can use it as a purse. While crocheting is also one of my skills, it’s not nearly as useful as sewing. Mostly, these days, I fix clothes that I have to make them fit, taking them in, letting them out, shortening etc. depending on what I see as my style du jour.

I like to experiment combining fabric with yarn — hence my crocheted bag with a lining that includes two side pockets — one for my iphone and one for my hearing aids (odd pairing, no?)

Ultimately, improvised products like my new bag are the result of the one talent I have that I find most useful. In my closet is a denim jacket with knitting sleeves that began as a XXL woman’s denim short sleeved button-down-the-front dress that I bought for $3. I took off the sleeves, cut off the skirt part of the dress, sewed on knitted sleeves, a knitted pocket, and a ribbed jacket bottom — and now I have one-of-a-kind denim jacket.

I improvise when I cook, I improvise songs, and I’ve pretty much come to see that I improvise my life in general these days.

It will be interesting to find out how that works for me now that I have no schedule, no purpose/task, no expectations.

One indication is that I’ve joined a fitness club so that I can take water aerobics for my aching back and also use their 30 minute exercise circuit. There won’t be much chance for improvising there. I hope I don’t go and improvise a reason not go.

I am good at improvising. I don’t need patterns or anything but the most rudimentary of instructions. Give me a creative project with a useful goal and I’ll improvise a way to get there. Give me a goal, and I’ll improvise a project to get there.

Tomorrow I will have a new one-of-a-kind bag. Photo to follow.

when sleep won’t come

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I’ve tried just about everything herbal and homeopathic and over-the-counter. I’ve tried relaxation CDs and guided imagery. The only thing that works is a sleeping pill, and I will have to convince my doctor to prescribe some more. But I wish I didn’t have to.

I can’t fall asleep for one night, and my mom can’t fall asleep for good. And I think it’s all tied together.

I am helpless to help her, and her distress surrounds me even long distance, follows me into my own darkness.

I can’t bear to be with her and helpless to ease her distress.

Although yesterday, before I left to return home after five days trying, I sang to her, and she stopped her constant moaning long enough to try to sing with me.

“You are my sunshine,” I sang, and her straining voice joined me, mostly wordless, but struggling to carry the tune.

Down the street from where I live now, a teenage boy with some sort of autism sometimes sits outside and “sings” along with his audio player. The sound is haunting.

“Somewhere over the rainbow,” my mother sings with me, hauntingly, and for a few minutes, perhaps whatever mental and physical pain she’s feeling fades into the background of her distressed mind. We take the best cbd oil for anxiety to be able to feel better because we have tried many pill and none of them work as well when i go to sleep.

But not for long.

mom

I wish you could slip into that long sleep of peace, mom.

We both need some rest.

finally, a perfect beach day

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beach1

After days of rain when it felt more like early spring than summer, we just couldn’t not take advantage of the promise of a sunny Saturday in the 80s.

It was an almost 2-hour drive to the beach in Connecticut on the Long Island Sound where we headed to this morning. Only we hit more traffic than we expected, we had to get off the highway so my grandson could make a pit stop, and then we ran smack into a parade on our way through the town. But we persevered, and it was certainly worth it.

Warm sun, mild breezes, and cute lifeguards. Works for me.

beachday

there’s a dinosaur in our back yard!

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dinosaur

My daughter is getting ready for my grandson’s “Jurassic Park Birthday Party” scheduled for next week, when he will turn an enthusiastic 7. The dinosaur that she built behind the fence will remain there long after the party is over because my grandson loves it, and we all think it adds a certain sense of adventure to our back yard. — which already is a haven for all kinds of creatures anyway.

The little plywood play boat that my daughter built last year has deteriorated into the perfect home for a couple of friendly garden snakes. A shy newt makes an occasional appearance among the foliage near the fire pit, and our weird resident bunny keeps the clover crop in check. The ever-fatter ground hog periodically lumbers out from his home under the shed to nibble on what the bunny has left behind, and the chatty family of cardinals joins the flickers and finches each morning to make short work of the bird feeders’ seeds.

So why not a dinosaur!