Is That Supposed to Be a Good Thing?

One of the downsides to being a news junkie is the occasional lack of discrimination, especially when it comes to reading the local rags, which, as we know, are so hungry for readers that they will cover just about anything to draw people in and drive up advertising revenue.

Crime -- the more horrendous the better -- plus fires, accidents, big weather events and sports rivalries are the mainstays of local news reports just about everywhere in America. Without them, reporters would have little to talk about beyond county commissioner meetings, municipal sewage problems and traffic tie-ups on the beltway.

This time of year, seasonal food and topics in education also make their way into the headlines. And if this past week is any example, I'm not sure that's always a good thing.

One of the "most popular" stories here recently was about a local guy who ate 35 local chili dogs in one sitting at his local bar -- he is now a local celebrity. The photo of him with his buddies in the bar -- his cheeks bulging with one of those "dogs" -- earned him his 15 minutes of Warhol-predicted fame.

This big story came on the heels of a bunch of food-related articles during the annual State Fair, where every year excited locals line up to try the most outrageous and, if news reports are to be believed, the most delicious grub ever invented on the face of this good Earth.

This year's favorite bite? Chocolate-covered bacon. Tip? Don't cook the bacon too much; something about its sogginess makes the semi-sweet coating taste even better.

Few local reporters waste ink or airtime asking locals if they really should be stuffing their face with such "food" every autumn, but then I'm just a spoilsport who doesn't appreciate the ingenuity that goes into combining pork and candy.

Our state agricultural commissioner was quoted as exclaiming: "Believe me, I've tasted it, and it's wonderful." Since the pork industry runs this state, I'm thinking he might have an interest in promoting this newfangled way to serve pig. Never hear him say much about eating more fruits and vegetables.

There were also candy bars dipped in funnel-cake batter, including deep-fried Oreos, deep-fried Snickers and deep-fried Ho-Hos, plus deep-fried pickles, deep-fried bananas and deep-fried macaroni and cheese.

"Anything you can fry and put on a stick, they'll buy," said one vendor proudly. (Not sure how you get mac 'n cheese on a stick but anything's possible at the State Fair.)

While October's mass gluttony is now moldy news -- though it still sticks in my craw -- a story in this morning's papers brought up the question of how to improve our schools' educational standards and ensure our children get the best education money can buy.

It seems that a local middle school has hit on a novel approach to raising the funds needed for digital cameras in the computer lab, especially when last year's candy sale didn't work. (Maybe they needed to deep-fry those Hershey Kisses. Just a thought.)

So, the idea is to have parents fork over 20 bucks to buy their kids an extra 20 points on their grades -- that would mean 10 extra points on two tests of the student's choosing and possibly raise a B to an A, for example, or an F to a D.

Apparently, a parent advisory group concocted the plan and the principal endorsed it, saying it wouldn't make any difference on the student's final grade.

A spokesperson for the state Department of Public Instruction said she understands that schools are struggling with the recession but questioned whether selling grades might teach students the wrong lesson.

Kids have until November 20th to get their money in. Less than a week before Thanksgiving.

Deep-fried chocolate-coated turkey legs anyone?

Late-breaking news: County school administrators just nixed the grade-selling activities in our nearby town, thanks to all of the publicity. Now that is a very good thing.

Neighbors in High Heels, and Other Petty Complaints

I love to travel. For all the usual reasons. See new sites, eat new food, breathe new air, meet new people, walk new streets, take new pictures, hear a new language, think new thoughts, buy new tchochkes.

Traveling takes us out of our comfort zone and demands that we adapt to a new longitude, new culture and new bathroom. This can be exceedingly good for the brain, which otherwise becomes complacent and even lazy when everything in its vicinity is already known, familiar and under control. The cerebral synapses need a good slap every once in a while.

It used to be, of course, that humans traveled comparatively slowly -- when we weren't running across an African savannah, we were on the back of an animal or in a carriage or on a boat. Whatever the mode of transport, it moved at its natural pace over the surface of the Earth. We spent days, weeks and even months getting to where we were going.

Then came the airplane and before we knew it we were spanning continents and time zones in mere hours. We can beat the sun at its own game. The high speed of our travel has become such a given that we yawn at the thought of it. Oh, that -- it's just a Greyhound in the Sky. And I'll be in Dubai by tonight.

If it takes eight hours to fly from Philadelphia to Frankfurt, say, then we expect our entire self -- body and soul -- to arrive at the same time, to reassemble itself as quickly and wholly as if we'd driven our car from DC to Boston. We believe ourselves beyond jet lag -- too modern, too sophisticated, too hip to be slowed down by such now-manageable forces as gravity, physics and the speed of flight.

But when we look back after our first few days, we realize that the time is a blur -- we know we spoke and ate and laughed and blinked and walked and slept, but was that really us? Only part of our being was really on the job. The other part was crawling across the Atlantic, trying to catch up.

I also hate to travel. For all the usual reasons. Feeling disjointed, out of my context, vulnerable, betwixt and between. Will my hotel room be on the ground floor next to the elevator or on the top floor, in the back and away from traffic, as I had requested? And why do so many Germans -- who have otherwise gone green, recycling every gum wrapper and powering their cozy Häuser with wind power -- smoke as if they were facing a firing squad and had just five minutes to live?

And what about that woman in the hotel room next to mine? Doesn't she realize that high heels on a hardwood floor naturally clash? That they cannot possibly work together? Especially when she gets up at five in the morning and races around her 200 square feet for three hours? Do I bang on her door and then throttle her or just hope she trips down the stairs on her way out?

Okay, I'm not that mean. I don't wish her any ill will, and remind myself that she knows not what she does. She deserves more pity than wrath. I tell myself this over and over until some small part of me starts to believe.

And then I remind myself that my two weeks here are too short to waste on mental squabbles with unknown neighbors, and that soon I will be back in my rural home where the only person in heels is me. But never before dawn.

Photos:

1. Climbing up to the Philosophenweg, a trail that overlooks the city and river. Really brings out the philosophical side of its hikers.
2. With friends and family after dinner.
3. The reason I'm visiting Germany -- daughter, Jennifer, on the Alte Brücke crossing the Neckar River.

Guest Blogger: An Ant Crossing the Road

By John Ford

I’m not sure where you stand on the issue of police officers versus flag men at road details, but this story may support your view either way.

On a recent Monday, I was working a road detail on one of the side streets of my hometown near Boston. I think I saw just three cars all day, which can be more tiresome than actually waving your arms for a full eight hours. When you’re busier the day seems to go faster.

Anyway, after counting the telephone poles, manhole covers, orange safety cones then on to sulking about not having more time with my wife and kids, lack of sleep, how I was going to pay for three college tuitions and so on and so forth, a lone little ant crossed my path at the toe of my boot.

Now the ant was carrying what appeared to be a small morsel of food about three times the size of itself -- one of those things that ants can just do. How incredible, I thought, that this small creature could carry a load three times its size. I also noticed that as the ant crossed the great expanse of tarmac it zigged and zagged every few inches.

“Why would it do that when it would be so much more efficient to just go straight?” I thought. “How did it know which way to travel over this sea of asphalt to get home?”

I continued to observe this little guy (or perhaps girl, my eyesight isn’t as good as it used to be) as it ambled along inch by inch. The ant came across a stone which to him must have been like a boulder. To my amazement the ant did not zag but, laden with its enormous load, the ant just climbed right over the stone and continued.

“Wow,” I remarked to myself out loud. Why wouldn’t it zag to avoid the stone?

This great migration entertained me for several minutes. I even began to dramatize the event. I cast myself as the Great Creator of the universe looking over the toils of this lowly creature. I could impact the ant by causing my shadow to cover him, I could block his path, I could even crush him so easily, and the ant wouldn’t even know it was coming.

“More sleep,” I muttered to myself. “I just need more sleep!”

That’s when I applied all of my theological training (which is none) to the situation. Isn’t that just like us? We zig and zag off the straight path that God has provided when it would be so much easier and more efficient to go directly forward.

Getting back to my little buddy, I noticed that, even though he zigged and zagged, he also seemed to be moving in an overall steady path towards his destination. A comforting thought then crossed my mind as well -- God, too, continually and lovingly pulls us towards home despite our constant transgressions.

That’s when it happened. Over the crest of the hill came the third car of the day. It was bearing down on us fast. I looked at the car, I looked at my little buddy, I looked at the car and then I once again looked at my little buddy.

Utilizing all of my police training and experience, I quickly deduced that 1) given the current speed of the oncoming vehicle, 2) the current location of the ant in the roadway, and 3) the ant’s apparent total disregard for the pending danger, that there would be a fatal accident any second now.

Now this may seem silly, but you have to understand by this point I had begun to develop a pretty tight relationship with this little fellow. I had to protect him. So with total disregard for the ensuing confusion, my hand shot up and I stopped the oncoming vehicle.

The operator of the car stared at me a bit perplexed. You see, he was already past all the construction equipment and there was no oncoming traffic to justify stopping his progress.

I smiled and pretended to be talking on my radio. Then I slowly approached the vehicle.

“Good afternoon, sir!” I said. “Is this a new Camry? Great car! How’s your gas mileage?” -- all the while surreptitiously watching my little friend make it safely to the side of the road. “Have a great day, sir! You’re free to go.”

The driver, looking even more confused, went on his way. “Phew, that was close little buddy,” I thought.

Now, here comes that good part. Back to my theological analysis of the incident:

How similar to our situation I thought. We plod along in our busy lives so often zigging and zagging instead of taking the proven path, the path that God has clearly laid out for us. All the while, our zigging and zagging clearly puts us in the path of countless looming disasters which we have no capacity to even see coming.

But through the intervention of Jesus Christ as he approaches the operator (of the universe) and says, “Father, take me instead, for they know not what they do,” the father responds, “Surely, my son, because of you, I will patiently wait for them.”

John Ford is a former classmate from high school. Through the miracle of Facebook, we were able to reconnect, and when he sent me this story -- which he shared with his church congregation a few weeks ago -- I decided to post it as my first guest blog. Thank you, John.

Why No Nobel Prize in Fashion?

The Nobel Prize Committee has been handing out awards like candy this past week -- and that was quite a sugar-coated jaw breaker for Barack Obama -- but I just don't understand why there is never a recipient from the fashion world.

That said, it has been quite a year for Nobel firsts.

More women than ever took home a gold medal -- plus a sack of Swedish kroner -- in the areas of economics, chemistry, physiology, medicine and literature; one for research into economic governance, two for delving into the mysteries of chromosomal activity, another for the most in-depth description of ribosomes to date, and still another for her critical depiction of life behind the Iron Curtain. A few men in physics received Nobels for work related to optical communication and an imaging semiconductor circuit.

And then, of course, the President of our United States got the startling news that he had won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize for world-saving acts yet to be committed, and his opponents have been raising campaign funds on that vast left-wing Swedish conspiracy ever since.

Now, these Nobel Prize accomplishments are all well and good, and we're proud to be breathing the same air as these brilliant people, but are science experiments and fictional books the only game in town?

What about the research that goes into making sure people don't walk around naked all day? It deserves a second look.

True, fashion is not the only category that has been slighted since the awards kicked off in 1901. There has never been a Nobel for mathematics, either, an oversight that also smacks of bias -- one can only assume that Alfred, who made his fortune inventing dynamite, saw no need to recognize people who simply dabble in numbers, and maybe he felt modern civilization already knew enough about adding and subtracting and that machines would one day take over all that crunching anyway.

For those of us tortured into learning the multiplication tables as an innocent child, the fact that there is no Nobel for math makes all the sense in the world.

But I digress.

Because even if algebra and calculus get no respect, shouldn't the science of clothing? I mean, these Nobel Prize winners studied what goes on in our economies, our bodies and our dysfunctional societies, shouldn't there be some recognition for those hard-designing men and women paying attention to what hangs on the outside of our bods?

I don't know how much of any given nation's GDP goes to buying the latest shirts, skirts, dresses, pants, vests, shoes, gloves, sweaters, jackets, coats, scarves, earrings, necklaces, bracelets and rings, but I would think that apparel plays a serious enough role in every economy that any economist worth his or her hat would see the value in that.

And it beats spending years staring at economic charts and graphs and still getting it wrong about the recession.

Medicine also applies here -- everyone knows that the best drug for just about any human being is a new outfit with a touch of bling. A Nobel Prize in Fashion could also, of course, hook in with the physiology category since the better we look on the outside, the better we feel on the inside. Any fashion magazine can tell you that.

And then there's an application to chemistry -- putting together just the right blouse with just the right skirt would be like mixing baking soda and vinegar which, if I remember correctly from Chem 101, would turn any well-dressed woman into a walking volcano.

This is why I just don't understand why fashion designers -- from those premiering their latest creations on the runways of Paris to those knocking off those ten-thousand dollar dresses for KMart -- don't get more attention from the eggheads in Stockholm.

Much peace has been bought over the decades with the perfect pair of shoes, especially when they're running away from a fight.

Shouldn't that be the basis for the best Nobel of all?

Spring Break Part I

The only people who would think it was a good idea to let three 17-year old suburban high school girls go to Ft. Lauderdale for spring break would be other 17-year olds.

But somehow our parents -- maybe because they needed a spring break themselves -- drove us to the Greyhound station in Boston early one snowy morning in February 1974 for a 36-hour bus ride that would take us down Route 95 and into the deep south.

My school record had been so dismal, and my behavior so unruly, that my parents probably wished I would just move to Florida and stay there.

It was our final semester, a special time when many students -- at least back then -- did even less schoolwork and homework than usual. We didn't really have much to take a break from, since we were doing little more than showing up for the occasional class and waiting to see which college might accept us when the admissions letters started rolling in -- or not -- come April.

Still, escaping the boring New England snow for the fun-soaked Florida beach -- and getting a chance to play grown-up -- seemed like a "wicked good thing" to do at the time.

When Nancy, Debbie and I slipped into the tall, cushy seats of the huge bus, we felt only eagerness, excitement and pride. The only buses we had known till then were those orange school buses, which now seemed puny and even laughable by comparison.

I'm not sure why but somehow we had the brains to sit up front, near the driver, and avoid the crowd of teenagers and hippies -- mostly boys -- clustered in the back rows, even though they kept calling out to us to join them. We were hardly goody-two-shoes but I could tell they were looking for more trouble than we were interested in -- drinking, shouting, laughing and smoking under the glare of lights near the bathroom.

By the time we headed out of the station, the bus was pretty much packed, and most of the other passengers were older men in suits and ladies in dresses plus a smattering of the elderly and young mothers with children.

When we arrived at New York City's Penn Station about five hours later, a bunch of people got off the bus while a line of newcomers stood waiting by the door to get on.

That was when a middle-aged man who had been in a rush to get off the bus stepped right back on with two New York policemen in full uniform right behind him. A scuffle started up in the back with people shouting and swearing -- a bottle even smashed on the floor.

I moved from my seat on the aisle to one by the window, tucked my bag under my feet and discreetly lifted my head to see what was going on.

That's when I saw the troublemakers being led up the aisle and off the bus by the man and one of the cops -- the boys were in handcuffs and muttering under their breath. The other cop stayed behind and began going row by row, asking to look inside the bags of some of the other young people on the bus and moving his way slowly toward the front.

Debbie and Nancy and I looked at each other with our mouths wide open.

"Can you believe it?!" we said without making a sound. "Oh, my God."

I kicked my bag further under my seat and watched out of the corner of my eye as the cop led someone else off the bus.

A few minutes later, the next batch of passengers started filtering onto the bus and settling into the vacant seats.

"That guy was an undercover cop," someone said. "Those boys had pot," another one piped in. "I could smell it." "Good riddance," said a third.

I breathed a trembling sigh of relief and gave my bag a final but gentle shove under the seat. The bus rumbled out of Penn Station into the snowy sleet, making its way through Lincoln Tunnel and onto the Interstate where its big nose pointed toward the promised sun.

We giggled, curled up in our seats and took a good, long, carefree nap.

Where Has All The Time Gone?

When I was a senior in high school, the quote I used under my yearbook picture paraphrased the great English poet, John Milton:

"How soon hath time, the subtle thief of youth, stolen on its wing my one and seventeenth year..."

Believe me, I was no wise-before-my-time teenager -- I was a party girl who lived in the moment, as children are wont to do, thinking little of the past and nothing of the future. But I must have figured out that my life was going to change very fast once I ran out that door with my diploma. And it did.

In that vein, and for your pleasure, I've assembled a few favorite quotes from far wiser men and women than I.

Time is what prevents everything from happening at once.

-- John Archibald Wheeler, American physicist
Coined the term "black hole"

***

A good holiday is one spent among people whose notions of time are vaguer than yours.

-- John B. Priestly, English novelist
Authored Man and Time

***

Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid.

-- Frank Zappa, American rock composer
Asteroid in his name: 3834 Zappafrank

***

The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.

-- Rabindranath Tagore, Indian poet
Won Nobel Prize in Literature

***

Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.

-- Carl Sandburg, American writer
Won three Pulitzers

***

Time spent with cats is never wasted.

-- François-René de Chateaubriand, French author
Considered the father of French Romanticism

***

I'm trying very hard to understand this generation. They have adjusted the timetable for childbearing so that menopause and teaching a sixteen-year-old how to drive a car will occur in the same week.

-- Erma Bombeck, American humorist
Wrote popular column and umpteen best-sellers

***

The soul doesn't wear a watch.

-- Prem Rawat, Indian-born spiritual teacher
His foundation provides food and water to the poor

***

The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.

-- Bertrand Russell, English philosopher
History of Western Philosophy became best-seller

***

Time is a great healer but a poor beautician.

-- Lucille S. Harper

No idea who she is

***

Image sources:

1. Black hole photo -- random source
2. English painting by George Morland
3. Drawing by Baron C. DeGrimm
4. Butterfly photo -- random source
5. Coins photo -- royalcoins.com
6. Painting of cats by Daniel Merlin
7. Car swerving sign -- random source
8. Melting Watch, Salvador Dali
9. Lotus painting, Amy Guion Clay -- www.amyclay.com
10. Self-portrait in plastic

Don't "Ask Your Doctor"!

Fidgety in school? Shy in crowds? Feeling blue? Tired? Can't sleep a full eight hours every night? Get a little annoyed from time to time? Trouble focusing at work?

Got sniffles? Just can't exercise or eat right? Don't have time for your period? Prefer one pill a month for bone health rather than daily calcium? Eyes a little dry? Can't get it up? Have to pee while out playing golf or rowing on a lake? Ate too much garbage for lunch?

Unless we retreat to a cave with no media access, we can't escape them -- ads for prescription drugs are in our face the minute we pick up a magazine, fire up the Internet or watch TV, especially the network news. Pill vendors are pushing their product day and night.

More than half of all Americans are now taking at least one prescription drug; the most common are for cholesterol and high blood pressure, according to Medco Health Solutions, but a whole slew of new pharmaceuticals covers an ever-expanding range of diseases and conditions, some real, many made up.

The Mad Men still exist! Those clever, empty people on Madison Avenue figured out the perfect catch phrase to sell more pills -- "Ask your doctor." And so we do. And then the doctor hands us a prescription (easier than an argument) and the pharmacist hands us an orange vial and the pharma companies laugh all the way to the bank.

Most of the time, I do believe, the whole system is playing us for suckers and we are falling right in line. And heck, if our insurance company will pay for it, and it promises to fix some annoying problem, why not? It's better than eating oatmeal for breakfast to lower cholesterol or changing our lifestyle to reduce stress. Right?

As with snake oil salesmen of the past, who sold bottles of useless and sometimes toxic elixirs to unsuspecting men and women in small towns across the United States, we find it hard to resist the lure of a quick fix. We often laugh when we see these characters in old movies -- we like to think we're smarter than our grandparents and great-grandparents and wouldn't fall for the fancy huckster. But the sad truth is, we're not. In fact, we may be a whole lot more dumb.

Truth is, we've lost all common sense. We forget there's a price to pay for everything.

Yes, I know there are people whose lives are saved by the drugs they take. And yes, there are people who really do function better on their meds. But I'm not talking about people who really need them. I'm talking about the rest of us.

The pharma industry feeds on the prevailing view in our society that anything that might compromise our efficiency, productivity and 24/7 happiness is a condition or disease that can and must be treated. As that market approaches saturation, the next step is to fabricate novel conditions and the drugs to treat them. Pills are the little workers designed to keep our inner factories in tip-top shape. Or are they?

A few examples from my own humble life.

Some years ago, I went to see a new gynecologist for insomnia. She immediately gave me a script for the antidepressant Paxil* and rushed me out the door. I took the things for about five months and while I did sleep a bit better (which may have been a placebo effect), I felt very flat and lifeless the whole time -- the pills had robbed me of my fizz. Quitting was terrifying; I was nauseous and anxious, fell over if I tried to stand up, and hardly slept for a few weeks. When I called her office in a panic, her assistant blew me off and essentially hung up.

The good doctor, who had so blithely prescribed these pills, had seemingly forgotten about me by then.

Recently, I went to see an orthopedist for muscle cramps caused by overdoing it at the gym. The ache had persisted for months so I finally decided -- against my better judgment -- to ask a doctor. He immediately ordered X-rays from his own in-house equipment then diagnosed me with degenerative disk disease.

I was shocked and dismayed. He prescribed one set of painkillers for daytime, even though I told him I had no pain during the day, and another set for night, when the ache would start up. I got home, looked up that diagnosis on the top health Websites, saw that the symptoms did not resemble mine in the least and realized that this was his standard response to every complaint -- a vague disease and a stack of painkillers.

I never took a single one, and before returning them to the drug store read the long list of side effects. Heart attack and stroke were the two biggies. I don't remember the rest.

Doctor knows best? Despite Congressional attempts to curb undue influence on MDs, many physicians are snugly tucked into the pockets of Big Pharma, handing out at best useless and at worst highly addictive and potentially dangerous drugs like penny candy.

Through my own trial and error, I determined that my muscle aches were aggravated by a magnesium deficiency -- I wasn't getting enough from my grocery-store supplement and so turned to powdered mag, which took away the ache in a few days. I also discovered that powdered magnesium helps me get a better night's sleep. For pennies!

We all know people, mostly the elderly but increasingly the middle-aged, who take many pills a day, and if you ask these otherwise intelligent, well-informed people what they are for, they will tell you they're not quite sure but that the doctor told them to take them. And once they're on those pills, they're afraid to go off. They're hooked on their pharmaceutical cocktail for life. And, as we all suspect, half of the drugs simply treat the side effects of the other half.

Fortunately, I was too young to have been part of the mass ingestion of hormone replacement therapy, back when menopause was a disease, but I had already decided I would resist what I heard was huge pressure from doctors to just take the pills and shut up. I know many women today who are now worried that they will be among those who get the cancer or heart attack or stroke they would otherwise not have fallen victim to, all because they took a drug they really didn't need.

Having worked as a freelance writer for the pharma industry, I came to believe that many of the ordinary people who work in it -- from operations to IT to communications and even to marketing -- don't really know what their company is doing.

They want to believe that what they're doing is for the good of humanity and, in some cases, it is. They're well-trained and good at their jobs, and are proud to hand out business cards from a corporation on the Fortune 500 -- they also have some of the best health insurance money can buy.

But they often know little about how their tiny sliver of the business might have contributed to the research, development and marketing of a drug for restless leg syndrome or overactive bladder or erectile dysfunction or even low testosterone, now called Low-T syndrome.

And one wonders about the fake people in the commercials; I used to occasionally hire actors for gigs when I worked in New York -- I know how tough finding that kind of work can be, and how much they can get paid for pretending to have sexual problems or osteoporosis or depression or acid reflux or even an enlarged prostate.

Then there are the actors who should know better, like the cheerful and ubiquitous drug peddler Sally Fields. As it turns out, her monthly osteoporosis pill (I won't write the name because even bad publicity is better than no publicity in this industry) costs a whole lot more than the alternatives -- and helps drive up the cost of health care in this country -- but because The Flying Nun is shilling it, women line up in droves.

Most drugs hawked in the media today are new to the market -- the idea is to create a blockbuster as quickly as possible, pushing out the competition and establishing the brand before it goes off patent and is replaced by generics. Many of these new drugs have yet to be completely tested for safety and efficacy, as we saw with some pain killers and other drugs that actually killed a good number of innocent people before they were finally pulled from the drug store shelves.

Where was the FDA when we needed them? Also in the pockets of the prescription drug cartel?

I finally couldn't write drivel for the pharma industry anymore and quit, even though it meant giving up a six-figure income. But the minute I said "No" to an assignment for the last time, I felt a rush of wonderful new vitality and health and energy course through my veins.

Now that is a drug I can live with.

A few articles and books:

*Are You Depressed, or Just Human? Andrew Weil
Study Shows More Americans Taking Prescription Drugs, USA Today
Disease Mongering: Good for Big Pharma, Bad for You, by Andrew Weil
Medical Editors Push for Ghostwriting Crackdown, New York Times
The Truth About the Drug Companies, by Marcia Angell
Our Daily Meds, by Melody Petersen
Selling Sickness: How the World's Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies are Turning Us All into Patients, by Ray Moynihan and Alan Cassels
Getting Well: It's About Time, Wall Street Journal
Epidemic of Fever Phobia, Dana Ullman, Huffington Post

Un Potluck à la Française -- Making Boeuf Bourguignon at Home

A few days ago, I got it into my head to whip up a batch of Boeuf Bourguignon -- or Boeuf à la Bourguignonne -- the luscious, wine-drenched beef stew first made famous in America by our beloved French Chef Julia Child and most recently by Julie Powell when she burned it to a crisp then remade it for no-show guests in the hit movie Julie and Julia.

(Does anyone else think those names should have been reversed?)

This past Saturday, we had about 30 Francophone and Francophile guests arriving for a potluck; members of our French-speaking club share the hosting of this monthly event and September was our turn.

Now, un potluck français is no ordinary covered-dish affair -- don't even think about offering a mayonnaise-drenched potato salad or chips and salsa or thawed shrimp with cocktail sauce or fried chicken or pigs in a blanket or crackers and pimento cheese or green beans topped with little marshmallows.

One must make un grand effort for this crowd -- and that's exactly why I attacked, if you will, Julia Child's recipe from Mastering the Art of French Cooking, with relish.

This called for, in brief, four and a half pounds of local, grass-fed beef, half a rasher of organic bacon, one-and-a-half bottles of Côtes du Rhône, a large sweet onion, a couple of small carrots, some garlic, a bag of frozen pearl onions (so you don't have to peel them -- Mark Bittmann says it's okay), a pound and a half of button mushrooms (called champignons de Paris in France), organic beef stock, various herbs, small amounts of olive oil and -- yes -- mounds of butter...not a complicated list of ingredients but enough to keep me busy for at least five hours.

Though I'd made beef burgundy numerous times in the past, usually following the Joy of Cooking version, halfway through preparing Julia's recipe I realized I had never really made Boeuf Bourguignon at all.

What I had made back then was some pale imitation -- a shameless knock-off. True, it had taken half the time, but, as in everything in life where we cut corners, there had been a price to pay.

To accommodate this extra-big batch, I dusted off a 5-quart Dutch oven inherited from my husband's gourmet father (Bax had made just about every one of Julia Child's recipes before Julie Powell was even born), which would double as a serving dish on the stove. The light and dark green pattern is the same used by Julia at one point in the film.

Baxter preparing a meal in the 1970s.

And so I spent a glorious Child-like Saturday afternoon in the kitchen -- chopping, slicing, washing, drying, searing, sautéing, braising, pouring, measuring, tasting, smelling, smiling, re-tasting, writing emails, checking Facebook, reading the news, playing online solitaire, stirring and re-tasting -- before finally turning off the oven and computer and cleaning up the kitchen for company. (Okay, Julia never checked Facebook...)

Though one should always make a big effort when making Boeuf Bourguignon, one should never appear to have made any effort at all.

I wish I had some hilarious story to tell about the cat eating the beef while my back was turned or drinking all of the wine myself and no longer being able to distinguish between an onion and a clove of garlic or spilling the whole thing onto the floor (as I did a roast turkey and veggies one Thanksgiving years ago) or crumpling into a sobbing, frustrated mess on the floor.

But the happy truth is that the whole thing came off without a hitch. That's how easy the recipe is to follow.

A few Julia Child tips and highlights?

• Make sure the beef is absolutely 100% thoroughly dried before searing it in the very hot oil.

• Toss the seared meat in several tablespoons of flour in the oven for four minutes then toss the mixture and put it back into the oven for another four minutes -- then and only then, add the liquids. This browns the flour without burning it.
  

• Watch the onions turn a delicious caramel brown before braising them with an herb sachet (fresh parsley and thyme plus a bay leaf) for another 40 minutes.

• Sauté the mushrooms quickly in small batches with very hot oil.

• Use that fuller-bodied Côtes du Rhône rather than (my usual) Pinot Noir.

Yes, there really was no burgundy in this Beef Burgundy.

Downsides?

• None, unless you count the additional time.
• None, except that I couldn't find -- or didn't try hard enough to find -- a single chunk of bacon with its rind still attached, so I used that regular sliced bacon instead. I'm sure Julia's recommendation would have added even more flavor.

As our guests arrived, I hit them first with the aroma emanating from the stew, which wafted down the driveway, followed by the lifting of the lid to show off its rich, glistening color, so shimmeringly beautiful. And then came the tasting.

The verdict?

Magnifique! Délicieux! Formidable!

Bon appétit! I cried out in my best Julia Child accent.

The few Americans loved my imitation and we all repeated the phrase over and over again, throwing back our head and shoulders and belting it out with gusto.

But the French just stared at us and shrugged.

C'est qui, cette Julia Child? Who, they asked, is this Julia Child?


For a PDF version of the Boeuf Bourguignon recipe, posted by Knopf Doubleday, the book's publisher, click here.
For just the brown-braised onions, click here.
For the sautéed mushrooms, click here.

Two Weddings Interrupted

Though not as popular as June, September is a big month for weddings. Maybe it's the added bonus of an end-of-summer celebration, an ushering in of cooler and crisper days, and the opportunity to feature rich, warm colors at the ceremony and reception.

But two joyous and much-anticipated weddings scheduled for this past weekend -- one in North Carolina, the other in New York -- will now never take place. Ever.

Separate tragedies left one young bride without her groom and another young groom without his bride.

Early last Saturday morning in Raleigh -- a clear and sunny day -- Christopher Raynor, who worked in construction, was on his way with two of his favorite buddies for a final single-guy breakfast before tying the knot at 11 o'clock with his fiance, school teacher Karen Taylor. No doubt in high spirits, they rode in the best man's car -- Raynor in the back.

Just at that moment, James Howard Early was headed toward a busy intersection with a yellow light. Maybe he was running late, maybe not, but for some reason he went sailing -- or bombing -- through after the light turned red and crashed into the groom's car as it was driving across to the other side.

The impact threw Raynor from the vehicle and another car, just passing by, ran over him.

Raynor died instantly. Instead of a wedding, family and friends arrived at the church to attend a hastily assembled memorial service.

That same morning, at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, police were scouring a medical school laboratory for clues to the disappearance four days earlier of Annie Le -- the pharmacology doctoral student was to marry her sweetheart Sunday on Long Island.

While some initially speculated she had developed cold feet, those who knew her well said that wasn't possible. But she had not been seen since Tuesday morning, when surveillance cameras recorded her going into the research building but never coming out.

During the time when she would have been seeing to the final preparations for her nuptials with Jonathan Widawsky, a graduate student at Columbia, police discovered bloody clothing behind ceiling tiles in one of the labs.

On Sunday -- her special day -- they found her body stuffed behind a wall in the building's basement. As of this writing, police are believed to have a suspect, someone she may have known, in her murder.

Sadly, these kinds of tragedies happen with such regularity that after we recover from our initial shock -- how could that Raleigh driver have been so careless and that New Haven killer so merciless -- we watch them vanish from the headlines and life, as always, goes on.

Is there anything to be learned from these so-unexpected, so-unpredictable disasters? These terrible events that happen on the eve of what would have and should have been the happiest days in the life of the victims and their betrothed?

Some often take away from such stories a reminder to cherish every moment of every day because our future could be taken away from us at any time. But even then, and rather quickly, we forget, and once again we take our own life and especially those of our loved ones for granted, expecting them always to arrive when they say they will.

The more practical will simply argue that Raynor might have survived the car crash if he'd been wearing a seat belt or that Le might have been able to fight off her attacker if she'd been carrying a weapon. (One Website really did see in this situation an opportunity to defend a gun-toting America.)

Such tragedies do cause me to reflect on how people and events can suddenly come into our life -- lives that feel so carefully organized, controlled and safe -- and turn everything upside down, whether by design or accident.

But mostly, such catastrophes leave me speechless. On a practical level, I can remind myself never to run a red light and to proceed cautiously into an intersection. I could become more wary of strangers and even the people I know, but what an appalling way to exist in this world.

Journalists report on such events with the detached air of one who is simply paid to inform the community of a loss, in the same way they write up the latest political and economic news.

Theologians and other religious leaders provide their own explanations, or at least try to comfort survivors and others suffering from the loss.

Some people might see in these terrible events a reason not to believe in a God, an all-knowing, all-seeing deity who would nevertheless let this kind of suffering go on; others might see in it a reason to believe -- that despite our weaknesses and frailties and mistakes -- there is a creator who loves us.

Some scientists might explain such events as random collisions of energy with no rhyme or reason whatsoever -- that two human lives have been snuffed out is purely incidental.

Frankly, I'm at a loss.

Joe Wilson Wins No Matter What

Hail Joe!

That's what the Republicans were secretly thinking when they publicly condemned the South Carolina congressman's outburst during Obama's speech Wednesday night.

And now conservatives are lining up in droves to put their money where that mouth is. Wilson apologized, of course, kinda sorta, and is now raking in the dough from delighted supporters -- they're thrilled because he not only had the guts to publicly challenge the President but he also managed to kick up a nice, big dust storm in the press and liberal world.

The battles in Congress these days are all about getting sand in the other guy's eye -- anything to whip the lefties into a fury.

Don't you realize what's happening, fellow Dems? We're falling for the whole thing!

Our outrage -- pundits, bloggers, comedians, and more -- is only making things worse. As long as he stays on the front page, the more we lose. And the more cash the conservatives take in for the next election.

And now nervous Democratic politicians are doing what they can to appease the Wilsons of this world. Instead of standing firm, for example, some Senators -- Baucus and Conrad -- are combing through their health care reform bill to be absolutely 100% sure that all illegal immigrants are excluded from the insurance exchanges. To make sure no one but no one gets through the cracks.

That way Wilson can't call them liars anymore.

Watching the Democrats squirm is high sport for the opposition in Washington. And we squirm easily and often.

I wouldn't be surprised if the Republicans start grooming Wilson for a presidential run.

What we needed from the outset was to ignore the guy just as we would an annoying kid at a party, and send him to his room without dinner.

End of story.

Instead, in a misguided attempt to protect Obama from the bullies, we've been throwing fuel on the little flame he started, and now it's turning into a blaze that threatens to consume only us.

Joe Wilson wins no matter what.

People: Just Minor Variations on a Theme?

Who am I? Who are you? And who the heck -- we would like to know -- are they?

It's such a lovely day that I thought I would shake it up a bit by pondering one of the great head-scratchers of all time; that is, what really is our human nature?

Far more agile minds than mine have tackled this question up and down and all around since humans started walking upright, lighting fires and plastering their hands on the inside of caves.

From before Plato and on to Aristotle and Lao-Tse and Rousseau and Locke and Marx and Darwin and Freud and Arendt and E.O. Wilson -- and so many in-between -- the great thinkers have wracked their brains over who, what and why we human beings are.

The conclusion from the big wigs, I'm sorry to report, is inconclusive. No one, it turns out, really knows.

The human being's first duty...is to think about himself until he has exhausted the subject, then he is in a condition to take up minor interests and think of other people. -- Mark Twain

My own limited view is that we -- all six point eight billion of us -- are but minor variations on a single theme. No exceptions. Like separate little ditties, we are each composed with a set number of notes -- all that differentiates us is the configuration.

So what are those notes? They're what determine our skin, hair, eye color and other physical features, of course, plus some personality characteristics and a predisposition to certain abilities, diseases and disorders. Scientifically minded people call them genes.

Those notes also make us animals; they make us want to eat, sleep, reproduce and fight to survive. And they make us human -- they spur us to love and be loved, to laugh and to cry, to think too much and to try and drive faster than the bozo in the next lane.

We each get a unique collection of good notes and bad notes. Of high notes and low notes. Of middle notes and post-it notes.

It is our job to make the best of them.

But if we don't like our personal set of notes, can they be altered? And even more importantly, can the theme itself be changed?

Many of us, especially Americans, are blessed and cursed with the idea that if we try really, really hard, we can transform ourselves into something completely new. We are constantly spurred on to remake ourselves, especially if we feel we were created in the wrong key.

Everybody wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant. -- Cary Grant

My cats can't become dogs (not that they want to) and a sheep cannot possibly -- no matter how much it might gaze longingly into the next meadow -- turn into a cow. A maple cannot transform itself into an oak and a cricket can't morph into an ant.

But what is that theme of which we humans are just a minor variation? Ah, therein lies the unanswerable question. Are humans mere shreds of matter that just happened to evolve into our current form? Or are we the children of Adam molded by a God who loves us? Or something else altogether?

I was just admonishing my cat this morning to make more of an effort to become an athlete. "You're an American cat, Booboo," I said. "You need to exercise more. It'll help lower your cholesterol and prevent osteoporosis. We can go out running together. Come on. Do it for me."

She looked at me with that icy gaze usually reserved for staring down canines, knowing full well -- and seemingly comfortable with the knowledge -- that she is but a minor variation on the ineffable theme of cat.

And as for her humans:

Whatever you may be sure of, be sure of this: that you are dreadfully like other people. -- James Russell Lowell

And the music, as always, plays on.

Good-bye, Teddy Kennedy

When the young Teddy Kennedy campaigned for the Senate in front of our suburban Boston home, my whole family ran out to greet him.

For months, my father had been actively campaigning for Kennedy and others on the Democratic ticket, standing out in front of the local dump, weekend after weekend, handing out fliers and asking for votes.

But on this fall day in 1962, Teddy Kennedy stood on our sidewalk and I, about six years old, looked up at that grinning face with the big teeth that was leaning down to say hello and I shook his big hand.

My mother handed Teddy Kennedy my kid brother and ran into the house to get the camera. She raced back out to take a picture, only to discover the thing was out of film.

In the meantime, Dicky was kicking and screaming -- screeching, really -- to make this strange man let him go. Sobbing hysterically, he was returned to my mother's arms.

To this day, my brother is a staunch conservative, and opposed to just about everything the Kennedys stood for.

For most of us, though, when you grow up near Boston as the child of outspoken Democrats, you come to believe that the Kennedys are somehow a part of your family as well.

Later, as a teenager, I would spend many a wild party weekend at a friend's summer house in Falmouth Heights, just a short drive from the Kennedy estate in Hyannis. Not only did we consider the Kennedys our relatives, we also saw them as our neighbors.

Distant neighbors, for sure, but still, at the same time somehow, one of us. And we one of them.

Barely a year after I shook Teddy's hand, his brother John was assassinated. Like so many Americans, I remember that day only too well. By then seven years old, I was riding my red, white and blue bicycle up town to get a bag of penny candy when I saw grown-ups crying in the streets.

"The President is dead!" They were calling out in anguish. Knowing only that something terrible had happened, I joined in with my own tears.

I don't remember Robert's death -- I was in full puberty and far too self-absorbed to care what was going on beyond the confines of junior high school, boys and going steady with them.

A year later, Teddy got himself into big trouble when his car went off a bridge in Chappaquidick and a young woman drowned. Suddenly, the Kennedy name was damaged, perhaps irrevocably -- the adults wrung their hands over this latest development. It seemed that this Kennedy was destined only to disappoint -- that the nation-changing work begun by his older brothers would end with them as well.

But then Teddy Kennedy pulled himself together and went on to become what President Obama called this morning "the greatest Senator of our time." Long known as "The Lion of the Senate," he would see more than 300 of the bills that he wrote become law.

In the Senate for nearly five decades, his impact on American life runs long and deep, especially in the areas of education, health care, civil rights and immigration.

Many of us now regret that he will never see what we hope will one day be the realization of one of his greatest goals -- the enactment of universal health care in this country.

At the same time, for many Massachusetts residents, and regardless of political party, Kennedy's greatest impact as a Senator was what most people expect of a politician -- that he or she represent the interests of their state and its constituents in Washington.

Sometimes, this meant eschewing lofty goals and just keeping it simple.

My mother, who still lives in our family home, often said of her long-time Senator: "I'll always vote for him. He brings home the pork."

In the long run, despite more ups and downs than most of us would ever experience in a single lifetime, Teddy Kennedy carried on the legacy of his family name, and then some.

And then some more.

May you rest in peace, Teddy Kennedy. Your time on Earth was good. RIP.


(Kennedy photo from the Associated Press.)

When Will Obama Re-Take the Ball on Health Care?

With football season now gearing up, it's hard not to think of this health care reform debate as the Super Bowl of politics.

So much of our political, economic and social life over the years has been in preparation -- in training -- for this big game.

That's why things have been getting so ugly. The need for reform is so great, the stakes so very high and the opposition so powerful.

Those of us in favor of significant health care reform essentially elected President Obama to be our quarterback. And -- unless the news reports prove me wrong, and I hope they do -- it looks like he might be giving up the ball too many times in the first quarter. And as we all know, few football teams can win when the QB forgets how to throw or give clear direction.

Many Democrats in Congress fear they're about to be betrayed, after they've been tackling opponents over the public option at Town Hall meetings across the country all summer.

And those of us who cheered on Obama during the primary and general elections, putting in countless hours to register voters, canvass neighborhoods and call voters again and again, are watching our dreams of a reform touchdown slip away as the game clock winds down.

Yes, We Can. Hope. Change We Can Believe In. Huh?

Instead, we're getting secret deals with the pharmaceutical industry, a probable reversal on the public option and a push for so-called health insurance "co-ops"?

As Wendell Potter, a former health insurance company spokesman pointed out on CNN.com this morning, the health insurance industry is running the whole show. Working with big PR firms, they're coming up with more key messages than reform opponents can manage to spew out on a single cable news show or picket line.

These masters of manipulation are controlling the debate. Are they also controlling the White House?

Is there really just one coach directing both teams?

New York Times commentator, Bob Herbert, wrote this morning that "Insurance companies are delighted with the way 'reform' is unfolding. Think of it: The government is planning to require most uninsured Americans to buy health coverage. Millions of young and healthy individuals will be herded into the industry’s welcoming arms. This is the population the insurers drool over."

And with no public option, we will have just one option -- the private insurance industry.

Herbert also says to forget about those co-ops, a proposal that pretty much just popped up out of nowhere over the weekend. Watching them play the Blue Cross Blue Shields and Aetnas of this world would be like watching peewee footballers go up against, say, the New England Patriots.

And unlike in those sentimental underdog movies from Hollywood, those little coops can't possibly get a winning goal in the last ten seconds of the game.

Obama campaigned to become a "transformational" president who would fight the big money and special interests, Eugene Robinson reminded us in the Washington Post this morning.

And as Obama faces this, the biggest challenge of his young administration, Robinson asks where will he "draw a line in the sand?"

Okay, so we're all grown-ups and we accept that politics requires some compromise and that campaign promises are just that -- promises. But if Obama compromises us out of real reform on this critical issue, before we even get to half-time, he will turn around to find his team has left the field and abandoned the game.

In this writer's humble opinion, a loss of this magnitude will leave Democrats -- and the country -- with a political price to pay for generations to come.

We're also grown-up enough to know that there is no incentive whatsoever within the medical industrial complex to reform the system itself, no matter how much the major players may pretend to go along with the gag. Too many people are making too much money to truly want to alter the status quo.

At the same time, some Democratic leaders, including Pelosi, Rockefeller and Feingold, seem to be putting more muscle into the game even as they watch their QB stumble down the field, and this renewed effort from Congress offers some hope for an eventual win.

Because if we lose this game, the GOP will regain some of its former power -- if you'll forgive another analogy -- like a hurricane gathering strength out in the Atlantic.

While the full force of that storm may not be felt until the elections of 2012, our best chance right now is to blow some really cold wind in its direction and push it back out to sea.

Health Care Reform in America: A View From the Trenches

It's one thing to watch snippets of Health Care Reform Town Hall meetings on the evening news, but entirely another to find oneself in an auditorium packed with 850+ people, including a bunch who are angry, belligerent and even violent.

This particular Town Hall took place last night in Durham, North Carolina with U.S. Rep. David Price sharing a panel with three others, including Dana Cope, head of the state employees association (which hosted the event), Gary Greenberg, a physician who runs a local free health care clinic (funded by donations and staffed by volunteers), and Chuck Stone, director of North Carolinians for Affordable Health Care. They were four men, all pro-reform.

One protester later complained that the panel was stacked, that it should have included voices from the other side of the aisle -- that's one point this writer will easily concede to the opposition. The process should always remain democratic, no matter how messy, painful, inefficient and even weird it may become.

After the pledge of allegiance, and exhortations from the moderator to remain civil -- we were in the genteel South after all -- at least five angry young men were escorted to the door, one with his middle finger pointed defiantly up on the way out.

In the beginning, each panelist briefly argued for the overall importance of reform in the health care and health insurance industries today.

Stone reminded the audience that the nationwide debate is not about President Obama nor illegal immigrants nor Democrats and Republicans. He did point out, however -- in a little dig to the conservatives in the crowd -- that Republican President Teddy Roosevelt supported universal health insurance in the early 20th century, and that Democrat Harry Truman also fully supported national health insurance after World War II.

"Health care should be a basic human right," Stone said, followed by loud cheering from the those who support universal coverage and equally loud jeering from those who oppose it.

Price later outlined the shared principles of the five bills currently moving through Congress, emphasizing that everyone must have access to affordable health insurance and that everyone needs to be brought into the system. He argued in favor of a public option.

At the same time, he wisely acknowledged the complexity of the situation. "It won't be simple or cost-free." But, he reminded the audience, every other industrial country in the world has already figured out a way -- in short, it's about time for America.

At this point, a guy in the balcony hit another guy in the face, creating a distraction that lasted a few minutes until the perpetrator and his victim were ushered out and all attention returned to the stage.

After Price spoke, about forty "cons" lined up in front of a microphone on one side of the auditorium, with an equal number of "pros" on the other. In case there was any confusion, each microphone had a "con" or "pro" sign attached to the stand. But somehow, a few cons ended up on the pro side, robbing reform supporters of their full chance to be heard.

On the con side, one woman became increasingly upset as she tried to read her written remarks. She finally blurted out: "Socialism is one step before communism!"

One man asked why we should have a government-run health care plan when people in other countries hate their own systems and are trying to get out of it.

Pros in the audience called out "Where?" "Who?" "Which countries?"

Exasperated, the man finally shouted into the microphone: "The Soviet bloc!" and sat down.

At various times during the debate, the cons shouted at the panelists: "Let me have a choice!" "Health care reform should be supported by the Constitution!" "How can we believe you?" "All the money the government has is stolen from us!" "Liar!"

In one of the more bizarre twists of the evening, an elderly physician seized on the wild rumor about "death panels" and insisted that Obama's plan would "kill off grandma and grandpa."

Price explained the value of the "consultation" option in the bills and that he himself had taken advantage of the opportunity, offered through his personal Congressional health insurance plan, to meet with doctors and discuss how he would like to be treated at the end of his life.

But there was no sign that the physician or any other cons listened to a word of the response.

In another twist, one con cleverly quoted Whole Foods CEO John Mackey's op-ed from Tuesday's Wall Street Journal, in which Mackey argued that while "we clearly need health-care reform," he is against a "massive new health-care entitlement that will create hundreds of billions of dollars of new unfunded deficits and move us much closer to a government takeover of our health-care system."

Instead, Mackey proposed eight alternative reforms to help lower the cost of health care, including tort reform.

This was the argument picked up by the con last night -- if doctors didn't have to pay such high malpractice insurance fees, they could charge their patients less and health care costs would drop significantly. Tort reform, he said, would solve the problem entirely.

Price argued against any tort reform that included a cap on awards -- which only frustrated the con side more -- but some liberals acknowledged among themselves that limiting payouts might not be a bad thing. However, the impact of tort reform on overall health care costs, Price said, might be just one or two percent.

The irony was, well, delicious. Who would have thought the health food champion of liberal baby boomers everywhere would be feeding the cons some of their best lines?

(As an aside, a number of universal health care proponents are now boycotting Whole Foods as a result of Mackey's stance against government-led reform.)

After nearly two hours of sometimes thoughtful, often hostile discourse, I came away from the meeting with mixed feelings.

On the one hand, I was hopeful that after all of these deep-seeded fears and rumors and wild accusations are elicited, tackled and dispelled -- and the rage and protest simmer down -- politicians and constituents can get on with the business of putting together a plan that, while it certainly won't please everyone, addresses the desperate need for serious health care reform in a country too great to leave so many of its people without help.

On the other hand, the resistance to change runs deep in many people, and they are clearly determined to cling to that fear and loathing.

Perhaps it's because they have so little and they're desperately afraid that someone -- and the government is a favorite whipping boy on this one -- will take it all away from them. They're joined by another group of reform opponents who have so much; their fear, too, is that government will take it all away from them.

The key ingredient in this debate seems to be fear of change and fear of the government.

After the meeting, a number of pros and cons continued their arguments outside under the glare of TV cameras. I noticed one pro vehemently explaining to a con the crux of the whole thing: that a good national health care plan would mean that no one, under any circumstances, would be denied health care.

The con, whom we had seen earlier at the microphone, seemed to be listening intently. Whether he was just preparing a retort or absorbing this insight I couldn't tell. Unfortunately, I didn't hear his response, if he even had one.

But something about that brief one-on-one exchange gave me hope.

Perhaps there will be significant reform in this country after all?

Some additional sources:

A Brief History of Universal Health Care Efforts in the U.S.

Whole Foods CEO John Mackey's Op-Ed in The Wall Street Journal

Bill Clinton Urges Progressive Push on Health Care

Ad Campaign Counterattacks Against Overhaul's Critics

A Primer on the Details of Health Care Reform


Grandma/grandpa puppet photo from www.puppetshoppe.com