Green places in the heart

Like many of my good friends, I am an unabashed tree hugger. I love the natural world and wish it well.

And as you probably know from either our acquaintance or your reading this blog, I love going to see beautiful land-, sea-, and mountain-scapes. They lift my spirits and touch me in ways I can’t always explain. I want to be inside these beautiful places and just be. Soak ‘em up, so to speak, to sustain me when I get back home.

I’m a bit of a walker, not so much a hiker these days. But I am, unquestionably a GREAT sitter. The picture here is of Fort Walton Beach, Florida, where Cindy Lou and I have spent a few spring break weeks. She can’t wait to get out in the sun and begin the process that darkens her skin into a lovely tan. Me? I love sitting on the balcony of the condo looking down at the sun worshipers with my poetry notebook and a cold Corona at the ready. Beach walks before breakfast and after dinner fill out the day for the both of us.

And now, it would seem, researchers have determined that just five minutes a day in the great outdoors can improve one’s self esteem and mental health. Just being out there makes a difference in our heads. Ride a bike along the river. Take a walk in a park. Dig in your garden. Sit out on your back porch and meditate. All these things have been proven to boost a person’s mood.

The research from the University of Essex in the UK says the benefits of spending time outdoors is not new, but the time needed for personal benefits to show -- just five minutes -- is the newest piece in the mental health puzzle. I mean, five minutes. The study included looking at a wide array of outdoor activities, including walking, gardening, cycling, fishing, boating, horse riding, and farming.

Good stuff, don’t you think? Undoubtedly. I hope we’ll all take this study to heart and get outside more often. It will be good for our heads.

I could have selected any of a number of pictures from the personal portfolio to accompany this blog entry, but I thought a shot of the lovely white sand of Fort Walton Beach the best choice. Why? Well, because this lovely place is in danger of being trashed by the uncapped seafloor oil gusher emanating from the floor of the Gulf of Mexico that today threatens not only Louisiana and Mississippi wetlands, but the vacation beaches of Alabama and Florida. Yesterday it was proposed that the oil could even catch currents that would take it around the Florida peninsula and up the Atlantic coast. Let’s hope not. Still, it is a possibility. How long will it take BP to stop the flow? Three months? Goodness. That’s a lot of oil.

So I am torn today. Yes, I drive to Florida. Yes, I am a user of refined petroleum. Yes, I love the beach. Yes, I love shrimp cocktail. And, yes, my heart breaks for the lives torn asunder by this oil disaster. It won’t be just vacationers whose plans will change if the beaches are covered in oil, but the countless families who make a living in the Gulf. Fisherfolk. Shrimpers. Shop owners. Restauranteurs.

Is it possible the oil slick could be worse for the Gulf than Hurricane Katrina? Some folks think so. And that truly hurts my heart. Talk about the lack of green -- or blue -- space impacting one’s mental health? Birds. Fish. Sea turtles. People. Oh, my.

Today’s elder idea: Dana Powell expects at least some lost business at her Paradise Inn in Pensacola Beach, Florida, and could see a different type of guest altogether: Instead of families boating, parasailing, and fishing, workers on cleanup crews will probably be renting her rooms. “They won’t be having as much fun,” she said, “but they might be buying more liquor at the bar, because they’ll be so depressed.”

from an Associated Press report today, 4 May 2010

picture: Santa Rosa Island, behind the Nautilus condo, Fort Walton Beach FL (2003)

Ted Schaefer (1920-1999)

He’s about 21 in this picture. Graduated from Chaminade High School a couple three years prior. Played center on the football team for Fuzzy Faust. Loved to draw, especially figures. Maybe art school, or interior design was in his future. War got in the way of that dream.

On Sunday, 7 December 1941, Ted had the day off from Frigidaire, but was called in by mid-afternoon after word had gotten back to the East that Pearl Harbor had been attacked. He ground firing pins for weapons to be used by American troops when the war came. Nobody doubted that it would come. Nobody knew when. They were surprised when it came from the Pacific. Most everybody assumed that crazy bastard Hitler would do something first. People were surprised and angry when it came at Pearl. A man’s got to do what a man’s got to do. It didn’t take him long to sign up for the Army Air Corps.

And then there was the girl. Gertrude. Yes, he loved her. She was his Honeybubble. But he didn’t want to anchor her to a distant hope of a life after a war when nobody knew when or what that might be. If there even was one. What would keep him from being a casualty? Gert agreed, but promised to write him every day, telling him of life here at home. At home without him.

She would make her war effort by rolling bandages for troop use and volunteering at the hospital at Wright Patterson. He thought she looked damned cute in the picture she sent of herself in that hospital volunteer outfit. She is standing out in front of her house, her profile to the camera. Her eyes are closed and her chin is upturned and a grin from ear to ear. Believe me, he had every intension of getting home alive.

After boot camp, he was selected to learn how to become a turret gunner. The mortality rate for gunners sitting inside glass bubbles on American bombers was extraordinarily high, but he didn’t think about it much. This was war, after all, and there were many dangerous jobs. He would do what he could. We’d all be happier than fiddies in a pond if we could just stay home. But, no. The world can’t seem to take care of its own business without US.

As he waited with the other guys for the bus to take him to gunner training, an officer came up and asked if anybody in line knew anything about butchering. He had spent time on family farms in Mercer county, Ohio, when he was a kid, and he helped out in his grandfather’s grocery store in Dayton. He was pulled from the line, and his military career was changed forever. He spent the rest of the war in the kitchen.

His time eventually came to ship out overseas to the European theater on the RMS Auquitania, sister ship to the long-lost German target, Lusitania. Radio blackout meant no communication with anybody all the way across. When they eventually entered Scotland’s Firth of Clyde, they were met with astonishment. Sub-hunting aircraft had spotted flotsam on the Atlantic days before that all in authority assumed was the remains of the Auquitania.

Ted’s duty station turned out to be Bury St. Edmunds, an airfield just northeast of London. He and the kitchen crew cooked for hundreds of guys a day, sometimes being called into the mess in the middle of the night. When the fly boys had to eat, somebody had to fix it. He prided himself as the first to create pre-packaged cake mix. He mixed all the dry ingredients prior, including dry eggs. All he had to do in a pinch was add water and the cake was in the oven in minutes, and on the table before the crew in no time. He worked hard to keep the guys happy. He concluded that as long as the guys bitched about the food, all was okay. When they got quiet he knew things were getting bad.

He always had a twinge when an Air Corps pilot turned over his wallet before heading out for a mission over the continent. If he didn’t return, the guys back at the base were supposed to spend the cash down at a local pub and toast those who didn’t return. He would never be able to hear taps again without tears.

Well, he survived the war at his station in England. He did get knocked down from the concussion of buzz bombs a couple of times, but nothing serious. After VE Day in May 1945, he shipped home and made it back to Dayton for a furlough. He and Gertie were married that July in St. Anthony’s church. She accompanied him to his next duty station in Florida, where he prepared to ship out to the Pacific. But the big bombs and VJ Day came in August. By Columbus Day he and Gert headed back home to begin a life, they hoped, that would be safe for the family they wanted to get started.

***

1 May 2010 marked the eleventh anniversary of my dad’s passing. He survived the war, but couldn’t get past the cancer. He left Mom and his seven kids to carry on.

Today’s elder idea: I want you to keep in communication with each other, love each other, and love hard. Love is the greatest thing that can happen to a family. So please stay together. It makes a beautiful family tree, and the fruit will be plentiful.

from ‘To my children’

written by Dad for his penultimate birthday,

8 February 1998

Spring rhapsody

It’s easy for me to gush about spring. As mentioned before, it might have something to do with my birthday. Celebrating your personal holiday at the same time winter grey morphs into budding green across hillsides is not something to be trivialized. I find this season change a well grounded source of grace that I still marvel at in this, my sixtieth year of witnessing it.

Power is afoot out there.

This year’s considered miracles:

So much is going on. The columbine has reseeded itself plentiful, now covering over one third of the front flowerbed. Hosta have awakened in their new home for the first spring following last year’s major transplant. They seem healthy and strong with room to spread their legs. Daffodils are gone, though I did see one yellow survivor yet this morning, head held high into the sun. A few natural dutchmen’s britches remain. A few mertensia survived their journey into new soil last spring. Good for them. Good for them all.

The pond was drained, cleaned, and refilled today, giving pause to the myriad larvae observed swimming there last night. The aerator is pumping again, hopefully keeping life and a semblance of comfort in balance. The birdbath dripper is back in action, too, splashing water onto a liberated Lake MacDonald rock that intends to assist honey bees and their kin to a sweet sip. Before today’s rock installation, I found one dead bee floating. Those kids had a hard enough time this winter, losing between 50 and 70% of their communities. Take a more comfortable seat at this water bar, my friends!

When we departed for Denver a couple of weeks ago, I wondered which floral openings would be most dynamic upon our return. On the road, it was redbud. Hands down.

But when we turned down our street, the pink dogwood just jumped out at us. Goodness. This critter absolutely amazes me. I’ve transplanted a few dogwoods just where they want to be -- forest floor, well drained, moderate sun -- and all have perished. This one gets full sun and has to have a portion of its roots under the driveway. Too much sun, not enough water -- and it does just great. Such a competitor!

Second most impressive upon our return, I would say, are the ferns. Don’t know their exact name, but they have migrated around the corner of the back of the house over the last fifteen years. I’ve cut back lots of bushes to give them more room. I wasn’t even thinking of them before I left. When I got home, less than two weeks later, they were up 18 inches. Such tenacity!

Birds have been beautiful, too. Nothing too special. I can’t say I saw a wood thrush at the birdbath lately. Still, there’s plenty of cardinal song outside our windows. Call. Response. Family responsibility. And titmouse. And Carolina wren. Red bellied woodpecker. American crow. Chickadee-dee-dee.

All Earthly travelers. All Nature’s people. All singing about another coming alive -- singing another life cycle -- another turn on the mandala.

But this rotation they will experience like no other. This time is not for the ancestors. It is not for those who come next. It is about here and now. These blossoms. These birds. These leaves. These flying and rooted and living things.

It is their breath. It is their lives. It is their turn. As a fellow traveler, I wish them well.

Today’s elder idea:

Nap on a granite slab

half in shade, you can never hear enough

sound of wind in the pines

Gary Snyder

from Danger on Peaks (2004)

Rocky Mountain high

From Kansas City:

We left the mountains this morning. Looked like it was raining up there. Probably snowing. Yesterday Cindy counted 85 elk in Horseshoe Park. Then we saw a dozen or so turkeys while driving up the Bear Lake Road. And a mountain bluebird, and chickadee, and white breasted nuthatch. The lake was still under heavy snow. The visit and the pictures were necessary for me. Every few years I need a fix. Rocky Mountain National Park -- that spectacle of such grace -- is one of those special places that gives it to me.

I fell in love with the Rockies in my twenty-seventh year. I’m not sure I was exactly coming home to a place I’d never been before, but it was coming home to a place that met some need I still don’t know how to explain. The last couple of days I found myself weeping standing at places fraught with memories, hearing music laden with family history, and retelling stories of a young dad, his brave and loyal wife, and their precious little four year-old daughter.

He had dreamed of finding a beautiful place in Nature where humans were only visitors. Places that rivaled the beautiful pictures of the Rockies on calendars and in National Geographic. Living out some experiences of John Denver’s ‘Rocky Mountain High.’ The acting out of some quest to find that something lost that belongs in the soul. Something you have to travel to. Something that binds a family closer together.

We crossed the country in my fourth car, the Nova I had to buy to replace my Pinto so the kid would be better protected in her back seat perch. And here I was, crossing the high plains in a car that couldn’t do more than 50 on that hot July day because the heat light would come on. The radiator just couldn’t handle it. Entering Colorado at five thousand feet, the car just quit, and there I was stranded in the middle of nowhere with a wife and child who trusted me. At least I hoped so.

But then the officer came by and offered that it was probably just vapor lock. Let the carburetor cool down, he said, then try to start her up again. We did and it did. The car performed flawlessly the rest of the trip.

My goal for the family at Rocky Mountain National Park was to spend a night in Estes Park, camping and getting our gear together. On our two-day, six-mile ascent to Lawn Lake, Jenny would carry only a couple of toys and her Raggedy Ann. I would take the tent, a couple of sleeping bags, the cooking gear, and as much other stuff as I could while Chris would take the rest.

What an amazing trip it was. Except for my nasty altitude headache the second afternoon, all three of us did great. It turned out that Jennifer’s favorite toy became a cast aside liquid detergent bottle she found at our first campsite. She filled in up repeatedly in the Roaring River and went around camp earnestly squirting everything for some reason only she knew. We all laughed. We all had a good time. And upon our descent and our pulling away from the parking lot, I popped John Denver in the tape player. I looked at Chris and she looked at me. We both wept. And JD just kept on singing.

It would be many years before I returned to the Lawn Lake trailhead in Horseshoe Park. In the interim, we were stunned to hear of the flood in 1982 when the manmade dam at Lawn Lake breeched that July after days and days of rain. The town of Estes Park and campers at the national park were warned of the impending flood.

It happened. The dam broke and the flood came. The only humans lost were a couple of backpackers who knew better but still camped along the Roaring River even after the warning. They were swept away and never found. The town got three feet of muddy water as the valley that held the river was scoured and gouged to expose boulders the size of pick-up trucks.

Jenni and I returned to Rocky Mountain National Park and Lawn Lake the summer before she started high school. She came along with me as a participant in a geology field study the high school at which I taught, not hers, offered to the West, culminating at RMNP. I don’t remember talking to her much about our first trip on a trail up the mountain, now sculpted so differently than when we first came. She walked ahead and chatted with her new friends.

And we made it. Again. I don’t know what it meant to her. She doesn’t talk to me much these days. It’s just the way it is.

But it meant a lot to me. Sunday evening I stopped a young pregnant woman on the bridge spanning the alluvial fan, where the exposed rocks seemed the biggest, and told her of my taking my four year old up that trail before the flood. I was proud to tell the story.

I had to tell it again to the woman in the print shop who sold me my newest Ansel Adams image, framed oh so beautifully and ready to take a place in my gallery at home. Long’s Peak it is titled. It was part of the Mural Project Adams did for the Interior Department in 1941-42. I’d never seen it before.

Then I told her I had two -- count ‘em: TWO -- postcards from Ansel Adams -- addressed to me, signed by the man. She pulled back a bit, gave me closer look, and said how she hoped I had them well protected. I assured her I did. Proudly.

The Rockies own a part of me. Lovely Cindy finally knows. She sees it in my face and hears it in my voice. It’s like her being on a beach in Florida. The girl just flowers. She comes alive under the sun. She knows I do the same thing in the mountains. I’m glad she knows. It will be easier for us to come back.

Today’s elder idea: He was born in the summer of his 27th year / coming home to place he’d never been before. He left yesterday behind him / you could say he was born again. / You could say he found a key to every door.

John Denver

from ‘Rocky Mountain High’ (1973 -- the year Jennifer was born)

Denver

I’m a bit late getting this week’s blog in because of travel. Cindy Lou was good enough to gift me with registration to the American Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) conference which is being held this week in Denver. The event is an annual gathering of university types, both faculty and student wanna’ be PhDs. The event lasts three days with many, many sessions on everything literary from poetry readings to fiction discussions to tributes to writers with impressive publishing credentials. It’s currently late afternoon on day two. It’s been good so far.

My hope this week was to sit in on some sessions that might help me with my own writing. Yesterday I went to a reading of Anhinga Press’s The Poet’s Guide to Birds and another session on putting together a writer’s first book of poetry. Today was a session on writing with a sense of place and another on a writer’s voice in middle school and young adult literature. I ended my morning thinking how cool it would be if Cindy Lou and I could write a YA novel celebrating our grandkids. A guy can dream.

I also hoped to see some important writers in the flesh. This morning I got to see, hear, and greet Pattiann Rogers, a poet I first heard at another literary conference in Montana years ago. She was as good as ever, and I think she was really pleased to hear how her work has informed my own. Tonight we hear environmental poet Gary Snyder and tomorrow former national poet laureate Robert Hass. There appears to be a heavy hitter around every corner.

I’ve been through Denver plenty of times on I-70, but never stayed here. Well, one night years ago out in a distant suburb, but that hardly counts. This time I’m just south of downtown for a five-night stay -- within walking distance of the convention center where the AWP event is being held. Such a town this is.

I suppose John Denver hooked me on both the mountains and Colorado years ago when I was a young dad. I was, in fact, in my 27th year when I first came to the high plains and the mountains just beyond, as was he wrote and sang about in Rocky Mountain High.

As was the case with many red-blooded Americans, during that trip I touched upon some chord within that lit up when I came West. Historians and philosophers have opined for years that the idea of the West is part of a unique American character. A couple centuries ago, the West was the Ohio frontier. After that was settled and Thomas Jefferson bought the Louisiana Territory from Napoleon, the West moved, well, further west. Denver celebrates so much of that unique character in its art and architecture.

But Denver is really just the foothills of the Rockies. From our hotel window, just beyond the hospital, I can see snow capped peaks. That’s where I need to go before heading back to my safe and sound home in the East. And that’s where we’re headed Sunday morning: north to Estes Park, the gateway to Rocky Mountain National Park, for our last two days in Colorado.

Cindy’s never been. Boy, am I looking forward to showing it to her.

Today’s elder idea: from ‘This Little Glade, Remember’

When lying beneath a ponderosa

pine, looking up through layers

of branches, mazes of leaf-spikes

and cones—contemplation grows

receptive to complexity,

the pleasant temptation of pine-

scented tangle. Sky as proposition

is willingly divided and spliced

into a thesis of weaves and hallows.

Name them something else

if you wish, but needled shadow

and substance are, in this hour,

an architecture of philosophy.

Pattiann Rogers

Space reflections

A couple of weeks ago when Cindy & I were returning from Staci Pepitone’s funeral in Baton Rouge, we found ourselves back in our car at the Columbus airport about midnight with the hour-long drive back to Dayton still ahead of us. We hadn’t had dinner, but didn’t really want to stop. We just wanted to get home.

So as I tooled our car onto westbound I-70, still reflecting on Staci’s remarkable memorial, I started enumerating for Cindy Lou what kinds of cool stuff I would mention about her life in the horrible case of my having to assemble a eulogy following her passing. Among other things, I mentioned her love for our grandkids, her passion for doing right by her students during her teaching career, her magical ability -- from my perspective -- of making music on violin, her support and companionship throughout our relationship, and her concerned tending of her mother and father at the end of their lives.

Then I asked her, if she didn’t mind, to tick off a few things about me she might mention at my funeral. My question caught her off guard a bit, but she warmed up to the idea. She mentioned good stuff about my being a dad and grandfather, my love for birds and Hog Island, my poetry, and my willingness to join in volunteer causes. As nice as all she said sounded, none surprised me too much. Then she mentioned my love of space and space travel. That one caught me a little by surprise.

But in a larger sense, her space comment seemed to be the one I was waiting for. It wasn’t the space idea so much, but an observation from my best friend and confidant about me that I wouldn’t have come up with myself. What beautiful priority in my life did she see that perhaps I didn’t quite so clearly? It was a warm a-ha moment.

As a kid of 1950 vintage, I was seven years-old when the nasty old Russians were the first to launch a satellite into space. The United States -- the best country in the world -- was one-upped by the communist bad guys who we all knew had only one thing on their minds: our destruction. So when the US got into the space race in January 1958 with the launch of Explorer I, I was immediately hooked. Then came space cowboy Alan Shepherd’s suborbital flight in 1961 followed by Ohio hero John Glenn’s three orbits in 1962. I can still remember listening to these momentous historical events over the public address system at school. The classroom was absolutely quiet as we did desk work and listened to the reporting of a real live person going into outer space. Dude. Very cool stuff.

I’ve been an avid NASA tv watcher now for about three years. Some of the constantly repeated programming is a bit too much for me at times, but when it comes to launches, NASA tv turns into the ultimate reality show. They broadcast extensive crew interviews, press conferences by ground managers, and hour by hour coverage of the launch and subsequent work days in space. It’s not redundant when I say again, very cool stuff.

So it wasn’t any kind of a stretch for me yesterday to invite grandkids Alex and Ellie, who are on spring break this week, to go with Grammy and me to the Museum of the United States Air Force here in Dayton to see the newest IMAX movie they offer, Hubble. Oh, my.

I know human interaction with space is all big stuff, but what the Hubble Space Telescope has accomplished in it’s twenty year run is absolutely extraordinary. One astronaut thought that 500 years from now when historians reassess the impact of space on humanity, Hubble will be remembered as one of the most important projects ever launched. I mean, this space-based observatory can actually see to the end of the universe. The light it collects on it’s mirror was generated so far away that it started it’s journey this direction millions of years ago. Excuse me, but like God, that idea is just a little too hard for me to comprehend.

But I love wondering about it. And I love exciting kids with it. When I asked seventh grade Alex what he was thinking about as a career choice, he mentioned aeronautical engineering. He’s loved aircraft all his life. Space is never too far from his mind, either. Again, it’s not redundant to say, very cool indeed.

Today’s elder idea: Life, forever dying to be born afresh, for ever young and eager, will presently stand upon this Earth as upon a footstool, and stretch out its realm amidst the stars.

H. G. Wells (1920)

Health care & 60

I’m one of those guys who has been playing disc jockey over the years by creating his own music mixes. In the beginning, it was on reel to reel tape. Then it went to cassettes that I could play in the car. I still have a bunch of both stored in closets, but I rarely play them. With the advent of CD recording, both tape recorders have been relegated to dark places in the basement. iTunes has surely made the practice much easier.

Most of these collections have a theme, like Western highway, Earth magic, Beautiful, and pisces & aries. Finding ‘theming’ music too much of a reach at times, about five years ago I began the practice of assembling a collection of songs to be completed twice a year, one about the time of my birthday at the beginning of spring, the other six months later. What to include? Well, whatever I find interesting in the moment. Some new, some classic, some just fun. It’s become a bit of a passion of mine. And for titling, I just number ‘em.

I mention this today because last fall when I finished my 59.5 collection, I included an oldie grandson Noah found somehow, maybe on Guitar Hero. It was ‘He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother,’ the 1969 classic from The Hollies. On the liner notes, I dedicated its inclusion to ‘the new health care bill that should help make more Americans healthier.’ I signed off on the dedication with the Fiddler’s Le chaim! I assumed passage of the bill was imminent last fall.

And here we are on March 23, my 60th birthday, with President Obama signing America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009. Finally.

It would seem lots of folks aren’t happy about it. Even in an unscientific MSNBC internet poll I looked at showed 65% against. I was part of the 27% in favor. Still, as I listened to progressive pundits debate content and comment on the furor the bill has caused, I distinctly remember hearing them say that the majority of Americans were in favor of it. Where did they all go?

I must admit that in the process of listening to the ugliness re: the health care bill, I lost interest in personally participating in government. I’ve never been very involved anyway, but I do watch the news, read the paper daily, and walk the neighborhood during presidential elections passing out literature for the Democrats. I came to the conclusion recently that if duly elected government officials can’t decide on what’s best for their constituents, to hell with the process.

What in heaven’s name is wrong with reforming health care? Insurance companies are making big money with our premiums and seem to feel free to drop coverage on folks who need it most because they file claims when they are sick. It seems to me that one doesn’t need to be a rocket science major to see that something had to change.

Still, there they were: every -- and I mean EVERY -- Republican opposing changes. Even after Nancy Polosi, Harry Reid, and friends included ideas brought to the health care table over the years by Republicans, like end-of-life counseling, nada. Some in the GOP even called such counseling ‘death panels’ that will doom grandma, trying to scare the pants off of us. Now that the the bill is law, some in the GOP are talking repeal.

First, I just don’t get it. War is okay, I suppose, but not help for Americans. I love my Republican brother, but I have concluded that he, like many of his GOP brethren, hate to see anybody get anything they didn’t earn. Get a job, dammit. Second, I am disgusted with the hate and fear that has boiled out of this debate. I mean, for pete’s sake, we’re trying to help America be a healthier place.

I know money is an issue. Still, some stuff just costs money. And to me, some stuff is just worth it. Streets. Clean water. Bank regulations. National security. Civil rights. Health care. They all seem targets for the role of a government by the people and for the people.

I had this thought yesterday: Name me three well-heard conservative radio hosts. Shouldn’t be a problem. Now name me three well-heard progressive radio types. Can’t do it, can you?

Expanding it to television, one could name three progressives. But there’s always the ubiquitous Rupert Murdoch and Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Glenn Beck -- all with huge media reach. I wonder how much of their fear and vitriol spewed on the air waves has brought many Americans to fear any kind of health care reform. And how much of the nonsense was funded by health insurance lobbyists?

As Rachel Maddow said Monday night, which parts of the bill do the repealers now want to strip away? Continue to exclude newborns with asthma because of a pre-existing condition? Going back to dropping coverage for people with a recurrence of cancer because they have exceeded limits? Have seniors decide if they can eat this week or buy their meds?

I don’t get it. We live in a democracy where we work for the aim of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. For all. Health care seems to be a step in that direction. All I can thank today are Democrats who did their best to make it work.

***

PS: March 23, in fact, does make me 60 this year. And this blog entry, oddly enough, is Back Porch blog #60. Having the President sign the bill this very day makes me damn proud. Gotta' love the syzygy!

PS2: Care to hear any of the music collections? Let me know.

Today’s elder idea: ‘A big f---ing deal.’ Indeed.

Vice president Joe Biden.