KatMulkey

Dear Mr. Mackey of Whole Foods,  

Your company’s health-insurance plan sounds great. It’s one answer for this country, so can you please hire a LOT more people, in my generation, and my daughter’s generation?  Will you hire me? I’m a thin-ish, exercise-every-day vegetarian. I’m unemployed, and therefore must purchase my own health insurance.  

Your opinion piece in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal was a two-pronged essay about modifying  taxes, laws, and regulations;  plus, how we could be a healthier country. They are two very separate points, with no bridge between them.  Perhaps it is emblematic of our nation’s current dilemma--we’re polarized about health care. We have seen evidence of this on the news lately. That’s why I wish that you had not used the Margaret Thatcher quote to open your piece. Using the word “socialism” these days can get you labeled a wingnut, and may blind the reader to any useful content of your essay.

The WSJ article featured a list of “eight reforms that would greatly lower the cost of health care for everyone.” And, yeah, they seemed like pretty good ideas (well, except for  #3 about repealing state laws which prevent insurance companies from competing across state lines.” I think portability is difficult for reasons other than state laws) to tweak our current situation (which I don’t like to call a healthcare system, because there’s nothing systematic about it).

But while your eight reforms might impress your corporate equals from CEO school, they don’t give warm fuzzies to your loyal customers—the compassionate, rational, liberals who shop at Whole Foods. And the reforms may not give immediate hope to the many ill employed and underemployed taxpayers who are without enough means to purchase insurance or treatment.  

Of course it’s true, as you said, that “we need to address the root causes of poor health. This begins with the realization that every American adult is responsible for his or her own health.” Right on! This, to me, is the preamble to the real patients’ Bill of Rights.  I’d like to add that we must dismantle the entire Obesity Industry, rework all sedentary occupations, and ban all meat, dairy, alcohol, and cigarettes. But then I would be a wingnut.  So instead, let’s try to get everyone calmed down, in order to meet somewhere near the middle and solve the most immediate problems first.

Thanks for your time, Mr. Mackey.

And now this goes out to everyone else. Everyone wanting to really converse about healthcare: Care about people (or at least pretend to care); be informed (don’t just make stuff up or willfully misinterpret language written in a Bill); speak carefully (watch labeling); and try to avoid the smugness that your current good health and employment situation might be swaddling you in. You might be sleeping under the freeway next month.  With no health insurance.  And melanoma.

I think this scorpion is the Uroctonus mordax mordax. Does that mean "show me the money" in latin? or does it mean "Hey is this a Hawaii state quarter? That's the only one I don't have."
?

After he sat on my hand for awhile...

. . .he jumped on my shoulder and tried to eat the polkadots on my shirt. 

(Kat's note: I know that you're supposed to leave baby birds alone when you find them on the ground. But I didn't find this guy on the ground, he was in a cat's mouth. The cat was going to torture him and then NOT eat him.)

 

BEST BOY, I’m writing you a poem for your 13^th birthday. Will you ever  see this? Perhaps yes, perhaps no. But I still had to write it because of giant Xmas stockings that you could climb into, and happy times at our house building lego wonders (those fantastic, impressive engineering projects) and many other good things. I wrote this poem for the world’s smoothest sock-floor slider,  indoor-scooter rider, guitar player, remote-control-vehicle operator, imaginative artist, and fort-building, snowball-preserving, kite-flying (and DOUBLE-kite-flying) book-devouring BEST BOY.  I’m writing you a poem for your 13^th birthday.

PIRATE KITE

I want to fly a pirate kite with you, here, on my hill.

First we'll make the black kite skin and frame, then test different tails.

Of course you should draw the skull and bones--

you’re good at that, you’re good at everything.

(we miss you)

Our kite will soar and swoop menacingly and pirate-y.

Those kite birds—the raptors who think they are the power of this hill--

will get scared out of their talons when they see our kite

and they will hover at the Andersons' house, instead, as if they wanted to go there.

But it won’t be what they wanted.  We don’t always get what we want.

 (I miss you)

Let’s remember this:

Sometimes when the wind falls off a bit

and the string goes slack, you think the kite is gone

until the tug returns, and you are reassured.

Even when the string breaks

(it  just happens, it’s not anyone’s fault)

you may still find the kite again, eventually, if you love it enough.

This is not the end. I’m not saying goodbye, because I know that I will see you again.

BEST BOY, I wrote you this poem for your 13^th birthday.