seasons, weeds, liberty and listening
It’s cooler outside and I don’t feel as old. In fact, my step is lighter and my knees don’t hurt. It feels like 50 degrees, but the thermometer says 82. This is grand. The feeling younger part especially. Nothing like a little shake up in the seasons to put a new lease on life.
And I visited with my mother in the Hill Country. I defied her orders to stay home and away from the flow of Houston evacuees. And I made the right decision considering there was no rain or traffic as predicted. And that was good, because we laid the new grass-appearing arrangement on my dad’s grave (“your father always wanted to be different from everyone else.”) Now, see, I didn’t know that. I did know she wanted me to care about what goes on the grave and I never have cared much. So I brought them this time; the weed arrangement that looks so real, like a field untended and natural. He would like these.
And we saw a movie together, The Women. A good one for a mom and daughter. She needs company and a little help at this time, and we can’t move just yet. We are almost at that place. It’s not the job-changing or moving so much as the daughter in her last year of high school. And my mom is so intent on NOT being any kind of burden that she is ready to pack up tomorrow and go into assisted living. But let’s try the knee surgery, and staying with us for rehab first. Recruit my sister to visit once a month and me once a month and take it one step at a time, with the neighbors watching closely, and check with the Florida sister just in case I am missing something between the lines here. This is tough. My daughter must have read it in my face this morning when I got off the phone with my aunt; she walked right over and gave me a hug. Not really like her. It was so good, I asked for another.
Presentation on sexual exploitation accepted for a local (Corpus Christi) conference sponsored by CPS, CASA and other child abuse prevention organizations. I submitted one on STI’s and child abuse, but they chose the one on sexual exploitation by health care and human service professionals, and asked for 3 hours for ethics. Yo can do. A few video clips perhaps, a few case examples, maybe even my own. Empowered enough to submit the same thing, with a college twist to the ACHA. Getting the word out.
I wrote to Tibor Machan today; he’s a columnist who wrote something interesting about universal health care and how it shouldn’t be. I don’t agree with what he says—something about how we can’t make professionals (doctors, etc) provide health care for free. I tried to show him another side to that. That it is not necessarily a burden to professionals, but something we can offer to better our world. He had no ear for my words, only a mind to clarify his own, evidently Libertarian, point of view. I got it. And it was interesting. Just not a two-way thing. I thought that was the point of writing for the public, to not only be heard but to hear other views. I guess not. To some, it is perhaps only to be heard.
He’s right, though. We should not force people to do anything against their will. God forbid. And health care is not a universal right, because, well, we would have to make someone else give them health care for free, and that is taking away from those professionals’ God-given rights. I tried to tell him that there are a few professionals around willing to serve in this way (although lately I cannot find very many of them to help me out in Penitas!) and if we could model this kind of serving the poor, instead of promoting some sort of justification based on individuals’ freedom to choose, instead of standing by while people suffer from ear aches because their co-pay is too high to afford to go to a clinic. Yeah, that’s right some people even have insurance, they do work, and yet they have no access to health care. And medicine is not rocket science. Geez, sometimes it’s just writing a prescription for the diabetes medicine to prevent complications that will eventually cost the public much more in expensive hospital stays. Common sense, not liberty.
And here I thought people were just too busy to help out at free clinics. Nope, they believe in freedom for all. And no forced labor. Now that is more noble. Nothing like justifying not helping the poor among us. Nothing like creating a reason to be comfortable with the state of things as they are.
There, I feel better saying my peace. Thanks for listening, Tibor. (not)
Glad I’m a democrat, by the way.
11:57:47 PM 
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