Autumn 2008

So here it is again, the time of year for colorful mountains, changing weather, pumpkins, pie, breezes and chills.

Time for the smokey smell of fireplaces, football, sweaters, hot chocolate and popcorn.

What will it bring this year, I wonder?

Snows at Thanksgiving?

More hurricanes and turmoil? Maybe a little rain to ease the drought?

What will the wind blow in, I wonder? Or what will it take away?

The seasons turn, babies are born, people die... cycle through, cycle on. It doesn't stop, this ol' world, this earth, this love.

Poof

And just like that, another weekend is gone.

So what did I do that was so engrossing that I couldn't blog?

Nothing. I didn't blog because my head these days is so full of stuff that sometimes when I go to write my fingers stop working. Too many words.

What I did do was stay home on Saturday, and I spent my time cleaning the house. My house is not a dirty place but it does get cluttered, particularly with catalogues and books and similiar things. So I sorted and tossed and dusted and in general things look much better and I was gratified.

Saturday night, with poor choices for TV, we played the Wii. We played the DECA sports game and in particular enjoyed the snowboarding and the motorcross racing.

Then we pulled out the Wii Play disc, where we laughed a lot as we raced one another on the backs of cows.

As we were putting things away, something slid from the pile where I'd put all the Wii things until I could find a storage box.

It was a disc. Odd. A disc I'd not seen before, still unopened in its package.

It was the Wii Sports disc that I thought was supposed to come with the Wii (the one with bowling and golf and tennis) but hadn't found. Apparently we'd overlooked it and the angels decided we should find it.

Sunday we went to Roanoke. First we went to the nursing home and visited my great aunt. She was feeling better than the last time we saw her and I was grateful for that.

Then we went to Walmart in Salem and then to Macadoo's for a sandwich.

After we ate, we went to Home Depot, Sportsman's Warehouse, Sam's Club and Gander Mountain. Then we visited my sister-in-law and her husband and my nephews.

Then we went by the grocery store.

Whew.

I was worn out by the time we made it home. After dinner we played with the Wii Sports disc a while. Then my husband read some things he is reading for work and I read a book and then we fell into bed.

I, of course, had vivid dreams all night long last night.

I dreamed that I had taken allergy medication as prescribed and then for some reason I drank an entire glass of whiskey - straight. Then I worried that if I fell asleep I would die from the chemical reaction, so I was going around telling everyone not to let me go to sleep.

Is it any wonder I woke up a little tired this morning?

Quote

"We will have achieved equality the day mediocre women take their place beside mediocre men. Check that one off the to-do list." - Ellen Goodman, September 19, 2008, The Roanoke Times

Study: Mushroom

Except for the first one, which is merely cropped, these photos were modified with MS Picture It!

Thursday Thirteen

I love where I live.

1. I love the small county seat.



2. I love the people in the small county seat, too. I have relatives who live there and I have many friends and acquaintances. Most of the county employees know me by name and will stop me for a chat in the street or in the hallways of the courthouse.


3. I love the landscape.



4. The thing about the Blue Ridge Mountains is that they are majestic. They aren't craggy (or crabby), either. They don't blow up with volcanic activity, they don't often have rock slides and the the theory is they help keep down tornadic activity. They are even high enough for skiing.

5. The change of the seasons is on display out the window. Spring flowers, summer green, autumn fire, winter snow blanket. What more could you want from your mountains?


6. I love that we live on a farm.



7. Living on a farm gives you a great appreciation for nature. You live the seasons - haying in late spring, summer, early autumn. Planting at the right time. Watching the animal and plant signs for the weather because that's about as accurate as the weatherman. Learning the value of a dollar because they're hard to come by.

8. I love the deer. They remind me to be curious and cautious.



9. The deer also remind me of the value of life, particularly during hunting season. While I really hate that the animals are killed I know there is justification for it. We eat the meat if my husband takes a deer. Everyone we know does. I know there are a few bad hunters but I don't believe they are the majority.

10. I love the turkeys. They remind me to always keep moving. Or else I might end up as Thanksgiving dinner!



11. I love that I have strong roots here that go back to before 1804 and that I can trace one line of my family tree back to the American Revolution.

12. I love that I have found work here that I enjoy and do well. How many people can really say that, I wonder?

13. I love that while this is a relatively rural area, it's suburban enough to give me access to great things like the Internet. Isn't technology great?



Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; you can learn more about it here. My other Thursday Thirteens are here.

The Afternoons

I really hadn't intended to bore anyone with the minute details of my day, but I suppose I may as well finish what I started.

My afternoons vary. I try to schedule interviews in the afternoon. Sometimes I do research in the library or courthouse. Occasionally I research at my desk on the Internet.

Otherwise, I do laundry, return phone calls, catch up on email. Sometimes I work on articles, particularly on Mondays when I have deadlines.

Other times I work on a book project I have been making some progress with.

Many evenings I have a night meeting. I attend a lot of council meetings and such, so I try to keep my afternoons open on those days.

Today, for instance, was a little topsy turvey because I will be in a council meeting tonight. I don't particularly want to work 15 hour days, after all.

So this morning I saw a client and then visited my acupuncturist. After that I stopped by the grocery store. After I unloaded my haul and ate a salad, I ventured into the county seat for a look at courthouse records, a conversation or two with officials, and a stop by the newspaper office to see if my editor had any comments to share.

By that time it was 4 p.m. and I have been home an hour. Soon I will fix dinner and then I'll head to a nearby small town for the council meeting tonight.

If I didn't have a council meeting, I would be fixing dinner and then doing housework, maybe playing a little video game to relax, and then reading a book or magazine until bedtime while my husband flips through the TV channels.

I try to be in bed by 10 p.m. but it doesn't always work out that way. Some nights I don't get there until 11 p.m.

At 6 a.m. tomorrow morning, I'll start it all over again. Except I won't have acupuncture, of course.

Another Morning

My days all generally begin the same way.

I get up at 6 a.m., give or take 15 minutes, almost every morning, even on weekends.

I put on my robe and trundle into the kitchen to fix myself a cup of tea, and while the water boils in the microwave I do stretches for my plantar fasciitis.

My husband, who rises at 5 a.m. regardless of day, has already fixed his own breakfast and brought up the newspaper. He'll kiss me and be gone long before I am fully awake.(I tried the good wife thing when we first married but I broke so many dozens of eggs that he told me to just stay in bed.)

Tea in hand, I come into my office where I check my email, read a few news articles, answer a couple of friends who have written overnight. Sometimes I write a blog entry if I've something on my mind or I'm not too busy.

At 7 a.m. I try to exercise. I was doing very well at this but it has waned over the summer. This is mostly because of the problems with my left foot and the heel spur, which makes walking on the treadmill practically unbearable. I've been trying to lift weights and ride a recumbent bike instead but I am not as good about that as I was walking.

So some mornings I spend longer at the computer. By 8 a.m. I am in the shower. Then I fix my breakfast (some morning eggs, some morning rice cereal, occasionally a gluten free waffle) and read the newspaper. I can't start my day without reading the comics and seeing if there are stories that happened overnight that I might need to follow up on myself.

After I eat, I quickly empty the dishwasher and load my husband's dishes as well as my own. Then I toss a load of clothes in the washer.

Then back to the computer. I check my tasks and then it's off to write. Mostly I write articles for the paper these days; I am quite busy.

At some point I take a break to put the clothes in the dryer or hang them on the clothes rack to dry.

I try to work until at least noon. That's three hours of writing every day.

And that's pretty much how it is in my life until lunch time.

Stephanie Plum Meets the X-Men

Plum Lovin'
By Janet Evanovich
Copyright 2007
164 pages

Stephanie Plum's friend Diesel, who is some kind of freaky not-exactly-superhero, asks for her assistance. She has to become a relationship expert and help five people find true love by Valentine's Day.

The men in her life, Morelli and Ranger, do not make much of an appearance. Lulu does, though, along with Stephanie's family.

I won't go into plot but this was a quick read - I think I finished it in an hour and a half. It is like all of Evanovich's books: swift, to the point, and able to raise a smile.

This is a "between the numbers books" which means I suppose that Evanovich didn't find it full enough for her regular series but didn't want to dump the writing, either.

The Wii

About three weeks ago, my husband and I stood for an hour outside of Best Buy in order to buy ourselves a Wii.

We have an XBox (the first version, not the 360) but it's hard to find games for that anymore. We hadn't used it in ages.

I wanted the Wii Fit game but so far have yet to make that purchase too. It apparently is as hard to come by as the Wii console itself.

I have noticed all the peripherals for Wii are very expensive, including the things you need for the Wii Fit. I did not do my homework very well before we bought the Wii, having succumbed to my need and desire to exercise and being bored by present routine and seeing the commercial of people happily doing yoga with their Wii.

So this was for all intents and purposes an emotional purchase and not a rational one.

By the time we bought the Wii ($250) and a crossbow thing ($25) and a Wii Play game which had an extra controller ($50) and a Cabella's Trophy Bucks video game ($50), we spent $400 on this wee bit of entertainment.

I have since bought a sports game that has ten different sports on it and Laura Croft's Tomb Raider's Anniversary for another $50 "investment".

The Wii Fit, whenever I finally get it, will add at least another $100 to the price of this thing.

And it's amazing what I don't know about it. I don't know how big a hard drive it has on it. I don't know, therefore, how many game saves the thing will take before it starts telling me it's out of memory.

Because I didn't really research it well, I don't know exactly what games are available for it, although a look at list on Wikipedia indicates that while there are a good number many are not the kinds of games I really like to play.

I like RPGs like Morrowind or Fable. I don't care much for shoot-'ems like Halo or weird games like Sonic Hedgehog or even the Mario and Donkey Kong games, which seem to be staples for anything put out by Nintendo. They haven't gotten past that for 20+ years.

I also like puzzle games and brain games that make you think. My husband likes racing games and deer hunting games.

I haven't put the first game save on the Wii for the Laura Croft game, which means I haven't played it much. My husband and I both have played the Trophy Deer game all the way through its 96 different hunts and then some, however. He is greatly enjoying that game, which certainly counts high in my estimate of the purchase.

We put this system in the living room which makes it much more accessible. However, it is not on our 42 inch TV but rather on a 26" TV because we couldn't hook the thing up to the 42" TV screen without making radical changes to our DVD/DirecTV setup and then having to hook and unhook wires every time we wanted to play or watch TV. Anything that was that much trouble would have been swiftly set aside.

The XBox, by the way, was on this small TV but it was located in the bedroom I use for my office. This change has made the gaming system more accessible, anyway.

So we now have two TVs in the living room, one on each side of the fireplace.

I do not think buying a Wii was a bad purchase, and I think we'll get enjoyment and kill a few hours with it, particularly since we've taken to trying to stay home more because of the price of gasoline. But I can't say that it is the best, most rational and appropriate purchase I have made in a while.

Oh, and this is also, I guess, our 25th wedding anniversary present to one another, even though our anniversary isn't until November.

Bull Stuff

Yesterday morning as I began work a noise caught my attention.

It was a low rumble, so low in the bass that I felt it in my belly as much as heard it.

Ummmm. Ummm.

Whatever was that? I wondered. I listened a moment.

It was the bull.

I hurried outside to stand on the front porch because for the first time our bull and the neighbor's bull were in sight of each other. Our neighbor fenced off what used to be a hay field and moved her cattle over there.

In the fog and close early morning hours, the sound of the bulls bellowing at one another was echoing off the house.

Umm. Umm. They both made a very low guttural noise.

Our cows had all stopped eating and were looking at the two bulls. I was reminded of a schoolyard with two bullies going at each other while everyone else stood around and watched them fight.

Suddenly, one of the bulls could stand it no longer!

Miii...nee! Mii... neee! Miii...neee! If you've never heard an angry bull bellow, well. I can hardly describe it. Very loud, very angry and very constant for at least a full minute.

I don't know of course what the bull is "saying" if anything, but it certainly sounds like a very low "Mii...neee!" to me. As in, Mine, Mine Mine! My herd, my women, you get the #@$ away from here!

I was very worried that the electric fence, hot on both sides of the wires, would not be working properly and the animals would get at one another. But thankfully after a while the two males tired of their game and went on about their business.

I didn't get any pictures because it was damp and drizzling and they were not close enough to the house for me to take a shot without getting my digital camera wet, which I did not wish to do.

Remember 9/11

September 11 Thursday Thirteen

1. On this day in 2001, I, along with most Americans, watched a plane crash into the second tower. Shortly thereafter, I watched the towers collapse in a swirl of dust, debris and screams.

2. My main thought was of the firemen who I knew were climbing the steps and making valiant efforts to rescue the folks trapped inside. The towers' collapse killed 343 firefighters.

3. In all, 2,974 people died in the attacks that occurred in New York City and at the Pentagon in Washington D.C. That number also includes the passengers of United 93, which did not hit its target but instead crashed in a field in Pennsylvania.

4. Our office closed at lunch time, as did many others. No one could work anyway.

5. I came home and watched footage of the event over and over again. My husband was not at the firehouse but he was working at his second job installing septic tanks and I couldn't reach him to tell him what had happened.

6. After a while I came into my office and I played a puzzle game while the images settled in my mind and I tried to come to grips with what had happened.

7. A feeling of helplessness settled over me and I think it settled over much of the nation. For many it hasn't yet gone away. It left many feeling emasculated and I don't believe that has yet been assuaged.

8. Most of the world stood by the USA while she grieved the loss of her citizens.

9. Air travel was suspended and the following afternoon I stood with a friend and looked up. Neither of us had ever seen the sky so pure and unmarred by jet trails.

10. The government used the attacks as a reason to implement the USA PATRIOT ACT, which abolished many civil liberties, including the right to check out what you wanted from a library without being turned into the police if somebody thought it was suspect.

11. The government also began spying on emails and telephone conversations and doing other Big Brother things.

12. The US led a coalition into Afghanistan. That war continues though not well reported.

13. The attacks are a sober reminder for me of how badly the US government sometimes behaves in world relations, how poorly some citizens of this world think of this country, and how hard our people work and pray and play.

September 11 also reminds me that all in the world are a part of the circle of life. Everyone, regardless of race, color or creed, deserves a chance to live. That includes bankers in the World Trade Center and Iraqis huddled in their homes during bombings in Baghdad. I pray for peace every day and for wisdom in the leaders who hold the decisions for such things in the palms of their hands.

My hope is that one day issues will be resolved without bloodshed and tears, and that the world will lose its hatred for one another and embrace love.

I wish that love, not vengence and revenge, had been the lesson learned from September 11, 2001.


Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; you can learn more about it here. My other Thursday Thirteens are here.

A Dangerous Game

One of my nephews, Emory, is the quarterback for LBHS this year. It is his senior year; I suppose this makes him big man on campus.

His brother, Chris, is a freshman at LB and he is playing JV football. He is number 45 (above) and is some kind of linebacker or blocker.

During the Hidden Valley game last Friday, the oldest nephew took a hit to the head and received a concussion. He was hauled from the game via ambulance. His doctor has told him he can't play for two weeks. This boy also took a blow last year in the shoulder that ultimately ended up causing him to have surgery to have part of rib removed in January because of a blood clot.

Earlier this week, the younger nephew received a brain-rattling blow and now he also has a concussion.

Neither boy will be playing ball this week, I have been told.

Football seems like a very dangerous sport. I don't know if these boys aren't being taught how to perform properly which is why they're having these injuries or if something else is going on. Maybe they need different helmets?

In any event, I do wish they'd have taken up golf or swimming or track instead.

Jewelry Box Treasures

On my dresser next to the bed sits a very small jewelry box.


My grandmother, who passed away in June of last year, gave it to me when I was 12 years old. If you wind it and open the lid, it plays Somewhere, My Love.

I do not have jewelry in this box. Instead I have more precious treasures.


One of these treasures is a Silver Certificate dollar bill dated 1935. The story goes that when my mother was born in 1944, her first visitor gave my grandmother this dollar and told her to save it for my mother. She did, and after my mother passed away in 2000 my grandmother handed the dollar down to me.


These items are guitar picks and smashed pennies. The guitar picks were given to me by my paternal grandfather when he visited once from California.

The smashed pennies have a picture of San Francisco, which I visited in 1977,a picture of the Statue of Liberty, which I visited when I was 13, and the Lord's Prayer on the third.



These coins have various meanings. My maternal grandfather gave me the Kennedy half dollars. He handed them out on birthdays and other special occasions. Some of the coins are foreign, left over from my high school trip to Spain and France. Other coins simply have old dates.



This is a picture of a picture my paternal grandfather sent me that he painted in 1978. It is a Polaroid and it is beginning to fade.

These are my treasures, worth very little to anyone else but very meaningful to me.

Julie and Romeo Get Lucky

Julie and Romeo Get Lucky
By Jeanne Ray
Read by Jeanne Ray
7 hours
Copyright 2005 or thereabouts


This was a fun book to listen to. Julie and Romeo are an older couple whose family for the longest time had a feud. They owned competing flower shops.

But Julie and Romeo become a couple and Julie's daughter and Romeo's son are wed, so that feud is no more.

The book begins with Julie and Romeo feeling feisty. Romeo decides to carry his beloved up a flight of steps to the bedroom.

His back is not quite as willing as the rest of him. Down he goes and he's told to stay in bed and not move until he heals.

Meanwhile, granddaughter Sarah has developed a weird fixation on the lottery and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Hilarity ensues over the course of a string of events, all of which actually seem believable given the characters and situation.

I liked this enough that I might just have to seek out the first Julie and Romeo book.

3.5 stars

Weird Dreams

Lately I have been having eye-brow raising nights. A few nights ago I began thrashing in the bed and yelling. I woke up with my husband shaking me, going "Baby, wake up, wake up, you're dreaming." The whole following day was colored by that event even though I couldn't remember what I was dreaming.

Last night I dreamed I was in this huge house. Like the Biltmore but not.

A lot of it was in sad disrepair. An unknown man guided me through the house to show me the repairs. I think I was writing an article about it.

He was using snakes to repair the house. The snakes would slither across the walls and in so doing it would remove the mold and mildew or whatever and leave the tiles in pristine condition. It was innovative if not a little unnerving.

There were snakes everywhere, all supposedly trained not to bite and to move along in proper patterns for the required work.

Meanwhile, down in the basement there was a huge toy museum, with toys of all kinds. It was a noisy place but very eery because it wasn't open to the public yet and there was no one there. Just a lot of toys making toy noises. I remember a lot of monkeys playing the cymbals.

And then it grew dark, and I was trying to use the elevator but I couldn't because it was full of snakes.

I tried to find a light switch but something short-circuited and a fire started. The house was a huge dark maze full of snakes on the walls. I knew there were other people in the huge mansion but I didn't know where they were.

So I started yelling "Fire" as I raced through the halls trying to avoid the smoke and the snakes....

Whew.

One of my dream books says this about elements of my dream:

Snakes: This denotes sly enemies who will conspire against you and by whom you will suffer in your character and estate. (That isn't a good sign!)

House: To dream you are building a house foretells prosperity and success in trade. (I wasn't building it, though, so I guess someone else is going to proper).

Fire: A dream of fire denotes health, great happiness, kind relations and warm friends. But to dream you are burned with fire portends calamity. (Yikes! I wasn't burned but it was surely getting close!)

Darkness: Dreaming you are lost in darkness and stumble denotes a change for the worst - by imprudence you will dreadfully commit yourself. If you emerge and see the sun, you will ultimately be happy.

Sheesh. It looks like I am in for some bad days ahead, doesn't it, if dreams really do tell something... fortunately I have never found my dreams to be anything more than the sum of my worries. If I had to interpret this dream, I would say I am worried about having something I've written blow up in my face.

Thursday Thirteen: Great Things

1. Air. I am most reminded of it when I am having an asthma fit. The lack of it in my lungs makes me realize what a precious commodity it is.

2. Water. Some people claim not to like water. I love it. I like the taste of it and the feel of it on my tongue, particularly on a hot day. I greatly appreciate my showers, too, even if I am still timing them because I worry about the well.

3. Earth. Can anything replace the feel and smell of moist soil? Is there anything more solid and stable than the dirt beneath our feet? Who could ask for any firmer foundation?

4. Love. I can't see it but I feel it all the time, everyday, as constant as the beating of my heart. I know it's there but I don't know how I know. It is and it is wonderful.

5. Sustenance. I shouldn't list food but... one of the great joys of life is eating. A good dinner can be a great highlight of the day if not the week. Who can resist good yeast rolls or a fine drink or the best dark chocolate?

6. Laughter. Every time I hear someone laugh, I smile. Even if I am crying, if I can manage a smile I know it will be okay. Remember how during the funeral in Steel Magnolias, the women eventually burst out laughing in spite of their pain? It's the beginning of the healing when you laugh after a wound.

7. Touch. This is something none of us get enough of. A good massage - that'll cure your muscle aches and many other things. A great massage will leave tears in your eyes. A hug from a spouse or friend can take years of worry away from your mind.

8. Colors. The vividness of the sky in August. The palate of color in Autumn. Grass greening almost instantly after a good rain. A rainbow passing overhead. How dull would it be if we didn't have colors? How boring and unromantic and constant if the world was just all in one shade?

9. Books. Many people won't count this as one of life's great pleasures, but for me a day without reading ... seldom happens. I have to be very sick indeed not to at least read the news paper. Words are as important to me as water. They quench the thirst of my mind.

10. Friends. Friends kind of go up there with love but this special kind of love is different enough to deserve its own slot. What would we do without friends, without those joyous connections that say "see, there's another soul in the world and you two get along." What else comforts like a phone call from a friend on a bad day?

11. Music. The sound of a voice raised in song is blissful and heart-lifting. Even a sad song, bringing tears, offers a wondrous release. It's like a balm for the soul.

12. Crying. Maybe it's not the nicest thing in the world to experience, but who hasn't cried and then felt at least a tiny bit better for it? It's cleansing and releasing and everyone needs that sometimes.

13. Communication. The only way to connect with someone else, to step out of our aloneness, is through talking, writing, touching... any of the many ways we communicate and move one another. Connections are great gifts. I thank my blog readers for allowing me to connect to each of you.



Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; you can learn more about it here. My other Thursday Thirteens are here.

Let's Have a Dialogue

One of my readers left a long answer about issues with health care and then deleted the comment. I received it anyway as an email.

I will respect the author's anonymity because I enjoy his/her blog and I am not out to make enemies. That's easy enough to do when you're not trying.

But I would like to make note of two of the writer's points.

One - Medicare (along with the insurance industry) is the real root of the problem. Medicare only pays a fraction of the actual cost of service, so charges must be made elsewhere to compensate.

Two - many people have no insurance and cannot pay. They fall under charity care because they haven't the funds to properly pay their medical bills.

These are critical issues but I think they go much deeper than just health care. This is a very wealthy country but there an amazing amount of people can barely scrap by. An amazing number of folks sleep on sidewalks or roam the streets of the city because they have nowhere else to go.

There are oodles of people living in substandard housing, living with a leaking roof and shivering in the cold because they can't pay their bills. I know because I have been in some of those homes.

The real issue, to me, isn't health care but this dual standard of living. We have the very rich and the middle class. Then there's this ghost poor who no one talks about and addresses accept to acknowledge that they are a drain on the system.

I think it's time we try to do something to help these people. What would this entail? Would we ask the churches to stop building larger buildings and instead tend to the needy? Would that become a mandate?

Would we increase the funds from Social Security and other government entitlement monies to increase the standard of living from barely there to maybe having a little something? If we do that, how do we pay for it? Do we stop fighting wars and train those funds on the poor? Do we stop paying for public education? Do we raise taxes on those who can pay? And then how do we define who can pay? Just folks making over XXX dollars? Folks who manage to live within their means?

This country needs a major conversation on very important issues just like what I've described above. We don't need to talk about who's daughter is pregnant, which church someone does or does not attend and what Britney Spears has had to drink today. None of that matters to the nation. It shouldn't matter to anyone but the parties involved.

How we handle our less fortunate has a big impact on the country. FDR managed to bring an entire class out of a state of drowning by creating jobs - upgrades to infrastructure that are now today badly in need of repair. In Virginia alone we need millions and millions of dollars of road work that the state is unwilling to pay for.

There are sewer lines to be laid and water lines to be put down. Bridges need repairing. If we put people back to work - real work - imagine how different it might be. Folks could pay their E.R. bill, maybe.

Instead of tossing out $600 stimulus checks that do little, why not set up another Civilian Conservation Corps? Why not let people have a little pride and go about helping their country while they are also economically sustaining it?

It's time for talking about this sort of thing, folks. We need a plan. And then we need action. We need to find our footing again so we can all stand up proud, healthy and strong - each and every one.

I Love Nurses

I fear my last entry about Carilion and its bloody nose might have left the impression that I blame everyone associated therein and not the higher-ups.

I do not blame the non-administrative staff at all. I think nurses in particular have a very rough time of it. They perform a service I cannot. I envy nurses and the way they can compassionately soothe a fevered brow and make the world feel a bit better with a cool cloth.

It's not a touch I possess and I think it is a remarkable quality. I wish it was a quality in me but alas it is not.

The same goes for aids and radiology specialists and the vampires who draw blood and all of those other unsung health care workers who have to deal with body fluids and irate and irritable sick people. They are truly saints.

As for doctors, well, I don't always know about the doctors. Don't they have choices that others do not? Can't they, theoretically, put up a shingle and go into private practice anywhere? Instead it seems to me they have chosen to follow the money trail wherever it may lead them.

Even so, I understand there are pressures on doctors these days, what with malpractice insurance and the threat of lawsuits if you don't do this or that.

The problem maybe is in part the locale. Let's face it. How many Grade A Great Doctors are going to set up practice in little ol' rural southwestern Virginia? Not too many. I suspect we get the B listers and C listers around here. Not the sharpest tacks in the jar. Those folks are at the Mayo Clinic or someplace like that.

My aunt, by the way, is a nurse and I have the utmost respect for her. I think she has a very difficult job. And she is a very caring person.

I remember when I was in the hospital for surgery over 15 years ago how wonderful I thought my nurses were. They were attentive and thoughtful and they made me feel better.

That is what health care is supposed to do. The nurses do it. Some doctors do it. They make you feel better. But the system overall is broken and it doesn't do that. It does something else. It breaks my heart.

I See You