Words from The Crone

OMG, here it is almost a week after Thanksgiving and I am still stuffed. It wasn’t all the bird’s fault either. We went out for supper at a local Mexican place and well, their shrimp taco salad (Washed down by a decent Margarita) was really good, then my R has cooked several delicious meals, and at work I had a fabulous portobella/goat cheese panini. And so, I am still stuffed, like our Thanksgiving turkey.

I am also stuffed with thankfulness. Normally, I don’t save all my “thanks” for one day out of the year, or rather for being thankful only one day. I try to find something each day for which to be thankful and I try really hard to be specific. It’s easy to be thankful for my family, or my friends, or my blessings, or may abundance. It’s harder to find one definitive thing to be thankful for each day and make it different each day.

For example, today I was thankful that I drove home before it got dark. I hate to drive at dusk when the chances of hitting a deer are exponentially greater. Yesterday, I was thankful for Cyber Monday and all the great discounts and bargains I got. The day before that I was thankful that I got to sleep in for the first time in a week. On Friday, I was thankful that the traffic was light as we drove home from Massachusetts. See what I mean?

Sometimes I’m thankful for really tiny weeny things like how great it is to have great smelling shampoo for my hair or that my computer booted faster than normal. Today I was even thankful that my glass of wine was just the perfect temperature. I can also be thankful that someone is home and answers the call when I call. After all, with caller ID they could just ignore my call. There are just so many itsy-bitsy things to be thankful for in this world.

Today a very young woman came into the church office seeking help. She had been staying with a friend who beat her up over the weekend and she was now homeless, without money, and hungry. I wanted to adopt her on the spot, but that is unrealistic as I would have to build a sizable building for all those poor souls I would like to adopt. Rather, people like that make me realize that I have huge, huge reasons to be thankful. Huge like an income, huge like a home, huge like living with someone who doesn’t beat me up, huge like having a family that loves me and to which I could turn in time of need.

Yes, there are so many things for which to be thankful. I pray that I never pass a day without giving thanks for a teeny-weeny thing and a huge things. For by comparison to many of the suffering in this world, I am a very blessed and wealthy woman. I hope that you are too.

Animals, especially wildlife, always seems to fascinate us. My office nook overlooks a pond and whenever a white egret shows up I grab my camera and shoot away. We took a trip to Assateague National Seashore and when we came upon three rather smallish ponies we pulled off the road, grabbed the cameras (two of them) and snapped away. What I wonder is the allure of animals?

When we toured the many national parks recently we were all psyched up about the possibility of seeing a bear. We never saw a one. The closest we came to a bear was one at Sequoia that was chased away by a ranger two minutes before we arrived on the scene. Now here is a list of all the wild animals we did see: marmots, turkeys, elks, prairie dogs, mule deer, chipmunks, bison, a great gray owl, a prong horn antelope, a tarantula, zebras, coyotes, llamas, horses, cats, hawks, pigeons, sheep, eagles, black crows, and Stellar jaybirds. Now, this is not an insignificant number of wild animals and yes, we did take photos of those we could catch on the run, but we were still disappointed that we didn’t see a bear. Sigh, some folks are never pleased.

I have a folder in “My Pictures” on my computer called “Animals.” I don’t have one called “Children,” or “Babies” or “Flowers,” or any number of things that might come under the category of capturing our attention. And, I have noticed that I rarely take photos of tame animals although we have many dogs being walked around here that are really quite attractive. I think the attraction then is that these wild animals (I include birds and aquatic life) are simply that, they are wild and we come upon them at their pleasure, not ours.

I guess it’s like rounding a corner and glimpsing a beautiful sunset or seeing the green flash. It is not planned, totally unexpected, and if you blink you will miss it. If you’re lucky the wild things will hang around for a photo-op, but often they simply bound off into the woods or fields and you have to be satisfied with the glimpse. I think life is often like that, it comes unexpectedly, leaves quickly, and only gives us a glimpse, or a taste of the experience. I’m going to try and savor those moments and, if I’m lucky, I might even get a photo of them!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. Enjoy the day, enjoy, the meal, love your family, embrace and be thankful for your moments or glimpses in life. You may never have them again.

I like the idea of the “Occupy” folks. I think it is high time us 99 percenters spoke up in one way or the other against the corruption and greed that is ruining our country. I wish I was younger so I could join them. I pray that they will find greater leadership and direction and bring about some real change. And, although the banks and corporate America are good targets, I think another target should be the medical industry.

You all know who I am talking about; the pharmaceutical vultures, the hospital elephants, and the specialist tigers that trample and eat us alive by charging outrageous amounts of money for a pill that cost pennies and that, by the way would include the research costs. Or that cardio-something that thinks a ten-minute consultation is worth $500, or the hospital that thinks a baby wipe is worth $10 and an aspirin is worth $7.00. Not to mention my latest techno-test MRI that cost $3638! Come on, the test took all of twenty minutes and the time of one person. Even if the equipment cost one million dollars, at that rate it would only take 277 patients to break even. I’ll bet that is accomplished in a year or so.

I am old enough to remember the “better” days of medical care. Whenever we went to the doctor for a visit we paid cash and it was affordable. As late as the 1970’s an office visit cost me $7.00 – in today’s dollar at an average rate of inflation that would now be only $19.12 not the $85 my insurance company is now charged. We also paid cash for our medications and they were rarely more than $10 and that was considered expensive. Our pharmacy even delivered them to our home. The only insurance we had was called major medical and it was to help pay the bill if we had to go to the hospital. By the time I was 30 years old I had been in the hospital to have two children, my appendix removed, and have a hysterectomy. I remember that the hospital bill for my appendectomy was $198 which in today’s dollars would only be $540.92, not thousands upon thousands.

Now I know that many of you will say I am being naïve about the advances in medical care and equipment and the associated costs. Sure, we didn’t have MRI, PET, or CT scans back then, we had X-rays and really good diagnostician MDs. Sure some people died because they couldn’t be diagnosed with a tumor or a clogged artery. People still die today from those things in spite of all of our advanced technology. Doctors today rely on all these new diagnostic tools and for all the lives they lengthen (we all eventually die anyway) that is really good news. In fact, I am the recipient of that very technology and would probably be dead now if not for my stents and pills and ability to find out what is a-whack with my body. For a reality check that $3638 MRI would have cost $1317.76 back in 1970 and we would have been outraged and only the rich would have been able to afford one. In fact, only the rich or the insured can afford them today. Somehow between then and now, between major medical and all-inclusive medical benefit’s insurance, our medical provider system has truly become really screwed up. So screwed up that unless you are privately insured (at outrageous premiums) or on Medicare or Medicaid, you are screwed, medically speaking.

Like our greedy bankers and corporate mavens who pocketed untold billions of dollars off the backs of us 99 percenters, wake up people, the medical industry is doing exactly the same thing. It doesn’t have to cost such unbelievably ridiculous amounts of money. They should all be ashamed of themselves for not putting some of those profits in our pockets so we can support our economy with more disposable income. Greed is a deadly sin and it has surely been deadly for our economy.

I say go you “Occupiers” GO-GO-GO, go after Wall Street, but also go after that medical industry and then you can go after the sporting industry if you want to talk about greed. I mean really, why is some tall guy throwing a ball through a metal hoop worth millions and millions every year when someone sweating away in a factory, standing for hours on end in a retail store, or someone hunched over a computer all day only worth thousands? We should all think about that and then speak up and speak out and maybe, even go and join those occupiers. Maybe I’ll find a group where walkers and scooters won’t get in the way. And, don’t even get me started on our government in Washington!