Be Less Boring

Canada's national health care system is often heald up as a model the USA should adopt.  Everyone is covered, regardless of their financial situation.

Well, there are a couple of problems with that, the biggest being that it results in a very overloaded health care system that they've so far been unable to get beyond.   There are, afterall, only so many doctors and nurses to go around and the pay rates in a national system aren't high enough to attract enough additional people to keep up with demand.

That's a problem already faced in many parts of the USA and it will only get worse once we have universal health care and demand increases as all those who can't currently afford health care begin to take advantage of it.

Because of the overcrowding, people often have to wait months to have all but immediately life-threatening problems checked out.  Basically, if you are not bleeding profusely, are still conscious, and haven't got any tree limbs or metal rods sticking out of your body, you'll have to wait.

I've had arguments with people about this issue before.  Many Americans are under the delusion that the Canadian system is great and I've had lots of people claim they have Canadian friends who rave about how good their health care system is.   Well,  I've had Canadians tell me they won't bother to go to a doctor because the wait is always too long.  How is that different from the American system where people won't go to the doctor because it's too expensive?   The net result is the same:  People aren't getting the health care they need.

This point was recently driven home in what's sure to be a blow to the Obamanator's quest for universal health care.  Newfoundland, Canada, Premier Danny Williams just came to the USA for heart surgery.   Many in both countries are crying hypocrisy.   I'm sure Canada has many qualified heart surgeons as capable as any in the US of fixing Premier Williams' ticker, but he didn't want to wait his turn in line.  And who can blame him?  If I needed heart surgery, I'd want it taken care of as soon as possible and I sure as hell wouldn't want to risk my life waiting my turn just because it would be more politically expedient.

I have largely avoided commenting on the health care debate in this country because I don't have anything good to say about it.  I do believe national health care is inevitable.  It will cost more, especially if they don't bring about tort reform to limit all the senseless malpractice suits that are one of the biggest factors currently driving up health care costs.  I don't have any confidence that Congress will agree to a plan that doesn't suck.  There are too many special interests and lobbyists buying votes for us to have any hope of getting anything other than a half-assed, wimpy plan that really doesn't do any of what we really need.  And did I mention that it will cost more?

The health insurance companies are scared shitless that it'll put them out of business and they should be.  A well designed national health care plan would have no need for private insurance at all.  It would put the health insurance industry out of business overnight.  And well it should, they've been screwing us over for decades.  The course of treatment should be determined by doctors, not HMOs.   Everyone should have access to the best possible treatments for whatever ails them, not just the best possible care their insurance provider is willing to pay for.  So, the health insurance companies are plowing billions of dollars into opposing national health care.

I say tough noogies to them.  There's still plenty of room for insurance companies to gouge us in auto and property insurance, so they have other options for making their billions.  Let the people have health care, damnit!  Let's just do it right and not create a tiered system where the rich can jet off to some other place to avoid waiting in line with the rest of us.  Let's build it right so nobody has to wait.

There are certain albums and artists that, when I first heard them, I immediately connected with them on some instinctive, emotional level.  A few of those artists and albums include The Violent Femmes first album, Liz Phair's Exile in Guyville, and the Cowboy Junkies Trinity Session.  All three of those albums would rank among my top 50 favorite albums of all time and all of them are albums that brought me to the edge of my seat instantly the first time I heard them.  They all became favorites the very first time I heard them.

That's a rare thing for me.  Quite often I've bought albums on recommendations from friends only to think they sucked on first listen.  Jeff Beck's Blow By Blow album was like that.  I bought it, gave it a listen, thought it was boring, put it on a shelf and forgot about it for months.  At some point I decided to give it another shot and I liked it.  As I listened to it more and more, I came to really like and appreciate it.  There have been quite a few albums like that over the years and I'd hazard a guess that, with unfamiliar music--meaning artists and songs I've never heard before--my first reaction is often negative.  I've observed this same behavior in other people and I'm aware of it, so I make it a point to give anything I don't like on first listen a second or third chance to make an impression. 

What's more interesting about the Femmes, Phair, and Junkies albums mentioned above is the first listen made such an impression on me that I remember where I was and who I was with the very first time I heard them.  In some cases I'd just met those people for the first time that day but they ended up having some interesting connections in my life.

The first time I heard the Violent Femmes was at a dinner party when I first moved to Maine for college.  I was a transfar student, so I didn't have to live on campus, so a friend from high school--I'll call him Ken for the purposes of this story--and I got an apartment in Old Town. That first day we went to the local department store to pick up some household items we needed.  Outside the store was a friend of Ken's, I'll call him John, who was the lawnmower salesman on duty.  It was the first time I met John and he invited us both over to the house he was sharing with a bunch of other students for a dinner party.  We accepted and later made our way out to an old farmhouse that was kind of in the middle of nowhere for a fine dinner party with plenty of food. 

At some point after dinner, while the rest of us sat in the kitchen talking and drinking wine, John went into the living room to change albums. When the first notes of "Blister in the Sun" hit my ears, I perked up.  Soon I was on my feet in the living room to find out who that band was. I'd never heard the Violent Femmes before, but ended up picking up that album as soon as I could after that. That night alone was enough to make sure I remember John, but it wouldn't be the last time I met him.

At some point that same summer, Ken acquired the Cowboy Junkies Trinity Session CD.   The first time I heard Margo Timmins start into "Blue Moon Revisited" I had to ask who that was.  I probably listened to that CD a couple hundred times that summer.  Since then I've acquired nearly every CD the Cowboy Junkies have ever put out and got to see them in concert a couple of years ago.  There's just something about their special mix of melancholy country blues that really moves me.

Fast forward a couple of semesters and I had a new housemate, we'll call her Sue.  Sue is the type of person who can walk into a room full of strangers and walk out an hour later having made friends with almost everyone.  She was always involved in various activities and meeting various people.  One time she came home and told me about a really cool guy she'd met at some student organization she was getting involved in.  As the days went buy and she spent more time with that group, she kept talking more and more about that same guy.  I don't think it was two weeks after they met before they were dating.  I asked his name and she said, "John." 

Now, really, what are the chances that some guy I met once at a party almost a year earlier would be the same John my new roommate was talking about?  John (and his real name) are amazingly common names and there were over 10,000 students on that campus.  But, of course, it was the very same John who had turned me onto the Violent Femmes.  By that point Tom Petty's Full Moon Fever album was out and John was always playing that.  I still can't listen to "Running Down a Dream" without thinking of a pep rally he was the organizer of.

Fast forward a few years and we were all out of school and I was back in New Hampshire.  I went to a New Year's party at Ken and his future (ex-)wife's new apartment in Exeter.  It was a bitteryly cold night, as New Years Eve so often is in New Hampshire.  Dinner and drinks were flowing, music was playing, and I was drifting from conversation to conversation around the room.  Then Liz Phair came out of the speakers. Once again, I was on the edge of my seat.  Then I was up to find out who she was.  Within days I was hitting Bull Moose Music looking for a copy of "Exile in Guyville."  But, that wasn't the only musical experience from that same night that left an impression on me. 

Somewhere around 2:30 a.m., while we were all sacked out in varous places around the apartment, sleeping and sobering up after a festive evening, somebody came stomping in from outside, waking me up.  It turned out to be future (ex-)wife's brother.  He'd spent a chilly New Year's Eve standing outside some stadium hoping to get tickets to see Phish who were playing inside.  He didn't get tickets but apparently had fun anyway, then hitchhiked home.  While I was familiar with Phish at that point, I hadn't listened to much of their stuff but, I figured if they were good enough to make people stand outside on a fridged New England night, missing other festivities in a vain hope for some miracle tickets, then there must be something very interesting about them.  So, I sought out some of their CDs, as well. 

Flash forward a decade and a half and I'm still in touch with Ken, Sue, and John and I still think about them every time listen to those songs and the memories they're associated with.

I'm sure there are plenty of other albums I've heard over the years that have had similar affects one me but I can't remember them all right now.   Two artists that have recently had that affect on me were The Gits and The Black Keys.   Sadly, The Gits are long gone, having lost their lead singer to a brutal rape and murder, but the Black Keys are still making some great music.

I realize that my connection to and interest in music is a lot deeper than most people, but I often wonder if anyone else has had this same experience where you hear something for the first time and it just stops you in your tracks and makes you say, "Woah, what's that?"  Anyone?

Virginia over at Living the Local Life posted a very well done essay by Annalisa Cox of Tuckaway farm in Lee, NH.  The essay is A Call to Young People and gets to the heart of the real problem the human race faces--that we've become so dependent on industrial agriculture we've forgotten how to grow, preserve, and perpetuate our own food supply, that we're not listening to the Earth, that we're living too fast and unsustainably, and that young people should seriously consider choosing a life and lifestyle that is sustainable and in tune with the natural world.  It's not a wishy-washy bleeding heart piece like one might expect, but a very thought provoking essay on the direction we should all be moving in but have not been for the past several decades.

It's a serious shock to the system when you're suddenly faced with the reality that people you went to high school with now have grandchildren.   It's very cruel and dangerous to shock us old people like that!

The soil in my yard is heavy clay.  That's great if you want to make bricks but its not much good for anything else.  Add a little rain or melting snow and you end up with a glue-like mud that sticks to everything, your shoes, shovels, and any vegetables you pull out of the ground.   This means I need to wash the mud off before I bring anything in the house.

I also needed a basket to carry all the vegetables that I pick.  I've been using various plastic containers but they're often too small and hard to carry single-handed.

While searching around, I found the perfect solution, the Maine Garden Hod.  Its based on the hods clammers have used for decades and is designed to carry vegetables and allow them to be easily hosed off.  Perfect!  Except for that $40 price tag.  Yeah, it's not horribly expensive but I knew I could build one out of mostly spare parts and leftovers for much less.   So, I did a little Googling and found some other people with the same idea.

First off, I found the patent documents for the Maine Garden Hod.   That was interesting but didn't really tell me anything I didn't already know.  Then I found a nice version created by the Unusually Unusual Farmchick.  I liked the size and shape of her hod, and the feet she added to it.  However, her version didn't have a handle, so it wouldn't be easy to carry one-handed.   Then I saw the one Mickey from Wisconsin made.  It was a little smaller than I wanted, a little boxy looking, and I didn't like the way the handle attached--it looked like it might pull off under heavy load or after long use.   I did like the fact that Mickey's was made entirely of ceder, which should last a good long time but cedar is hard to find around here, especially in larger dimensions.   Finally, I saw the hod made by RunnerDuck.  That one was a little small but had an interesting solution for the handle.  I didn't like the fact that the handle was attached to doglegs, though.

In the end I ended up basing my hod on Farmchick's but added a handle.   It ended up costing me about $15 worth of materials but would have cost a good deal less if I hadn't burned two nice pieces of 1x12 last month that I thought were too small for any project I'd ever come up with.    Construction took about an hour and I designed as I went along.  Measurements were quick and dirty and the curves were drawn around a couple of different sizes of paint cans.  The hardware cloth, nails, glue, and polyurethane were leftovers from other projects.

Here's the finished product:

So, yeah, there it is.  I'm mad at myself for burning the small pieces of 1x12 that I had.  I think I'd have kept them if I had a bigger house.  It's my frugal, Yankee nature to save anything that is potentially useful but space is at such a premium in this place that I'm constantly getting rid of things that I'd rather keep.  It almost always happens that I find a use for anything I get rid of a short time later.  Frustrating!

Now I'm thinking about the best ways to build a cold frame.   I've got a couple of glass shower doors and an unused basement-type window that I could do something with.   Probably have to wait for the ground to thaw to really do much with that one, though.  Stay tuned.

I spend more time on Facebook than I should and I don't know why because it annoys the hell out of me.   I don't know how many dozens of requests to join people's "Mafia" or to join "Farmville" I've ignored but it's probably up in triple digits by now.   People are always sending me stupid things that want me to install an app that has to access my personal information.  Fuck that.  Then there are all the people I don't know who send me friend requests.   If I don't know you, I'm not adding you.  Get over it.

Many, if not most, of the people I'm "friends" with on Facebook are people I haven't seen or spoken to in 25 years and even then I wouldn't have categorized us as really being friends.  Classmates, yes, acquaintances, yes, people who hung out together on rare occasions, yes,  but friends, not so much.   But so it is.

Maybe I expect too much from Facebook.  I don't think I expect anything at all, so that's unlikely.  Maybe I still don't really get the point of it.  Yeah, we've connected with people we know (or at least knew at some point in the past), now what?

If there is anything useful about Facebook it may be that it makes stalking people real easy.  The kids today call it "creeping," as in, "My mom was creeping on all of my Facebook friends."    Call it whatever you like, Facebook makes it easy.  Everyone puts out way more info than they should and it's way more accessible than it should be, especially if you aren't smart enough to clamp down the pitiful excuses Facebook offers for security settings.

Have I ever creeped?  Yes, but I didn't find anything interesting that way.  Most of the interesting things I've found out have been accidental or incidental.   Whenever someone sends me a friend request, whether I accept it or ignore it, I always browse through their friends list to see if there is anyone there I know.   By doing this, a couple of days ago, I saw someone had linked to my very first girlfriend, whom I last saw when I was 12 or maybe 13.  We "went out" for a month before she dumped me for my best friend.  They lasted less than two weeks.  She only lived in our town for a couple of years and I'd all but forgotten her long ago until I saw her in someone's friend list.  I'm not going to send her a friend request, but it was interesting to see she's still alive and kicking.

A while back I found out something a bit disturbing by Facebook creeping, though. In the friend list of a mutual friend was a link to a girl I had a big crush on in Junior High School.  The reason this was disturbing was because she's not a girl anymore.  She's not a woman, either.  That's right, she is now a he.   That's all well and good for herhim, but it made me pause and question my taste in women a bit.  Sure, she was a little on the tomboyish side, but so are lots of girls that age.

Anyway, as a result of all this, I'm really losing interest in Facebook.  Expect to see me back here on the bloggy where I belong a lot more than I have been the past few months.

I found a tumblr blog this morning that just shows old pictures of people's parents.  There are pictures of people from the 1980s on back to at least the WWII era.  It's quite interesting to look at them and see how clothing fashions, hair styles, and home decor have changed over the decades.  There is even one picture from the 1960s that shows a couple standing in front of some curtains very similar to some my parents had back then.

Looking over the pictures, there are two things that really caught my attention.  First, those who dressed in the high fashion of the day look really silly now, while those dressed in classic style would fit right in during any time period.   The striped pants, bell bottoms, afros, mullets, spandex jumpsuits, and leisure suits would all stick out like a sore thumb in anyother time period than the far too lengthy periods when those were in fashion, but a nice suit from 1940 is still a nice suit today.  A pair of straight-leg blue jeans with a t-shirt from 1975 still looks normal today.

The second thing that I noticed was that in many of the couples pictures, especially those from the 1960s and 1970s, she is a total babe while he looks like a complete doofus.  How did they end up together?

See for yourself at  My Parents Were Awesome.

It's interesting to be a gardener in the winter.  While everyone else has been complaining about the cold, I've been nestled near the wood stove poring over seed catalogues planning out the summer garden.   I've made lists of what seeds to order.    I've researched seed starting supplies, row covers, cold frames, and other methods to extend the growing season and increase yield.  I've read articles from the UNH Cooperative Extension Service about the best growing techniques for New Hampshire gardens.

All the while I'm doing this, I'm far, far from the cold of January in New Hampshire.  In my head it's mid-summer, with all the sunshine and greenery of June.  But, it's better than summer because there's no sunburn, no bugs, and no humidity.

It makes me feel sorry for all of you non-gardeners who have nothing better to do at this time of year than to lament the Patriot's poor performance and complain about sub-freezing temperatures and wind-chills.   I'm in a whole other world and I'm not coming back.

And thanks for all the great songs.  Singer/songwriter Vic Chesnutt dead from an apparent suicide at age 45.  I first learned of Chesnutt through his collaboration with the Cowboy Junkies on the "Trinity Revisited" album and movie.   He was paralized in a car accident when he was 18 but could still sing and play guitar.  Chesnutt was one of those immensely talented but relatively unknown and underappreciated musicians like Townes Van Zandt and Elliot Smith--musicians all, who were loved and admired by fellow musicians and those individuals who were aware of their work but who never achieved widespread commercial success during their lifetimes, and all of them died too young.

This song, "Flirted With You All My Life", is particularly haunting at this time.

So long, Vic, the world just lost a brilliant but troubled troubador.

While the press vilifies Obama and America for the failure of the Climate agreements in Copenhagen, insiders point out that it was really the Chinese who sabotaged the entire deal.