Friday, July 17, 2009

Target: Women and Seniors

Health care reform is getting interesting. If this was a movie, over the titles we'd hear the sound of thousands of boots marching, swords clanging on shields in the darkness. It's war, baby! Foley editors to your drums and weaponry!

Today's posts include more reports of ramped-up lobbying efforts, closeted and outed; "centrist" Senators' delay tactics; the closed-door committee wrangling to get stuff stuffed into the House and Senate versions of this screenplay.

Will health care reform be derailed by delaying a vote? No. Government hurried to bail out the "too big to fail" banks. Goldman Sachs did OK with the rush, but did we?

Jason Linkins reports that AP made up the $1.5 trillion price tag tied to the cost of health care reform. It's a fake number. It's a scary fake number. Salon.com grabbed the same fake number. How far will it spread? The plot thickens!

We can't get the right information to find out who the players are, and who's being paid to play, and who has taken their balls and left the building.

And we're counting on Congress to get it right?

Big Pharma is battling to make the 5-year moratorium for generics on patented pharmaceuticals become a 12-year grace period. Big Pharma is the only actor in this drama that I know is absolutely not on the side of the American people. Big Pharma is in its own pocket, jiggling its pieces of silver.

Big Pharma is undoubtedly fond of a man named Dr. Robert Spitzer, who, after applying the same
"camel = race car designed by committee"
mindset that is overtaking health care debate, added "disorder" to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Thus was created the obscenely profitable realm of new medications for new disorders, at an enormous price to the American people - both in the costs of medications for undiagnosed, but medicated disorders - and to the women and seniors who have undiagnosed complaints that are prescribed one medication after another, and then the resultant side effects drugged as well. We're not curing diseases with all this pharmacology. We're lining the pockets of the firms who are treating restless legs, bladder issues, flaccidus, stomach upsets, and allergies.

Hey AP: got any numbers of women over 55 who are being medicated for bipolar disorder?

In our health care reform movie, Big Pharma is the villain.

Any idea who the heroes are?

Monday, July 13, 2009

CODA Foreword: The New Novel Begins

The Weaver: Before Time

In the beginning there was only darkness and cold without form. When The Weaver began to dream, she dreamed first in sound. The sound became vibration and the reverberation of her dream song became mist. The mist gathered and danced warm. The warm became liquid, and from the miasma there was heat. The heat became fire and from the crucible, crystals took shape and carried the song of the beginning in their hearts.

She dreamed deeper, and crystals sought other crystals, and the collision birthed stars and the closest star to her dream spawned molten eggs from its rays. The volcanic rock children cooled, and the beauty of their birth brought tears to The Weaver dream, and the cooled egg that would be home to her people was covered in the water from her joyful weeping.

She sighed in her dream, and with the heave of her breast, the mountains formed, rising above the water. The crystals with the song of The Weaver’s dream in each heart sang in the mountains near the sea. The water yearned for the land that was now the precipice, and kissed the rocky shores below, and the forest grew from the muddy union of water and mountain, and the crystals sang beneath the stone and the waves and the trees.

From the dream; the song, the crystals, and the forest offspring of mountain and water, The Weaver awoke. She opened her eyes, flexed her fingers and began to spin her people and their stories.

Into the weave she wove the pain of the galaxies that bloodied her hands as she worked; and the joy which was so light, it required careful attention to remain in the weave.

When the sun at noon split the sea, shattering through the clouds into green, blue, gold, amethyst, she reached into the deep water and gathered the beads of the sun, and at each knot in the weaving where a bead from the watered sun she twined, laughter came to the people.

At night, she gleaned the pearl tears of the moon from the dewed stones dancing in the forest. She wove the moon tears into the raven hair that would belong to all sleeping beloveds forever.

In the deep mystery of winter, she gathered the diamonds on skeletal petals that formed diaphanous daisies of shimmering snow. Snow daisies she wove into enemy eyes, sparkling to reveal the ancestors the enemies shared and the people would know that to fight bravely is good, but to fight without need is to kill a sibling.

In the early spring, when the frozen water returned melting to the earth, she gathered the lace ice skirts from the tree trunk dresses. The lace ice she wove into the costumes of the dancers who would call the spirits from the ice around the fire, and the people would believe in the power of the dance, and the conjuring strength of flame.

As the wind blew hot in the summer, she gathered its breath in ribbons, so weightless and mighty that the breadth and strength held the weave of the world to itself and the people would worship the wind song and gather strength from its release.

When the maples shed their golden stars in the autumn, she gathered these into her apron. The golden maple stars she wove into a mother’s dreams for her newborn child, and the child would dream of stars then, too. She wove the mother dreams into the stories of bear, fish, tree, heron and all living things.

The singing crystals she wove into the darkness of the mountain caves and the depths of the sea so that only those of the people who could hear their song would find them, and when found, would take the song into their hearts to be sung from generation to generation to generation.

The Weaver edged the weaving North the color blue, cold and deep so the people would remember the universe before The Weaver began to dream.

The East she wove red for the heat that created the crystals that birthed the stars. South she wrapped white and warm, celebrating the peaceful slumber of her people who are heir to the love of their creator.

Then West spun black: the wheel come full circle around, the people returning to join The Weaver in dreaming, the circle now sacred for those who heard, then sang, the crystal song and followed it to its end.

The Weaver sighed, held the stories of her people she had spun above her head and let all move from above and below to the center of the place her people would call home. The cloak of creation drifted for a long while and then, settling over the round egg of water, mountain, forest and crystal, disappeared into a brilliant sunrise.

The Weaver returned to dreaming as, on the shores of the Great Lake, near the mountains and the trees, a copper child awoke and began to cry.

Friday, July 10, 2009

Sentinels and Tyrants

Is ego a tyrant or a sentinel? Is my alarm clock the sentinel, shepherding the tyrant time? As a caregiver, am I more tyrant or more sentinel?

When I was giving a tour of The Dungeon to friends recently I noticed all the angels. Big one on the wall, small paper one on the cabinet. Tiny copper angel on my desk clock, sharing the 8-inch space with a double-winged fairy. Those figures that are not winged are also women - the nested doll from St. Petersburg, Russia; the African carvings on the wall.

Sentinels.

Except for Lucifer.

Lucifer is a 2.5 feet tall...statue. He has horns, and is wearing a sleeveless monk's tunic. He has a small box in his hand that he is opening with the other. There is a silver imp in his tunic pocket. My mom bought him at the Ann Arbor Art Fair long ago, and I inherited him because no one else wanted him.

I'm still not sure I do. Without the artist to ask about what the hell she was thinking, I keep calling him Lucifer. I don't believe in the Lucifer, Fallen Angel myth. My mom didn't either. What did she find appealing enough to buy? Did she or the artist name it? What did he represent for her? Is he a He? He has a mustache, but so do I these days.

I put my reading glasses on him, with my Aunt Suoma's eyeglass chain to diminish his spookiness. If the statue had feet, I'd put high heels there.

Today's thought: Lucifer is Ego. Ego always has an imp in the pocket of its tunic. Ego is always opening a box, contents unknown; consequences unknowable.

Ego is a tyrant. Awareness are the sentinels. Is that close?

Thursday, July 2, 2009

Biosolids, Orgro and EPA


The White House vegetable garden is a no-go. 93 ppm lead content is too close to the 100 ppm lead content line drawn by scientists concerned about feeding children lead. The Clintons let the White House lawn be treated with what was then called ComPRO, a "fertilizer" made of sewage sludge. The EPA was spinning the bad rap "clean poo" was getting. Biosolids. Sounds healthy, doesn't it?

ComPRO, renamed Orgro, was used in a lead abatement study in 2005 in Baltimore. In a Mother Jones article, the study was reported "controversial." Lead levels found were 237 ppm.

http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2009/06/did-sludge-lace-obamas-veggie-garden-lead

Why does Orgro's site open to the Baltimore City Composting Facility?

http://www.orgro.cc/

What about the misspelling on the supposed Seal of Approval?

A quick look forward to the US Composting Council's (spelled correctly) page regarding Terms of Use, the copyright is in the custody of the Solid Waste Association of North America.

Guidelines for environmentally-sound composting written by an association whose members resell clean poo. Hmmm.

At the SWANA site, there are links to press releases regarding the Climate Bill SWANA.org. Jointly SWANA and the National Solid Wastes Management Association (NSWMA) make their PR case for delaying monitoring and enforcing as inconsistent with good environmental policy.

How do I figure out who the good guys are? Where is green that is genuinely green?