a little red hen

"Not Massachusetts, Please!" HR 676 Supporters Alert Us

Yesterday this important email arrived from Healthcare-NOW!  It outlines what has been going on behind closed doors to push single-payer healthcare (also known as Medicare for All) off the table.  Read, pass along to friends: 

"Invite everyone you know to watch the upcoming Congressional forum on the Massachusetts reform live on February 25, from 2-4 PM. This is a unique opportunity to listen to witnesses, medical professionals, union representatives, and patients from the state of Massachusetts testify against the problems of the reform to Congress.   Listen this afternoon to the Congressional Forum

The New York Times reported last week that, "Since last fall, many of the leading figures in the nations long-running health care debate have been meeting secretly in a Senate hearing room."

The sentence should make us all tremble. Those whose pockets books will benefit most from health care reform are secretly meeting. It also sounds familiar. 16 years ago, the last time health care reform was on the national agenda, the secrecy and exclusion of Congress in its development was one of the major reasons why the reform failed.

Similar clandestine strategies are at work again today. The people sitting at the table include pharmaceutical and industry lobbyists mixed with big labor unions and other special interests. The people who will be most affected by the reform have no voice at the table, and there is certainly no strong advocates for single-payer included.

The Kennedy legislation will include a mandate component to health care reform. This means any citizen not eligible for a public option - primarily Medicaid (for those with low-incomes) or Medicare (for the disabled or those over 65) - will be forced to purchase private insurance or risk being fined or otherwise punished.

The "Individual Mandate" model is currently used in Massachusetts. It is a deeply flawed plan resulting in huge profits for the insurance industry and little improvement to the health care access and quality of the state. This is not a model for the Nation.

Here are the major flaws of the Massachusetts model for reform in a nutshell:
-The plan is bankrupting the state.
-It is not universal.
-It criminalizes the uninsured.
-It is not affordable for everyone.

Is this the model we want for national reform? NO!

If you haven't already done so, invite your representative to attend in-person on your behalf here. "

One part of me feels there's a magic moment now...for genuine equity in health care, i.e., that we can act as if healthcare in America is a right.  Please, let me know your thoughts.

Columbia Greenmarket: neither rain, nor snow...

Sunday we connected with our local greenmarket for the first time since returning from Portland.  I do hope that the Columbia and Barnard and Manhattan School of Music students understand how lucky we are to have this small representative of New York City's Greenmarket program . 

This first stand had just what we needed for a damp, sometimes snowy afternoon:  hot cider at this stand where this woman is dressed less intensively than the last time we saw her in December.   Wholewheat sugar donuts--too good--consumed before I could take their picture.  This is also the stand with my favorite pear cider.

On to a dozen brown eggs.  These farmers also produce their own pasta.

We got adventurous and tried the goat cheese made by Judith Mae and her spouse (seen here).  They farm in  northeastern Pennsylvania--21 goats in a natural environment where sustainable practices are valued.  Like composting the goat bedding, recycling grey water.  Judith also produces goat milk soap which we'll try another time.

We stopped to check out greenhouse-grown spinach and ended up with (after trying a peppery leaf) buying this delicious salad mix.  Next time I'll be more organized and write down the names of all the leaves.

Apples, apples, (sharp photo by another blogger) from  the far end.   Stannard Farm,  South Cambridge, N.Y. has so very many choices of apples butfortunately only one kind of Pure Honey--the elixir that's Ron's habit. 

Carole Foster of Foster Sheep Farm is usually here with  yarn spun from her flock of sheep.  But it's lambing time right now, so I wont be seeing her for at least a month maybe.  Back in November 2008  she spiced up the Greenmarket's first Knit/Spin event right there on Broadway at 115th Street.  (The impressive gates to Columbia University are up the street.)

You are viewing Carole's demo of how to spin with a drop spindle.  A very special and ancient art.  I'm working on Carole's own pattern for a Multidirectional Hat that she was wearing when I saw her in December just before we left for Portland.  I'm using worsted yarn she dyed and spun-- purple and two shades of gray.

It has always been important to our family to support small farmers where we've lived.  They were closer to us geographically in northern Ohio and Baltimore, so we take great pleasure from the Greenmarkets bringing them closer to us here in the City.

An email came today from the Farmland Trust, hanging out in the left column here all the time; last Fall I joined their Action Center.  Here's a letter you can sign to the new administration to thank them for their recent efforts.  Their latest campaign,  "No Farms, No Food," would benefit from your support whether you live in an urban, rural, or suburban place.    We all need to eat!

Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me!

We first noticed it earlier in the week...new guy named by Obama administration.  A mention on the Yahoo news.  "Who Is Ron Bloom?"  the Wall Street Journal's blog queried on Monday.

Time magazine called him "Obama's Car Non-Czar."  You see, this one is 20 years younger than mine, not from Brooklyn.  Similarities?  Both dress casually for meetings but my Ron Bloom likes to knit during his.

Yesterday there was more inside the front section of the ever-thinner New York Times.

I've always told him to be more formal about his name, really, it's Ronald. 

People in academe would ask if he was the creator of "Bloom's Taxonomy"  Not even close.

These are pictures of my Ron Bloom.  Top photo, ten years ago in Mexico--the other two as he appeared recently,  grandfathering in Portland, Oregon.

The knitter/weaver/spinner--formerly Chair of Home Economics (a very different sort of economy than the one in the news) at Morgan State University  And my feminist spouse.

He is not, I repeat, the one who has been appointed to save the nation from its car sickness.  He has been driving Toyotas for 20 years.

UPDATE:  Thanks, Hattie, links now working.

Goodbye PDX, Hello Again New York

You'd think it might be the other way around, that I'd be energized by returning to the Big Apple, its subway sounds and sights.  No, been very slow--not reading blogs much, not writing here.  In the week we've been back have  been housebound mostly.  Oh yes, to the doctor about persistent arm/shoulder pains...more later. 

More serious medical stuff has been around Ron's lingering Northwest cough (see Marianna at Hattie's Web; visiting grandkids in Seattle was her source).   He was helped by going to one of  Providence Hospital's Urgent Care sites.  Great views from the parking lot!  But then a nasty side effect of leg pains.  Turns out antibiotics  depleted his potassium.  He's fine now, vitamined-up.

  We had such a good time with our grandkids.  What a treat to live right across the street from them.  So much so that I will refrain from details of the challenges of the house where we stayed.

Instead, here's a view of some of their shell collection under a tub.  Folks who own the place have spent many years working in southeast Asia, like us they have run out of places to store shells.  There were gorgeous baskets too.

 Back to my lethargy in the City.  Finally have one idea:  I was employed!  Yes, life with our daughter, Rachel, means you are in her system.  For seven weeks, we retired from retirement.     Found this perfect button at a cute store in her Portland neighborhood, with its cute name, Noun.  They take pages from discarded dictionaries and make  $1.00 buttons.  Wore mine pridefully, along with Obama buttons.

Though it had warmed  in Portland the day we left--and did so periodically during our visit--it was very cold as we stepped off the plane in New York.  

Our son was back to wearing his huge, fur-lined hat. The style he wore as an undergrad at Wisconsin, then again in grad school at Brandeis.

He finally got a Visiting Prof gig at Tulane in New Orleans (before Katrina); very hot summers.   Ron tried the hat, then Roxie, of course!

Now all in our extended family in the City have colds--not restricted regionally.

Postscript:  You wonder why button appears upside down?  Me too!

A Terrible Possibilty for Health Care Nationally

An  important alert just in from the National Women's Health Network

 Obama Considers Unhealthy Nomination for HHS

The Time to Act is Now...Today, Not Tomorrow, Please Use the Link Here!

Now that Tom Daschle has withdrawn his name, the question of the week has been "Who will President Obama appoint in his place to head the Department of Health & Human Services?"

Women's health advocates who are committed to getting quality, affordable health care to everyone living in this country should be very concerned about one name reported to be under consideration: Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen. Governor Bredesen has systematically gutted the Medicaid in his state over the last six years. Below is a description from the Tennessee Justice Center of the havoc Bredesen has wreaked on the poor of Tennessee.

If you want President Obama to appoint a Secretary of Health and Human Services who actually believes in health and human services, please contact the White House at 202-456-1111 (FAX: 202-456-2461, TTY/TDD 202-456-6213) and/or send them an email by using the form provided on the White House web site at http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/.

Here is what the TN Justice Center has to say about Gov. Bredesen's health record:

In many ways, Bredesen is the "anti-Daschle": his values and health policies are the opposite of Daschle's, and he has a track record in Tennessee of not playing well with others, especially legislators. No other governor of either party can match the metrics that reflect Governor Bredesen's 6 year management of health policy in Tennessee :

• He presided in 2005-2006 over the deepest cuts in a public health insurance program in the nation's history. The cuts took $1.9 billion a year out of the state's health care system. The 170,000 disenrolled was the largest single increase to that point in the number of uninsured and accounted for a third of the entire national growth in the number of uninsured.
• Tennessee is one of two states (the other being Mississippi, where Gov. Haley Barbour also cut Medicaid) that in 2005 bucked the national trend in steadily declining infant mortality. Tennessee's infant mortality rate rose in 2005 to 9.0 per thousand. Tennessee is 45th in infant morality among the states. Memphis, the state's most populous city, has the worst infant mortality rate in the nation. Gov. Bredesen is now cutting the state perinatal network's funding by 50%.
• Tennessee ranks 50th in support for home and community-based services as alternatives to institutionalization. Two months ago, a federal court found that the Bredesen Administration's cuts in home nursing services violated the Americans with Disabilities Act by forcing people into nursing homes.

Two blogs the originate in Tennessee, Women's Health News and The Crone Speaks, have raised my consciousness about retrograde thinking in this state--on almost any issue.  What is the Obama administration thinking?

Nick Bloom Hits NY Times on Groundhog Day

I was about to get in the shower this morning when my cellphone rang.  It was my friend Audrey calling from New York.  "Have you seen the Times?  Nick's on page 8 in the first section!"  Our son had told us last week about his upcoming appearance on the Time's blog to answer questions about the City's public housing.   But we had no idea that it would be announced in the daily paper this way.

Since the publication last spring  of his book, "Public Housing that Worked:  New York in the Twentieth Century," he has received attention in public and academic quarter for his even-handed approach.  Many are suprised to learn how successful public housing has been in New York City--and why it needs to  be supported. 

Today, nearing the end of our long visit in Portland we are far from Nick in New York.    This afternoon our grandson Zach was excited to see Uncle Nickel's picture on my laptop.  There are similarities between the two of them besides looking alike as young children.  Both have great eye to hand coordination and worked together on a book about China when Nick, Leanne, and Roxie visited this summer.

Of course, this special event for our family has nothing to do with Groundhog Day.  Except that we will remember February 2, 2009.  For an entirely different take, check out today's  Mason-Dixon Knitting.  Kay Gardiner can really put a spin on the every day.

UPDATE:  The affordable, paperback edition of "Public Housing that Worked" has just been released by the University of Pennsylvania Press.

We Meet Again...Powell's, City of Books

The Grandmothers met again...this time in a less amiable climate than before.  Marianna coughed.  I sneezed.  Hers-- the result of visiting her young grandchildren in Seattle.  Mine, my entire  Portland family has  colds.  I have a vision people all ages along a trail  through the Northwest as a noisy and nosey cacaphoney, tissues in hand.

We talked about politics in this city where she once lived.  Currently there's  the sad story of Portland's new Mayor.  Will his recent disclosure end his career?  My knitting led to an explanation of the way  needle-wielding  women had emerged in a virtual explosion over the last 15 years.  Groups, yarn shops everywhere.  We want to make things with our own hands.  An accomplished cook, surrounded by great fruits and vegetables in her current home in Hilo, Hawaii, she understood.  

Elderblogging had brought us together.  What would Ronni Bennett reveal from her time off from the practice?  She thought I'd met Claude in her hometown, Paris.  No, we had an in-person visit when she came to the U.S.  Marianna knows a great deal about European cities unfamiliar to me like Barcelona.  It's quite noisy I learned.  Oh, Portland is wonderfully quiet after New York.  I've only heard one car alarm in all these weeks.

Our spouses began their own conversations.  That worked for us.  Ron was the major cougher in our group.  Terry, partner to Marianna, seemed to have escaped the popular illness.  We envied him.

I realized afterwards that it would have been fascinating to hear what each of them would say about one of my recent Powell's purchases--she from a literary perspective, he from a scientific one.   Our time together was too short!  It's the green one pictured here I refer to.  ( I've only just begun the one on dieting.)  Still trying to figure out what fuels my robot interest.

Photo at top features two abandoned books outside Powell's.  A friend suggested maybe the bookstore's secondhand desk would not buy them, so they were left for the taking.  Very Portland.

My plan for this posting  included a link to our first meeting last year shortly  before Obama's election, once again I've been undermined by TypePad.  Something else Marianna and I have in common is our shared struggle with TP and their unhingeing of our posts and comments.  Too much innovating, I've told them.

They've lost the photos from that post, also  rendered  it unlinkable.  So here reposted is my snapshot  of her and Ron from that balmy day, outside Pearl Bakery in Portland.