New Years Haiku

Visiting Lake Tahoe near the Gregorian New Year with my sweetheart and experiencing the strangeness of record high December temperatures, the slowness of the tourist traffic due to the lack of snow (and lack of steep discounts from the ski resorts for the horrible ski conditions) and the beauty of Tahoe without the throngs and/or the typical seasonal expected conditions pulled this little ditty out of my consciousness:

Three bald eagles float
above Fallen Leaf Lake in
December's sunset

***I should add that though the birding was not great (due to the below freezing overnight temps), we did see a pair of buffleheads, a male wood duck and these three baldies.

DC and Haiku

I've been reading "Traces of Dreams" by Haruo Shirane, a suggestion made to me by Gary Snyder at one of my few chance meetings with him while I was at UC Berkeley. It is actually a hard book for me to get my hands on now that I'm not officially enrolled or in the alumni association...an academic text written for academics and not available through local public libraries. But, I'm fortunate to have a few friends "on the inside" who pipe a few books here and there out of the Cal library system for my eyes to peruse.

So, I was in DC working on a project this past week and brought this book along as my only read. I wanted to force myself to sit down with it--it's so hard to create space to read such texts at home (the garden always calls me away from such pursuits). I finally made some time and have been reading through it. It's hard as a non-Japanese reading/speaking haiku writer in English to truly understand the details Shirane talks about, rooted so deeply in ages old Japanese and Chinese cultures. But, I must say such a thorough discussion on the topic of Basho's legacy has been helpful for me to better understand the cultural relevance of the forms he passed on to his students and colleagues (and us). I also see the personal relevance to myself of the Basho mystique, one of a wandering traveler ascetic artist (an icon I have looked at and explored a bit in my work and life).

Being in DC during the Cherry Blossom Festival, reading about the life and work of Basho and being quite fond of the form myself, I couldn't help but capture a few thoughts while wandering the Capital and along the Potomac. Here are a few selections:

Basho on the Metro Tanka

for Jimmy Purvis

I found Basho

on an east bound blue train

in the Metro--

a frog chirping in a pond

on an IPhone app

------------

a cherry petal

disturbs the surrounding stillness

only once

------------

a tomato seed

woven into my clothing

left overs from lunch

migrating through the DC Metro

like foods once did on wood ships

------------

looking up

cherry blossoms share blue skies

with kites

------------

train cars

filled with coal

stretch for miles

to/from Washington DC

under high voltage power lines

----------

Somewhere along the Potomac

Gothic spires part a pair of ducks in flight

momentarily separated from each other

and the water

Somewhere along the Potomac

a group of painters rushes

to capture sunset in oils

attempting to halt

cherry blossoms in flight

Somewhere along the Potomac

two lovers pose for a photograph

the river passing by eternally

on film

Somewhere along the Potomac

I watch a group of children

gather handfulls of cherry blossoms

toss them at each other like snow balls

with a shower of pink flutters

and giggles

-------------

amid DC's

bustling metro, the scent

of the Potomac

-------------

I should add briefly that my last remaining grandparent, my beloved Fay, recently passed away, so I couldn't hide a sense of sadness, loneliness and the awareness of all life's impermanence from these poems, even during this joyous Spring season. May she forever remain, poetic, in the hearts of those privileged enough to know her (including myself).

Health Care Around the World

PLEASE PASS THIS LINK ON to anyone you know who is having difficulty sorting out the health care debate in the US. [Please read: "Anyone who doesn't support health care reform in the US"] The link leads to a 1 hour radio program of the Commonwealth Club of California in discussion with Washington Post correspondent T. R. Reid. In it, he discusses his research for his new book "The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care." Reid characterizes health care systems of developed countries around the world and discusses the "how" and "why" each country has the particular system it has. This is a very informative and thoughtful discussion on the subject. Here's that link again.

Further, here's a link to the book from Amazon:


(so you may help your local library acquire this text)

Reid discusses how, in the developed world there are basically four models of health care systems. The "Beverage Model" of health care (the British system which created the British single payer system where everyone is insured and the health insurance industry is government run and government paid), the Bismark Model (a German created model of employer sponsored health care where employers and employees each pay half the cost of private health insurance), the "National Health Insurance" Model or "Medicare" (a Canadian created model of private medicine paid for by the government) and the "Out of Pockett" Model (the most popular system around the world--if you have money, you have health care, if not, you remain sick or die). He discusses these models and lists the countries that utilize them.

Reid says, though, that one needn't travel around the world to experience these four models, that they each exist here in the US, the richest country in the world. He says, "If you're a Native American or a Veteran or active duty military, you live in Britain" because, essentially, all of those individuals costs are covered by the government at government doctors and they see no bills. He continues, "If you're over 65 or on Medicare, you live in Canada" because these folks see private doctors and the government pays the bills. Thirdly, Reid says, "If you're a working person getting health insurance with the employer and you split the cost of the premium with the employer...you live in Germany" and that around 100 some million Americans take advantage of this system, the Bismark system of health care. Lastly, and most poignantly, Reid states, "If you're one of the 40 some million Americans with no coverage, for health care purposes, you live in Afghanistan or Angola...in the out of pocket model" because if these individuals have money, they see a doctor, if not, they or their children go to sleep at night wheezing or aching or with fever or, even worse, they die.

Well, I'm writing this to say that in light of Reid's discussion, I as a middle class, white male have lived well over half of my life in Afghanistan, California. Born and raised in Los Angeles to middle class parents in a mostly single-parent-working-household, I can clearly remember the times in my life when we were all insured and times when we weren't. My father, who works and has worked in the construction industry for over 30 years, would see his job and benefits wax and wain with the economy. When times were bad, he may have been unemployed or underemployed and we lived without essentials like health care and sometimes enough food to get by. When times were good, we lived with most of the essentials. For instance, I remember clearly all the orthodontistry work both my brother and I hurriedly had completed while my father worked for one company which offered family benefits including orthodontics (the reason I have straight teeth today...Thanks Mom and Dad and Aluma Systems, Inc.). But I also clearly remember a time shortly after or before that when laid in bed at night and was afraid to tell my mother I was having a serious asthma attack because I knew it would mean that she would have to take me to the emergency room and that we didn't have insurance at the time and it would cost a considerable sum of money we didn't have (we could barely keep food in the cabinets). There may have been many nights like this before it grew serious enough that I had to tell her and we had to go to the emergency room and in the end were saddled with VERY high bills which she complained about incessantly as she paid them off over many many months.

I'm writing this because it seems morally wrong for the richest nation in the world to not take the PROVEN, tried and true example of the MANY MANY other poorer industrialized, first world countries around the world (I won't make an exhaustive list, but Japan, Taiwan, France, Germany, Switzerland, Canada and Britain, to name a few...note, these are "poorer" countries) which have taken serious steps to ensure that their citizens are insured.

I don't care what plan(s) or system(s) we eventually chose to use, I really don't. I care about two things: 1) I care that those who are uninformed on this subject take a moment, even if it's only 30 minutes to listen to the first half of this radio program (here's that link again) so that those who wish to obscure and deceive them about our or any other health care system may have to answer a few more pointed questions; and 2) I care that fair and decent health coverage be available to all Americans regardless of their working status, social class, etc etc.

So, LISTEN and please pass this show on to friends and family who are not as well informed on the subject. To take it further, request that your library purchase the book, or have screenings for your family of Sicko or, more delicately, PBS Frontline's Sick Around the World (also written by T.R. Reid in the lead up to the publication of his book).

Let us all be healthy and well.

Opening

All things need to start somewhere. According to the Judeo-Christian interpretation of the history of our world, all things began with a word. Pretty sacred stuff---I don't necessarily believe it, but OK (it's a family story, so I have to listen, right?). Word, sound, pitch, vibration, explosion, the hum of dendrites or the flap of some piece of primordial biologic tissue, some wave of electricity or ions or whatever. I could only hope to manage to spittle a few understandable sounds in a commonly accepted order in hopes that it makes sense to at least myself and hopefully at least one other person (but most likely not). Provided I can spell the noise that is this sound I hear buzzing in my head in a commonly accepted way using written ciphers accepted by those humans (homo-sapiens-sapiens to be exact) who speak the sounds commonly classified as the language called English, perhaps I can succeed at this simple task.

Most likely not.

Boom.

There it is.

This blog has begun.