Straight Zen

BILL LAMBERT

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Wednesday, October 14. 2009

Oh! Canada...

The last time I made the trek up to Halifax, Nova Scotia, was more than half a long lifetime ago. Don't remember much, except for endless stretches of gorgeous desolation throughout most of New Brunswick into the western part of Nova Scotia, plus way friendly folks the few times I accidentally happened to bump into one.

This time around we managed to hit leaf-peeping prime-time all the way up through Maine and the Maritimes. A new postcard vista greeted us over the crest of every hill, while countless rivers and streams crisscrossed the highway, running fast, deep and beautiful, filled with the autumn rain.

Nature freakin' rules.

So, Eastern Canada turned out to be much the same as I recall through the fog of 36 years, at least outside the few and far between smallish cities. Urban and suburban areas have grown considerably, unfortunately, taking on that hideous American fright mask of chained food and shackled marketing: Walmart, Staples, Home Depot, Target, and all that crap, generously peppered with a shaker full of cheap-ass chain hotels, mega-markets and video stores.

Inevitable, I suppose... though disconcerting. The main detail of difference between Fredericton, NB, and Nashua, NH is the license plates... just replace all the Dunkin Donut shops with Tim Horton's, the Canadian equivalent.

The same US-made commercial ugly stick will beat a garish neon bruise on places like Mogadishu, Papua, New Guinea, and Chad someday, the way things are going.

Too bad for Chad, but The Way of the World.

Our main purpose was a scouting trip; the resident high school senior has more than a little interest in continuing her education in Halifax, at either St. Mary's or Dalhousie University. It was worth a trip to see if this was place she could survive... to get a feel for of the schools and the students, the neighborhoods and the city.

Turns out Halifax is way neat--unique in many ways, still quaint and quirky. Except for scale, the city is much like Boston/Cambridge, with the seaport, the many universities and hospitals and the tourism trade dominating. It's a nice blend of the old and modern, well-cleaned and well-kept. (Even the homeless panhandlers were clean, much better dressed than half the customers at Market Basket in Nashua.)

My former little girl said she had set no particular expectations on Halifax or either college before we headed up there. She ended up impressed, as were we, with both the St. Mary's and Dalhousie campus facilities and the general city scene.

I wouldn't mind going to school up there myself.

Women--even young ones--often change their mind, I'm told (ahem). The kid may not end up in Halifax, but I liked her approach at evaluating things and discovered she did a lot more pre-trip research than I believed going in.

Good job on the kid.

All in all, an excellent trip. We all enjoyed the long weekend, including the resident terrier/baby surrogate Lylaboo, good as gold and no trouble at all during the entire trip. We might have done without the two nights we had to stop over in Fredericton, one on the way up and one on the way back, but Jesus, you have to sleep somewhere.

Total drive time from Saturday noon to Tuesday evening, including side trips, about 26 - 27 hrs. Gas: around $200 for my fuel-hungry VW Touareg.

Make sure to top up before you hit the Canadian border.

Posted by Bill Lambert in Straight Zen at 10:43 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Monday, September 21. 2009

More On Healthcare

In my most recent blog entry, I tried to emphasize the inequities inherent in our current healthcare system. At the time I wrote that, I knew I lacked hard research data, no doubt weakening my case.

An article in the Boston Globe this past week cited a Cambridge Health Alliance report that appeared in the American Journal of Public Health: a study that followed 9,005 adults under 65 years old who took part in a national survey conducted from 1986 through 1994 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. After 12 years, 351 people had died. Sixty of them were uninsured and 291 were insured.

I'll quote from the article...

After accounting for age, education, income, and other factors, the researchers found that people without private insurance had a 40 percent higher risk of dying than people with private insurance. An earlier study by the Institute of Medicine based on 16 years of data through 1993 found that uninsured people had a 25 percent higher risk of dying than insured people, which translated into 18,000 additional deaths.

Co-author of the CHA paper, Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, noted in an interview that being uninsured is more lethal relative to being insured than it was 20 years ago, due to advances in treatment and prevention.

Even I didn't think the difference in mortality rate would be that startling... shocking, really. That means that lives lost due to lack of quality healthcare will exceed lives lost by american forces in the Vietnam War in about 15 months, and the Iraq war in about three and a half weeks.

Another Globe article Thursday reported on their recent survey of the commonwealth's major health insurance providers and the prospects of upcoming rate increases. Anticipated increases ranged from 7 to 12 percent, capping a decade of consecutive double-digit premium increases. Rates for 2010 will depend on the size of the employer and the type of coverage, but small businesses and individuals are expected to be hit the hardest.

The Globe claimed that, overall, premiums are more than twice as high as they were 10 years ago, but if the writer were familiar with the back-of-the-envelop "rule of 72", 10 years of at least ten percent increases gets you closer to a mind-numbing 150% boost. Massachusetts insurance costs are higher than most states, but the average cost of a family plan will be around $14,000 next year, with those insured through their employer footing around two-thirds of the bill.

An annual tariff of $14,000 is roughly double what an employee making $50K and her company will shell out for the twin payroll taxes, SS and Medicare.

These two trends are what the real healthcare crisis is all about. Private healthcare insurance is rapidly becoming beyond the means of the majority, and people will die because of it.

Posted by Bill Lambert in Straight Zen at 07:46 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Wednesday, September 9. 2009

A Question of Equality

For all but the last few ticks on the human time clock, the quality of healthcare or medical care mattered little. If someone developed a serious affliction or became critically injured, in all likelihood they were headed toward their rapid end. Indian or chief, royal or rube, you were lucky if your medical practitioner knew enough not to clean open wounds with river water, didn’t administer killing amounts of mercury or arsenic or blood-let you to death, not to mention passing on to you some nasty, lethal infection.

The threat of serious illness or death has always been the great equalizer. The high-born and the rich never fared much better than anyone else, and no amount of wordly goods could save you.

The modernization of medical care accelerated rapidly only during the mid 19th-Century. In one of the cornerstone achievements of mankind--along with the widespread use of fire, writing and the exodus of out Africa--we began to observe, discover and understand the things smaller than we could observe with the naked eye: our building blocks, our essence. Discovery of this micro-world drove development in the three basic sciences of modern medicine: biology, chemistry, and physics, and fueled the modern medical revolution.

Barely a-hundred-and-fifty years removed from the childhood of modern medicine, the average life expectancy has roughly doubled in areas with access to modern healthcare. The availability of quality prenatal care is the single largest factor in raising the live birth rate and reducing infant and early childhood mortality.

What could be more basic to, “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness...”, than our health and longevity? Denial of healthcare or pricing it beyond the means of many essentially shortens the lives of those left out.

This is a statistical no brainer, really. If you have health care, on average you live longer than those who don’t. A new kind of inequality suddenly appears, a direct result of our misplaced, market-based system: some of us will have a right to expect a longer, better quality life; many of us will not.

Only the federal government can remedy this inequality by assuring health care access for every citizen, every indian and every chief.

I look on those who would deny universal healthcare access with pity. What kind of folks would deny their fellow citizens an equal chance at life as a political statement or to maintain their profits.

We should take the model of our one true socialized governmental function: defense and security. We aren’t left to hiring our own police or private armies to keep us safe. Since national defense and local laws apply to everyone, it is much more effective and better managed through the public sector, supported by our taxes.

Healthcare, so basic to our freedom and a core issue for every citizen, from every walk of life, demands the same level of national effort and attention.

Posted by Bill Lambert in Straight Zen at 11:37 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Thursday, July 2. 2009

Eat it, Eat it...

Like most folks, I have a Michael Jackson tune or two ricocheting around my brain like a bullet in the bathtub. Unfortunately for me (and now you), one of them is the Weird Al Yankovic version of Beat It.

Just eat it, eat it , eat it
Get yourself an egg and beat it
Have some more chicken, have some more pie
It doesn't matter if it's broiled or fried

I even found this video of Weird Al doing his thing on Japanese TV, of all places. They can't understand a word, so why's it funny?

This is why we Love Japanese TV...

It continues to rain, Le Deluge most of the day, every day. This morning at 9 AM it was as dark as the mid-winter dusk, thunder rumbling by continuously, eerily.

Never saw it that dark on a summer's morning. I love strange weather.

Posted by Bill Lambert in Straight Zen at 10:37 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Monday, June 15. 2009

It Was You

Last week at The Watch City Brewery in Waltham we had a sort of reunion of my brothers and sisters from our days at Mitsubishi Electric, some of them even before and beyond.

Thank Goodnews we have Squire Burgess to put out the call once in a blue moon. Somehow he knows it's his job, and he does it so well.

They make me proud, these folks. During my 30-plus-years in the computer business, I always considered myself the accidental tourist--a grateful 'victim' of a long string of fortuitous circumstance. In 1984, some mystical alignment of stars placed me across a large conference table from nine Japanese managers and three lawyers, negotiating the price on myself, a handful of others and a three-year project already two-years behind.

What a wonderful trip it turned out to be.

A cadre of usual suspects during Iseki Kota and Kako-chan's visit, summer of 2007.

Make no mistake; it was hardly ever easy and not always fun. Hard, challenging creative work never is. We fought many battles on foreign soil, some folks paying the price of separation in their personal lives, all of us changed by the experience.

I am deeply grateful to many Japanese managers: Yonezawa San, Tabuchi San, and my beloved Mutoh San, among others; great guys who trusted me enough to allow me to try things my way.

But most of all, I am grateful to my brothers and sisters.

There were four generations of them, by my reckoning. There were those who came with me from IPL and our first hires: Fran, Chris, Peeto, Kathy, Fred, Limey, Craig M., Suga, Shirai, Sukkoto, Andrea, Mako and half the Egg Brothers. In the office computer era, we hooked up Gary and Carol, Mike.L, Mike D., Jeff P., the Derek, Ueki-San, Paco Saito and the irrepressible Watanabe, the Japanese version of an accident waiting to happen. SW ramps up, new faces appear: Evan, Sam, Rulian, Noemi, Dave Mankins, Steve Mason and Al Leisinger and so on. Finally, Frank, Tom W... and so it goes.

I can't list everyone, wish I could. Everyone had a story. We watched each other grow, mature. Though there were always enough Ali Safavi's, Ken Bloom's, Ray Betterini's and Wakim Bitar's around for comic relief, I loved most of my fellow travelers, if not all.

Late one night, a long time back, someone burst into my office, red-faced and screaming. "Why don't you fire SoAndSo? How do you put up with him?"
"Part of SoAndSo's job is to be the person everyone hates," I told him, "If I fire him, you might be the one." Fortunately, the dutifully despised were few and far between.

When I walked into Watch City Thursday night, I paused by the door, looking around for Steve. When I spotted our gang among the crowded bar's gang of gangs, I stood there for a minute, watching them talking, joking, doing the familiar things they do. I was moved. If there's ever a place in time where a better, more talented, group comes together over so many years, I'd be interested in knowing about it.

It was you, my comrades, my fellow warriors, all along. It was you who made it work. Forever, I'm in your debt.

Mull mentioned that Fran has graciously volunteered to hold the next reunion at his palatial Newton estate. Don't forget to bring along tennis rackets and skeet gear if you're not already penciled in for the 4 PM freestyle orgy... pets welcome!

Thanks, Bubbaloo. You be da man!

Posted by Bill Lambert in Straight Zen at 17:26 | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0)

Friday, May 22. 2009

Mail to the Chief

I sent a letter via White House email to President Obama the other day, the second time I've ever written to a public official. The first time was September 12, 2001, the day after the Twin Towers fell, in case you just dropped in from the planet Mongo. It was late that evening and the government seemed halfway into chaos trying to figure out what to do. My letter urged President Bush to get thee to New York City as fast as possible. As our leader, he needed to begin the healing process and comfort the bereaved, things better accomplished from the site of the catastrophe.

It was late at night on the second day and, unbelievable to me, W hadn't yet gone to the site or anywhere near it. It would have been the first thing I would have done if I were president.

I wasn't angry, I was polite and encouraging and wished him well during the crisis, but as an American, I wanted him in New York, well... yesterday. Thankfully he did go to Ground Zero the next day, though I'm sure my letter had nothing to do with it.

I wrote to President Obama after seeing snippets of his speech at Notre Dame. Not one who moves easily, I was moved. To call the abortion issue 'irreconcilable' at that place and time was a bold and risky move, and I wanted to send words of support and encouragement to Mr. President for making the effort.

When someone does something outstanding, you should tell them. I don't expect my letter would ever get to him, but if its weight is merely added onto the pile of favorable emails, it's fine enough for me.

UPDATE:

Lyla has been getting along well and has totally adjusted to her shock collar. She seems to know the boundaries now without the flags, since the guys who mow our grass (or whatever it is) have shredded about half the markers into oblivion.

There are other plusses, besides keeping her on the property. There have been a lot fewer barking incidents with the neighbors when they're out in their yard. I think Lyla figured out that, since she can't get to them, it's not worth it. Ditto the denizens of the woods, deer, squirrels, a turkey or two.

May and Marii say they've seen fewer ticks this year, probably because of reduced hunting forays into the woods.

Now if only I could make myself feel better. It's becoming rare, but she'll still chase a moth, a toad or something over the line and get zapped for it.

I hope she never figures out who's behind it.