Category: Guest Bloggers

Rhetoric vs Reality By Lorie Sheffer, Guest Blogger

Photo: Lorie Sheffer

“Weeds are flowers, too, once you get to know them.” -Eeyore

When it comes to life expectancy, Japan takes the top spot, with Switzerland  #4, France #10, Canada #11 and the UK at #20. All of these countries have Universal Healthcare, with a few of them also having privatized insurance as an option. The United States, “the greatest nation in the world”, ranks #36 in the world in life expectancy.

The #1 reason for bankruptcy in America is inability to pay medical bills. As of September 2010, there were over 59 million Americans who were uninsured. Roughly 22% of children in Texas have no health care coverage. This is a real problem in the United States, and politics aside, it has to be addressed. It seems more a moral issue than a political issue.

I’ve been hearing quite a bit of rhetoric about the “typical” person who is uninsured. It seems that there are folks who either really do believe, or who for some reason are trying to convince their listeners, that the majority of the uninsured are lazy and/or irresponsible and/or trying to milk the system. They want a handout.

My son is a physician at the hospital in Philadelphia that has the highest number of uninsured patients in the state. I asked him if his patients are lazy people who just want to have the rest of us pay for their care. That is what we hear from politicos and talking heads alike. I wanted to hear the real low down from someone who is actually treating these patients, as opposed to someone who is sitting in a radio station or standing behind a podium. I wanted the word from the front line, so to speak.

The reality that my son faces every day is quite different from the picture that is being painted by those who oppose equal access to healthcare. Yes, there are a few people who would love to grab at any handout they could get. But that is the very small minority. What I hear are stories of people who lost their jobs. People who are trying to work two part time jobs to support their families. People who are doing jobs the rest of us wouldn’t want. They are the folks responsible for us having our dinner brought to our table, for us having clean public restrooms; people who clean up after we leave a concert or a sporting event. They are the person who takes our drive thru order, who carries our new appliances into our homes, who mows our lawn and who delivers pizza to our door. They are the people who can’t afford private health insurance. Blue Cross/Blue Shield runs about $900 a month for two adults. These people cannot pay those premiums, but they earn slightly more than the cut off point for Medicaid. They are the working poor. Some have been laid off from jobs, sometimes after having been employed for years by the same company. Some of them choose putting food on the table for their children over medications to treat their own chronic health conditions. They can’t pay for screening tests like colonoscopies and pap tests and blood sugar screenings and mammograms.

This country has mandatory, universal education. We have public schools, which are funded with a combination of local, state and federal tax dollars.  Private schools are available for those who choose them and can afford them. Really, is public healthcare that different a concept?

Caught In The Act, By Lorie Sheffer

"Caught In The Act" (Photo: Lorie Sheffer)

This evening I got a good dose of food for thought along with my carry-out order of sushi.

I didn’t call ahead, so I had to spend a few minutes on a sofa by the front register. There was a little girl sitting at a table not too far from me. She was one of those adorable kids who you just want to run over and hug. A wild mass of blonde curls, wire rimmed glasses and a red tint to her nose that makes it seem she had spent this, one of the final days of summer, swimming in the afternoon sun. She seemed tired and restless. When her mother walked her back to the ladies room, she commented on the kimono that hung near the hallway as a decorative dividing curtain. Her mother told her that yes, it was pretty, but NOT to touch it. On the way back out she just couldn’t help herself, and as soon as her mother’s gaze drifted for a second, one of her little hands reached up and tugged at the sleeve. It immediately hit the floor. Her eyes got wide as her mother took her by the hand to the front of the restaurant to confess to the owner and offer an apology for what she had done. The owner, a Japanese lady who was probably near my own age, wasted no time in hunkering down to the little girls’ level and scooping her up in a warm hug. “I’m so sorry”, the lady offered. “No….. you don’t have to apologize to her. She grabbed it and it fell….” said the mother. “Oh, I understand. I saw the whole thing.” The owner now smiled to the little girl and went back to the register to answer the phone and take an order.

I watched this little girl, who was maybe all of 5 years old. She looked a bit confused, but she quietly went back to her seat, where she displayed her best manners for the remaining time I was there. She also kept glancing, and shyly smiling, at the lady who had shown her such mercy.

Zen, By Lorie Sheffer, Guest Blogger

Lorie Sheffer's Aunt Ruth (left) & Grandmother

“Did you know I’m 100 now? I think since I made it this far I’m going to try for 105.”

My brother was sitting in his regular restaurant/bar last Friday night when he saw two familiar faces. Our dad’s aunt and cousin were getting up from their booth, having just finished their dinner. Dad’s aunt turned 100 years old in January. Although she never smoked and never drank that I know of, she also has some of the characteristics that we are being told do not lead to longevity. She is an “apple” shape, carrying most of her weight in her midsection. She never ran or swam or joined a gym. She eats pretty much whatever she wants, which is mostly Pennsylvania Dutch home cooking. Her mother died at a young age from cancer, and her sister-my grandmother- also died of cancer. Not fantastic genes on that. And yet…… here she is. Not only has she made it to the century point, but also she has a pretty darned good quality of life.

What I’ve always noticed about Aunt Ruth is that she seems to be sort of laid back. I’ve not spent a tremendous amount of time with her, but the times we have spent in one another’s company she always seemed to be calm. She hits me as someone who just takes life for what it is and kind of rolls with it. She enjoys things and doesn’t seem to dwell on the negative. Maybe there is a lesson to be learned here. There is no question that there is pretty conclusive medical evidence as to the benefits of exercise and a healthy diet. Perhaps we need to add to that the benefits of stress reduction. And the optimism of a 100-year-old lady deciding there is no good reason she shouldn’t shoot for 105.  I’m betting she reaches her goal.

Creating and Sharing, By Lorie Sheffer, Featured Guest Blogger @ Mid Life Celebration

Photo courtesy of Lorie Sheffer

If you love to cook, would it still give you pleasure if there was no one to eat the food you prepared? If you love to sing, would you still sing if no one ever listened? If you love to write, what if you were the only person who read your written word? Would an artist still paint even though his or her canvases could only hang in total darkness? What if there was a play that was performed every evening to a totally empty theater?

How much of what we love is done for the simple act of creating something, and how much of it is because we can share it with others? If we love doing something does it matter if anyone knows or cares or shares it with us? Or is the simple act enough for us to continue?

New and Improved, By Lorie Sheffer, Guest Blogger

Have you ever wondered what happened to your favorite summer hangouts or vacation spots? One day I decided to look for information on a campground where my family and I spent several summer vacations. I wondered if others remember it as fondly as I do. It was the place where my older cousin saw the ocean for the very first time. It is the one place from our childhood that has no equal.

Enter a combination of Google and Facebook. I am now one of a growing group (48 members at last count!) of baby boomers who gather Online to reminisce about the shared experience of this old campground. Best of all, they share PHOTOS!  My family wasn’t big on picture taking and my memories were becoming faded. Reading the posts by the other members made something very clear very early on: this place holds an almost transcendent nostalgia for all of us. There is almost a reverence in talking about it.

Some of us have made the mistake of trying to find out what happened to our old campground. I was tempted a few years back, when my son was in college about an hour north of it. Knowing me as well as he does he advised me to keep my old memories and not go look at the area as it is now. Curious, I looked it up a few weeks ago. I should have listened to my son. What I discovered left me sobbing. The beautiful beach is now home of several high-rise hotels and condos. The wooded area is now a gated community of townhouses and a conference center. The website for the area describes it as beautiful and full of amenities. And yet those of us who spent those magical summers in tents and campers, showering in the bathhouses and using the public toilets, do not see the new and improved version as an improvement at all. One man said that he drove by a few years ago and was shocked at the emotional reaction he had when he saw the area. He longed for the old Trading Post, the rickety wooden footbridges, miniature golf and rowboat rentals. Our pristine, once almost wild beach now resembles a small city.

I know that the South had some ugly things happening in the 1960s and 1970s. Some of those things were shocking for me to see, and even at such a young age I felt anger at the inequality that was almost proudly on display. I had never seen a “Whites Only” sign until I went to eat dinner in that town. This was a time when many of our leaders who had the audacity to speak out in favor of equality for all of our citizens were gunned down. We were at war in Southeast Asia and we saw black and white imagines on the nightly news of soldiers returning home in body bags. Maybe that is what added to the innocence of those wooded acres of solitude and natural beauty. Maybe the contrast of the beauty of the unspoiled beach and the smell of the pine that hung so heavily was what soothed us.

I watched man’s first steps on the moon from a tiny, snowy black and white TV that my uncle plugged into the campsite’s lone electrical outlet. Reception wasn’t great, but the crowd that gathered round to watch with us hardly seemed to care. It was July 21, 1969 and I was 10 years old. In my heart I know that had I been on the 15 floor of one of those climate controlled luxury towers on that same South Carolina beach, watching a giant plasma TV when Neil Armstrong’s boot touched the surface of the moon, it would not have been as magical.