Please take more than a single day off whenever the urge hits you. Don't burn out. Your observations are nuggets of gold, and I hope you will share them with us for years to come. So pace yourself!!
Has anyone else noticed that today belongs in a fairy tale, but one that we actually lived through? You know, the age ole script of the demons and monsters overtaking the family, only a year later the skies are nearly clear and everyone can glimpse a sense of home. Here’s what happened, just today!
I can’t remember feeling this hopeful since .... I can’t remember. My wife and I watched President Joe Biden reassure, encourage, and trumpet ALL that has been done in the first 50 days of his administration. But he reminded America that this is a team effort, and it is being led by ... well, by EVERY mask wearing American!
Biden had so much to tout about the coronavirus roll-out, he forget to highlight his signing of the most major economic revival legislation, in our lifetime. And that goes for today's oldest living person! $2.1T dwarfs the $.85T market crash revival, 2009 whimper, that Obama-Biden managed after the “free market” crashed and burned due to deregulation.
To see Schumer and Pelosi today at the signature table together, I’d have thought they were signing autographs for 325 million Americans! In my mind, they then lept to their feet as they clasped and heartily shook hands as people cheered in the background! I felt like their team had just won the World Series, and thiner team is America
These two miraculous events, the Biden signature and address, happened on what most people consider to be the 1 year anniversary of the virus taking hold in America - March 11, 2020. That was when professional sports and entertainment venues and dining venues .... turned out the lights.
Now,I feel the lights are back on, and the sun is bursting through. All at 9PM, March 11, 2021.
His understating of the ARP was intentional. After four years of Pres. Blowseephus, he put the emphasis on us, the American people. It was a fairytale day!
Well, Joe has a positive vibe, doesn’t he? He IS optimistic about America. Remember the wya he ends seemingly every session. “There is nothing America can’t do, when we all work together!”
WHAT IF liberals and progressives talk liked ... THIS! This makes me smile all over again
Thank You, Frederick! That is exactly how it felt yesterday! A Fairy Tale Come True! President Biden embodying the calm and comfort of FDR, along with the hope of a great new deal. And my "prince" came in the morning, wearing a National Guard uniform, to he give me my second COVID vaccine shot!! One year ago today we hunkered down for the viral seige (tRump being the most virulent of the maladies), with our fears stoked, not assuaged. Now, as you proclaim, "the skies are nearly clear"!! Many thanks to Dr. Heather Cox Richardson for leading us through the mire, and to all of you HCR (first) responders for support, stories and sanity! Cheers!
Thank you! Loved listening to you and Dr. Freeman discuss history tonight. What wonderful rapport you both have! I appreciate you both so much. #brilliantwomen
What I find most astonishing about Joe Biden, as a man who has suffered unimaginable losses in his lifetime, is his ability to transform the grief that is always with him into positive attitude and action. But we should never think for a minute that he isn't continually living with both grief and joy as his bedfellows. These his life experiences have helped shape him into the empathic, competent, and quite regal statesman he is today.
Lots of gratitude to HCR for her perspective and effort. Feeling good enough today to imagine the future with more hope. Below is not a rant really but a long discussion of problems and solutions that might have been sufficient to write and not send. But then it is fun to reach out and imagine there is a path to follow.
Yesterday I wrote a blurb linking the difficulties we face in getting our politics to work for us in parallel to the profession I know personally, medicine. Several people chimed in with their own personal experiences validating mine. I am aware that a teacher could do the same. A police captain could probably also write something similar. I thought I would continue the thought especially since it is otherwise a quiet day when we are hoping the relief bill gets signed.
In each case there is the influence of money on a professional, a licensed or badged service provider and a bureaucracy that is overseeing the provision of a service that doesn’t lend itself to competition in the way that building a car does where you can easily go to the next sales room to try out the products and make your own personal decisions.
The staffs of these overseers and especially the leadership are overwhelmingly coming from finance backgrounds where they (1) do not hold a license or a badge and (2) they are acculturated to believe that the way to manipulate a situation is through money. I’m trying to break down the situation in the most simplistic way. I am aware (via my loved sister) that it is always “more complicated” but I feel that it is by this process of simplification that solutions can be discussed. After all what is the point of debate and conversation if not to come to solutions? I am aware that we also love to grouse together but I’m not into that so much this morning. Which is why I’m not giving further examples of the problem. How many do we need to accept the problem as truth and move toward a next step?
I am also aware that this is HCR’s venue and not mine. But I have personally enjoyed when others have written about their knowledge base and their views if only tangentially related to HCR’s.
So what is the solution? Remember when younger Bush ?(I think) got into the business of ‘upgrading’ public education? This was done by linking financing to standardized testing and all the experienced teachers threw up their hands predicting exactly the future we are now in, where teaching has become no more than preparation for these tests which they knew would not, could not, equate to actual education? And, where the root problems in public schools haven’t been fixed. Who was it and how did they come to the conclusion that they knew better than all those licensed practicing teachers? Maybe it was a teacher as some of the ‘leaders’ in medicine also hold MD’s and once upon a time did see patients but are now chasing dollars.
Remember when the Japanese car industry started and took Detroit to the cleaners? (I lived outside Detroit at the time.) Remember Demming who tried to sell his management theory to US industry but got turned away so he went to Japan and became a god? He said reduce the layers of management and if you want to run a company well go where the actual work takes place and ask the guys who are actually doing that work what the problems are and how to solve them. Then just do that. These answers have never been complicated. Always it has been that the people in power who have gotten there by manipulating money are still in power and the only thing they think about, care about, know about is money.
Money gets it done. Money solves the problem. It is a BIG LIE. Money is the problem.
Secret money is just plain toxic. Seems like that shouldn’t be difficult to know. But also as long any money runs our leadership we have a problem. Money isn’t even real. It is not a product. True, it has been the vehicle that has developed the world from the Middle Ages to now but now it is time to move on. We didn’t really have health care issues in the Middle Ages or the 1800’s for that matter. We had food and sanitation issues. We didn’t think or see very large back then.
Money changed that. Now we have health care systems and global food distribution. Now we want equality, to preserve the planet, to raise the bar of over all thought and experience. We want to live in a humanitarian world where being inventive and cooperative is the goal and is rewarded. So things have to change again. Where we had war-lords we now have the super-wealthy. Where we had taxed, mud soaked villages we now have slums, gangs, terrorism and clouds of pollution. Where we had swords we now have guns, rockets and money.
So what does it take to unseat the money people and seat humanitarians to do this not as a blip but as a trend? The For The People Act. (Which means reducing the filibuster) and a follow on movement to not just make the money visible in our power structure but to remove it. Campaign finance reform. Taxation reform. And, the recognition of the expertise of the individual doing the work. Not finance but actual work. Perhaps starting with those service disciplines that require licenses. License them and then let them control their own environments.
This requires user controlled database interfacing because like it or not we are in the computer age and big data is here to stay. Ordinary workers doctors, nurses, teachers, need to be able to see the data, search it, decide themselves how to interact with it and what to do with it. Big data can’t be placed solely at the service of profit. Bill Gates gives a lot of money away but he also controls a lot of big data. Judy Faulkner CEO of EPIC the medical record company… not so much giving but a really lot of big data. Google, big data, controlled by big money. Face Book. On and on. Big data is like the new money. It is just as powerful and just as devoid of ethics. But it is also the key to the future beyond money.
All IM not so HO.
Well that was fun. Way too preachy though. Sorry about that. I definitely don't have HCR's style.
This nurse agrees, too. What I think I hear you saying is that we have "capitalized" medicine (and education) rather than socialized it. Patients are not stock shares in a portfolio and students are not cars on an assemly line, but in America, that is how they are perceived and treated. When money is our god, then money changers are in charge.
This was not always so. The original hospitals were started by physicians, like your distant relative, Dr. James Decker Munson, who were compassionate, caring and focused on bettering patient care:
" [Dr. Munson] eliminated straitjackets, advocated for compassionate mental health care, planted trees, investigated Holstein breeding and milk production, and told stories from the downtown barber chair.
"And when he did, a lot of people showed up to listen.
"Call James Decker Munson, MD, a renaissance man, pioneer, and visionary. He may not have been a Moses, but he certainly turned a lot of untilled, logged-over acreage into a land of promise.
"In addition to sought-after medical skills, the 37-year-old Dr. Munson arrived by train to Traverse City in 1885 with 43 patients and a determination that would weather many difficulties and challenges, and instill a culture of care that remains part of Munson Medical Center today."
Well, that "culture of care" has taken a beating over the last 40 years. Hmm, about the time Reagan became president and money became king? Ironically, though, with the pandemic, I am seeing some very positive changes in both healthcare and education. The god of money has clearly failed us. Perfect time to replace it with a commitment to a cullture of care.
Patrick (Dr. Munson I presume?) You are also speaking about higher education in our current age: top-heavy administrations, obsession with meaningless "focus groups," very expensive consultants who basically are telling educators (foxes) how to suck eggs: all of this operates against providing a valuable educational experience to students increasingly under-prepared for higher education's demands on their brains and time. Faculty leaders yell, stamp feet, and complain but the whole notion of "shared governance" (a buzz-phrase the admin in my uni love to use that is absolutely meaningless) has been debased and faculty are being overwhelmed by top-down demands to control curriculum, monitor research and scholarship, and dictate the relationships that are developed in the classroom between instructors and students. It is all toxic. Moreover, the students know this. And what is driving this particular bus off the cliff? Big money: administrators are more concerned about achieving bonuses from their boards for "keeping costs down." As the perks for Athletic Directors and coaches of NCAA Div 1 sports grow and grow, the budgets dedicated to actual education shrink and shrink. This has been happening since the 1970s but the acceleration of these trends in the last 8 years--because of Republican obstruction in the Senate that slowed the recovery from the Great Recession and the shenanigans of the just-replaced Secretary of Education--has exacerbated faculty loss of morale and a conviction that we are simply going to be cannon fodder for whatever "culture war" the Right cooks up.
LOTS of excellent insights here, Patrick. Thank you. The ways these systems have evolved into the behemoths they have become is certainly lamentable. I completely agree. Through my mom's lifetime spent in healthcare I grew up hearing about it--almost went into medicine myself, but my total lack of math skills dissuaded me!--and then took note of how it operated. Instead, having an artistic bent, I followed my muse of music, performed professionally as a career singer for 30 years, and ended up working in higher education. There, I saw so much evidence of what you talk about--and what teachers have said below. It is a shame we can't overhaul both the medical system and the "industry" of higher education. They're both HUGE-ticket items and I wonder if they'll ever be reformed to serve the people better, but it doesn't hurt to bitch about them! Maybe one day someone will listen to us. Again, thank you!
I spent a year living in Lithuania not long after the end of communism. At that time, a physician and an elementary school teacher (based on the old Soviet model) occupied the same social status and income range. Both provided a necessary social service and the majority of them were women. And the doctors were pretty good. They could not believe that I had contacted a nearly fatal infection during heart surgery in an American hospital, since their vision of American medical care was utopian, a land of OZ where everything was lavish and mistakes were never made. We have created a society where money is the central driver of almost all efforts, the signature of potency, the foundation of meaning. We should not be surprised when it poisons everything.
Is it just money that has changed this? I'm thinking how much the ad industry especially over the airwaves has affected our thinking & purchasing. They are so good at great a "need" & most of us fail to recognize that we are being manipulated.
I think would include this in the general category of money. Advertisers are only interested in selling and the money that produces. They don't have a humanitarian mission. I would postulate that overt advertising is like that but that much of media has been consumed by advertising. I don't have a problem with this as long as it is regarding products that can be evaluated by real people. Advertising one hospital over another rarely has substance and if it did that would be a problem.
Thank you for writing through the weekend! Rest deeply and happy spring. There is nothing like the Atlantic meeting the sky on the coast of Maine. Peace writer.
Have a wonderful evening, Heather. And true that, Spring is coming,in fact already here in California. And tomorrow I go to visit my best friend, first time in a year, to eat fresh oysters (west coast of course) and drink champagne. So very much to celebrate.
So fun. We had just spent a week in county clare just before lockdown and gorged ourselves on delicious west coast ireland gigas oysters (w Guinness...and actually a delicious albarino...) we learned it was the west coast pacific oyster spat that helped launch the resurgence of the Irish oyster beds!
It's hard to comprehend that only a year after this horror show began and kept intensifying with criminal help from a morally bankrupt president, something more tangible than hope is taking root? And only 50 days since President Biden took office! Imagine for a moment where we would be if somehow Trump was still in office. On second thought, let's not. Instead, let's bask in what expertise, leadership, and empathy have delivered, thanks to democracy in action.
After such a moving address by Biden, seems it's possible that we all can sleep a little better. Heather, I hope your rest was a peaceful as the serenity in your photo. And, after Biden's address, "hope" is the word.
Please take good care of yourself -- I echo the words of Christopher LeeKeenan -- I'd been concerned about the cost to you of so much hard work, so many late nights preparing your invaluable Letter.
By the way, the photograph you gave us is marvelous. Like all the others you've posted when you were taking a break, but more so.
I agree with all those other sentiments. What you write is remarkable. I have no idea how you keep it up, so please rest from time to time, watch the sea, breathe the ozone, listen to the birds and watch the early buds of spring swell into leaves.
Please take more than a single day off whenever the urge hits you. Don't burn out. Your observations are nuggets of gold, and I hope you will share them with us for years to come. So pace yourself!!
YUP
! ! ! YES ! ! !
Has anyone else noticed that today belongs in a fairy tale, but one that we actually lived through? You know, the age ole script of the demons and monsters overtaking the family, only a year later the skies are nearly clear and everyone can glimpse a sense of home. Here’s what happened, just today!
I can’t remember feeling this hopeful since .... I can’t remember. My wife and I watched President Joe Biden reassure, encourage, and trumpet ALL that has been done in the first 50 days of his administration. But he reminded America that this is a team effort, and it is being led by ... well, by EVERY mask wearing American!
Biden had so much to tout about the coronavirus roll-out, he forget to highlight his signing of the most major economic revival legislation, in our lifetime. And that goes for today's oldest living person! $2.1T dwarfs the $.85T market crash revival, 2009 whimper, that Obama-Biden managed after the “free market” crashed and burned due to deregulation.
To see Schumer and Pelosi today at the signature table together, I’d have thought they were signing autographs for 325 million Americans! In my mind, they then lept to their feet as they clasped and heartily shook hands as people cheered in the background! I felt like their team had just won the World Series, and thiner team is America
These two miraculous events, the Biden signature and address, happened on what most people consider to be the 1 year anniversary of the virus taking hold in America - March 11, 2020. That was when professional sports and entertainment venues and dining venues .... turned out the lights.
Now,I feel the lights are back on, and the sun is bursting through. All at 9PM, March 11, 2021.
3.11.2021
His understating of the ARP was intentional. After four years of Pres. Blowseephus, he put the emphasis on us, the American people. It was a fairytale day!
I see a theme building here tonight. You stated it much more eloquently than I. Lovely!
Well, Joe has a positive vibe, doesn’t he? He IS optimistic about America. Remember the wya he ends seemingly every session. “There is nothing America can’t do, when we all work together!”
WHAT IF liberals and progressives talk liked ... THIS! This makes me smile all over again
We're fractious by nature, but need more of Joe's positivity. He's killing it.
Thank You, Frederick! That is exactly how it felt yesterday! A Fairy Tale Come True! President Biden embodying the calm and comfort of FDR, along with the hope of a great new deal. And my "prince" came in the morning, wearing a National Guard uniform, to he give me my second COVID vaccine shot!! One year ago today we hunkered down for the viral seige (tRump being the most virulent of the maladies), with our fears stoked, not assuaged. Now, as you proclaim, "the skies are nearly clear"!! Many thanks to Dr. Heather Cox Richardson for leading us through the mire, and to all of you HCR (first) responders for support, stories and sanity! Cheers!
NICE
Thank you! Loved listening to you and Dr. Freeman discuss history tonight. What wonderful rapport you both have! I appreciate you both so much. #brilliantwomen
Wasn't that fun? I could have listened for hours!
It was, the dynamics and passion they share is infectious. I’ve never loved history as much as I do now.
What I find most astonishing about Joe Biden, as a man who has suffered unimaginable losses in his lifetime, is his ability to transform the grief that is always with him into positive attitude and action. But we should never think for a minute that he isn't continually living with both grief and joy as his bedfellows. These his life experiences have helped shape him into the empathic, competent, and quite regal statesman he is today.
Thank you, Heather. You are so dedicated. Rest.
Yes, what she said. Rest and renew.
Lots of gratitude to HCR for her perspective and effort. Feeling good enough today to imagine the future with more hope. Below is not a rant really but a long discussion of problems and solutions that might have been sufficient to write and not send. But then it is fun to reach out and imagine there is a path to follow.
Yesterday I wrote a blurb linking the difficulties we face in getting our politics to work for us in parallel to the profession I know personally, medicine. Several people chimed in with their own personal experiences validating mine. I am aware that a teacher could do the same. A police captain could probably also write something similar. I thought I would continue the thought especially since it is otherwise a quiet day when we are hoping the relief bill gets signed.
In each case there is the influence of money on a professional, a licensed or badged service provider and a bureaucracy that is overseeing the provision of a service that doesn’t lend itself to competition in the way that building a car does where you can easily go to the next sales room to try out the products and make your own personal decisions.
The staffs of these overseers and especially the leadership are overwhelmingly coming from finance backgrounds where they (1) do not hold a license or a badge and (2) they are acculturated to believe that the way to manipulate a situation is through money. I’m trying to break down the situation in the most simplistic way. I am aware (via my loved sister) that it is always “more complicated” but I feel that it is by this process of simplification that solutions can be discussed. After all what is the point of debate and conversation if not to come to solutions? I am aware that we also love to grouse together but I’m not into that so much this morning. Which is why I’m not giving further examples of the problem. How many do we need to accept the problem as truth and move toward a next step?
I am also aware that this is HCR’s venue and not mine. But I have personally enjoyed when others have written about their knowledge base and their views if only tangentially related to HCR’s.
So what is the solution? Remember when younger Bush ?(I think) got into the business of ‘upgrading’ public education? This was done by linking financing to standardized testing and all the experienced teachers threw up their hands predicting exactly the future we are now in, where teaching has become no more than preparation for these tests which they knew would not, could not, equate to actual education? And, where the root problems in public schools haven’t been fixed. Who was it and how did they come to the conclusion that they knew better than all those licensed practicing teachers? Maybe it was a teacher as some of the ‘leaders’ in medicine also hold MD’s and once upon a time did see patients but are now chasing dollars.
Remember when the Japanese car industry started and took Detroit to the cleaners? (I lived outside Detroit at the time.) Remember Demming who tried to sell his management theory to US industry but got turned away so he went to Japan and became a god? He said reduce the layers of management and if you want to run a company well go where the actual work takes place and ask the guys who are actually doing that work what the problems are and how to solve them. Then just do that. These answers have never been complicated. Always it has been that the people in power who have gotten there by manipulating money are still in power and the only thing they think about, care about, know about is money.
Money gets it done. Money solves the problem. It is a BIG LIE. Money is the problem.
Secret money is just plain toxic. Seems like that shouldn’t be difficult to know. But also as long any money runs our leadership we have a problem. Money isn’t even real. It is not a product. True, it has been the vehicle that has developed the world from the Middle Ages to now but now it is time to move on. We didn’t really have health care issues in the Middle Ages or the 1800’s for that matter. We had food and sanitation issues. We didn’t think or see very large back then.
Money changed that. Now we have health care systems and global food distribution. Now we want equality, to preserve the planet, to raise the bar of over all thought and experience. We want to live in a humanitarian world where being inventive and cooperative is the goal and is rewarded. So things have to change again. Where we had war-lords we now have the super-wealthy. Where we had taxed, mud soaked villages we now have slums, gangs, terrorism and clouds of pollution. Where we had swords we now have guns, rockets and money.
So what does it take to unseat the money people and seat humanitarians to do this not as a blip but as a trend? The For The People Act. (Which means reducing the filibuster) and a follow on movement to not just make the money visible in our power structure but to remove it. Campaign finance reform. Taxation reform. And, the recognition of the expertise of the individual doing the work. Not finance but actual work. Perhaps starting with those service disciplines that require licenses. License them and then let them control their own environments.
This requires user controlled database interfacing because like it or not we are in the computer age and big data is here to stay. Ordinary workers doctors, nurses, teachers, need to be able to see the data, search it, decide themselves how to interact with it and what to do with it. Big data can’t be placed solely at the service of profit. Bill Gates gives a lot of money away but he also controls a lot of big data. Judy Faulkner CEO of EPIC the medical record company… not so much giving but a really lot of big data. Google, big data, controlled by big money. Face Book. On and on. Big data is like the new money. It is just as powerful and just as devoid of ethics. But it is also the key to the future beyond money.
All IM not so HO.
Well that was fun. Way too preachy though. Sorry about that. I definitely don't have HCR's style.
This nurse agrees, too. What I think I hear you saying is that we have "capitalized" medicine (and education) rather than socialized it. Patients are not stock shares in a portfolio and students are not cars on an assemly line, but in America, that is how they are perceived and treated. When money is our god, then money changers are in charge.
This was not always so. The original hospitals were started by physicians, like your distant relative, Dr. James Decker Munson, who were compassionate, caring and focused on bettering patient care:
" [Dr. Munson] eliminated straitjackets, advocated for compassionate mental health care, planted trees, investigated Holstein breeding and milk production, and told stories from the downtown barber chair.
"And when he did, a lot of people showed up to listen.
"Call James Decker Munson, MD, a renaissance man, pioneer, and visionary. He may not have been a Moses, but he certainly turned a lot of untilled, logged-over acreage into a land of promise.
"In addition to sought-after medical skills, the 37-year-old Dr. Munson arrived by train to Traverse City in 1885 with 43 patients and a determination that would weather many difficulties and challenges, and instill a culture of care that remains part of Munson Medical Center today."
https://www.munsonhealthcare.org/blog/james-decker-munson-md-%E2%80%98a-grand-old-man.
Well, that "culture of care" has taken a beating over the last 40 years. Hmm, about the time Reagan became president and money became king? Ironically, though, with the pandemic, I am seeing some very positive changes in both healthcare and education. The god of money has clearly failed us. Perfect time to replace it with a commitment to a cullture of care.
Patrick (Dr. Munson I presume?) You are also speaking about higher education in our current age: top-heavy administrations, obsession with meaningless "focus groups," very expensive consultants who basically are telling educators (foxes) how to suck eggs: all of this operates against providing a valuable educational experience to students increasingly under-prepared for higher education's demands on their brains and time. Faculty leaders yell, stamp feet, and complain but the whole notion of "shared governance" (a buzz-phrase the admin in my uni love to use that is absolutely meaningless) has been debased and faculty are being overwhelmed by top-down demands to control curriculum, monitor research and scholarship, and dictate the relationships that are developed in the classroom between instructors and students. It is all toxic. Moreover, the students know this. And what is driving this particular bus off the cliff? Big money: administrators are more concerned about achieving bonuses from their boards for "keeping costs down." As the perks for Athletic Directors and coaches of NCAA Div 1 sports grow and grow, the budgets dedicated to actual education shrink and shrink. This has been happening since the 1970s but the acceleration of these trends in the last 8 years--because of Republican obstruction in the Senate that slowed the recovery from the Great Recession and the shenanigans of the just-replaced Secretary of Education--has exacerbated faculty loss of morale and a conviction that we are simply going to be cannon fodder for whatever "culture war" the Right cooks up.
Very well written and this retired teacher agrees wholeheartedly. I like the way you “take up oxygen “.
This nurse could not agree more! Thank you for your insights and ideas.
LOTS of excellent insights here, Patrick. Thank you. The ways these systems have evolved into the behemoths they have become is certainly lamentable. I completely agree. Through my mom's lifetime spent in healthcare I grew up hearing about it--almost went into medicine myself, but my total lack of math skills dissuaded me!--and then took note of how it operated. Instead, having an artistic bent, I followed my muse of music, performed professionally as a career singer for 30 years, and ended up working in higher education. There, I saw so much evidence of what you talk about--and what teachers have said below. It is a shame we can't overhaul both the medical system and the "industry" of higher education. They're both HUGE-ticket items and I wonder if they'll ever be reformed to serve the people better, but it doesn't hurt to bitch about them! Maybe one day someone will listen to us. Again, thank you!
I spent a year living in Lithuania not long after the end of communism. At that time, a physician and an elementary school teacher (based on the old Soviet model) occupied the same social status and income range. Both provided a necessary social service and the majority of them were women. And the doctors were pretty good. They could not believe that I had contacted a nearly fatal infection during heart surgery in an American hospital, since their vision of American medical care was utopian, a land of OZ where everything was lavish and mistakes were never made. We have created a society where money is the central driver of almost all efforts, the signature of potency, the foundation of meaning. We should not be surprised when it poisons everything.
Is it just money that has changed this? I'm thinking how much the ad industry especially over the airwaves has affected our thinking & purchasing. They are so good at great a "need" & most of us fail to recognize that we are being manipulated.
I think would include this in the general category of money. Advertisers are only interested in selling and the money that produces. They don't have a humanitarian mission. I would postulate that overt advertising is like that but that much of media has been consumed by advertising. I don't have a problem with this as long as it is regarding products that can be evaluated by real people. Advertising one hospital over another rarely has substance and if it did that would be a problem.
Not preachy - you got right down to the nitty gritty! Good comment & very descriptive of the problems we all are facing.
Dear Professor,
Thank you for writing through the weekend! Rest deeply and happy spring. There is nothing like the Atlantic meeting the sky on the coast of Maine. Peace writer.
Your grateful reader
Have a wonderful evening, Heather. And true that, Spring is coming,in fact already here in California. And tomorrow I go to visit my best friend, first time in a year, to eat fresh oysters (west coast of course) and drink champagne. So very much to celebrate.
So fun. We had just spent a week in county clare just before lockdown and gorged ourselves on delicious west coast ireland gigas oysters (w Guinness...and actually a delicious albarino...) we learned it was the west coast pacific oyster spat that helped launch the resurgence of the Irish oyster beds!
So thankful for you and your wisdom in my life. Sleep well.
Ahh, those little grey cells of yours need their rest. Meanwhile, here's a look at our President's accomplishments in his first 50 days: https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-first-50-days-key-promises-d40e38b8125d1ab2b98661c9ba919238
He’s making up for lost time. This is what leadership looks like.
It's hard to comprehend that only a year after this horror show began and kept intensifying with criminal help from a morally bankrupt president, something more tangible than hope is taking root? And only 50 days since President Biden took office! Imagine for a moment where we would be if somehow Trump was still in office. On second thought, let's not. Instead, let's bask in what expertise, leadership, and empathy have delivered, thanks to democracy in action.
After such a moving address by Biden, seems it's possible that we all can sleep a little better. Heather, I hope your rest was a peaceful as the serenity in your photo. And, after Biden's address, "hope" is the word.
Rest well! I so appreciate your letters and chats and excellent ways of putting the present into context with history! Thank you!
Please take good care of yourself -- I echo the words of Christopher LeeKeenan -- I'd been concerned about the cost to you of so much hard work, so many late nights preparing your invaluable Letter.
By the way, the photograph you gave us is marvelous. Like all the others you've posted when you were taking a break, but more so.
I agree with all those other sentiments. What you write is remarkable. I have no idea how you keep it up, so please rest from time to time, watch the sea, breathe the ozone, listen to the birds and watch the early buds of spring swell into leaves.
Ah, Bless you Heather. Thank you for everything you give and do for the many of us. Wishing you deep, sweet, regenerative sleep:)❤