I Don't Usually Do This

After reading McAllen, Texas and the high cost of health care : The New Yorker, I made a point of learning something about The Mayo Clinic, especially their business model.

Should have guessed — they're not-for-profit. They know how to make it work, and via their Health Policy Center, they're trying to help congress make it work for everyone.

I left a message asking them to put McAllen at the top of their list next time they consider opening another clinic  and, of course, thanked them for their good work. It would be so very, very nice not to worry about how quickly my insurance (and yours) could be drained past the lifetime policy limits.

I don't usually leave messages at websites, but after reading about and discussing the issues, I just had to let them know their answers are the best I've come across.

The Lottery

Shirley Jackson's The Lottery is a story that will always need to be told, until perhaps its antidote can be written. Finding the antidote, I realize in restrospect, has been a part of my life's project.

So far all I can say is, Celebrate others' creativity, presume good faith, hope with all your heart that positive examples will prevail, and define yourself first by what you love.

Being There

Historical roots are always there to permeate being; it is that into which we are thrown. The given may or may not be re-cognized within the limits into which we are born in time and place. The time and place of a history in its own history determines the limits of being's own understanding of itself, of history's understanding of itself.

This I think gives rise to a sense of arbitrariness that post-modernism recognizes and confuses with relativism. It says, everything could have been otherwise, which leads to everything could be otherwise. Now, history's self-awareness is throwing itself into the future, but continues to argue short-sightedly with contingency.