THINGS THAT DEPRESS ME

As many as 500,000 Louisiana residents — mainly working adults — won’t get government health insurance as a result of Gov. Bobby Jindal’s decision to reject a Medicaid expansion in the law overhauling the federal health care system.

Jindal has said on national television that the new health care law recently found constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court is too costly and allows government to intrude too much into private lives.
Executives of the LSU-run and community hospitals voiced concern that Louisiana could suffer a “double whammy” because the new law decreases money to pay for the care of the uninsured, while increasing funding for Medicaid coverage for many of those same people. Jindal opposes state expansion of Medicaid.

Insurance executives also say they’re worried about Jindal’s opposition to setting up a state-run clearinghouse that allows consumers to shop and compare policies, according to Insurance Commissioner Jim Donelon.
....

DHH Secretary Bruce Greenstein, who is Jindal’s chief public health lieutenant, declined comment again Monday.

He has refused a dozen requests for an interview about the Affordable Care Act, or ACA, since June 28.

If Louisiana expanded Medicaid, the federal government would pay 100 percent of costs for the first three years, then 95 percent for the following three years and 90 percent after that, under the provisions of the ACA. (My emphasis throughout)

So tell me how Jindal's decision not to participate in expanding Medicaid makes any %#@&*$ sense at all.  Why is the secretary of the DHH in hiding and refusing to comment?  Greenstein will have to say something sometime.  What will he say? 

The man who has the title of governor is running around the country, making a fool of himself trying to get Mitt Romney elected, and, in the meantime, leaving the Gret Stet of Loosiana in the hands of surrogates to run...the Gret Stet, which is at the bottom of the surveys in all the positives and at the top in all the negatives, and who, when he does take action, runs the state further to the ground.  By the time Jindal finishes his term, the state will be underground.

AH...EVENTS

 

Your vision after cataract surgery generally doesn't deteriorate over time. However, sometimes the lens capsule that holds the implant becomes cloudy. In such cases, the cloudy capsule can easily be treated with a laser to make it clear again.

Yesterday, after we dropped off my car to have a scraped fender repainted, Grandpère and I continued to the ophthalmologist's office in New Orleans, where I had tests and pictures taken to monitor macular degeneration, which - Thanks be God! - has not progressed since last year.  Then the doctor performed the laser procedure mentioned above to clear up cloudiness in my right eye.  Once the blurriness from the eye drops was gone, I could see an immediate improvement in the clarity of my vision.  What had been my bad eye was now the good eye, and I could see, after the fact, how cloudy my vision had been, and how cloudy the left eye still is.   In a month, I will have the left eye done.  All went well and without pain, but after the hours in the doctor's office and the various procedures, I felt worked over, and we still had to face the traffic before we made our way out of the city and back to Thibodaux.

We returned home after picking up my grandson from day camp; I picked up my laptop and went to my son's house to stay with my grandson until his father returned home from work.   When I reached home later in the evening, our landline phone service was out, so we went through all the procedures of unplugging each phone to check if one of our phones was the problem, but all seemed well there.  This morning, the phones were working again but with static on the line, so I called the repair service and gave my information to the automatic voice connected to no person, and someone is to check the line by Thursday.

The cleaning lady arrived early and began her work, followed by the termite inspector come to check for the little critters.  No termites were found.  As I was eating my toasted Italian bread for breakfast, I crunched down on something hard, which, when I took it out of my mouth, looked like a small stone, and I thought, "What the hell is a stone doing in my bread?"  Upon a closer look, and a strange feeling in my mouth, the "stone" turned out to be a piece of an upper molar.   My dentist will have a look this afternoon, and I'm sure I will need a crown.  Non-stop events take their toll in old age, but I realize life could be much, much worse...whine, whine, whine.  Sorry, sorry, sorry, but I had to do it.

The stained glass eye pictured above hangs in the doctor's office.

PRAYER FOR GENERAL CONVENTION OF THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH & FOR GENERAL SYNODS OF THE ANGLICAN CHURCH IN AOTEAROA, NEW ZEALAND & POLYNESIA AND THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND

Almighty and everliving God, source of all wisdom and understanding, be present with those who take counsel in General Convention and two General Synods for the renewal and mission of your Churches. Teach us in all things to seek first your honor and glory. Guide us to perceive what is right, and grant us both the courage to pursue it and the grace to accomplish it; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (The Book of Common Prayer)

Note: I added the Church of England General Synod to our prayers.

MY WEEKLY REMINDER

OUR MAN DIARMAID ON WOMEN BISHOPS IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND

Well, Diarmaid MacCullough is our man in a way, as he's a member of the No Anglican Covenant Coalition.  In his latest article in the Guardian, MacCullough notes that despite claims to the contrary, in the early church the label "apostles" is not limited to the 12 named in the Gospels.  Paul, writer of the epistles to early churches, emphatically claimed the title of apostle, and, in his letters, he speaks of women in leadership roles and named Junia as an apostle in the letter to the Romans. 

The great distorting factor in Christian history which transcends denominational and many other ecclesiastical divisions is that most history has been written by men. And the truth is that men are for the most part not very interested in women, except in certain very specific ways – most of which have been officially out of bounds, because of the general tendency of past Christian historians to be not just men, but celibate clergymen.

(Pause)  All right, I had to stop for a chuckle.

There is another wild card to take into account in history: the way that something which once seemed so important to everyone can suddenly seem of no significance at all – and then all the worries are rapidly forgotten, as if they had never been. Let me point you to one of the most long-lasting examples: the Christian ban on menstruating women from participation in the sacraments or even from approaching the altar..

Oh ick!...and another chuckle.  Men!

MacCullough doesn't mention Mary Magdalene.  Earlier in the article the writer reminds us that apostle means messenger, and the Magdalene was the messenger at the tomb whom either Jesus (John's Gospel), or the young man in the white robe (Mark's Gospel), or the angel (Matthew's Gospel), or two men in dazzling apparel (Luke's Gospel) sent to the disciples with the good news that Jesus was alive.

Do read the entire article, as it is excellent.   In the end, MacCullough advises the male bishops to just get on with the business of ordaining women bishops.

AT THE MOVIES - AT MY HOUSE

A month or so ago, I broke down and signed up for Netflix.  Tom and I have not been seeing movies in theaters as often as we once did.  The senior discount is a thing of the past.  The smell of popcorn is irresistible; and we end up paying an exorbitant amount for a couple of bags and sometimes a small box of candy and end up spending $40 or more to see a movie.

Okay, so I miss the mystique of the quiet, dark theater, with the large screen and the entire focus on the movie, but along with the $40-plus price tag to have the theater experience comes smelly carpets that are not cleaned nearly often enough and, on occasion, stalls in the ladies without toilet paper.  Then, too, we live in the boonies, and a good many of the movies I want to see are never shown at the theater in the next town over and would involve a trip to New Orleans.

The Netflix plan I chose is the one DVD at a time, which suits me well, as I don't have time to watch a movie every day.  The movies arrive a day after mailing, and I viewed four movies last month and one so far this month for $7.99. You may tell me of better alternatives to Netflix, like movies on demand, but I'm not sure we could have the service on our TV sets, since they are old, and we would surely need a box and another remote.  I've just about mastered the two remotes to use the DVD player, and I don't want to learn another.  Grandpère has never learned how to use the player, so I have to set him up each time he watches a film.  Netflix offers the option of watching on the computer for the same subscription price, but I want a bit more comfort than my computer armchair offers...thus Netflix DVDs.

Oh, and I don't care for movie rental outlets, because I can seldom find what I want in the vast space.  Besides, I don't like vast spaces.  So why not have the movies mailed to my house, watch them, and pop them back into the ready-to-be mailed envelopes to await the next in about four days?

Thus far, I've watched the following:

I can't think why I chose an animated film, and one that was shown in 3-D in the theaters as No. 1 in my queue, but there it was.  For some time, I'd been keeping a list of movies I wanted to rent but never did, and "Rio" was on the list.  Anyway, in "Rio" the  animation is well done; the colors are gorgeous; and the songs are tuneful with witty lyrics.  The story is of a parrot, Blu, and a human, Linda, who love each other.  Through a mishap, Blu ends up in Rio De Janeiro and falls in love with another parrot, Jewel, and troubles, separation, and dangers ensue before...you guessed it...the happy ending in which Linda also finds true love.

The second movie to arrive in the mailbox was a winner, "Moneyball", a baseball story about real people.  Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland Athletics, played by Brad Pitt, is convinced by a young Yale graduate, Peter Brand (Jonah Hill) to adopt a new statistical method for choosing players, and he sticks with the method in the face of repeated losses and opposition from within the organization until the team turns around and begins to win and proves the method works.  The theme of resistance to change, the old ways versus the new ways, runs through the movie.  Brad Pitt does a fine job of acting, as does Jonah Hill, and their scenes together are especially well-played.

The film includes a charming side story of the tender relationship between Beane and his young daughter, Casey, beautifully acted by Kerris Dorsey, who worries for her dad when the team is on the skids.

Next up in the queue was Woody Allen's "Midnight in Paris", with Gil Pender, played by Owen Wilson, and his fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams) in Paris as a treat from Inez's father, John (Kurt Fuller) who doesn't much like Gil or the idea of his daughter marrying him.  Mimi Kennedy plays Helen, Inez's mother.  As the movie started and the four characters began to interact, I thought to myself, "This is going to be a long movie.  All these people are insufferable."  Gil is a screen writer but he wants to be a "real writer" of novels.  In the evenings, he roams the streets of Paris alone,  longing for the 1920s when Hemingway, the Fitzgeralds, Gertrude Stein, Picasso, Cole Porter, Josephine Baker, and all the beautiful people lived in Paris.  I can't blame John for not wanting his daughter to marry the dithering and mooning-about Gil.  Gil reminded me too much of Hamlet, another character who makes me quite impatient, so that I want to shout out, "Get on with it!"

Gil gets drunk and lost in one of his walks and hitches a ride in a 1920s car, and - bam!..he's back in time meeting all the beautiful people, and the movie picks up speed.  Of the celebrities from the twenties, Kathy Bates is outstanding as Gertrude Stein, as is Adrien Brody as Salvador Dali.  Gil has a dalliance with Adriana, Picasso's mistress, played by Marion Cotillard, who longs to live in the Belle Époque, and the next thing you know the two are back in the 1890s.  The dialogue in the scenes with the celebrities in both eras in the past is delightfully clever and witty and thoroughly entertaining, but when the movie moves back into real time, the pace slows.

The critics gave the movie very high ratings, with one even saying it was a work of genius, though the same critic called Gil's fiancée his wife, which kind of messes with the plot, so one wonders...

The two next films I'll save for another post, and I will await Netflix's offer of at least a couple of free months for promoting their service - movies for techie dummies.  Thus far, the subscription is well worth the price.

SOM SABADELL FLASHMOB

On the 130th anniversary of the founding of Banco Sabadell we wanted to pay homage to our city by means of the campaign "Som Sabadell" (We are Sabadell) . This is the flashmob that we arranged as a final culmination with the participation of 100 people from the Vallès Symphony Orchestra, the Lieder, Amics de l'Òpera and Coral Belles Arts choirs.

Beautiful!  Thanks to Ann V.

QUESTION OF THE DAY

CERN, via Associated Press

Proton collisions from the search for Higgs boson.

Now that you know it's probable that the God particle (Higgs boson) started it all, have you lost your faith?

FR JAKE BROKE HIS SILENCE

He's arrived at General Convention with his pup to sell his snake oil, which is "Good for Man & Beast".  Do pay a visit and read his post.

One of my fondest memories from GC2009 is a nice, long chat with Terry (aka Fr Jake) as we sat on the sofa in the lobby of the hotel.  Try as I might to call him by his true given name, I called him Jake the entire time.  "Terry" just didn't trip off the tongue.

JANE AUSTEN'S RING UP FOR AUCTION

What excitement! (Well, it is for me, as a true, blue, forever fan of dear Jane.) First the painting of the teenager that could be Jane Austen, and now the ring for which the provenance is much more certain.

A turquoise ring which once belonged to Jane Austen is up for auction at Sotheby's next week. But fans of the romantic novelist will need deep pockets if they are to win the rare piece of jewellery, which has a guide price of £20,000 to £30,000.

The turquoise and gold ring came to Sotheby's from Austen's family, complete with a note sent by Jane's sister-in-law, Eleanor Austen, in November 1863, to Jane's niece, Caroline Austen. "My dear Caroline," wrote Eleanor. "The enclosed ring once belonged to your Aunt Jane. It was given to me by your Aunt Cassandra as soon as she knew that I was engaged to your uncle. I bequeath it to you. God bless you!"

 Other pieces of jewelry belonging to Jane Austen are on display in Chawton Cottage, her final home until she was moved to Winchester to be nearer to her doctors preceding her death a few months thereafter.

In a display case in the drawing room, for example, is a delicate blue bead bracelet with a gold clasp, which belonged to Jane Austen. It somehow seems to symbolize the refinement of her turn of mind. She may have worn the bracelet to balls when she lived in the resort town of Bath - such as those Catherine Morland had the confused pleasure of attending in ''Northanger Abbey.'' In the same case is the topaz cross given to her by her brother Charles and an ivory-colored miniature similar to one that may have inspired the observation: ''The little bit (two inches wide) of Ivory on which I work with so fine a Brush, as produces little effect after much labor.''

How romantic it would be to think that the young Irishman, Tom Lefroy, with whom she flirted shamelessly, gave her the ring, but, since the box is from a London jeweler, it is much more likely that the ring was given to Jane by her brother Henry, who was a banker in London.  And would it be proper for a young man to whom she was not engaged to be married to give Jane a ring?

As I told Lapin, who sent me the link:

Exciting indeed.  I'd bid on the ring if I had the money to spare, but then what would I do with it?  Alas, my collections no longer interest me much any more as I draw closer to the end of life.  It has dawned that you really can't take them with you, and none of my children are interested, except for furniture and my few pieces of good jewelry, which are not antique collector's items.  

Should one quote oneself on one's blog?  Well, why not?

UPDATE: The beaded bracelet, which would have gone nicely with the ring.  I saw the bracelet when I visited the Chawton Cottage museum.