I had a doctor’s appointment last week, a follow-up to the diagnosis of low thyroid activity. So my doctor is happy with how things are going, and as he opens the examining room door to take me down the hall to the lab for my bloodwork, he says “Let’s head up to the lab” and because I’ve seen Rocky Horror enough to know how to do the Time Warp (It’s just a jump to the left), I replied with “And see what’s on the slab.” This made us both very happy. So I’m sitting and knitting and waiting for the nurse to do the blood draw, when I hear the girls up at the front desk start to complain to another one of the staff members to stop changing the office radio to a country and western station. She replies that this is Taylor Swift and she’s awesome and they need to broaden their horizons.

This leads my doctor to pop out of his office and chide the young woman that she’s one to talk about broadening horizons when she was the person who thought Bruce Springsteen did a lame half-time show at the Superbowl.

I’ll pause for the enormity of that to sink in.

In the event, I let out an audible and completely involuntary gasp and jumped out of my chair and ran out into the hall where this conversation was taking place. I pointed my finger at the girl and said “Blasphemer!” She didn’t bat an eye. No, in fact, she said that it was a weak performance, that the Boss is a talentless old hack and that she’d never seen anything worse in her life. At that point, it was a good thing that I’d jumped up and left my knitting needles in the lab.

I pointed my finger at her again and began to yell “SHUN!!!! SHUN THE UNBELIEVER!!!!” as I chased her down the hall and into another office. My doctor found this whole exchange humorous, which is a good thing I suppose or I might be blogging from a padded cell.

I went to my childhood home on Thanksgiving day, for the annual feast, now held at the Girl Cousin’s home. For twenty years or more, it was my mother’s feast, and the family, and the widows and the orphans all piled in. It went from a sit-down dinner with the good china to a wild and wooly buffet off paper plates. Along with Passover, Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. Food and family and both in wretched excess.

This year was subdued, as the Girl Cousin’s mom was in the hospital with pneumonia. We took her a plate of all the home-made goodies and she sat up in a chair and teased me and ate everything. Then the sun set, literally, and the dementia came back and the anxiety and anger and the family decided to get her out of hospital and into the local hospice house, until she could be stabilized and sent home.

Only the first part happened. My Auntie Em went to the hospice house and 48 hours later, she was gone. She left this world surrounded by her family, which is exactly how she lived her life. The RLA and I drove home to Miami, switched out the clothes in our suitcase and drove back north for her funeral. There was more to it than that, of course: I had been called for jury duty, we had doctors’ appointments and the stupid cat had to go back to the vet with his chronic weepy ear.*

Back north, funeral, back south, back to work. And now my mother has “issues”. I have a new pack of cigarettes and a full bottle of scotch. More later, I promise. It’s just that I am finding it hard to be amusing these days.

* The vet says that this is medically known as “squishy ear syndrome”. He also says that Ming has a “chronic, pernicious exudate”. I say that needs to be the name of my next imaginary punk band…at least Pernicious Exudate.

I have a friend, a long-time friend, and I talk about her here now and then. She’s The Coolest Person In The World TM. We were neighbors in New York City a million years ago, and while we haven’t stayed in touch in anything resembling a regular way, we are still friends.

In June, I bought an i-phone, and my Twitter habit began shortly after that. I started following famous people (Lauren Bacall, Brent Spiner & Kevin Smith). I started following other bloggers (SinPantalones, Quisp & RJFlamingo). And I started following The Coolest Person In The World’s daughter, who is, like her mother, very cool and very funny.

Once in a while I would reply to her tweets. I loved reading about her life in New York City and about her mother: what she was cooking, where they were going, the weather out in the Hamptons. It made me feel closer to my friend than I had in years. It also, quite honestly, made me feel a little bit creepy and voyeuristic, but what the hell, you know? I mean, I’ve know her since she was a twinkle in her papa’s eye, it’s not like I was some Aqualung-type pedophile stalker. And anyway, she’s in college and aspiring to be a stand up comedian, so having strangers read her Twitter feed is something that she should expect.

Several weeks ago, the daughter blocked me from her Twitter feed. It was a surprise and made me feel a lot creepier. I am not exactly hurt or anything, but I miss reading about her mother. It was like being neighbors again, not friends separated by miles and years.

RJ hit me up with a meme. I am not totally averse to memes, and since she singled me out not once, but twice on this, I’m going to play. The instructions say to use one word answers and to tag another 6 bloggers. I won’t tag, but feel free to play, leaving a comment with a link to your answers.

1. Where is your cell phone? purse

2. Your hair? shagged

3. Your mother? zombie

4. Your father? dead

5. Your favorite food? Indian

6. Your dream last night? boring

7. Your favorite drink? martini

8. Your dream/goal? creating

9. What room are you in? studio

10. Your hobby? fiber

11. Your fear? powerlessness

12. Where do you want to be in 6 years? here

13. Where were you last night? here

14. Something you aren’t? unmemorable

15. Muffins? no

16. Wish list item? Paris

17. Where did you grow up? Stuart

18. Last thing you did? drink

19. What are you wearing? dress

20. Your TV? off

21. Your pets? varied

22. Friends? special

23. Your life? feh

24. Your mood? feh

25. Missing someone? Jayne

26. Vehicle? Smart

27. Something you’re not wearing? shoes

28. Your favorite store? Picasso’sMoon (I had to cheat, it has two names)

29.Your favorite color? purple

30. When was the last time you laughed? today

31. Last time you cried? yesterday

32. Your best friend? Renee

33. One place you go to over and over again? Sarasota

34. One person who e-mails you regularly? Bobby

35. Favorite place to eat? Gil’s

I was making copies of advertising tear sheets the other day, standing at the copy machine and daydreaming, when the following caught my eye. It is reprinted with permission from Southern California Physician magazine, the November 2009 issue. This magazine probably doesn’t have the distribution of say, the New York Times, or even Weekly World News, but this essay is too important not to share.

Silence is Consent

Speaking up for the public option, by Howard L. Lang, MD

I cannot remain silent. When I read the opinion articles by Drs. Krauss and DiLibero and the predictable answers to the interview with the Libertarian Cato Institute in the September issue, I felt compelled to respond.

The pigeonholing of “government control of health care” puts ideas into a prefabricated box that has infected and distorted the debate about the public option. Simply put, the public option is nothing more than an option for consumers what would expand choice in the insurance marketplace. Without a public option what will restrain the insurance industry? The public option is the key to expanding coverage and choice, bringing down costs and holding the insurance industry accountable. It is not a “government takeover” of health care. Let us not have these labels blind us to the facts.

The facts in the current legislation, as reported in Medscape Business of Medicine, are as follows:

To put it simply, only consumers who want to enroll in a government-run health plan would do so. Anyone who preferred private insurance could get it.

Government can enhance human freedom and give people options they would not otherwise have. When you consider the involvement of government in K-12 education, helping students to attend college, and unemployment compensation, you realize that the public insurance option is entirely consistent with the American tradition of using government to open new avenues of choice and opportunity.

The fate of the public option as of late October is still undetermined. There is a public option in the three committees of the House and in the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee. There is no public option in the Senate Finance Committee bill.

There is strong support for the public option in the physician community as well as in the public. A recent poll of physicians funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, as reported in the New England Journal of Medicine, showed that 63 percent of physicians supported a plan that contained a public and private alternative with 27 percent supporting a private-only option that would provide subsidies for low income individuals to purchase insurance. The researchers found that 58 percent of physicians surveyed supported expanding Medicare eligibility to those between the ages of 55 and 64. A recent national poll showed that 70 percent of Americans favor a public option as a choice.

Here are more unpleasant facts, not opinion. A Harvard study revealed that 14,000 people per day lose their health insurance and 62 percent of all bankruptcies are from medical costs. This breaks down to 120 people every day, 3,750 people per month, 5 people per hour and 1 American every 12 minutes. All dead because of a broken delivery system which is based on profit, not caring.

The public option uses government as a nudge toward greater competition. The public option is a monopoly and monopsony buster. The 2008 update of Competition in Health Insurance: A Comprehensive Study of U.S. Markets presents new data on the degree of competition in different regions of the country. The study is intended to help identify areas where consolidation among health insurers may have harmful impacts on consumers, providers of care and the economy. Market shares and concentration measures are presented for 314 metropolitan areas and 42 states. This study finds that the vast majority of markets are highly concentrated and are dominated by one or two health insurers. These findings, coupled with higher insurance premiums, higher profits, lower scope of benefits and high barriers to entry, leads to the conclusion that health insurers are exercising market power in many parts of the country. Without a public option providing competition, more of our fellow citizens will be uninsured and more will die.

Another issue is cost to consumers and government which the public option will help moderate. In the October Editors note, one part of the cost issue is addressed. I will add that, as reported in teh Washington Post health care premiums have risen by 300 percent over the past 30 years after adjusting for inflation. Hourly earning for workers, adjusted for inflation, have fallen and any wage increases have been consumed by health care costs. The costs for the approximately 46 million uninsured are shifted to the insured. According to an analysis by the Center for American Progress, this raises premiums for the average family by $1100 a year.

When we look at the entire picture of our health care delivery system it is clear that substantive reform is absolutely necessary. We are talking about the fundamental principles of social justice. Not only would collapse of health reform be a political and policy failure, but a profound moral failure and a blot on our great nation. How we provide health care says a great deal about our country’s heart and soul. Has our soul departed?

The Ayn Rand and Gordon Gecko philosophy of “Greed is Good” is the antitheses of what this country should stand for.

Thucydides was once asked: “When will there be justice in Athens?” His reply: “There will be justice in Athens when those who are not injured are as outraged as those who are.”

I am outraged!

Howard L. Lang, MD is Past President of the California Medical Association and past chair of the AMA Medical Staff Section.

Yeah. Pass that along.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let’s just get this over with. Miz Shoes was disinclined to expend the energy on notes, so this may not be the most accurate recap you ever read. The final adequate three have been chosen and given a meager pittance to create a collection to show in Bryant Park. Tim is subjected to humiliation, delivering forced repartee with Heidi and then having to dance The Bump with her behind the scrim. It’s embarrassing.

Further injury and insult takes the form of a flowery apron, tied neatly over his black suit by Carol Hannah and her mother, as Tim makes biscuits with the women. That is neither a metaphor nor a symbol of something deeper. Sometimes a biscuit is only a biscuit. Carol Hannah has been inspired by a visit to the Duke Campus at night. Apparently, they have some drab grey topiary at Duke.

Next Tim meets the ur-creaky old elevator you’ve ever seen in a horror/action flick and visits Althea in her gritty brick loft, a relic from the days when Dayton was a boom town. Miz Shoes cannot speculate on the decade that may have been. Althea has been inspired by something or another and is making the same black sequin waiter’s jacket she made all season. There are more pants. There are more oversized knits and drab colors.

Finally Tim is allowed back onto the island of Manhattan where he is taken to Irina’s favorite restaurant and he (presumably), but not the viewers, is introduced to everyone at the table. Irina’s sisters all look exactly like her, and she is the clone of her mother. Everyone gets subtitles, and it’s kind of awesome and kind of insulting. Her mother looks like she’s wearing the sweater Irina made for the Aspen challenge. It’s the same color, and has the same cowl neck.

Irina is inspired by New York City, specifically, Coney Island. She has made drab grey tee shirts with the iconic image of the Coney Island ferris wheel. Everything else is black, including the oversized knits. Later, we see Tim telephone her to say that the producers and the lawyers have determined that that iconic image is copyrighted by someone else, and she doesn’t have permission to use it. Irony? Anyone? Anyone?

Finally, it is fashion week and the girls meet again at the hotel. Irina and Althea sit in awkward silence for hours waiting for Carol Hannah, who never shows because she has a stomach virus. But she recovers enough to show up for model casting. Then she throws up. Then Michael Kors and NinaGarcia come

to give some last minute advice. Irina ignores what NinaGarcia tells her, because what would NinaGarcia know about fashion editorials?

Carol Hannah is still sick when Heidi and Tim come to give them the annual Surprise Thirteen Look At The Last Minute For Drama (trademark). To help them, the last three designers thrown off the show get to come and eat ashes and crow. Althea snaps up Logan who is still bow-legged, but no longer wearing the magic shiny pants. Irina tells Gordana to come to Mama, and Gordana pretends joy as she steps to her side. Carol Hannah is so happy not to be puking on national television, that she welcomes Christopher.

Irina pretends to think that Althea somehow channeled her from afar and stole her ideas. They both have knits. Gordana asks for a crochet hook while at Mood. Over on Ravelry, there is debate about the knits. Althea said that she herself had been knitting, whereas Irina merely called hers handknit. So did Irina knit, or did she hire someone to knit for her?

Next week, Irina styles her models like Jillian from Season 4, and we find out who won and like baseball fans everywhere, sigh, well, there’s always next season. It has to be better than this one.