Happy Independence Day! Happy 250th Anniversary, America!

I'm not doing much. It's been really hot (heat index of 108°F) here, although it's a little better since some thunderstorms came through last night, but I don't think I'll go downtown and celebrate. I will babysit the dogs, two of which are terrified of fireworks.

I do love the Fourth. It used to be my favourite holiday. Over the years, that's sort of faded, I guess. I used to go downtown for the festival, but it stopped having many craft vendors, and the art vendors were too pricey. Maybe it's changed now. Hopefully. When I worked at the old Shriners, we could park at work, which was right across from the Idle Hour Country Club and Golf Course, which allowed us an excellent view from the front lawn to watch a wonderful fireworks show. To view downtown, I'd have to deal with parking and a lot of traffic and crowds. I just don't feel like doing that for 20 or 30 minutes of wow.

So my main way to celebrate is wearing my new Kentucky Blood Centre shirt, which celebrates the 250th anniversary of the founding of our country. I didn't actually earn it. I tried, though. I went yesterday, and they had to turn me away because my iron was too low. They went ahead and gave me the T-shirt and a coupon for a pint of Blue Bell ice cream anyway, which was very nice. I can try again in three days, and I'll probably come back Saturday to see if it'll be up by then. Considering I'm post-menopausal and take iron pills, I was a little surprised.

Anyway, here is me a year ago at work, in a silly headband I wore at the reception desk (thanks to recreation therapy). I enjoyed doing things like that because the families seemed to like little touches like that. Besides, it was fun to get a little silly sometimes. Then there's a picture I took this morning in my blood centre shirt.

I have now visited exactly half the states in the Union

1. Alabama
2. Arizona
3. Arkansas
4. California
5. Georgia
6. Illinois
7. Indiana
8. Kansas
9. Kentucky
10. Louisiana
11. Maryland
12. Michigan
13. Minnesota
14. Mississippi
15. Missouri
16. New Mexico
17. North Carolina
18. Ohio
19. Oklahoma
20. Pennsylvania
21. South Carolina
22. Tennessee
23. Texas
24. Virginia
25. West Virginia

I just added Michigan, even if I only saw the Detroit airport. Note, I still haven't visited Florida, the only Southern state not on my list, and the one everyone seems to have been to. Okay, now to bed. Good night.

This, I thought, was very compelling

Mental illness and guns do not mix. We should be doing more as a country, both in treating and supporting the mentally ill, and reducing their access to guns.

Amazingly

I have never made it to Florida. On the other hand, strange news stories and horrible shootings seem to come from Florida. But maybe some day...

These are interesting

But I think a better one for us would have been Waverly Hills Sanatorium, an abandoned and supposedly haunted old tuberculosis sanitorium in Louisville, although since its undergoing tours in the hopes of restoration, maybe it's no longer considered 'abandoned'.

Abandoned America: 50 States, 50 Deserted Places

Four hours and at least two downpours and a thunderstorm later...

I'm groggy, but I'm awake. I saw this and thought it was interesting:

The $2.7 Trillion Medical Bill: Colonoscopies Explain Why U.S. Leads the World in Health Expenditures

Deirdre Yapalater’s recent colonoscopy at a surgical center near her home here on Long Island went smoothly: she was whisked from pre-op to an operating room where a gastroenterologist, assisted by an anesthesiologist and a nurse, performed the routine cancer screening procedure in less than an hour. The test, which found nothing worrisome, racked up what is likely her most expensive medical bill of the year: $6,385.

That is fairly typical: in Keene, N.H., Matt Meyer’s colonoscopy was billed at $7,563.56. Maggie Christ of Chappaqua, N.Y., received $9,142.84 in bills for the procedure. In Durham, N.C., the charges for Curtiss Devereux came to $19,438, which included a polyp removal. While their insurers negotiated down the price, the final tab for each test was more than $3,500.

“Could that be right?” said Ms. Yapalater, stunned by charges on the statement on her dining room table. Although her insurer covered the procedure and she paid nothing, her health care costs still bite: Her premium payments jumped 10 percent last year, and rising co-payments and deductibles are straining the finances of her middle-class family, with its mission-style house in the suburbs and two S.U.V.’s parked outside. “You keep thinking it’s free,” she said. “We call it free, but of course it’s not.”

In many other developed countries, a basic colonoscopy costs just a few hundred dollars and certainly well under $1,000. That chasm in price helps explain why the United States is far and away the world leader in medical spending, even though numerous studies have concluded that Americans do not get better care.

My biggest worry regarding the planned end to my job in two years isn't actually other costs; I'll get a severance and unemployment, and that will help some. It's the fact that I'll lose my health insurance that worries me the most.

Somehow I am not surprised by their findings

A Field Guide to the Middle-Class U.S. Family

Anthropologist Elinor Ochs and her colleagues at the University of California, Los Angeles have studied family life as far away as Samoa and the Peruvian Amazon region, but for the last decade they have focused on a society closer to home: the American middle class.

Why do American children depend on their parents to do things for them that they are capable of doing for themselves? How do U.S. working parents' views of "family time" affect their stress levels? These are just two of the questions that researchers at UCLA's Center on Everyday Lives of Families, or CELF, are trying to answer in their work.

By studying families at home—or, as the scientists say, "in vivo"—rather than in a lab, they hope to better grasp how families with two working parents balance child care, household duties and career, and how this balance affects their health and well-being.

Want to know where your US taxes go?

Use the tax-receipt tool announced on the White House blog. Or you can try it right here (it puts some white space at the end of this post, so just scroll down for the rest of them):

I suspect Brits love stories of Americans like this

Defecating dog sparks US shootout

Two neighbours in the US state of Mississippi drew weapons and fired at each other as an argument over a defecating dog ran out of control.

I once filed assault 4th degree charges against a particularly unpleasant man who threatened to poison my dogs because he thought (erroneously) that one had urinated on his bush. I wanted a paper trail in case anything came of it. But drawing guns...well, that's even crazier.

I love the bit about the elevator...

A British journalist reflects on his time in the US after 3 years and 46 states:

Kevin Connolly's guide to American culture

But there are, of course, irritations to living anywhere, and it is the job of the irritable to find them.

Americans could make their public spaces a little quieter, for example, if they all took one step closer to the person they are talking to.

And they could speed up their journeys to work by not insisting on holding every elevator for everyone who wants to catch it as though it was one of the last helicopters leaving the roof of the Saigon embassy in 1975. There will be another lift along in a minute.

And after three years of eating steaks the size of elephant's ears off plates bigger than satellite dishes, all of our crockery back in Europe now looks like it was borrowed from a doll's house. They may take some getting used to.

But America in one sense was exactly as I expected it to be: a place of gripping public theatre at election times, and a place of great private virtue nearly all the time.

I found that private virtue on the night I arrived three years ago on a much-delayed New Year's Eve flight, which slipped and stumbled through the icy skies over the choppy darkness of the cold prairies.

I chatted sporadically to the grandmotherly woman beside me about home, and family, although I cannot in truth remember much of what was said.

But I do remember what happened once we landed.

There were no taxis and my fellow passenger insisted, without checking with him, that her husband would happily drive me to my hotel.

It was a round trip for him in the Arctic midnight of a public holiday of perhaps two or three hours.

I expected to detect at least a flicker of surprise on his face when this was first put to him, but there was none.

"This is America son," he told me, "We help each other out."

Nothing that happened in the three years that followed was to undermine that first impression of friendliness and hospitality.

Sometimes I think we're so backwards for a 'first world' nation

US balks at decriminalising homosexuality: Sixty-six nations wage campaign to better deal with discrimination

Alone among major Western nations, the United States has refused to sign a declaration presented Thursday at the United Nations calling for worldwide decriminalization of homosexuality.

Favourite quote, from Dutch foreign affairs minister, Maxime Verhagen:

'Human rights apply to all people in all places at all times. I will not accept any excuse.'

In all, more than fifty countries opposed the symbolic, non-binding measure, but 66 signed it--including all of Europe, Japan, and Australia. Opposition was mainly seen in Islamic areas, Asia, and Africa. According to the article, in over 70 countries that are members of the United Nations, homosexuality is a crime, and in some of them that crime can be punsishable by death.

International law and boundaries just don't seem to matter to the Bush Administration

US Forces Reportedly Strike Inside Syria:


This 9 days before the election. I hope this goes no further than Syrian protests. I mean, attacking other countries is generally considered an act of war. Nevermind overextending the military, let's fight on as many fronts as possible, right? Who cares about whether we have to go into another country or not? We're Americans; we can do anything we want. What a mentality. Gods, I hope that some cooler heads get put in office before our country goes belly up in terms of international support. It's no wonder the world thinks we're a bunch of cowboys.

Shame

US wavered over S. Korean executions

In the early days of the Korean War, other American officers observed, photographed and confidentially reported on such wholesale executions by their South Korean ally, a secretive slaughter believed to have killed 100,000 or more leftists and supposed sympathizers, usually without charge or trial, in a few weeks in mid-1950.

Funny how when war (regular or Cold) comes up, basic freedoms go right out the window. In this case an ally apparently conducted thousands of killings and the American government stood by, documenting and reporting on it but putting little pressure on the Koreans to stop it.

Also, I hate to admit, things like this, and Japanese internment camps, and releasing nuclear weapons on a civilian populace--these were all done under the Democrats' watch. We like to think of ourselves as the party that protects freedom. It's Republicans like Bush who curtail our rights, correct? But the wholesale slaughter and confinement of those who either disagree or simply inconveniently exist goes far beyond things like the PATRIOT Act (and for that matter, plenty of Democrats voted for that, too.)

We need to dig up and bring to light these unpleasant truths from the past so that we my learn from it. But I'm embarrassed by my government's choices in the 1950s. I have a bumper sticker, much loved by others, that says something like:

I love my country
It's the government I fear

This certainly reiterates why. I had considered getting a new sticker if the Democrats take the White House in the fall. This just shows that history bears witness that it political affiliation doesn't matter--you still can't trust, especially when given a political machine that operates in secret in the name of protecting freedom.