I was sitting in my chair last evening watching the news with my headset on to block out the noise my parrots make in the evening. Through the melodic sound of the newscasters’ voices, I kept hearing a rhythmic banging.  I kept shaking my head thinking there was a problem with the headset. Then I started fiddling with the tuning button on the side of the earpiece thinking I was picking up some construction noise. When nothing stopped it, I took the headsets off and got up to see where the noise might be coming from if it wasn’t from inside the headphones. I pulled the blinds back on my all glass porch door and there at the bottom of the door were not one, not two, not three, but four Stellar Jays rapping on the glass with their beaks. I’d apparently forgotten to put out their evening snack and they were quite annoyed.  When I opened the door to put some peanuts out, they didn’t even bother to fly away but hopped right up to the table where I put the peanuts and were already grabbing them as I put them out.
Someday I fear my home will be the site of a real life Hitchcock scene from The Birds.

Don’t you get the feeling that at some point the people of Germany are going to get a little tired of Americans who oppose any health care reform calling the other side Nazis? I mean, Nazis were like the evilest group in pretty much all of recorded history. And comparing some long winded politicians to them is just… well absurd and ludicrous come to mind.  Isn’t it bad enough that the German people must bear the burden of having actually produced this vile regime? Do they now have to share it with American politicians? I mean, the only two people in America today who can even come close to living up to the Nazi standards are Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh. And they hardly constitute an entire nation.

Back from Barrow. Funeral is a sad reason to go there. But while there they landed four whales and I got to have unaliq and watch all that was going on as a snow squall blew and then disappeared almost as fast as the whales did under the skillful hands of the whalers.  Made me realize how much I missed it.

I have lived through many autumns in the northeastern part of this country and they are beautiful. But autumn in Anchorage is amazing. Before the snow and after the bugs, with golden leaves shimmering in the breeze. It takes my breath away… and not just because the temp is below forty degrees.

Today I give a eulogy for Deborah Lyn, one of the best people it has ever been my privilege to know. I will miss her.

Remember during the Vietnam war how we kept getting those body counts from the military after each battlle as though if we finally had a large enough count of dead bodies we could declare victory?  Am I the only one getting the same feeling out of the numbers now being released by the government about how many Taliban we kill each day?

America’s current health care system should really be called our sick care system because health is simply not its primary objective.

Preventive care, which would actually be caring for your health, is all too often not covered. For instance, the state of Alaska’s retiree health insurance plan will not pay for an annual breast exam if you no longer have a uterus. I have never quite understood the connection but the shortsighted nature of this policy is obvious to anyone who looks at the cost of caring for someone with advanced breast cancer as opposed to someone who catches it early.
Our current system seems to reward illness, not attempts to stay healthy – unless, of course, you are a man and need “help” to stay active. You can understand how some women might resent how quickly “male enhancement” drugs were mandated for coverage while some women are still fighting to get birth control prescriptions covered by their plans.
Many plans still do not cover something as simple as immunization shots, which once again leads to the question of whether it’s cheaper to pay for someone to get immunized or to pay for that person to spend a week dying in a hospital that is charging $300 per box of tissue used.
I find it absolutely appalling that my doctor can tell me that getting a flu shot is my best bet at not getting ill this winter but my insurance plan won’t cover that shot. How can health insurance not cover something so very basic to your health?
Here’s what I think is happening. I think health insurance companies are simply gambling on people dropping dead while waiting for approval of doctor recommended treatments and preventive care procedures. This means more money to put into their executive bonuses. Maybe that’s a short sighted way to look at things, but I don’t think long range planning has ever really been what the profit motive encouraged. If you can make a million today and walk away to spend it on a beach in the Bahamas, why worry about profit tomorrow when it will be someone else’s concern.
I think it has to be pretty obvious to anyone looking seriously as the state of health care coverage in America today that for so long as there are people who can profit from other people’s deaths, the health of those insured is not going to be of paramount importance when choosing which procedures and treatments recommended by medical personnel will be covered.  A much more gripping motive is how much money they can make from premiums without returning any benefits. Anyone who has ever sat on hold while an insurance clerk checked with their supervisor on why your doctor’s recommended treatment would not be covered knows that the ultimate decision on health care is made by anyone but the doctor and patient.
It seems that in America today, no one or thing is more important than the bonuses and dividends given out by insurance companies to their executives and shareholders. I get the impression they think I’m just being selfish to assume that their primary focus should be helping me stay healthy and fight illness or actually treating me as recommended by my doctor when illness strikes.
It’s not that you won’t eventually win the battle over some things with your insurance company. If you have the guts, stamina and stomach to stay the course through innumerable phone calls, letters and information requests to your doctor, you might actually win one occasionally. That is, if you haven’t dropped dead along the way and thus handed an automatic win to the insurance company’s executive suite.
America’s “health” insurance is really illness insurance with people making decisions on treatment based on how big their year end bonus can potentially be. It’s not right that we have an entire industry in this country that makes money on your death while purporting to be about your health.
Whatever else may or may not pass when it comes to health care reform, let’s at least take the profit motive out of the health insurance industry and mandate they become non-profits who actually put their clients’ needs first.
It’s a radical thought but one whose time has come.

This year is Barbie’s fiftieth anniversary. Talk about a role model!  As a girl, I assumed that when I developed breasts, I would also develop a 10-inch waist to match. Didn’t happen. At fifty, her breasts remain upright and perky while mine started heading south two minutes after I hit the half century mark.

I was never a doll girl.  My mother tried. She bought me all kinds of dolls. We found them moldy and rotting in the back room of our old store when mom died. Some had heads. Some didn’t. Some had odd pieces of clothing clinging to them as though they somehow could use those few pieces of cloth to retain a little of their dignity.
Amidst the dolls was a plastic case that, when opened, revealed Barbie’s first closet, filled with clothes my sister carefully arranged for her.  This made sense as Judy was always more of a clothes person than I was. Barbie was where my sister sharpened her wardrobe expertise. I often think her passion for beige comes from her horror at the number of Barbie outfits that began with a layer of glitter. To this day I firmly believe that Barbie started the whole idea latched onto by countless generations of little princesses that a dress without sequins is a dress without purpose.
But as much as my sister was enamored of Barbie and her style, I was equally as bored and eventually very resentful. Why would God give me such an overabundance of development without a concomitant reduction of waist size? Why was God treating Barbie better than me? And why was this happening to me at a time when most of my classmates could still only dream of its eventuality?
When summer arrived in Atlantic City the same year my breasts arrived, the fact that over the winter I had blossomed a good two years earlier than most of my peers meant that I had to move into that category of 50’s bathing suit that involved enough metal wiring to set off every security alarm at JFK.  I went back to Barbie to do a closer inspection of her bathing suit.  She didn’t have any wires.  God apparently built hers in so there was no need for external controls.  Once again I felt shorted.
But the worse moment of all came when I realized that boys were no longer looking at my face.  Not that I’d been that thrilled when they did. I was a painfully shy Catholic schoolgirl of the 1950s, decked out in my little uniform while deciding whether God wanted me to be Joan of Arc or St. Agnes. Boys were a scary distraction. But at least when they looked me in the eye, it wasn’t as discombobulating as when they never raised their eyes above my chest level.  Ken never did that to Barbie.  Ken always looked straight ahead into Barbie’s eyes, never once dropping them or that frozen grin. 
Suddenly my world was all askew. Up was down. Black was white.  Good was bad. And Barbie had lied to me again and again and again. Is it any wonder that I quickly relegated her to the same space at the back of the closet where my Betsy Wetsy was deposited? I didn’t want to change a doll’s diaper and I didn’t want to compete with one for perkiest breasts in the 5th grade.
Now here we are, celebrating Barbie’s 50th birthday. Long after her early followers learned the sad facts of gravity, she walks tall and proud on impossibly arched feet. She continues to do at fifty what she started to do for me so many years ago – make me feel lumpy, inadequate and unaccountably saggy without the help of steel girders inserted coyly into my undergarments.
You’ll forgive me if I don’t feel like saying “Happy Birthday, Barbie.” I’m still too busy trying to figure out how old she’ll have to be for her perk to go poof.

$63,000 and some change. That’s apparently the going rate for dinner with our lovely gal, temporary Sal. Wow!

I found myself wondering whom I would pay $63,000 to have dinner with and realized that the list was extremely limited even if, in my daydream, I allowed myself to have millions and millions in disposable income. I found myself thinking that maybe if Todd served dinner in little tighty-whiteys I might consider putting out maybe $5000 just because he’s kind of hot in a very Alaskan dorky way.  But $63,000 – even if Sarah was serving it in her tighty-whiteys it wouldn’t be worth it.
I think my problem is that I’m Italian and food occupies a very specific place in my life. And in that specific place, $63,000 spent on the food and wine would be acceptable. $63,00 spent on anything else at a meal would cause great consternation and wonderment in my family.  In fact, now that I think about it, does Sarah even drink wine? OMG, an entire meal with her and you wouldn’t even be able to get a buzz on to make the time go by. How horrible would that be?
Given that Sarah rarely reads anything, doesn’t seem all that interested in current events in Alaska or the world at large and gives out sound bites that are vapid unto death by ennui, one has to wonder what the conversation at dinner will be like. How many different ways can she find to say “death squads” or “right to life” or “ gay marriages? Not on my watch”. Of course, I realize she has had some op ed pieces recently appear in the Wall Street Journal but I think she wrote them as much as Levi writes on anything but walls with a spray can.
So whom would I pay money to have dinner with?  Jay Hammond and Charles Dickens come to mind first, rapidly followed by Hunter S Thompson, Jane Austin and St. Francis of Assisi. Until such time as Sarah actually completes an entire term as our governor, or writes a series of amazing, intelligent books filled with unforgettable characters or gets the small animals of the forest to fall at her feet for reasons other than the fact that she shot them, I’ll keep my money in my pocket and dine with my dogs.  They tell some of the funniest stories of what they smelled in yard yesterday…

I thought I’d try to see just how comfortable the jays who come to my porch for peanuts are. I usually put the peanuts out and then sit in a chair on the other side of the porch while they dive in. But last night I stood there with peanuts in my hand. Once before they had come to my hand, grabbed a peanut and then flew off. This time, one of them was bold enough to grab a peanut, toss it in his beak enough to satisfy him that this was not the one he wanted, drop it back into my hand and pick another one. He went through each one in my hand until he found the right one. And each time he dropped the wrong one back into my palm, he cocked his head and looked at me to see if I disapproved of how picky he was being.
Yep, I want to go to animal heaven when I die. It seems like a lot more fun than people heaven… assuming we’ve worked out that lamb lying down with the lion thing by then.

Well, I know now who Kanye West is.  I am not impressed. His momma should have taught him better manners.

For those of you in the Anchorage area, I’ll be at Title Wave Books from 1 to 3 today signing my book. Come on by and say hi.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again… if god had meant women to wear shoes with pointed toes and four inch heels he would have given us much bigger arches and made out toes come to a point.  And no, I did not buy a pair of shoes. I was, thankfully, born without the shoe fetish that every woman on TV and in the movies seems to have. But I was in a mall for a few minutes today and passed a store with shoes in the window and wanted to run in and scream that god never meant us to mince our way across the floor on shoes that brought tears to our eyes… and not the good tears.
Ladies - there is a reason men wear comfortable shoes and still rule most of the world. There is a correlation. Think about it.

Winter has officially arrived.

I applaud any and all efforts made to help people with substance abuse and mental illness get the assistance they need to be off the streets and safe. So I support the recent proposal to use involuntary commitments as a tool towards getting alcoholics and drug abusers into treatment.

But having spent a lifetime working with people with the dual diagnosis of mental illnesses and addictions, I have to wonder how much help will ever be enough for them.
I trained as a nurse in the late sixties.  It was a time when doors were being flung open on mental institutions and a new wave of thought ran through treatment programs. The idea was that with proper support and medication, most people with mental illnesses could live outside of a locked institution and perhaps even create a productive life for themselves.  Civil rights attorneys argued that being mentally ill should not be an automatic ticket to a life locked away from society unless the person could be proven to be an immediate danger to themselves or others.
Since those heady days, we’ve learned a lot more about what happens to this population when it is simply shown the door and wished good luck in future endeavors - because that’s pretty much what happened. All those community mental health centers that were supposed to be built to support this group as it attempted to assimilate into the general population never did materialize in numbers near enough to provide adequate care.
And the mentally ill proved to have ideas of their own about how they would live that often did not include medication or follow up visits to any clinic.  Once on the street, many discovered that alcohol and street drugs made them feel much better than the medication dispensed from pharmacies. For so long as they were not an immediate danger to themselves or others, it was argued they should be free to make these choices.
And so, forty years later, we find ourselves with a somewhat intractable problem and few viable options for resolving it. Involuntary commitment into substance abuse treatment will work for some. But for those who also suffer from mental illnesses, it’s not enough. Even sober, they continue to make poor choices and put themselves in dangerous situations. They continue to go through the revolving door at API. And we seem totally stymied about how to create a long lasting positive change in this population.
Am I arguing for the creation of those horrible institutions where the mentally ill were warehoused in conditions that most of us would not allow for our family pets? No, of course not. But I am arguing that the system we now have is so broken that there isn’t enough money to throw at it to fix it.  And for those families who live from day to day in thrall to the wildly varying vicissitudes of their mentally ill member, it often seems as though they can’t remember a life not dominated by the problem.
That wears families down quickly, even those that start out strong. Given how many mental illnesses don’t show up until the person is in their late teens or early twenties, many families are completed blindsided by its appearance and bewildered by the limited array of choices available to them in dealing with their loved one.
It’s one thing for a lawyer to go to court and argue that someone who only 48 hours before had been admitted to API is now, after two days of medication, doing fine so there is no need for that person to be kept in a locked facility. It’s another thing to be the family of that person who, nine times out of ten, will go off their medication with some immediacy, hit the streets and start the turmoil all over again.
We need to start somewhere in helping people living on the street – those with mental illnesses, those with substance abuse problems, and those who combine both problems into something that seems to defy our best efforts.  Forced detox might be one step. But if we don’t come up with a whole bunch of other steps and see that they are adequately funded and coordinated, the revolving door will keep revolving.