Could the Public Option Help Keep Us From Eating to Extinction?

According to this Salon article, it may easily be that last night's tuna steak dinner and the haddock in recent weeks consisted of commercially extinct fish. Damnation.

In an articulate comment to the article, the writer says that half the fresh water in the world goes to quenching the thirst of livestock.

Like Laura Rogers at HuffPo, I noticed the ads in the Washington Metro reminding us that 70 percent of our antibiotics are used on livestock that is not sick. Ick.

These are but a few public policy issues that might have more weight in the public discourse if their implementation mattered in a tangible way. Making the "Public Option" available in pending health care reform could close the loop of the federal government's responsibility, so that what producers and harvesters do to our food might show up in our collective health care system as opposed to the disparate private insurance companies' responsibility.

America Can't Wait For Health Care: Day One

USAIR flew about 25 Maine delegates, plus some regular passengers, to D.C. in fine style, on time, early even.

Upon landing we trooped through the beautiful Metro system to the Fairfax Embassy Row, where SEIU has billeted us. We appear to be a group various in age, from upper 60s to barely 20. After a month in Maine's June gloom, all of us fairly drank in the abundant sunshine and warmth pouring down on our heads. I realized I not only left my sunglasses in my car, I had forgotten about the existence of sunglasses.

Elaine from Scarborough, Shawna from I don't-know-where, and I are about to head out for a bite, then to the organizing meeting at the Omni.

I've already seen someone carrying a red Employee Free Choice Sign in the Metro.

Riding the subway today, I wondered whether Washington, D.C., with Obama in the White House, might, rather than the shady, wheeler-dealer, corruption capital, soon morph into the most exciting city in the world. Please forgive the gushing. It could that I am reeling from the sudden sunshine. Or maybe I'm still heartened from the West Wing episodes Stan and I watched last night.



Update, 9:50 p.m. -- Turns out Maine People's Alliance and the Small Business Coalition have also sent contingents, making a total from Maine of around 50, including organizers.

We're just back from the agenda setting lobbyist meetings at the Omni and a moderate rally at Freedom Square, right across from the National Theater, with a stunning view of the Capitol Building.

What I learned at the lobby meetings is that I am a crank. Sure I have a tale of woe and intrigue and I want easily available health care for all, but also I want some explanation why we, as constituents who have interrupted our lives to come to Washington and beg for our Senators' help, fail to get the same attention as the insurance companies.

A tall attractive young mother from Brunswick named Tamsin talked me down by reminding me that Snowe is the only Republican--let me repeat that, the only Republican--who did not sign the pact to uniformly reject the Public Option. (In case the whole Public Option thing is a mystery, here's a great diary on 'kos about it.)

Tomorrow, another rally then lobbying meetings with Snowe's and Collins' people, maybe a couple hours for some sightseeing--lugging frakking luggage may be a problem--then home to Maine on a 9 p.m.-ish flight. More later.

Obama Cracks Wise; John Hodgman Outlines America's Culture War

Ah, the literacy and humor of our President makes me proud.



In the keynote speech at last night's Radio and Television Correspondents' Association Dinner last night, the famously understated and nerdy John Hodgman described the rift in our country as one between the Geeks and the Jocks. He calls on President Obama to bridge the gap.



God, I love C-SPAN. Does that make me a geek or a nerd?

Trekking in the Rain

My intrepid sister, friends and hundreds like them set out this morning on their bicycles from Bethel, Maine. They will take three days to ride to Belfast to raise money for the American Lung Association. It's pouring and looks to keep it up all day.

The crush of the last day of school keeps me from singing my little sister's praises properly. Suffice to say she's a hero of mine. She has raised the right money and ridden this trip for at least half of the Trek's 25 years. Me? Twice.

Anyway, Team DeLorme has posted a widget to follow the trip with slides and maps, so I'm putting it up here:

Trek Across Maine 2009

Widget powered by Spot Adventures: GPS Geotagging

Who are you following?

Yet Another Reason to Stay Up Past My Bedtime: Fail Blog

see more Fail Blog

Commercial Fishing Documentary/Jeremiad Opens to Mark World Oceans Day, June 8

From the Guardian, we learn that the documentary film "End of the Line", a film designed to explain the prediction that commercial fishing will end by 2048, has opened around the world to mark World Oceans Day, tomorrow. I wish the film could premiere in Gloucester, Rockland, or Port Clyde for that matter.

Here in Maine, unfortunately, we have no easy access outside a trip to Massachusetts. Those of you scattered around the country will have better luck.

Hope you didn't pack tuna for your lunch this morning.

Maine Family Court Fails to Protect Yet Another Mother and Child

Lori Handrahan, a Phd from the London School of Economics, writes in the Bangor Daily News about her experience escaping her abusive husband and her vain attempts to protect her daughter in Maine Family Court.

My faithful friends who have endured Eli's saga will hardly be cheered.

Some Cold Hard Sad Truth

Just in case you might be feeling some irrational exuberance, here's a Nick Turse article to help you feel the earth's core pulling at us. His waltz through America's current despondence may keep any warm fuzzies at bay for a while.

Read this if you think our country's problems are temporary and can be solved. If they seem interminable and beyond our ken, keep moving, nothing to see here.

My real reason for posting Turse's work is that I want our local papers to do a better job at telling the truth. I expect them to risk controversy and write frankly about our local economy and our neighbors' response to these troubled times.

Writing about the decimated school budgets is one thing; writing about the effects of a nosediving economy on children in marginal schools is another; and telling the real story about what we spend on health care as compared with the dreaded education-tied property tax, a tax that has dropped an average of 22 percent in Maine since 1991, is yet another.

Property taxes are not the issue, folks. I am talking to you Sherwood.

Canadian Reactor's Shutdown Radiates to Maine and the World

In a potentially tragic manifestation of the old saw, "the thigh bone's connected to the hipbone; the hipbone's connected to the backbone," a local power outage shut down the Chalk River nuclear reactor in Ontario, Canada; the shut down led to a heavy water leak at the world's oldest nuclear research reactor; the leak caused officials to close the plant indefinitely; the closing has obliterated the availability of certain nuclear isotopes used in both diagnosis and cancer treatment throughout the world, even at Damariscotta's Miles Hospital.

Lana Brandt of Boothbay Harbor, who manages the diagnostic radiology department at Miles, described the lack of isotope availability as serious and global for both patients and doctors. She said the 52 year-old Chalk River reactor's shutdown "brings the world to a standstill." She said the plant supplies more than 50 percent of the world's nuclear diagnostic material.

Though cardiac scans can be done with an alternative isotope, anyone who needs a bone scan is simply out of luck, she said, until either Chalk River goes back online or a new source is found. Patients and doctors wanting to check on spreading bone cancer or see other fine details in bones will probably find the wait, "very worrying," said Brandt.

The aged nuclear plant also closed in late 2007 for several weeks and Canadians have scrapped plans to replace it. Brandt said that before the 2007 closing, she had never seen anything like the sudden lack of availability of the atomic tools of her trade in her 30 years in the field.

Locals used to our small regional hospitals not having every single technology often head to larger hospitals in New England for specialized care. In this case, no one can help, said Brandt. "You can't just go down to Maine Med," she said. "We're all in the same boat."

Canadians have been fighting over this plant's safety for years and it continues to inflame. Political intrigue has plagued regulators and politicians since the head of Canadian Nuclear Safety Linda Keen was fired for refusing to sign off on Chalk Rivers' re-opening in 2007. Parliament opened it over regulator's objections citing the world's need for the isotopes.

The current Canadian closing creates particular concern because of the four plants supplying medical isotopes two others closed recently for maintenance. Netherland's HFR reactor, the single remaining open plant supplying about 30 percent of the world's medical isotopes, primarily contracts with countries outside of North America.

A Bloggy Sort of Gift; a Mother's Big Mistake Redeemed, Maybe

Finslippy, Remains of the Day and Some Pig are my gifts to you, all six of you regular readers. You deserve it. Of course they all write so clearly and humorously, I may never see your IP address 'round here again.

Between Finslippy, Remains of the Day and Some Pig, my Mommy Blog jones gets fixed, I get some great laughs, an education in not sweating the small stuff and some incisive school-based situational humor. I cannot read enough of any of them.

*******

Speaking of Mommy Blogs, when something exciting happens, I occasionally indulge in a little mommyblogging myself. Something exciting happened this weekend, two things actually, one horrible, one wonderful, strangely related. The following post started out as a comment on Some Pig's blog wherein she regrets that her children don't get enough green vegetables. My point to her was that failing to feed children meals of less than perfect nutrition pales next to, say, nearly running over your child.

This past Friday, Eli, newly 8, and I were headed to town after a sick, though apparently not that sick, day home. He had been rediscovering the joy of the Smurfs and Jetsons for too long when he wandered out the door to push the mower (non-motorized)for a bit, making a swath of hay as he went. When I came out I hollered that he needed to bring the mower back up the hill since, a. were were leaving and it looked like rain, and b. our house already looks enough like little Appalachia.

He walked down to get it and I went into the garage to get the car. He must have had the wings of Mercury to get up the hill in the time it took me to s l o w l y roll my aging VW Jetta out. All I know is when I turned my head to see if Eli was back, he was right there, in the window. He had pulled the mower up the hill backwards and suddenly he was in the driveway with his left rubber boot under my right rear tire.

All I could see out the back seat passenger side window was his blond head and turquoise shirt inexplicably close. I'm guessing he was pulling the mower up backwards, hit the car with his back or bottom, spun around and stepped just behind the tire as I was backing out. He hadn't said anything at that point and I could not understand why he wasn't moving out of the way.

Here's the nightmarish part. I don't know what I did next, whether I took my foot off the clutch and continued backing up, thinking I was in first, or whether I pushed the clutch in to change gears. In either case the car went back about another two inches. It felt like a quarter-mile to me, and I'm sure to Eli too, because at that point he sat on the ground. Somehow he communicated, just before he sat down that I should go forward, and that I had not actually driven completely over his foot. So I did. (Manage to go forward, that is.) Quickly. So that my front wheel drive car spat gravel at my beloved little accident victim.

Eli was screaming and he was obviously in pain, terrified, betrayed, surprised and horrified, but through all that I could hear his angry scream, not his sick, or traumatized scream, and I knew that though we had had a terribly close call, Eli was going to be fine.

We got his boot off and his foot looked a little red. His ankle had gotten skun up where he fell, but he could wiggle his toes and flex his foot. Since Eli was insisting, maybe partly because likes to tell a good story and he was hoping for x-rays, we went to the ER. I have had my share of foot and ankle injuries and I wondered if they would even elect to x-ray him. The lovely P.A., Frank, did not think x-rays were in order.

After an hour and a half of exposing ourselves to the worst germs in Lincoln County, we left, Eli handily operating the wheel chair with a cool ace bandage around his ankle.

Saturday, he revisited the t.v. for most of the day and cheerfully hopped around the house when I had failed to deliver a desired item. Then he agreed to walk a few steps when I told him if he could walk at all we would go swimming.

Long fun swim later, he volunteered to take the Y's swim test, swam a length of the pool and treaded water for two minutes. He had been fretting about this test since Thursday when I told him we were switching pools, there were different rules at the new one, and he would have to pass a test. With the lovely lifeguard Emily's calm assurance, he passed with room to spare. I could not have been prouder of him if he had won an Olympic medal, and he beamed as if he had.

On the way home, he said, "It's like you didn't even run over me, Mom."