Two this time, both classic San Francisco shots. Fingers are a bit more cooperative, so I’m making up for lost time.

Raven over the Golden Gate

Fog at Stow Lake, Golden Gate Park

I’ve been working on a few thoughts re: the healthcare “debate” we’re having in the U.S. from my perspective as a “professional consumer” of same. I didn’t plan to write this, though.

I have been seething at the treatment President Obama received addressing Congress about healthcare last Wednesday. The disrespect shown him – not just by Addison Graves Wilson of South Carolina, aka. “Joe the Heckler” but by the entire Republican caucus – was nauseating. Almost to a person, these “statesmen and women” of the opposition heckled the President waving sheafs of paper, petulantly pouted, booed and catcalled, and shot him endless hate-filled sneers worthy of a pissed-off 8 year old. One congressman even walked out for benefit of the cameras. It was disgusting.

Their venom has nothing to do with healthcare. It has everything to do with race.

Like the birth certificate flap that entertained us through the Summer, Spring’s anti-stimulus “tea parties” and pretty much every other pseudo-conflict stirred up since Obama’s election, the racial subtext of the health care “debate” is blatant.

Some people cannot abide having an intelligent, thoughtful black man in the Oval Office.

Finally someone with a pulpit has put the obvious out front and center. Maureen Dowd titled her column in yesterday’s New York Times Boy Oh, Boy, putting the missing word back into Wilson’s shout out, as in “You lie, boy!” Think about it for a nanosecond and you know she’s right. The old racist code word for black men was loud and clear.

Now, read carefully: no, not everyone who disagrees with Obama’s health care plans is a racist. Reasonable people have fiscal objections to government-run health care, philosophical objections, objections about his approach, and there are all sorts of worries about what change might do to our precarious status quo.

Are you hearing those people? No.

You’re hearing a U.S. senator boast how he’ll destroy Obama’s presidency by destroying his health care bill. You hear Master Wilson’s “liar liar” and how it’s netted him over 700 grand for re-election. You’re hearing Lindsey Graham – the so-called “reasonable” South Carolina senator – and a gaggle of other legislators calling the President a disaster.

And as always when politicians blow hard at the bottom of the barrel, they stir up muck.

Look at pictures from last week’s “tea parties”. Read the signs. You don’t need a psychic to see the real point of the protests. Obama is a “Fascist Muslim Communist!” (Will someone please tell me how anybody can be all those things at once?) Another shows Bin Laden passing the terrorist baton to Obama. Some of these fine patriots even put Obama’s picture in a pile of horse manure and took each other’s pictures standing in it. That’s a debate?

Death panels, granny-killers, black-on-white racism, a senator (Inhofe of Oklahoma this time) grandly proclaiming “I refuse to read the [healthcare] bill and I’m proud to vote against it!” Guns at town halls. Radio talk – serious – of killing the President. And anybody who has any kind of rational argument for, against, or middling on the actual issue of health care is a terrorist supporting a terrorist.

Don’t agree? Don’t think it’s racism, just strong opinions about a contentious issue? Take a look these photos from the first “tea parties” in April, set up to protest the stimulus package: “Obama’s plan: White slavery.” “The American taxpayers are the Jews for Obama’s ovens.” You look at the rest. I don’t have the stomach. The racial subtext has been front and center for the opposition from the moment Obama was elected.

The Obama presidency has brought out the best and the worst in America. So many of us have a quiet pride in our nation taking such a significant step last November, including many who disagree with him and didn’t vote for him. But at the other bottom of that barrel are those so incensed by his election they welcome him as termites welcome an exterminator. They cannot abide – abide! This! New! World!

Racism is the venom in the veins of America. It’s time to get it out – to call it out – before it kills us.

This “debate” disgusts me. And it has nothing to do with health care.

It’s hard to take pictures when your hands feel like they’re in boiling water and you can’t pull them out. And it’s really hard to take a picture that isn’t blurry from shaking and is also more or less composed. This the first one in well over a month I’m proud of. It’s also – I hope – a sign that I’m finally moving a little bit in the direction of “nominal” and praise the deities for that.

Poles in fog, McLaren Park

The fog faded the colors, not the computer.
Half an hour later everything was technicolor in sunlight
as the fog withdrew to the Pacific.

This happened yesterday. The only info you need to make sense of it are a) I was in the hospital for a few days about two weeks ago due to high fevers following an endoscopy (a look down the throat), and b) when they were looking, the docs saw something that concerned them,  declaring it Must Be Removed. I agreed. Now if only I could get it done…

Rather than polish it up and risk losing the, er, spontaneity, here’s the eMail I wrote to my friends.

Went to ENT (Ear/Nose/Throat) clinic today to get the thingy in my throat removed. The following happened:

1. Doc saw me, said situation is exactly what the docs in the hospital had said two weeks ago: growth on pharynx, probably papilloma, needs to come out. Said he’ll do an excisional (right word?) biopsy removing the whole thing (unless it extends into my brain or some other inconvenient spot). I said hooray for that! Continue Reading »

This post isn’t likely to make much sense. The pain caused by the autoimmune war my body has declared on itself is so over the top I reluctantly downed half a Norco (Vicodin with less liver-destroying Tylenol in the mix) to dull the fire then for good measure threw in the prednisone I skipped yesterday – prednisone barely keeps Eddie’s War from going nuclear – as I had to hold still for an MRI so the docs can take another stab at figuring out what exactly this dermatomyositis/ GVHD/ mess of a condition might actually be.

Got that? Continue Reading »

Grass at June Lake

I saw some film-based infrared photography and was intrigued. This is an experiment reproducing the technique via Photoshop. Not as good as the real thing, but interesting. A little bit of color is mixed back in – something not seen in real IR photography.

Looking up…

…at a sculpture along San Francisco’s Embarcadero.

Nobody sees a flower, really, it is so small. We haven’t time – and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time. –Georgia O’keeffe

I saw a man on a street corner staring up with such intent he seemed to be studying for an important exam. I think he was.

In his hand was a camera, a Canon EOS, and the objects of his analysis were the powerlines overhead. Or he was noting the angles and shadows of the rooftops on the buildings nearby. Or perhaps it was the textures of the gray clouds left by our last small storm that fascinated. If his exam was an advanced one, he was considering all three.

The man was in the midst of what I’ve come to call the seeing – the act of poring over something, point by point, detail by detail, trying to figure out what is there. What is really there, not the small and disconnected bits we register in our day-to-day and then claim – foolishly – we’ve actually seen something.

Continue Reading »

Otto and street furniture

People leave all sorts of stuff on city streets.
Sometimes you just can’t resist a sit.

In my whine about my latest medical issues, I mention chronic pain. Chronic pain is different from regular pain in the same way a bad mood is different from a blackshade depression. A beloved friend who knows more than most about chronic pain sent me the following. She gave me permission to reproduce it here.

Chronic Pain: A Rant by RLL

It isn’t fair-but it doesn’t give a shit about that.  It just hurts.

Most people don’t know you’re in pain.  They think you’re just in a bad mood or are just being bitchy or difficult and hard to get along with. Some still consider it malingering — a sign of weakness.  Especially when pain starts canceling plans. Others take it personally – if you loved them you’d still want to do this or that like you used to or promised you would.  It’s just a lame excuse.

Chronic pain and its side effects don’t show really, at least not like acute pain.  If you don’t have a body part split open, are not dripping blood, have something wrapped up, slung up or taped down, it can’t really be all that bad and you’re just being a big baby.  You’re just making excuses to get out of something.

Continue Reading »