Bear Nearby

Bear Nearby

Tonight a bear's at the perimeter,
beyond where cabin-lights dissolve.
The animal breaks brush and gulps air,
snorts, working hard, and we hear this.
We glance up at Ursa Major above
the Sierra Buttes, a risen massif.

We figure the bear's breaking down
an apple tree now and gorging--wild
and deliberate, focused and irascible.
We don't walk closer. The bear doesn't
advance. There's a distance to be kept.

There's a fascination in the dark,
which entertains a big invisible mammal
whose family's lived here since before
any human named constellations or
eavesdropped on night's business.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Top Chef

Before I post a poem, here's some this-and-that:

The Lewin Group, which the GOPers and unctuous Charles Gibson (ABC) cite when discussing health-care "reform," is owned by United Health Care, a large insurance corporation, which also controls a database other health-insurance companies use to judge how much you get reimbursed and how much doctors get paid. . . . God willing and if the creek don't rise, as the saying goes, I might be in the High Sierra this time tomorrow, in a pesky canyon that used to resist radio- and TV-transmission and that still resists cell-phone transmission. . . . 'Tis the season when most Northwesterners give up on the pretense of maintaining a lawn and let the grass go blond and brown. Actually, the grass doesn't die; it just looks that way. I saw some poor sod (so to speak) spraying his brown lawn with water tonight, but his heart wasn't in it. Holding the hose was more of a gesture. . . . Meanwhile, I'm hatching Xeriscape plans that feature lots of gravel, boulders, hardy herbs, and drought-resistant plants. --But mostly boulders. One may water boulders, but one doesn't need to do so.


Top Chef

The celebrity tasters sample dishes cooked
competitively by erstwhile celebrity chefs
on a TV food-show. The tasters are
disappointed and get ready to reprimand
the chefs. They're about to opine when the
corpse of a starved person falls from
the ceiling of the TV studio onto their TV
table. Flies swarm out of the corpse's mouth
and seize the tasters' faces. The Food Judges'
hands turn to stone. The competing chefs use
this moment to flee from the show's decadent
premise. In this episode, there is no winner.


http://www.worldhunger.org/

Buddy's Cords of Wood

Buddy's Cords of Wood

Buddy was engaged to marry a woman who
lived in a white house on the hill. He
cut and stacked cords of wood for her.
Before Winter came, she broke off
the engagement and married another man,
who moved in with her. They burned
the wood Buddy had cut. Buddy lived
with his sister from then on. This

was in a town of 225 where few
can afford the luxury of embarrassment.
When Buddy cheated too obviously
at pinochle, the men banned him
from the games for a while. For
decades, an adage flourished in town:
"Don't cut wood for your beloved
until after you marry because some
bastard might end up burning it."


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Sometimes A Cat

This summer, our household features not one but two cats, a cerebral Russian blue, female, who is 10 years old, and a tabby who may have some Norwegian Forest Cat in his background; he is one year old. Her name is Lisa Marie, after Elvis Presley's daughter, and his name is Jerry Garcia. Jerry is a native of California, very laid back but also impulsive. We sense that Lisa Marie desires him to be more thoughtful. Unless they are supervised, the cats must be kept separate. When I watch television, the tabby gets up in a nearby chair and watches it with me. --Just a couple guys watching the tube.


Sometimes A Cat

Sometimes a cat relaxes so much,
it forgets where it is. That is,
sometimes a cat, relaxed, remembers
nothing is any place and anywhere
is nowhere in particular. A cat's
among the most in-particular creatures,
a purely present artist of equilibrium,
a monarch of the moment, eyes like
twin comprehending moons.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Scott Bateman on Lou Dobbs

I'm so old I remember when CNN had some credibility as a journalistic enterprise. No, really, I'm not kidding! Then it decided to "jump the shark" for ratings, so it tolerates the increasingly bizarre, micro-minded, sour-spirited rants of Lou Dobbs, for example. In all fairness, I have to say (well, I don't have to) that observing Lou's hair over the years has been a source of fascination. I am not on firm ground here, as my own "hair style" is an oxymoron. But at one point, Lou's hair looked almost tangerine in color. I'm lucky my job doesn't involve sitting under blazing lights, wearing makeup, and reading from a tele-prompter. To this extent, I sympathize with Lou and other on-camera crooners.

In any event, one of the most talented animators in the land, Scott Bateman, has produced a nice piece on Lou. One great thing about Bateman's work is that it simply but creatively uses the exact words of its subjects. Lou speaks, Bateman animates, and Bateman inserts comments:

http://trueslant.com/scottbateman/2009/07/24/lou-dobbs-nutjob/

On the Road to the Contagious Health-Care Bill

I have to agree with Fran-from-Canada's comment on the previous post: namely, that America's competitive streak prevents the U.S. from simply looking at nations who have successfully implemented health-care (and if it's not "universal," it's not health-care, as "health" refers to "whole") and imitating them, even if we acknowledge that some aspects of our situation may be different.


We mustn't overlook the cynicism of politicians and corporations either. The GOPers have made it plain that their only strategy is to stall and that the strategy is in service of the 2010 election. I think it's refreshing that they admit as much. They rank doing well in a mid-term election higher than providing reliable health-care coverage to (at least) 45 million persons who now go without it and who, if they're "lucky," get some help at an emergency-room. Meanwhile, the DEMsters will wrestle themselves into submission, easy pickings for lobbyists.

But let us turn to a physician who wrote poetry, W.C. Williams, and his "Spring and All," with its genius first line:

Spring and All

by William Carlos Williams

By the road to the contagious hospital
under the surge of the blue
mottled clouds driven from the
northeast-a cold wind. Beyond, the
waste of broad, muddy fields
brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen

patches of standing water
the scattering of tall trees

All along the road the reddish
purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy
stuff of bushes and small trees
with dead, brown leaves under them
leafless vines-

Lifeless in appearance, sluggish
dazed spring approaches-

They enter the new world naked,
cold, uncertain of all
save that they enter. All about them
the cold, familiar wind-

Now the grass, tomorrow
the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf
One by one objects are defined-
It quickens: clarity, outline of leaf


But now the stark dignity of
entrance-Still, the profound change
has come upon them: rooted, they
grip down and begin to awaken


Let us hope that those in charge of delivering the health-care goods will "grip down and begin to awaken."

For more information about this poem and W.C.W., please visit . . .

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5953

Corruption Even a Poet Can Understand

To the extent other industrialized nations pay attention to the U.S., they must wonder why establishing something as basic as adequate health-care for everyone is so hard for Americans to achieve. Availability to solid health-care for all citizens in a nation is about as basic as a good fire department is for a city. In this instance, "American exceptionalism" is not a compliment. Most reliable ratings of health-care systems worldwide put that of the U.S. around 35th (or so).

As you no doubt already know, one reason for our inability to get to this basic goal is that Congresspersons in effect answer to large health-"management" companies and insurance companies, who contribute a lot of money to campaigns and who employ people who previously worked in Congress as staffers. Thanks to a fellow blogger in Tacoma, I was able to look at a simple map of such corruption involving an important participant in the health-care legislation, Max Baucus, a U.S. Senator from Montana (and once you get to the chart, you may click on it to enlarge it):

http://www.sunlightfoundation.com/projects/2009/healthcare_lobbyist_complex/#baucus

Even a poet can grasp the corruption reflected in this chart!

Ancillary problems are that the alleged two-party system is, in effect, a one-party system wherein the two large parties suck up money from the same troughs, and that corporations may legally function as persons, so that trying to limit a corporation's monetary control of elections is depicted legally as an encroachment on "free speech," as if a corporation had vocal cords.

One piece of the current legislation delays the public option (which, among other things, would put pressure on insurance companies and also spread out the risk--you remember that simple insurance-concept) until 2013--after a) another presidential election, and b) a lot of people will have died, some of whom will die because of inadequate health-care. Demographically, it's in the insurance-companies' interest to have a lot of Baby-Boomers die; what a lovely bunch of coconuts. Meanwhile, when a citizen (or a visiting American, for that matter) in Canada or Sweden becomes ill, he or she (now, follow this complexity) goes to a doctor or a hospital to get treated without fear of being turned away for insurance-reasons or of going broke after being treated. Wow. It's almost like when a brush-fire occurs in a city and a crew from the fire department puts it out with water, quickly and professionally. If Baucus were in charge, the truck would show up late, charge the land-owner, and throw gasoline on the fire. Thanks for looking out for us, Max.

And yes, I know nothing is perfect in Canada or Sweden or elsewhere, but the American system suffers from more than imperfection. It just isn't functioning.