Complex issues in 2 minutes.

I shot the video above 2 years ago, along with a bunch of others. It's a short, maybe too short and too simplistic treatment of the mental/emotional component of being physically ill. I got a few comments on it from people who expected a lot more from a a 2 minute video. I also got some encouragement. Not many comments, but people still watch it a fair amount (compared to some of our other videos). So, maybe one day I'll re-do it longer and more completely. Maybe not. It's short, it's off the cuff, and the issue is one of the largest issues which human beings face.

"Why people get sick" probably should have been called "Some Contributing Factors to Illness". The basic premise being that sometimes people get sick because they need an undeniable excuse to avoid something in their lives. SOMETIMES, being the important word.

Granted, I'm pretty healthy most of the time. I go through long periods being perfectly fine, and then, once in while I get sick and seem to take a very long time to get over it. In my case there are usually some easily discernable psychological patterns there, personal stuff, that's how and why I do any video; to share from my personal experience, as far as that goes and only as far as that goes. Some youtube viewers get that, some get mad when their personal experience doesn't exactly match mine. Or they want to take my "Why PEOPLE get Sick" video and ask me why animals get sick. Not ask, really, but start an argument with me.

In 2 years we've had to learn to simply delete the malcontents, the trolls, essentially anybody who either lacks common sense or just has a chip on their shoulder for reasons which have nothing to do with me. Web 2.0 is not all that it's cracked up to be. Imagine if every TV broadcaster could hear what every viewer across the world yells at their television set. Do you think those "comments" would be worth publishing? That's what happens if you run unmoderated comments on youtube. Actually, it's worse than that: because one comment feeds another comment, and another and another. OK, enough about dogpiling trolls. It looks exactly the way that it sounds, and I'd have to say that it smells about the same way too.

Lately I was very dismayed to find that a video of an older white guy who gets in a fight with a younger black guy got about 1.5 million views in three days. It's still going of course, getting reposted everywhere. I had already come to grips with the fact that any teenage girl in a skimpy outfit doing anything would get far more views than all of our educational videos combined. Maybe that will change some day--- after all, our most popular video is about spontaneous Kundalini awakening and I figured that this would be the most obscure subject of any video that we've shot. Anyway, sex and violence: it's a draw and it's always been a big draw. Even Shakespeare knew how to use that to his advantage, and yet his plays also move in to the profound, some of the highest human concerns and callings. There must be a lesson in that. It's holistic, life includes it all. Don't expect to see Hamlet on youtube anytime soon though, you need to devote several solid hours to really take in the unedited play, and that's the way that it should be.

Sick Again

I can't believe how much I've been sick since Christmas. Near as we can tell, I came down with the swine flu shortly before Christmas. Never confirmed because I never saw a doctor, but all the symptoms were there. Sheryl quite amazingly held off getting sick for the longest time. She seems fearless about this kind if thing, whereas I hate being around contagiously sick people. I've had bouts with pneumonia and bronchitis before, and this was pretty bad-- I ended up sick for all of January. Again, never saw a doctor; partly because I kept thinking I was on the mend, telling myself "OK, well if I'm not much better by Monday--- then I'll go." Monday would come around, I'd feel better, but then find myself feeling punk a few days later. On and on it went.

Around my birthday, Feb 7th, I still wasn't feeling so hot. Lingering respiratory symptoms, tightness and wheezing, and just not feeling up to mustering the energy to watch and enjoy a whole movie in a theater. Not really sure now when it lifted, but somewhere in there I managed to sit through "Avatar" and enjoy it, and gradually felt more and more like I could take long walks in the desert with Sheryl again. And yet. . .

Here came March, and the Juniper pollen started blowing. Last year I discovered I had an acute allergy to Juniper pollen. We are absolutely surrounded by Juniper trees for miles, and not much else. This year the symptoms started in again, though not as badly. And I was determined to make friends with the pollen. It's been a confusing time-- as I did manage, mostly through mental attitude, to slow the response down to just a few sneezes here and there. But then the chest constriction, the wheezing started in again, a deep pain in my chest and a really, really deep cough. In the middle of this we had a house guest who suffers from severe allergies. We assumed I was having a sort of allergic asthma, and when I got desperate I borrowed his inhaler. Suddenly I could breath again. But the following day-- noises in my chest, a headache lasting the entire day, and to make a long story short, within a few days we realized that allergic symptoms weren't really adding up to this, I had chills and a bad cough. . . again.

Enough is enough, I went to a local doctor. Good man, he prescribed me some of the usual stuff: an antibiotic called Cipro, Albuterol in a nebulizer for the wheezing and constriction, a very small does of prednisone (basically an immune supressant for allergic type symptoms). I looked up everything on the net, and have been dealing with all that ever since. Pretty much skipped taking the prednisone, and am good with that decision. I figure when I've got an infection, I'll handle discomfort to some extent in favor of keeping my immune system un-supressed.

Took the Cipro religiously like a good boy, twice a day. I appear to be on a medium dosage. Good news there is that it doesn't give me terrible stomach aches like some anti-biotics have (In case you wondered why I avoided the Doc for so long-- there it is.)

Good news bad news: I can't determine for certain why the Doc chose Cipro, and can't tell if it's actually doing anything good. In the past when an antibiotic "hit the mark" meaning it was eradicating the particular bugs I was infected with, I've generally felt a hell of a lot better within about three or four days. Besides that, there were always obvious changes in the nasty mucous; from nasty thick yellow/grey to a less noxious clear and watery. Not so this time. In fact as of Thursday (four days on the Cipro) I was having so many new noises in my chest it sounded like a haunted house. It seriously scared me, and Sheryl and I determined to call the doc back the next day.

We did, got another clinician, and in my opinion, a pretty weird response: "The Cipro is working" she said, "It gets worse before it gets better."

I though about that, and either she's right, and I just need to give it more time, or she's wrong--- and the Cipro isn't hitting my particular bacterial infection. We can research these things now, and it turns out that Cipro works well on gram negative bacteria, but not gram positive (whatever that means). No antibiotic is perfect, and I wouldn't want anybody to get the wrong idea either, that I'm critical of medical personnel, or think I know better than they do etc. Further, I'm allergic to Penicillin or anything pretending to be it. And, without a lab culture telling the Doc specifically which type of bacterial bug you may have, the actual drug you get prescribed is just a broad-spectrum killer which will hopefully knock back your particular brand of little, hungry, invading critter.

The more I read about antibiotics, the more impressed I am by the cleverness of the people creating them, but also the more horrified I am about how quickly new bacteria strains evolve, the kind which resist being killed by all the wonderful antibiotics which came before. Doctors have to keep up on what the latest and greatest antibiotics are, because they are the only ones which work, for now, until the new bugs kick their collective asses too. Furthermore, this is mostly the fault of patients who take three or four doses and then quit the rest of the bottle--- no matter how many times they've been told that this is precisely how to build antibiotic-resistant superbugs. There are also many good reasons to avoid antibiotics altogether, if you can. And I usually do avoid them, but comes a time when you say, hey, I ain't livin' in medieval times here, gimme some of them good drugs.

Cipro is a pretty good drug, after several tries, we determined a lot of good reasons why this Doc prescribed it, as opposed to say, Clarithromycin. So for now, I'm good with that, good with the idea that considering how incredibly differently this drug works compared to others, that my past subjective impressions may not apply anymore.

These things can get confusing though: for example, the abluterol inhaler that I borrowed about a week ago was a sudden and amazing godsend. Suddenly I could breath. The next day: I was truly sick. All day. Chalked it up to side effects, but what if it wasn't that?

Here's the thing: my bronchial tubes get inflamed and close up for a reason, they're fighting infection. If I force them to open up chemically, then what? Have I interfered with a natural and important part of my own immune system? Same goes for the prednisone; I'll say this, if you've ever needed a steroid to keep your own immune system from killing you, these drugs are like miracles. You get to not die. And that feels pretty good. Same goes for lesser versions like OTC allergy meds; your quality of life compared to gasping for breath, hiding in the house next to a hospital air filter running full blast on a gorgeous Spring day, is just an amazing difference. Suddenly you're normal. Better yet you can train your body to say "hello, I love you" to perfectly harmless pollen, but we haven't all mastered that yet. Wait and see. We will.

But getting back to some of my other meds: I'm not doing the prednisone. I did do the albuterol, twice I think, on Thursday. I also tended to get real "aggressive" in trying to cough up the stuff in my lungs. Why: because I hate being sick. I hate having stuff in my lungs. I want it out, right now. But around the time I started seeing a little bit of blood coming up along with what little I actually was coughing up, I had to rethink the strategy. By late that same night (yesterday) I seemed worse than ever. My chest hurt, my throat hurt, I was wheezing and rattling like you wouldn't believe, and starting to get panicky.

This is the kind of thing I remember from way back when, had several bouts with similar symptoms in 1998. It's not so simple as "coughing it all up". You can injure your lungs doing that, coughing too hard and too often. You can irritate your lungs inhaling medicine too, no matter what it's supposed to fix: your lungs only want to see clean air, and are built to reject anything else. The response to rejecting what you put it in them are a form of pneumonia right there. Sinuses too: they're delicate. You can't just go nuking them with any old home remedy and expect good results. Anyway it's a balance. There are ways you can assist your body to get you well, and ways which you can shoot yourself in the foot. I'm dealing with that this week. I think I could have a had a much better year, so far, had I seen doctors sooner. I don't think I'd even be sick right now. I'd be done with it. And yet, now that I've got a few chemicals in the house, designed to have some pretty powerful effects, I have to be cautious and careful. You can't employ a scorched earth policy against "germs" when you're the earth.

Peace.

My Sweetheart

My sweetheart, Sheryl. We took a walk today nearby. However I started out starving and dehydrated. Not too bright to do that in the desert. It was windy too, and we walked up a sandy gully with few sights we'd not sen before. Oh well. Sometimes the magic works, sometimes it doesn't. Still, this is beautiful country and we can try again tomorrow. I got a few shots, and the weather was very nice, as it has been for several days now.

When the ego loses, sometimes the spirit wins.

We finally got around to shooting some new video. Put one up on youtube here . This one I worked from without notes, it's just one continuous take. We only trimmed off some superfluous stuff at the very beginning and at the end.

In the video I discuss some aspects of loss, effects on the ego and on the spiritual life of an individual whether they chose loss or it gets chosen for them.

Sunflower Print, 24X36"

Shipping a large print to Susan in California, soon. Sunflowers! I shot this back in 2005 I think. Re-edited the file for the size and print process. Very happy with the way that it turned out. Should cheer up whatever room it's in. That's my partner, Sheryl, holding the framed print. Susan chose a black frame and I think it's a good choice. We'd definitely buy from that frame vendor again too, the quality is good and it was packed really well, makes it easy to re-ship. Discovered that Imagekind could handle a 77 megapixel image without choking too. It all went well. Click here if you want one, or email me and we'll handle the details.

On forgiveness

Eric Ball: feels that the resistance to forgive is an attachment to the need to be right. When we lack the capacity to forgive others, it is an indication that we also find it difficult to forgive ourselves. The power of forgiveness is liberating, because it allows the flow of good into your life.

I found this on facebook and decided to quote it. Forgiveness and acceptance of the past comes up a lot in our practice, in one way or another. From time to time we also encounter perfectionism of a variety which is crippling, to the point of paralysis for some. We all have standards, and that's a good thing. But the choice of accepting the flow of life can really get dammed up when judgment is too harsh.

In the grand scheme, "who's right?" can't be the factor in deciding who or what to forgive or to withhold forgiveness from. After all the "unforgivable" does occur, and what do you do then? You can never really move on until you forgive. Not to be confused with approval, nor with being a doormat, forgiveness is for the benefit of those who were harmed, lest a festering wound becomes an evil seed over time.

And that's how it works really-- become the thing which you despise if you work at it hard enough. Not a fun thing to wake up to one fine day. "Hey, I didn't know that hatred is contagious. Why didn't I wash my hands more? I need a shot of Love-a-cillin."

New newsletter is out now

So, this month I wrote the newsletter article and Sheryl contributed something to it as well. Here is the link http://healingcommunicationnews.blogspot.com/ and you can sign up and get it directly to your email in the future if you want.

These days I write more on facebook than anywhere else, but am working on getting my book together too. I have a lot of collected writing, this book will be a combination of my fiction work most likely, and the stories are often true enough. Sheryl does a lot more blogging than I do right here http://healingcommunication.blogspot.com/ and she's got her finished book being shopped around for a publisher.

Follow up on the Government Healthcare issue

I think that the people (us) who originally supported this bill in huge numbers did so because they were convinced that, plain and simple, it meant that the average person in the U.S. would be able to see a doctor without having to worry about what it would cost. Since then the bill has fallen precipitously in popularity, as it has gone through the various compromises and deal making which every bill goes through before it ultimately will be allowed to pass. Has the bill been "ruined" now? Is it still "pretty good", better than what we had before, good enough for starters?

I'd prefer it if people went directly to the official source and decide for themselves. So here it is:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/Issues/health-Care

It's the White House, of course, because I'm not about to recommend some "compromised" source of information where they will seek to re-interpret the whole thing for ya. If you're really diligent, I'm pretty sure you can read the whole bill itself. Part of the problem with politics is everybody wants the sound-bite version, and rarely are things that simple. Trouble with sound bites: consider the source. There is little integrity left in the news media today. It's all going the way of sensationalism and partisanship. Lately my biggest "tactic" whenever I get into an important discussion on Facebook or elsewhere is to simply fact check what people are reporting. Takes about ten seconds on Google. You never won an argument so fast as when you point out that somebody is reporting completely fictional "facts". People lie. They lie a lot. Be careful out there folks.

My little take on public health care.

On the public health care option, which I am in favor of, just so you know why it's been such a huge struggle in a country that's supposed to be a democracy; where it has been clear from day one that the vast majority of Americans would like to get quality health care without having to declare bankruptcy. I'm sick right now as I write this. I appear to be on the mend. If this weren't the case, there is no way that I could afford to see a doctor. I am solidly within the majority of Americans in this case.

Now, if you watch Fox news or otherwise believe everything that you hear, please, before you send me the standard response-- check your facts. The majority of Americans want this (72% http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/06/19/opinion/polls/main5098517.shtml). The majority of Americans have always wanted this. So if you're an American who believes in majority rule (democracy), you might keep that in mind. If you're plenty rich and can afford your own health care--insured or not-- you are in the minority, a tiny minority. If you pay for your own insurance now, and think that this will take care of you if you get sick, think again, and do some research. If you get sick, you will likely have to fight tooth and nail to get your insurer to pay the bills they have promised to pay. In the very least, they will delay payment as long as possible, hoping that you will either give up or die waiting, and that your descendants won't have what it takes to fight it out in court.

If there's nobody in your immediate circle of friends or family whom this has happened to, I'm surprised. It happens so often that it happened to the mother of our current president. She died of cancer in the middle of a fight with her insurance providers. Look around a little-- these cases are all over the Internet. Insurers refusing to pay medical bills is not the exception, it's the norm. In the case of big medical bills, you are more likely to have your insurance canceled because you misspelled your mother's maiden name, or forgot to report that you broke your pinkie finger when you were nine years old than you are to have your bills paid in a timely manner, or in a proportion that you were led to be believe would be of significant value. Next time your premiums come due, however, try paying them late, or pay just %70 of what's due, and see what happens.

A general barometer for the state of health care in any given country is infant mortality. If you think America is doing well with our health care, think again. "Infant mortality in the U.S. is worse than in 29 other countries, including practically all of Europe, Canada and Australia, says a report just out from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
If there's any good news, it's that the situation in the U.S. hasn't gotten even worse. Based on 2005 data, the U.S. ranked 30th in the world in infant mortality, compared with 29th in 2004 and 23rd in 1990. Back in the good old days of 1960, the nation ranked 12th.
Almost 7 infants die for every 1,000 born in America, a 36 percent rise since 1984. That's far worse than the lowest rates--between 2.1 and 2.8 babies per 1,000, reported by Singapore, Sweden, Hong Kong and Japan." ( http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2009/11/us_falls_further_behind_europe.html )

So, if you're pregnant and there's any serious risks to the survival of your baby, you're better off as a citizen of Hong Kong than America. A lot better off, about three times better chances for survival of your baby. Are you a pro-life Republican ? Please factor that in to your concerns.

So, why has this been such a struggle to improve our health care in this country? Bill Clinton couldn't do it. He gave up. Decided to put his efforts elsewhere. He looked at the opposition from the insurance lobby, and the AMA-- and figured he didn't have a chance. It's an issue that is popular with the majority, but most politicians wouldn't touch it because the big money is against them. Big money cares about their own interests, not yours, not about the majority of Americans, it's not about ideology or about what's more American, more right, more just or more anything other than more money for themselves. And politicians are notorious for taking the easy stance on anything that makes them look good, because popularity is their currency, it's their power, and they can accomplish nothing without it.

Back when I was a reporter for a tiny, podunk newspaper up in Bellingham, Washington I had an unusual experience. Unusual for me, that is, but probably very common otherwise across America. More common I should think, when you work for a larger, respected newspaper.
I got sent out to cover a discussion on Dairy products-- out to some tiny town north of Bellingham. I didn't want to go. It sounded boring. Turned out to be quite interesting-- to me, although still challenging to write an engaging article about. I doubt there was more than thirty people in the room, mostly Dairy farmers and their families. Good eats. Lots of butter and bread and milk and cheese. The State Rep attending arrived early wearing a suit, looked around, then got back in his car and re-appeared a few minutes later wearing blue jeans and no tie. The gist of the story was about how the US dairy industry was being threatened by price fixing from foreign dairy markets who are government subsidized. There was some other stuff about foreign countries trying to trademark generic names like "cheddar" or "Parmesan". Not one of my best stories, but it was interesting to me. I was earning about 7 cents per word for every story I wrote. If I got lucky with a headline story: 10 cents per word.

The unusual part came afterward. I wrote the story, did a lot of research including contacting foreign markets to try to get comments to include in the story, got some interest but nothing I could use by deadline. I may have turned the story in to my editor, can't remember for certain, but in any case the story wasn't yet published. At that point I got a phone call from some corporate group I had never heard of. The call came in on my private, unpublished cell phone number.

I returned the call. It was a lobbying group centered in Washington DC, one of the bigger ones. They represented the dairy industry, among other interests (I looked them up). They wanted (if it wasn't too much trouble) a copy of the story I had just written. I told them I'd be happy to send them a link to read it online, just as soon as it was published. They didn't mind at all seeing the unpublished version, which I really didn't understand. How could that be of use ? Hung up the phone, a bit stunned.

If you don't know about lobbying groups, here's an article http://www.washingtonian.com/articles/mediapolitics/4264.html A lobbying group charges big money to exert influence on the laws that get passed, often they author some of the actual language of a bill. One of the top lobbyists in Washington "Jack Abramoff, now resides in Cumberland, Maryland, a guest of the Federal Bureau of Prisons. His prosecution on charges of giving illegal gifts and meals to lawmakers." Ok, so he got caught. What do you think the rest of them do ? Well, the "best" of them anyway. . . and by the way-- it's perfectly legal to take a reporter to lunch. Buy him a car. Buy him a house. Buy thousands of dollars of ads in the newspaper he works for. Buy Fox news. If a lobbying group in DC had offered me a decent salary at that time, I'd have been there in a heartbeat. I'd rather support US dairy interests anyway-- no conflict.

That's how a tiny minority interest with a whole lot of money convinces the Republican party reps that public health care is akin to Armageddon. It's easy. Republicans and Democrats are pretty steeped in an "us-versus-them" mentality anyway. If the Democratic pres says "Blue" you say "Red", it even works on some Democrats. Follow the money y'all, it's that simple. If you wonder why we may finally pass this health care reform bill after all this time-- it's because the #1 most influential lobbying group in DC is AARP, and the baby boomers, which still constitutes the majority of Americans, are all getting old. Older now than they were when Bill Clinton was i office. One of the biggest concerns for the elderly is affordable medical care, and most if us (them?) can still drag ourselves to the voting booth, or write a check to AARP, which owns the #1 and #2 top circulating magazines in the country. #3, Readers Digest (not exactly for the under 30 crowd) Has only one third the circulation of #2. Percentages drop precipitously below that. Arguably AARP is the most influential publication in America.

I'm too sick to keep writing. I must be getting old. Sometimes the majority of American's do get what they want, but one way or another, they buy it.

Another batch of pendants

We made another batch of 25 art-glass pendants here. The last batch was here, and those are all sold out now. We made a few duplicates, and are gearing up to make more. An unusual number of errors slowed us down this time, but overall the process is probably improving. I'm happy with the outcomes and I'm much more involved in this batch than I was with the last. We have far fewer "rejects". I'm becoming convinced that some of our friends are in fact patrons of the arts. It's very heart-warming to be encouraged so, and recently one of our friends paid us generously for a larger framed print also.

Last time I photographed each pendant individually, this time I ganged them together in groups. I probably should have stuck to the original plan, because this time numbering the images for easy identification became an issue. No sooner had I uploaded what I had, but Sheryl decided to direct people to the older, sold out gallery so that people could see the chains. Well, good idea-- but confusing. Pretty much every step has gone about like that this time around, but I'm not complaining, because the artwork is finally selling again and in a form that I know people will enjoy. We sold six in the first hour or two, and would have sold more if we'd had more duplicates in the inventory. Also we're now getting special requests for certain images and likely we'll be able to do that too.

It took me a while to get used to the idea of selling my photos at one and three-eigths inch size, but they actually came out very sharp and viewable at close range. The medium itself is lending more towards a certain type of editing, and I am enjoying the process. Sheryl's art and my photography are selling at roughly the same rate, and that's kind of good too. We even have a few designs where we collaborated--- something I thought would never happen. We're excited about the possibilities and have been brainstorming other ways to be much more actively involved in the printing process and on through the final presentation. This is much different than the ways in which we relied upon outside corporations to print and do order fulfillment and virtually all customer service for the past few years. We've learned. We're still learning, of course, but we much prefer being in closer contact every step of the way.