Community columnist - Rick Starr

This Is It - MJ - a review

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:11:54 -0500

I recently saw and wrote about "Every Little Step", the behind-the-scenes story of the auditions for the Broadway revival of "A Chorus Line".

When you look at the lines of the hundreds of people auditioning for a few precious spots in the show, you realize getting a role is almost like a lottery ticket: someone will win, it will just never be you.

On Government Health Care

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 19:14:37 -0500

I don't know, I didn't hear a lot of people complaining that their flu shots were provided "free" by the government when I got mine the other day. Complaining that there's not enough of the vaccine, quickly enough, sure (please direct your complaints to the private-sector manufacturers who are delinquent in their deliveries, thanks).

But I betcha there a whole rooms full of people taking the "free" flu shots who are simultaneously against "government health care."

Maybe we should make a condition of "free" that they align their views on both issues?

I'm just sayin...

I Got The Last Flu Shot

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 13:58:58 -0500

So I had my annual physical today with my doctor: peed in a cup; he knocked me around with his little hammer; did a quick check of the eyes, ears, nose and throat; finger up the poop shoot, you know, the works, and he says "Have you had a flu shot?"

"Sure," I answered. "I do it every year because of my asthma, when I go down I go down so hard I literally think I'm going to die."

"OK, good," he said, and then continued "How about the H1N1 shot?"

"Nope," I replied. They don't have it, I've been checking."

Well, as it turns out, they do have it - just not at CVS or the other clinic down the road where I occasionally go. Doc told me they have it at the County Health Department, and sure enough he was right.

Corker & Lamar - Republicans for Rape?

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 09:52:24 -0500

So I see that both Tennessee Senators, Bob Corker and Alexander Lamar, have landed prominently on the "Republicans For Rape" website. How does this happen? What's this all about?

Well, it seems that several women working for defense contractors have been raped, only to find out that they can't sue their malefactors, because one of the conditions of their employment contracts is that (you guessed it) they can't sue they employers. In fact, they are required to submit to binding arbitration (including criminal acts such as rape) rather than pursue remedy in the US court system.

In 2008, for example, KBR employee Dawn Leamon finally told her story in public: several months prior she was assaulted and gang-raped by co-workers at Camp Harper in Iraq. While she tried to report the incident, she was pressured to keep quiet, forced to work alongside her rapists, and denied medical attention. This was not the only such incident, it just became the one which finally jumped to public attention when she brought the story to an attorney in Houston.

Reconnecting with Dad

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 21:12:58 -0500

I have been away from this blog for over a month, having previously written that my mother died in June, by a circumstance of timing just days from the date she and my father planned to move into a retirement community. The house they lived in had been denuded of furniture, the move scheduled and accomplished, the excess junk thrown away, and suddenly my father found himself in a new apartment in a new (nearby) town without the companion which was to have made the transition so much easier.

There are four of us children: me, 11 hours away; a brother and sister in Boston, six hours away; and a sister in New Jersey, about 90 minutes distant. That last one was heroic in visiting Dad twice a week, and all of us returned a month later for Mom's memorial service, and we all stepped up our e-mails and phone calls as we were able.

A Good Death

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 20:14:58 -0500

I've been away from the blog for a few weeks, a result of a real-life intrusion: my mother died in the evening on June 20th, at age 91 in Pennsylvania.

Since then I've received an endless torrent of "Sorry for your loss"es and similar thoughts from well meaning people and relatives, as is customary in such matters. But the truth is, I'm glad it's over. I am not grieving. Her life was poor the last 10 years, and miserable the last two. After the sixth "She's in the ambulance, we're going to the hospital" there comes a sense that it's just time. In another culture, perhaps at a different time, this would have ended differently, perhaps better and perhaps not, I don't know. She told my father on more than one occasion "I want to die", but he was angry at the sentiment, and she hung on.

Film review - Every Little Step

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 20:12:33 -0500

Who thought up this concept? It's a reality show about a fake show, which, as we learn in the opening minutes, turns out to be about a real show.

"A Chorus Line", one of the first Broadway productions to eschew plot and story, turns out to have sprung from a 12-hour audiotaped session between Michael Bennett and a dozen of his Broadway dance pals, where he told them "I don't know if there's anything here, but I think there might be a show. Somewhere." Or so one story (this one) goes.

Michael Jackson and the Wall to Wall Moonwalk

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 13:45:41 -0500

Today New York Congressman Peter King (R-NY) called Michael Jackson a "pervert" and called on society to stop "glorifying" him.

Well, I've had somewhat the same thoughts, if less pointed, since Jackson died a little over a week ago. I thought of writing something about it here, except I was in Pennsylvania where my mother had died only a few days previously. I was a bit busy, relocating my father to a new retirement home and dealing with other family matters, so I can't say I was paying full attention, but...

The Beatles: Rain, a review

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 13:52:31 -0500

It was 1968, and my journalism teacher often veered off the textbooks and into arguments about contemporary culture: Vietnam, drugs and anything else which struck his fancy. This particular day it was The Beatles, and the debate was about whether their music was actually art or "just", you know, rock and roll. One of the points he railed about was the last 30 seconds of "Strawberry Fields Forever" and of "Rain."

"How do you call that art?", he asked, pointing to George Martin's simple twisting around of the tape and playing part of the last stanza backwards?

We all thought him hopelessly out of it, of course, because the Beatles were God, leading a generation - and the music industry - into areas no one else imagined. And they did it over and over with each succeeding album: from the sugar pop days of "Meet the Beatles" and and "Hard Day's Night" to "Help!", then from "Rubber Soul" to "Revolver", eventually to "Sgt. Pepper" and finally to "Abbey Road", with a few in between stops with the "White Album", "Magical Mystery Tour", and others.

Debunking the Canadian Health Care Myths

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 19:16:07 -0500

Here's an article in the Denver Post which answers most, if not all of the shibboleths about health care in Canada. It's written by a clinical psychologist, who happens to be, well, read it and see:

As a Canadian living in the United States for the past 17 years, I am frequently asked by Americans and Canadians alike to declare one health care system as the better one.
Often I'll avoid answering, regardless of the questioner's nationality. To choose one or the other system usually translates into a heated discussion of each one's merits, pitfalls, and an intense recitation of commonly cited statistical comparisons of the two systems.
Because if the only way we compared the two systems was with statistics, there is a clear victor. It is becoming increasingly more difficult to dispute the fact that Canada spends less money on health care to get better outcomes.

Wingnuts and Chrysler Dealers

Thu, 28 May 2009 17:26:44 -0500

Ah, conservatives are all a twitter because of the possibility that Chrysler dealerships are being closed down because they donated to the opposition during the past election. One wingnut makes the unsubstantiated charge, and the rest of the lemmings follow. As one blogger said "Posts at RedState, Reliapundit, American Thinker, Gateway Pundit, Joey Smith and Doug Ross" pointed intitially at the remarkable number of closed Chrysler dealerships whose owners happen to have been contributors to Obama opponents, mainly Republicans."

OK, that "blogger" didn't say it, he, like so many others, just repeated it. Repeated it. Repeated it, in an unending chain of unfounded accusation, without the slightest raised eyebrow or moment's reflection of its accuracy.

Here's news:

Another Bogus Statistic

Mon, 25 May 2009 16:16:56 -0500

It makes me crazy. People who should know better - don't. Robert J. Samuelson, columnist on economic matters for the Washington Post and Newsweek, writes that he hopes Social Security and Medicare go bankrupt, and the sooner the better.

Well, intemperate though that might be, it's his opinion and he's entitled to it, even if it's so clearly daft. But what's worse is that he buttresses his argument with the same tired statistics of how much longer people life since the Social Security program was enacted:

"In 1940, life expectancy at birth was 61.4 years for men, 65.7 for women; by 2008, the comparable figures were 75.4 and 80." - Washington Post, May 25, 2009

The trouble with health care

Sun, 24 May 2009 16:19:12 -0500

I'm one who thinks the current health care system is a bit screwy, but I'll leave the details for a possible future column in your favorite local newspaper. In the meantime, I'm certainly not alone in this; there's a debate (of sorts) going on all across the country, and President Obama keeps saying that he's going to propose some sort of legislation later this year. We'll see.

For now what passes for debate goes something like this missive in the current issue of BusinessWeek, as columnist Catherine Arnst opines:

"keep in mind that there are only three ways to pay for universal coverage: Raise taxes, cut payments to medical providers, or ration care."

Cheney vs Obama: What doesn't make sense

Sat, 23 May 2009 08:57:46 -0500

I've been following the recent public controversy between former Vice President Dick Cheney and President Barack Obama over national security, torture, the closing of Guantanamo and other issues, and there are a few things that don't make sense to me. Since nearly all of this kerfuffle is in speeches, no one ever gets an opportunity to say, "Hey, wait a minute," so I will do so here:

For instance, Dick Cheney says waterboarding is a valuable tool, one which has produced "a wealth of intelligence" on plans by Al Qaeda and which has kept America safe. What doesn't make sense? That the last time anyone was waterboarded was in 2002. If the technique is so effective, why did the CIA, or Dick Cheney, or whoever not employ it for the past 7 years? They've certainly had "high value" prisoners along the way; more have been added to Guantanamo, more have been captured on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan since 2002. Have none of these "insurgents" or "fighters" had any information worth pursuing?

A Personal Announcement

Tue, 19 May 2009 21:00:52 -0500

Gay marriage has been allowed, or is about to be, in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Iowa, Connecticut and Maine, as well as the District of Columbia.

I have completed an in-depth survey with my wife, and after careful evaluation we have decided that our marriage has not been affected.

I will keep you up to date on this developing story.