As hot as it’s been, I had no choice but to move my Swiss chard from containers to the real garden. Swiss chard is a big, leafy plant that prefers cooler weather but does handle heat better than, say, spinach. That’s why we grow it – as a spinach replacement. I think any recipe that calls for spinach will do just fine with Swiss
chard. Anyway it was against my better judgement to plant it in this unusually hot, record breaking weather. I planted it late in the afternoon when the sun was low in the west and hoped that a solid 14 hours before it had direct sunlight would give it a fighting chance. It was ok at 8AM but not so ok at noon. I needed to shade it fast or it would cook right in front of me. Have you ever heard of Saw Palmetto? It’s a low growing palm with big, wide fronds atop stems that are sharp toothed like a wood saw. If you handle these bad boys wrong, you are sliced. I have jillions of them in the jungle surrounding the yard so I lobbed off a handful and set them in the garden to shade the chard. It looks crazy but I’m so far off the beaten path that the only person who will give me any grief about it is Nancy. Within the next few days I’m going to have to transplant cauliflower, kohlrabi and celery into the garden for the same reason so if the palmetto solution works for the chard, no doubt I’ll be cutting more shade palms (and fingers). We have a cool front coming in, supposedly, by the end of the week so hopefully I’ll be able to restore dignity to the garden then.

And here’s a little tidbit for those who care – the yellow bush zucchini put out small fruit on 10/13. I planted the seed on 9/20 so that’s about 4 weeks. I’m guessing it will be about that much time before they’re big enough to pick but it seemed surprisingly quick to see little squash babies. At the same time I planted the yellow variety, I planted a green variety and those are not showing fruit yet – probably only a couple days away.

The green bean plants are also growing really fast and I’m guessing a few blossoms will appear in the next couple of days. I was walking the bean row and notice a few leaves were folded over. Sometimes at a leaf tip, sometimes along an edge. It was really easy to spot because the underside of the leaf is almost white and contrasts well against the dark green top side. I pried one open and found a little green worm critter inside. I’m fairly sure this is a butterfly larva since I’ve seen several little yellow butterflies circling the garden. I went to each leaf I saw that was bent over and just squeezed it. That squooshed the interloper and squirted out his green innards. I’m sure I’ll miss some and they’ll manage a new crop of butterflies but I think I’ll win this battle.

I spotted a red fox the other morning about a block from the house. That may explain why the rabbits haven’t been such a problem so far. It would be fairly easy to exterminate the rabbits if I had the heart to do it. They seem to have no fear of me and I can walk right up on them before they move a few feet away. I’m guessing the foxes have a bit more of a chase on their paws.

How bout them Gators. I was fairly sure Tebow would play and also knew Florida was better than LSU. I was hoping, though, that they would start the back-up quarterback, Brantley. We’ve seen him a couple of times when the game was totally out of reach and he’d come in for a few plays at the end but I think it would liven things up a bit with a passing quarterback at the helm for a change. I’ve got a feeling Urban will give him a bit more playing time this season since there are no serious bad ass teams left on the regular season schedule. You never know in the SEC but unless South Carolina trips them up, I think they have a fairly clear shot at the SEC title – that’s looking more and more like a Fla-Ala matchup.

Just a note on October again – we had a week with record colds followed by a week of record highs. I could do just fine without either. An October event that I forgot to mention is Nancy’s trip to Salt Lake so I’m doing the bachelor thing again. She travels to Salt Lake a couple times a year, ostensibly to play bridge, do luncheons, and catch up on all the local scoop. She’s my kind of traveler. We had to leave for the airport by 5:30AM so she set the alarm for 5. And her total luggage was one carry on size bag. Granted it was heavy but still……… I have the routine down tightly now and will be honing my casting skills, surf fishing skills and perfecting the sandwich as the essential meal. It’s still too hot and sunny to do much in the garden so my time will be split between fishing and working on the koi pond project at George’s. Nancy starts putting away leftovers a month or so in advance so I’m well fed and of course the house stays spotless all on it’s own. We have a central vac system so all I do is break out the long hose as soon as she leaves and set it up in the living room for the duration. When I inevitably track in sand, it’s sucked up in 10 seconds. That doesn’t work when Nancy’s here because she doesn’t like the idea of a hose strung across the house all the time.

One thing that happens when Nancy’s away is that generally speaking, I have no idea what day it is. I have no time dependent routines. By that I mean I wake up each day and figure out what it is I want to do and then set about doing it. It really doesn’t matter what day of the week it is – if I feel like or need to do something, well I just do it. Nancy, on the other hand, has a routine that is day of the week dependent. If she goes to quilting, it’s Tuesday; If she goes to Crescent City to play bridge, it’s Wednesday; Welaka, Friday. So I’m in sync with the world by knowing what Nancy is doing on any particular day. I do find that sometimes it’s important to know the day of the week. For example the local newspaper only publishes the fishing reports on Friday so if I don’t happen to know it’s Friday, I might not know what’s going on at the beach or river. And if I lose track of Saturdays, I could miss the Gators football game. Or what if I got up, felt like driving over to the beach to surf fish and found out too late that it was a weekend and the water was full of kids and surfers. I guess I could have her tell me what day it is when she calls but that would really be lame.
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The new item going into the garden this year – Brussel Sprouts. I really don’t like them but Chris assured me that if fixed right, they are edible. He tells me to roast/grill them, coated with olive oil and salt, just like we do for most other veggies now and all of a sudden they’re good. I’m trusting him on this because he always hated them too. One thing about them is that they sweeten up with a deep cold snap. So that gives me something to cheer about when we get the occasional freeze. Wow, nailed the squash but sweetened up the sprouts. I did finally break the code on okra. The trick was to pick them small – as in 3-4”. Anything larger is woody. I guess the bigger ones could be cut in pieces and boiled for a couple of hours but to be edible grilled, they have to be small. The other good thing about okra is that it had no problems surviving with wet roots. Nothing else I tried survived the wet, wet summer – but the okra thrived. Maybe that’s why you link okra with cajun cooking. You just have to pick it every day. So next July when all other crops have gone over the top – I’ll just put in Okra – (anticipate a drought).

Chris had to be in Orlando for a business meeting so he tacked on a few days and spent the weekend here. He suggested that since Nancy’s birthday is later this month, that we leap ahead and have a surprise party while he was home. So we did that Saturday. We had about 20 people and I think she was truly surprised. The other big surprise was the food. I was going to get barbecue from Brian’s but changed my mind and decided to try a local roadside guy instead. This guy has been selling barbecue out of a giant smoker for about 7 years and I’d heard that his ribs were awesome. So I took the chance and placed an order for “enough food to handle 20 people”. Got ribs, chicken quarters, beans and cole slaw. It was ready right on time and enough to feed 30. Fantastic. The meat was fall off the bone done and, in my opinion, much better than Brian’s. And it ended up less expensive. I can see where this place is going to play a big role in my future diet.

The weather behaved – no rain and a nice cool breeze off the lake. The kids got in plenty of swimming and boat riding; the adults dealt with the barbecue and adult beverages. Tina bailed me out with dip and chips and napkins which I had totally forgotten. Had a great, Publix carrot cake. I don’t think that’s Nancy’s favorite but it is mine and since I was doing the ordering………

After the crowd left we were sitting around watching TV about 10PM when we heard this strange sound – which to us sounded like a phone ringing on TV. But it kept up even when the show went to commercial. It was indeed a phone. Simon had left his cell phone and was calling to see if we had found it. Chris figured out what it was and we promised to bring it to him after dropping him off at the airport Sunday morning. At 6AM we were awakened by this weird sound. My first guess was that Chris had set an alarm clock but it didn’t seem to be waking him up. Nancy tracked it down and found it was Simon’s phone in alarm clock mode. So how do you turn off an alarm clock disguised as a phone? When it’s dark and when you are still in zombie mode. One of the buttons she pushed turned it off and we went back to sleep. At 6:11, it went off again. This time it was at least close and I turned on a light to see if I could silence it. I hit the red, end button and it shut up. Must have been a snooze function because 10 minutes later it went off again. This time I carried it out to the living room, put it under a cushion on the couch, piled on all the pillows, and topped the pile with a quilt. Never heard it again. When Chris got up he disarmed it. Turns out I had hit the right button but you have to hold it down for 3 seconds. Who’d a thunk it?

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Put a new wrinkle in the garden – a couple of soaker hoses. I’ve read that the best way to water is with drip or soaker systems and to avoid water on the foliage. We’ll see. Our weather went back to being summer so my cool weather stuff is looking at me like I’ve let them down.

For me, October is a swing month, and I love it. By the end of the month the garden will be fully planted and actually producing the first of the fall veggies. By the end of the month, the speckled perch will have started forming up schools and showing up in the Carbone frying pan. By the end of the month, the bluefish should be showing up strongly in the surf and showing up in the Carbone frying pan. The tangerines will be turning orange and the grapefruit will be turning from dark green to light yellow-green. Both will be table ready by Thanksgiving.

I put away the sleeveless shirts and break out the short sleeve T’s. Put away the shorts and switch to light khaki’s or nylon pants with zip off legs. These are my favorite clothes and I’ll have 2 months before switching to long sleeve shirts and lined jeans.

Cut back on mowing from once a week to once a month.

Be on the lake about 5 PM and in by 6, before it gets too dark and just in time for dinner. By the end of October, that becomes 4PM and in by 6 so I have enough time to clean all the fish I’ll be catching.

I particularly like Halloween here. We are so far out in the woods that there are no trick or treaters. None, zero.

And the hurricane forecasters will soon announce that this season is going to be less active than originally forecast. Technically the hurricane season extends into November even though we all figure mid October. That’s so the experts can make the adjustment in October and say there is still 6 weeks left so don’t let down your guard.
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Another tidbit on Bigeloil. George went to the feed store to pick up a couple of bottles but they were sold out. Tried another feed store in Deland and got it just fine. The proprietor told him that he had a customer who bought a case a month. He was a massage therapist and used it on the job. That made me feel a little better than it was safe on humans.
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Obama assessment thru 3 quarters;

The good:
He likes Charter schools and seems on the right track for education reform
He thinks texting while driving is a distraction
He went all out to help Chicago win the Olympic games
He likes good beer, hotdogs, and pickup basketball

The bad:
He favors socialized medicine
He favors a gov’t takeover of large chunks of the private sector
Spend, spend, spend.

The Ugly:
He hates the military, space programs, advanced weapon systems – short sighted
He hates the CIA – scary
He hates free trade – financially disastrous
He has a Neville Chamberlain view of the world and an FDR view of the US.
Putin, Quadaffi, and Chavez love him. Jimmy Carter loves him. Embarrassing.

Got a new product endorsement to pass on. This one is bizarre and has to do with relieving aches and pains. Working in the garden and on my neighbors new Koi pond project, I develop aches and pains in a variety of spots on my body. For some reason the worst is always in my neck and shoulders. I’m sure it comes from shoveling dirt and moving it around in the wheel barrow. Nancy came home the other day after a bridge game in Crescent City and said she heard of a good remedy for muscle aches and had stopped by the Feed store to pick it up. I laughed when she showed me the plastic bottle of a gel called Bigeloil. It’s a product used by vets for treating animals but all the gals at the bridge club swear by it and claim an old family doctor up there put them on to it. I passed on it the first day but after another morning of heavy lifting, I was hurtin for certain. So I generously applied the gel and rubbed it in per directions. Within a few minutes I could feel it heating deeply and the pain in my neck and shoulders was gone. No kidding, gone. I carried it over to my neighbor’s who was hurting even more than me – his knees were the worst. He rubbed it on after taking a shower and 30 minutes later I got a call asking me where we had gotten it. His knees were pain free. As for me, after two days, still no pain.

It doesn’t smell, doesn’t stain or seem to do anything bad. There are lots of cautions about taking it internally so I won’t try it on a tooth ache. And I’ll probably give it a month to see if I start barking or mooing or growing fur on my neck. But so far, so good. The container says it’s good for arthritis and bucked shins – whatever a bucked shin is. Also strains, sprains, bruises, and superficial wounds. I’m going to make a wild ass guess that it won’t be covered by medicare.
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The fall garden has taken off like a gunshot. Three days after I planted cucumber seeds, they had all germinated. The next day all the squash sprouted and most of the green beans. I would have expected all this to happen 5-10 days after planting. Sure hope they can take the heat. I had to move quickly to put up a temporary wire fence to keep out the rabbits which I saw eyeing the new shoots and licking their chops. We’re supposed to have the season’s first cold front coming in next week. Supposed to drop day time highs down to 87; night time lows to 70. This may not be a cold front by most standards but trust me, that will be a nice drop for us. And with that nice cool weather, I can start thinking about lettuce, cabbage, broccoli and the like. I’m going to try to control myself this year and keep a steady stream of new stuff going – avoiding gaps and veggie overloads. It’s mostly a self control issue because having any areas in the garden unplanted eats at my brain and I’m not very good at pacing the plantings. The other thing I’ll try to do is use wider spacing between plants. That should cut down on the overall crop size but make the plants happier. With any luck we should be eating out of the garden big time by the end of October and then right on thru until next July.

Another reason to love fall – college football. Go Gators. Relatively speaking they have an easy schedule and a better than average shot at winning the SEC championship. But all college football fans are on edge waiting to see which unrated, underdog will dump their heavily favored team.

Here we go again. Ready to start up the garden after 6 weeks of solarization and 2 months of flooding rains. Not sure if the solarization will work as advertised since the rains had to have a cooling affect. About the only thing I learned was that almost nothing grows in the kind of heat and moisture we had this summer. Almost nothing – I did have success with a second planting of okra and the vining Malabar spinach. Didn’t seem even slightly intimidated by the climate. I thought my watermelons were another success but they got about half size and then just split and rotted on the vine. And of course the nematode killing marigolds thrived – too bad those aren’t edible.

I completely reformatted the garden with wider, raised rows in the hopes of promoting faster drainage. As of 9/15 the water level was just a few inches beneath the floor of the garden or about 12” below the raised rows. In leveling the garden I measured a 4” difference from one side of the garden to the other – that’s over a 20′ span – a fairly big slope to make up.

I had planted pepper seeds in pots about 8 weeks ago with the intent of having a good, late fall crop of peppers. But the rains kept coming and the pepper seedlings kept growing until it was put up or shut up time. The seedlings had grown so large, some plants were sporting blossoms – way larger than I had ever let grow before outside the garden. So the big question marks are: will it continue raining or can we hope for some drop in the ground water level? Hurricane season is not over yet but things look placid in the Atlantic – am I tempting Poseidon? Peppers just won’t grow with wet roots so this is a major gamble. Will the large plants transplant ok? I really have no choice; they are not going to get smaller. I planted 8 standard green bell peppers; 4 jalapenos; 8 volcano banana style – these were free seeds sent to me by a seed company so I figured no big loss if they crash. Our next door neighbor pickles the jalapenos so maybe these volcano peppers will make it in the same jars. We’ll be ok pepper wise if half of these make it.

Also planted another wide row with a space saving bush variety of cucumber, a bush variety of zucchini, and a semi-bush acorn squash. And a row of bush beans – half green beans and half wax beans. I’m hoping that it’s going to cool down a few degrees over the next couple of weeks with just the right amount of rain. Doesn’t seem like to much to ask. If all goes well, we could be harvesting these items in early Nov. Probably start the cool weather stuff in a few weeks when the daytime highs are consistently below 90.

Had my annual eye exam yesterday. I really hate it because it takes so long. First the office is always running behind; it’s always full; you get a regular exam then a dilation which takes 30 minutes to kick in; then another wait for the real doc to check for the tough stuff. After the doc does his examination he gives me the results. No problem he says. You have some cataracts starting and one of these days you’ll come in and complain about a little blur and glare and we’ll get rid of them; no problem, a little dry eye macular – but you won’t go blind. If you drink a little red wine, great for the macular – take two glasses instead of one. Great doc. He gives me a prescription for glasses

Finally got trapped into getting a new computer. My old Mac was just fine and all we needed but the internet kept shutting doors by demanding newer and newer access software. We decided on a laptop for a variety of reasons but the driving issue was that living out of the woods means a dial up connection or big bucks. It made it impossible to keep updated software without tearing the machine down and carrying it to Tommy’s for an annual software tuneup. With the laptop we figured we could just carry it off to a place with WiFi and do all the high speed things we needed then. The other thing that was motivating me towards a laptop was a particular program – Streets and Trips – which I thought would be a big help on long road trips – to fill in where the GPS was over it’s head. My big concern about a laptop was the smallish screen and the keyboard with scratchpad instead of a manly mouse. Tom and the guy at the Apple store demonstrated how we could attach a big monitor, keyboard, and mouse to the laptop. So we pulled the plug and bought a new MacBook – and a 24” monitor from Costco. Since the new mac engine will support both the mac operating system and Microsoft, I would be able to operate 100% in the familiar Mac environment and still run Streets and Trips.

I felt fairly confident that the transition would be easy. My confidence was in Tom’s ability to pull it off flawlessly, not my own. And it went smoothly with a couple of exceptions. One of my necessary conditions was to transfer a program that was no longer supported. I had a big time investment in several databases on Appleworks and the replacement program didn’t incorporate a database program. Tom had a workaround with a new program but I really hated to start down that path again. After two tries, Tom broke the code on that and Appleworks now works on the new computer. The other glitch was that we forgot to download a printer driver for a new printer that came with the computer. I knew we had not downloaded it but since there was a disk in the printer box, I assumed it was the driver. It was, but for PC’s not Mac’s. So we carried it back to Tom’s to get the proper driver loaded. So we are back up with the new machine, the big screen, and a real people size keyboard and mouse. Couldn’t be happier.

Last night we decided to see if this WiFi thing would really work. I knew it worked technically because it worked at Tommy’s house but was it really practical for us. I didn’t see me sitting for hours at Wendy’s soaking up megabits. So Nancy and I headed for Deland and slowly prowled the neighborhoods looking for open WiFi’s. Success!!! We found a good one in DeLeon Springs, just 6 miles from the house, and good ones in downtown Deland and at Gator’s landing. We sat in the parking lots and did our high speed stuff. I plan to do the same in Pierson which is only 3 miles away but am already secure with what we found. Personally I’m 98% ok with dial up but Tom put Nancy on Facebook and that is destined to consume her. So this way I just pack her lunch and her laptop and send her off to Facebook her little heart out. And we lived happily ever after. I f this passes the time test, I can see her getting one of those little netbooks and leaving the big, heavy laptop home with me.

Nancy hosted a party for her quilt group yesterday. Normally I wouldn’t mention it on my blog but in this case I was actually drafted to participate. The purpose of the party was to unveil quilts from each of the attendees. These quilts were all built to a certain set of rules and out of sight of the others. Quilts are built by making squares and then sewing the squares together. In this event, each member submitted a pattern for a square. So if there are 10 participants, there are 10 different square pattern designs. The rule is that each quilt has to be built from these squares. The quilter can use additional square patterns, or use any particular square multiple times but each quilt must have each square included at least once. No rules on the material to be used, the colors, or the overall quilt design – totally up to the imagination of the quilter. I think they have 6 months or so to complete the quilt. At the party they each bring in the fruits of their labors all hidden in bags. Here’s where I come in. They give me the bags and then go off to chat, gabber and eat while I set up a display. In this case I had hung a clothesline on our porch and hung all the quilts on the line. I took pictures of all the quilts and then let them know the show was on. The amazing thing to me is that none of the quilts looked the same. In fact, unless somebody had told me, I would never have picked up on the fact that they all used the same squares. With totally random color selection, totally random square arrangement, they were completely different end designs. I can’t begin to describe them but several were geometric arrangements of the blocks, one was a school house, and one was a giraffe. You really had to get up close and study them to spot that they used a common basis.

Rain, rain, and more rain. We are inches from the lake topping the dock. No giant rains as in hurricane rains, but just a succession of 1” days. You know how you see pictures of Asian farmers stooping over planting rice – give me a straw coolie hat and I would look the same. And there are no signs of a let up. Rain chances are forecast at 50% as far as the forecasts go. That’s down from 70% but has really made no difference. My neighbors dock is now underwater with even a little wave action. In a few days it will be over even when totally calm.

Saw some kids who were really happy with the wet weather. I was driving to the beach on a 2 lane, country road. All 2 lane, country roads in Florida have drainage ditches just off the shoulder of the road and right now, all these drainage ditches are full. These particular ditches were fairly wide, maybe 10-12′. I noticed something weird coming at me and was surprised to see a 4 wheel ATV with a couple of boys – maybe 12-14 year olds, driving at a pretty good rate on the shoulder. They had a long rope out the back and were pulling a tube in the ditch with a couple of teener girls hanging on and whoopin’ it up. You know somewhere there are sets of parents thinking their kids are just out exploring on the 4 wheeler. Not sure which was more dangerous, riding on the ATV or the tube.

Had to stop the other day when driving down our little two lane road to let a flock of turkeys cross. I counted 10. They were just walking leisurely across the road, with no particular concern about me bearing down on them. I lived the first 60 years of my life never seeing a wild turkey (except on a bar shelf) and now routinely come across large flocks all over the place.

We just got home from a 10 day trip visiting friends and family. We hit most of the SE going thru AL, MI, LA, TX, OK, MO, IL, KY, TN, NC, SC, Ga and back to Fla. I think we logged about 3500 miles. A few big picture observations:

1. Almost no motor homes on the road. The last time we made a road trip of this magnitude we were amazed at just how many motor homes were on the road. Now, none.

2. All the corn fields across the top of Miss and Louisiana and Texas were burned up. Fields and fields of tall, dead corn. All the corn fields across Missouri, Illinois, and Kentucky were tall, green, and healthy looking. So you can sure tell where the drought is and isn’t.

3. The Dallas area is one, huge road construction zone. And one huge traffic jam. By Dallas area I’m talking a 50 mile radius around Dallas.

4. Interstate 40 from Tennessee through North Carolina is one of the nicest, most scenic interstate drives around. I prefer off interstate driving but this is one big exception.

5. Quilting is becoming bigger and bigger. For the first time there are actually billboards along the road advertising quilt shops. I think that’s over the top; Nancy thinks it’s a sign of progress.

6. South Carolina peaches are the best in the galaxy.

7. People drive faster on I-95 in Florida than anywhere. If you try to hold it at 75 you will be passed on the left, on the right, and have some jerk pushing your rear bumper.

8. Portable GPS navigators are a 98% solution. Except in South Carolina where they’re a 48% solution. I was glad I stuck a couple of AAA maps in the glove compartment just in case. At one point we ended up on a dirt road through a car junk yard before I reached for the old standby. I was tempted to pitch the unit when it had me making a hard left turn in the middle of a bridge but Nancy saved it. It redeemed itself by finding Holloway’s Country Store in nowhere Tennessee.

Highlights of the trip were:

1. Luke and I beat Nancy and Mary at bridge one evening. If you add up 3 days, we sucked gas again but just that one night, we reigned tall.

2. Tommy’s living quarters in Columbia passed muster. He is helping his college guy tight budget by foregoing haircuts. It works for him.

3. Discovering a squirrel nest under our hood. In Kentucky I decided to check the oil and did a scan around under the hood. Up by the windshield on the passenger side I spotted what appeared to be a large bird nest. I pulled it out and noticed that the critters had eaten through a piece of flexible wire conduit and eaten away the insulation on one of the ground wires. No other wire was bared so luckily we weren’t shorting out. My nephew Ali repaired the damage in SC and we noticed that a deep depression on top of the engine block was full of wild cherry pits. It was a cavity maybe 4” x 4” x 2” deep and was chock full. We were able to work a vacuum hose down to suck them out. We’re probably very lucky the whole mess didn’t go up in flames.

4. Attending the Christening of our great-great niece, Grace Marie. Aside from me, we finally have a nice little Episcopal person in the family. No lightning or alarm bells when I passed through the portals. And she basically slept through the event even with 3 cups of water being dribbled on her head.

Well it’s that time of year again. Storm season. So this morning I got up and started getting prepared. Brought out the generator and cranked it up to make sure it would run when needed. Then topped off all my garden equipment with the remaining gas from my stocks and took the empties to the gas station to load up. As it turns out, I have 20 gallons of external storage and over the past year I used every last drop – counting today’s top off. That means I use 20 gallons a year with the mower and chipper since the only time I used the generator all year was to start it once every few months to make sure it was running. I think the generator runs for 10-12 hours on For those of you who have never experienced hurricane season, one of the things that happens is that you lose electricity which shuts down gas stations. So part of everybody’s prep is to be sure your gas tanks are full. If you wait until a couple of days before a storm hits, the stations are mob scenes so I just get it done early and forget about it. Ditto propane so we can grill for a couple of weeks if need be. Beyond that about the only thing we do is tie down all the dock stuff and get anything that could fly fastened down or put away. Move the chain saw up to the house in case we have to cut our way out. That sounds bad but our driveway is a few hundred feet long with jungle on both sides. Big storm wind invariably brings down a couple of big branches if not whole trees and we just anticipate the likelihood of having to clear a path. Right now we’re planning a 10 trip to visit Dallas, Columbia MO, and Rock Hill SC but we’ll be keeping a close eye on the tropics and be ready to abort as weather conditions dictate.

Hey, want to hear a bizarre one. Nancy learned about a quilt shop in Alachua, Fl. We entered the address in the GPS and off she went. The GPS took her to an empty lot. So she called the shop and was directed there verbally. Interestingly the place had the same address as was plugged into the GPS, xxxxx N Main St. Turns out that the house is an old, historic house that was moved to this location and renovated and in Florida if the house is over 100 years old and moved, it has to retain the same house number as it did originally. So even though the house number is totally out of sequence with it’s neighbors, that’s the rule.
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On healthcare – One provision in one of the house health care bills that’s catching lots of heat is the provision for end of life counseling. Some see it as leading to state sponsored euthanasia; some see it as a simple counseling service being added to medicare. Here’s my concern – since when does it take an act of congress to add a simple benefit to medicare? What’s covered or not covered changes all the time and I don’t ever recall hearing about congressional debates. The other thing that bothers me is why it takes 10 pages in a 1000 page bill to add a counseling service. Seems like if it’s that innocuous, it would be done in 10 sentences, even by politicians. Nah, something more to this than meets the eye.

And with no tort reform, liability reform on the table – the whole idea that this is health reform is a joke. Legal costs add about 3% to the cost of healthcare and 3 out of 4 suits brought are fraudulent. And it’s not even open for discussion.

What about the 47M people who are uninsured. Almost half of those could be insured but choose not to buy insurance. 9M are illegal immigrants. Whittle the big scary number down and you get to something more manageable. In fact the number I’ve read for those legal citizens who aren’t covered but would like to be is 9M. What the feds want to do is add all those who are opting out of the insurance system as payers. Most of these folks are young, healthy folks who just don’t think anything is going to happen to them. And mostly they’re right. And that’s exactly who the gov’t wants – people that pay but do not get sick. Can’t blame them for that. Somebody has to pay. But freedom of choice is fairly basic to Americans and that’s what’s stirring up so much anxiety. Most people have made their choice and are happy with it.

But if you just stand back from the whole thing, you know that you are not going to add a bunch of people and have total costs go down. Even to remain $$ neutral, you either have to add money – read taxes – or cut back on services to those currently covered – read senior citizens. It’s simply dishonest to say we’re going to do more for less money. And if you use the argument I’ve heard that as much as half of the new costs could be covered by eliminating fraud and waste from medicare and medicaid – my answer to that is if you can do it, just go ahead and do it. You sure as hell don’t need a new healthcare bill to get rid of waste and fraud. And the fact that there’s that much in the current system is reason alone not to give the gov’t even more control.

My suggestion is to set a handful of objectives, plainly stated, that the big majority can get behind. Things like not allowing insurance companies to drop coverage or not insure because of pre-exisiting conditions. Tort reform to reduce legal costs to medical providers. Create a branch of the FBI that does nothing but go after medicare/medicaid fraud. Not many people would argue with any of these improvements and should not result in higher costs for anybody.

Take anything that smells like Socialized medicine or moral issues, read abortion, off the table.

And how’s this for an idea – open a few Medical Universities in the mold of the military academies. Selective entry, free education, a 5 year commitment to practice at a public health venue – maybe VA hospitals or one of the fully integrated medical clinics sauch as Mayo or Cleveland clinic. Crank out medical professionals to boost the supply and turn them out without the huge debt most graduate with now. I can’t help but think that will help hold costs down.