The Friday Photo
June 5, 2015 
A Little Free Library is a great way to teach children about being part of a community. Both of my grandchildren took books home to read (and helped add more young reader books to the box).
Category: family
Two boxes, 8.5 years
The Friday Photo
May 29,2015
We’re downsizing today. These two boxes are filled with documents spanning 8.5 years (and counting) of some of the most difficult, rewarding, and meaningful work I will ever do.
We have failed our heroes
Today is Memorial, or Decoration Day, a day of pause begun decades ago for decorating the graves of Civil War soldiers.
The long weekend is now dominated by stores holding big sales, high school graduations, blockbuster movie openings, and the unofficial beginning of summer.
Today media outlets will provide us with beautiful photos of thousands of small flags doting the graves of the heroes buried in Arlington. The President will lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown and make some remarks. Local television will update viewers on local ceremonies at 6:00 and 11:00 tonight.
Before the day ends, our country will have 22 more veterans to mourn, soldiers whose lives where cut short due to their willingness to serve in our armed forces.
The United States spends billions on waging wars with no exit strategies. Our fighting forces are built on the backs of the poor, officers who tolerate sexual assault and intimidation, and military families who can’t afford to feed their children without food stamps.
Even worse, when our soldiers return, we fail to provide them with the services they need and deserve.
Our failure as a country is why 22 veterans will kill themselves before Memorial Day comes to an end. Twenty-two brave volunteers who came forward, and survived, will reach their breaking point today and succeed in ending their pain and agony. Twenty-two families, made up of parents, sons and daughters, husbands and wives, nieces and nephews, brothers and sisters, will begin preparations to bury their soldier.
Because there are war injuries we can’t see with our eyes, we fail to see them with our hearts.
We’ve seen the photos
The Friday Photo
April 17, 2015
Twenty years ago we saw heartbreaking photos of heroes and the injured escaping from the Alfred P Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Instead of pouring over the pictures from that awful day, listen to stories of survival told by Christopher Nguyen and his mother Phuong, and PJ Allen and his father Willie Watson, both recorded by NPR’s Story Corps.
Where’s The Friday Photo?
I didn’t post a photo last Friday because I didn’t think I had anything that was worth posting. What I did think about a good bit on Friday, and other days, was about putting Rural and Progressive on hiatus to figure out if I should continue.
It takes me A LOT of time to crank out posts that are heavy on politics. Fact-checking, reading a variety of sources, double checking, proofing, maybe asking for a review before posting, and triple checking take time. When I worked at home and my schedule was flexible I could pick up and put down posts throughout the day.
And then today Hillary announced. So I signed up and donated to her campaign.
This election isn’t about electing the first woman POTUS (even though we’re behind the curve on electing women to national leadership in America). This election is about children, women, seniors, people of color, my LGBTQ friends and family, the middle class, the working poor, our veterans, energy production, peace, public schools, rural communities, national infrastructure, the arts, health care, housing, food shortages, and our natural resources.
So I ‘m figuring out what Rural and Progressive will be in the future.
Got a suggestion? I’d love to hear it.
Among cousins
The Friday Photo
April 3, 2015
Checkers is a universal language,
The groaning board
The Friday Photo
March 27, 2015
My mother-in-law died peacefully this morning before breakfast.Homemade food began arriving in time for lunch.This photo captures most of what arrived after 5:00 pm.
In the rural South no one ever wonders what they’ll eat when they
have to plan a funeral.
Does Charlie love you?
One of the best posts here was written by my friend Man Martin (he corrected the Declaration of Independence). Man usually writes for laughter, but this essay demonstrates his skills go far beyond humor. Please read it and then share it.
Plays with matches
The Friday Photo
March 20, 2015
This pendant was made for me by Life is a Verb Camper Jen Land. I wear it everyday as a reminder to be invested and to speak up. And to choose carefully when using matches.
It finally arrived!
The Friday Photo
March 13, 2015
My husband has put thousands of miles on the bike he has owned for over 30 years. After years of looking at bikes and saving for a new one, his arrived earlier this week. I don’t know anything about bikes except to say this one is beautiful.
Gov Deal’s band-aid approach to health care
Hancock County, Georgia’s poorest among our 159 counties, is getting much needed help with access to health care via technology, community leaders, and innovators in delivering care to patients.
Right now people living in Hancock County have to drive to a neighboring county to see a doctor for any and all medical concerns. Even something as simple as an ear infection requires a drive of at least 25 miles to another county. Getting to the doctor can be a huge expense and feat of logistics for Georgia’s rural citizens, including those in Hancock County.
A new program, with a price tag of just $105,000, will now bring state of art health care to Hancock County’s citizens. Patients, Emergency Medical Technicians (EMT), and doctors, connected through secure technology, will work to determine medical problems and where a patient needs to receive care. Emergency room trips and the cost of care should be reduced, while patient health outcomes, and the establishment of medical homes for patients, should improve.
I don’t want to diminish the importance of this program for Hancock County, which has Governor Deal’s support.
But it is important to understand that making access to health care easier and more affordable for Hancock County’s citizens via technology, isn’t enough to address the failure to provide affordable health care to all of Georgia’s citizens.
And a pilot program announced by the Rural Health Stabilization Committee last week won’t either. The Committee will create four hub and spoke type health care delivery sites. Dcotors and EMTs, along with the patient and technology, will assess medical problems and get the patient to the appropriate place for care.
Using technology to care for patients isn’t new in Georgia. Telehealth has effectively been used for emergencies, specialty consultations, and mental health care in our state for years. What these programs offer should increase access to very good health care, reduce costs, save time, and improve patient health outcomes.
But these programs aren’t going to solve the bigger problems of delivering health care to Georgians and making it affordable. The Rural Hospital Stabilization Committee wasn’t convened to address Medicaid Expansion. Gov Deal’s spokesman Brian Robinson has been clear about that.
Governor Deal remains a staunch opponent of saving our state millions of dollars with Medicaid Expansion and improving access to health care for underserved Georgians. Instead, he and his buddies in the Georgia General Assembly, chose to constrict access to health care via Medicaid Expansion. That also means our elected officials have redirected the federal tax dollars Georgians send to Washington every year to states who have chosen to expand care and reduce costs with Medicaid Expansion.
Hancock County’s new telehealth program, coupled with the hub and spoke pilot program designed by the Rural Hospital Stabilization Committee, are big pluses for a few communities.
Governor Deal and the General Assembly can do more for Georgia’s citizens who need access to health care. We need more than a lick and a promise.
We’ve been adopted
The Friday Photo
February 13, 2015
I keep telling this cat that despite the fact it has its own Cat Condo with felted wool scraps, food to eat, and fresh water, that we are not its family. I have been saying that since the fall but it doesn’t seem convinced.
When grandparents are the parents
Last week the Atlanta Journal Constitution reported that Gov Nathan Deal said this about Georgia’s families where children are abused, or worse, murdered,“When was the last time the press or anybody else asked the greater family, ‘Why didn’t you do something about this?’ It really galls me, quite frankly, to see an able-bodied grandparent complaining about the fact that DFACS didn’t do something to protect her grandchildren. And my question is, well, where were you?’ ” (DFACS is the Georgia Department of Family and Children Services).
Where were these grandparents? US Census data from 2012 says this about grandparents and their grandchildren:
Number of grandparents living with grandchildren 265,530
Percent responsible for grandchildren 46.9
Percent of grandparents raising grandchildren for 5+ years 38.8
Percent of households with no parent of grandchild present 32.8
Percent of grandparents over 60 years old 34.1
Percent living in poverty in 2011 25.2
Number of households with grandparents and grandchildren 171,939
Percent of all households in Georgia 4.9
Grandparents in Georgia who care for their grandchildren are eligible for a whopping $50 per month from the state of Georgia. Have you priced diapers, day care, or children’s books lately? Fifty dollars doesn’t begin to make a dent in the costs of raising a child.
Single grandparent Deborah Paris, who is raising three grandchildren, told the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer “Our system will pay a foster care parent to take care of children and supply and do what they need for them,” she said. “But me, as a relative or actually grandparent, you give me little to no assistance. … Our system is just awful.”
We need to address multiple problems concerning the welfare of children in our state. Gov Deal shouldn’t begin by making grandparents the scapegoats where the state has failed.
Don’t let child abusers and marital rapists hide behind religion
The AJC Political Insider reports that the Georgia Baptist Convention met last week to support a bill floating in the Georgia General Assembly sponsored by Marietta Republican Representative Sam Teasley. HB 29 will allow people accused of child and spousal abuse to use their religious beliefs as a justification for their violent and abhorrent actions. (The bill would also legislate discriminating against a person because of race, sexual orientation, their religion.)
Legislators who support HB 29 made an exception that doesn’t allow child sexual abuse, but beating a child, perhaps to death, could be claimed as justified by the abusers and/or murderers. Anything short of child sexual abuse is fair game under the law. Rape happens within marriage. When a woman says No, even to her husband, then it isn’t sex, it is marital rape. HB 29 legalizes it.
I just can’t find a way to be tolerant of beating or killing a child, or beating, raping, or murdering a spouse, because your god told you it was ok. And our legislators shouldn’t either.
#letwomenchoose
The Friday Photo
January 23, 2015
New Year, new challenges
The Friday Photo
January 2, 2015
My granddaughter needed some mittens yesterday before going to walk our dogs. I don’t traffic in mittens, but this was a custom order I couldn’t turn down. Her brother will probably need some now too.
Fine china and crayons
The Friday Photo
December 26, 2014
We got out the fine china last night, but the best tables have paper, crayons, and markers.
A house that is just too much
The Friday Photo
November 28, 2014
Earlier today my mother-in-law said goodbye to the house she and her family restored in the late 1970s. It is a wonderful house where food has been served to appreciative guests, grandchildren and great-grandchildren have played in the huge hallway, and rosemary still spills out of huge planters in the backyard.
The house is now one obstacle after another since strokes and dementia left her fragile and frail. She is too much for my father-in-law and her bighearted caregivers to manage, so the hard words, “She can’t live at home any more” were said earlier this week.
I imagine it will begin to sink in when the dishes left by visiting sons and their families are unloaded from the dishwasher and he drives to the nursing home to sit with the woman he has known since he was 13 (or 12, he says he fibbed about his age when they met, in hopes of impressing her as an older man).
He’ll find a new routine in the coming days, but there will be fewer dishes to clean up after a meal now. Hopefully with each day it will be easier.
Why Ferguson is burning
Racism and hate are too deeply embedded in our country today. They are ignored and denied, like other difficult problems, that will, if acknowledged and fully addressed, change the way our country’s people, businesses, and institutions work.
This opinion piece in the Washington Post by Emory Professor Carol Anderson explains a critical part of the foundation of racism in our country today, and why we are certain to repeat Ferguson if we continue on the current path.
Upgrade, reset
My friend Dennis Kirschbaum, whose work has been shared here before, wrote an erudite essay on choosing work that fits your life and who you are (or want to be). I shared it on Facebook with some friends who have in turn shared it with their friends and young adult children. I hope you will share myLife 2.0.