American Exceptionalism in One Heartbreaking, Grotesque Tweet

This excellent article is heartbreaking and deeply disturbing. And both shocking and not surprising at all. The American healthcare system is barbaric, brutal, inhumane, immoral, and soaked in greed and the utter disregard for the deaths, poverty, bankruptcies, and extraordinary suffering it causes countless human beings who are excluded from the basic right to receive the medical care they need. This cruel system must be completely dismantled and replaced with healthcare that is humane and actually grounded in health and care. — Molly

A tribute banner is displayed along with seven candles and flowers in a makeshift memorial to honor mass shooting victims at Mac Dutra Park in Half Moon Bay, California on January 24, 2023.

 (Photo: Ray Chavez/MediaNews Group/The Mercury News via Getty Images)

A victim of the mass shooting in Half Moon Bay, California told Gov. Gavin Newsom that he wanted to leave the hospital as quickly as possible to avoid high medical costs.

By Julia Conley

An anecdote told by California Gov. Gavin Newsom at a press conference on the mass shooting in Half Moon Bay—the second such appearance he made in two days, following another deadly shooting in Monterey Park—encapsulated the United States' twin crises of economic injustice and rampant gun violence, said advocates on Monday.

The Democratic governor told the press that while visiting a man who'd been injured in the shooting at two farms in the Bay Area city, the victim said he was hoping to leave the hospital quickly to avoid high medical bills.

"He said, 'Hey, Governor, thanks for being here but when am I gonna get the hell out of here?'" Newsom said. "His leg was shattered by the gunfire. He goes, 'I can't afford to spend any more time here, I don't have the money."

The man's mother and son later arrived and told Newsom they were "worried he's going to lose his job at a warehouse the next day unless he can go back to work."

Politico reporter Lara Korte relayed the governor's comments on social media, eliciting numerous responses in which critics—including advocates for Medicare for All and strict gun control—said the post represented "the United States of America in one tweet."

The United States of America in one tweet: Get shot in a mass shooting, go to hospital, try and leave early because the debt would kill you instead. Complete and utter perversity.— Christian Christensen (@Christian Christensen) 1674659567

"This is the most American tweet of all time," added progressive commentator Kyle Kulinski.

The shooting in Half Moon Bay was one of dozens of shootings since 2023 began just over three weeks ago. Along with the shooting in Monterey Park last Saturday and the shooting of a family in Enoch, Utah on January 4, it was one of the deadliest attacks so far.

Dr. Adam Gaffney, an intensive care unit doctor and former president of Physicians for a National Health Program, called Newsom's story "a gut-wrenching indictment of our healthcare system."

Dania Palanker, an assistant research professor at the Center on Health Insurance Reforms at Georgetown University's McCourt School of Public Policy, noted that the costs associated with being one of the millions of Americans who will survive gun violence in their lifetime are an often-overlooked consequence of the Republican Party's obstruction as the vast majority of Americans call for stricter gun control.

As CNNreported in December, one insured survivor of the mass shooting at Club Q in Colorado Springs received a bill for $130,000, while another person who was among the 27.5 million Americans who lack health insurance was billed $20,000 for spending a night in the emergency room where doctors stitched a bullet wound in his leg.

The Journal of the American Medical Associationpublished a study last May showing that the average initial hospital charge for mass shooting survivors between 2012 and 2019 was nearly $65,000 per person.

"How many people are shot and then face massive medical debt?" asked physician and anthropologist Eric Reinhart. "How much revenue and profit do hospitals generate via shootings? Perversity through and through."

For the complete original article, please go here: https://www.commondreams.org/news/mass-shooting-victims-medical-bills

Adrienne Rich: What Kind of Times Are These

Photo by Molly

What Kind of Times Are These

There’s a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill

and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows

near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted

who disappeared into those shadows.

 

I've walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don’t be fooled

this isn’t a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here, 

our country moving closer to its own truth and dread, 

its own ways of making people disappear. 

I won’t tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woods 

meeting the unmarked strip of light — 

ghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise: 

I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear.

 

And I won’t tell you where it is, so why do I tell you 

anything? Because you still listen, because in times like these 

to have you listen at all, it’s necessary 

to talk about trees.

— Adrienne Rich

Mary Oliver: A Dream of Trees

Photo by Molly

A Dream of Trees

 

There is a thing in me that dreamed of trees,
A quiet house, some green and modest acres
A little way from every troubling town,
A little way from factories, schools, laments.
I would have time, I thought, and time to spare,
With only streams and birds for company,
To build out of my life a few wild stanzas.
And then it came to me, that so was death,
A little way away from everywhere.

There is a thing in me still dreams of trees.
But let it go. Homesick for moderation,
Half the world’s artists shrink or fall away.
If any find solution, let him tell it.
Meanwhile I bend my heart toward lamentation
Where, as the times implore our true involvement,
The blades of every crisis point the way.

I would it were not so, but so it is.
Who ever made music of a mild day?

— Mary Oliver

Wendell Berry: The Peace of Wild Things

 The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

 

— Wendell Berry

Ellen Bass: If You Knew

A beautiful poem reminding us to be mindful, to be compassionate and kind, to actually notice and see each other, and to remember how precious life is and that every being we encounter matters and has value. The sacred thread is woven through us all. Just imagine how different our world would be — and how different each of us would be — if we remembered this as we went about our daily lives. Just imagine if we knew... 🙏 Molly

Photo by Molly

 If You Knew

 

What if you knew you’d be the last
to touch someone?
If you were taking tickets, for example,
at the theater, tearing them,
giving back the ragged stubs,
you might take care to touch that palm,
brush your fingertips
along the life line’s crease.

When a man pulls his wheeled suitcase
too slowly through the airport, when
the car in front of me doesn’t signal,
when the clerk at the pharmacy
won’t say Thank you, I don’t remember
they’re going to die.

A friend told me she’d been with her aunt.
They’d just had lunch and the waiter,
a young gay man with plum black eyes,
joked as he served the coffee, kissed
her aunt’s powdered cheek when they left.
Then they walked half a block and her aunt
dropped dead on the sidewalk.

How close does the dragon’s spume
have to come? How wide does the crack
in heaven have to split?
What would people look like
if we could see them as they are,
soaked in honey, stung and swollen,
reckless, pinned against time?  

— Ellen Bass

From The Human Line 

Ellen Bass reading "If You Knew"

Ellen Bass: The Thing Is

Photo by Molly

The Thing Is

to love life, to love it even

when you have no stomach for it

and everything you’ve held dear

crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,

your throat filled with the silt of it.

When grief sits with you, its tropical heat

thickening the air, heavy as water

more fit for gills than lungs;

when grief weights you down like your own flesh

only more of it, an obesity of grief,

you think, How can a body withstand this?

Then you hold life like a face

between your palms, a plain face,

no charming smile, no violet eyes,

and you say, yes, I will take you

I will love you, again.

 

— Ellen Bass 

A Poetry Booklet To Share

For the holidays and as a blessing for the New Year, I gifted over 20 poetry booklets to both family and several friends. It's come to me to share the poems and writings that I chose for this booklet with anyone else who hasn't already received this as a gift and who may be interested.

The cover page of the poetry booklet that I had made was of this yellow tulip, a photo that I had taken when we received a late snow last year. From there I copied each photograph to accompany the poems that I had selected and had them compiled into a booklet in this order:

1. Joan Zakon Borysenko: A Prayer — https://mollystrongheart.blogspot.com/2022/11/joan-zakon-borysenko-prayer.html
2. David Steindel-Rast: Prayer For Unity — https://mollystrongheart.blogspot.com/2023/01/davidsteindl-rast-prayer-for-unity.html 
3. John O'Donohue: A Blessing for Beauty — https://mollystrongheart.blogspot.com/2022/11/john-odonohue-blessing-for-beauty.html
4. Mary Oliver: The Summer Day — https://mollystrongheart.blogspot.com/2022/08/mary-oliver-summer-day.html 
5. Chelan Harkin: Heart Warriors — https://mollystrongheart.blogspot.com/2022/03/chelan-harkin-heart-warriors.html   
6. John O'Donohue: For a New Beginning — https://mollystrongheart.blogspot.com/2022/08/john-odonohue-for-new-beginning.html 
7. Pema Chödrön: The Love That Will Not Die — https://mollystrongheart.blogspot.com/2023/01/pema-chodron-love-that-will-not-die.html 
8. Our True Nature — https://mollystrongheart.blogspot.com/2022/12/our-true-nature.html 
9. Kahlil Gibran: On Joy and Sorrow — https://mollystrongheart.blogspot.com/2022/12/kahlil-gibran-on-joy-and-sorrow.html  
10. Francis Weller: Grief and Love Are Sisters — https://mollystrongheart.blogspot.com/2022/12/francis-weller-grief-and-love-are.html  
11. A Prayer: Candlemas — https://mollystrongheart.blogspot.com/2022/12/a-prayer-candlemas.html 
12. Naomi Shihab Nye: Kindness — https://mollystrongheart.blogspot.com/2023/01/naomi-shihab-nye-kindness.html 
13. John O'Donohue: Beannacht/Blessing — https://mollystrongheart.blogspot.com/2022/11/john-odonohue-beannacht-blessing.html 
14. Chelan Harkin: Ancestral Treasure — https://mollystrongheart.blogspot.com/2022/08/chelan-harkin-ancestral-treasure.html 
15. Rumi: The Guest House — https://mollystrongheart.blogspot.com/2022/12/rumi-guest-house.html  
16. Chelan Harkin: Just As Holy — https://mollystrongheart.blogspot.com/2022/08/chelan-harkin-just-as-holy.html 
17. Chelan Harkin: Sensitive Ones — https://mollystrongheart.blogspot.com/2022/08/chelan-harkin-sensitive-ones.html
18.  John O'Donohue: For Belonging — https://mollystrongheart.blogspot.com/2022/12/john-odononhue-for-belonging.html 
19. Jack Kornfied: My Simple Prayer — https://mollystrongheart.blogspot.com/2022/10/jack-kornfield-my-simple-prayers.html  
20. John O'Donohue: For Old Age — https://mollystrongheart.blogspot.com/2022/12/john-odonohue-for-old-age.html  
21. Mary Oliver: When Death Comes — https://mollystrongheart.blogspot.com/2022/07/mary-oliver-when-death-comes.html

This poetry booklet was something I shared with a diversity of special people in my life, from young to old. May something here also enrich and nourish you. 🙏💗

With many blessings,

Molly

Naomi Shihab Nye: Kindness

Photo by Molly

 Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend. 

 ― Naomi Shihab Nye