My family’s Appalachian experience is a composite of Catholic and Protestant steel foundry workers, circuit riders, train flagmen, coal miners and barons, lawyers, teachers, car salesmen, card sharks, and housewives. We are descendants of early American settlers, farmers, merchants, Revolutionary and Civil and Spanish-American War soldiers. We brokered steel, commanded Navy vessels, prosecuted rural crime, […]
Americans are all cuckoos because we make our homes in the nests of other birds. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes My people came to America in a very long and winding way from the Avesnes region of France. But it goes back further than the ancestors my Grandmother marked down in the family tree (who I’ll […]
I can give you that historical bird’s eye view. But I cannot readily explain the mystery of Leonard Side’s inheritance. Most of us know the parents and grandparents we come from. But we go back and back, forever; we go back all of us to the very beginning; in our blood and bone and brain […]
Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world The heart has its beaches, its homeland and thoughts of its own Wake now, discover that you are the song that the morning brings But the heart has it’s seasons, its evenings and songs of its own Grateful Dead, Eyes Of The […]
I’m reckless and feelin’ no pain You know I’ve got no need to control Livin’ with the danger I’m always on the edge now With million dollar visions that I hold Livin’ like this never ever tore my life apart I know how to maintain and you know I know my part Reckless Life, Guns […]
Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful. Samuel Johnson The President’s lawyer says that “Truth isn’t truth” and any effort to question his client under oath is a “perjury trap”: the inevitable result of flouting all recognized rules in a scorched-earth, “win at any cost”, “art of […]
Empty prayer, empty mouths combien reaction Empty prayer, empty mouths talk about the passion Not everyone can carry the weight of the world Not everyone can carry the weight of the world REM, Talk About The Passion In pursuit of my clients’ cases, I have risked everything: financial ruin (investing everything I had in a […]
It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light. Aristotle When Regina Kobel’s medical records came in, there was nothing about the lump in her breast. Her obgyn exam looked perfectly benign, according to the notes. There was nothing about the mass or the examination in the chart, even though she […]
Overall, despite a level of spending that dwarfs the other countries in the study, the U.S. comes in dead last in three of the five, and arguably the most important three, of the five domains: health outcomes, equity, and access. We are tied for last on administrative efficiency and about average on care process. The […]
I don’t want to hear about it later I don’t want to, baby I don’t want to I don’t want to hear about it later Van Halen, Hear About It Later When Angela Walker went to the emergency room complaining of “the worst headache in her life”, she was sent home. The next day, when […]
