Opinion
Another friend of mine tells me that, on Friday morning, Joe wasn't feeling well, so his partner (common-law wife by now) took him to the doctor. You know how men are – they never want to go to the doctor unless they feel like they're about to die because there may be needles involved – so when he got in the car with her, she knew that something was terribly wrong.
Joe is ("was" is still too hard to say) a fly in the ointment – not always the life of the party – but almost. He's the instigator, he laughs the loudest from his belly, he's the first to get on his motorcycle – without a map – and say, "Let's go!" (Until that time he jumped back on his bike that had been sitting in the desert sun of Tonopah, Nev., for a few hours wearing the tattered jeans with the hole in crotch – and not wearing even boxer shorts underneath his jeans! – and had to miss the whole rest of the trip due to burns on very sensitive areas). But he was the guy who was always the last to go to sleep on a camping trip - and cleaned up the campsite and got it ready for coffee in the morning while everyone else was already asleep and dreaming of pancakes.
After his partner brought Joe, who didn't have health insurance or the $150 the doctor required for an office visit, back home, he died from a massive heart attack several hours later.
If California already had in place SB 840, Sen. Sheila Kuehl's universal health care bill, Joe would be alive right now. It probably never occurred to him to go to the emergency room at the hospital because he had always gone to his doctor's office in the past. But he no longer had health insurance or the $150 to get checked out.
Please urge our politicians to support SB 840.
www.democracyinaction.org/dia/organizationsORG/HCA_CA/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=7081
E-mail Terre Logsdon at
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- Written by: Lake County News Reports
Later, relaxing in the shade of a fruitless mulberry tree, we surveyed our Hidden Valley Lake backyard. The fruit trees generously feed us cherries, apples, and figs. We eat grapes from grapevines growing along the back fence. Our persimmons will ripen soon.
From two raised-bed gardens, we eat zucchini, cucumbers, tomatoes, kale, artichokes, eggplant, strawberries, basil, parsley, garlic chives, oregano and lemon thyme. And, we’re harvesting giant sunflower and pumpkin seeds to roast.
Around a tiny lawn in our unfenced front yard, sage, rosemary and lavender plants flourish underneath three flowering fruit trees.
This is the first summer we’ve swapped vegetables over the fence with our neighbor, another gardener. Also new this year is the enjoyment my husband gets from lovingly preparing cardboard “gift baskets” for friends filled with vegetables and fruit from our yard.
Especially satisfying is consuming our own delicious food. We augment our fresh food supply by shopping at Kelseyville’s farmers’ market, an occasional trip to Hardester’s grocery store, and with home-grown beef from my dad in Natomas, near Sacramento.
Author Barbara Kingsolver’s book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, was my birthday gift from my son and daughter-in-law. Living in San Francisco, they live vicariously hearing our “crop reports” during weekly phone conversations.
Kingsolver’s book makes a passionate case for putting the kitchen back at the center of family life and diversified farms at the center of the American diet. My husband and I bless our rural life in which we can raise our own food and consume what is raised by us or people we know.
We realize the growing season is finite. Our water use will soon lessen. Meanwhile, we give thanks for the water and the harvest it provides.
Susanne La Faver lives in Hidden Valley Lake with husband, Lyle.
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- Written by: Lake County News Reports
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