"Like a flattened Flamingo" Start your day with Ted Kooser's www.americanlifeinpoetry.org (Yes, a repeat urging.) Column #459 features a pink pantsuit and creates what I'll call a North Carolina attitude, creates an unclimate-changed' NCa.
My Libertarian Friend jumped on my account of another friend whose monthly health insurance cost, under ACA/CoveredCalifornia/Obamacare, will drop from $360/mo. to $64. (Deductible drops to subbasement $500, from $6000.) MLF writes: "I do believe it is important for folks to know why they can pay $60 instead of hundreds . . . not efficiencies, not squeezing corporate profits . . . Obama doesn't write a personal check . . . . The ACA takes money from someone else in the form of higher taxes and/or artificially higher rates . . . Socializing the cost does not reduce the cost; it simply puts the cost on someone not receiving the benefits." I hereby offer spaces for 80 words of prompt, on-topic comment. (email@example.com)
I saw a reflection in a Black Oak Roastery window: 3 men, 2 tables. 2 of the men were in earnest conversation. Or, one was earnestly reading to the other short passages from a thick, black book. Frequent pauses & pointings to lines of print. Second man nodded when cued. The third man sat at with a similarly thick, green book at an identical table, watching the other two, mildly predatorily, possibly awaiting his turn or opportunity. Parable, I think.
The Top 10 Percent--N. Roca, L. Leaf & I. Sis discuss Science News's top story of 2013: "people and other animals form a unit with their resident bacteria, archaea, fungi, and viruses the collection of microbes known as the microbiome. In fact, only about 10 percent of a person's cells are human; microbes make up the other 90 percent" (12/28/13). N. Roca says, "We need to micromanage."
JM lives in Redwood Valley.