Cassandra Langer

Everyone seems to be going crazy about Swine flu-or H1N1 who the heck can remember all this nonsense. The main thing is that they said they had enough to treat us. Oh just kidding! This is health care and concern in the United States of America in 2009. Every magazine, flyer on the planet seems to have made it their business to spin panic. Why am I bothering to blog this. Because as Stein would have it a cold is a cold is a cold and there is a difference between a common cold and a virus. So while it would be nice to think that they really, really care what happens to us peasants down here paying health care and doing without everything else to afford the outrageous fees and denials of drugs and services we get for our shrinking dollars–don’t kid yourself; they really, really, don’t give a rats ass if we live or die as long as they can make money off us. This being said, sure go get a flu shot if you can find a place that will give it to you in a timely fashion at a price you can afford. Even if you have Medicare–by the way–the only government run service that actually works fairly well most of the time–SORRY you REpulsiicans (this includes the DEmock-rats as well–) out there–but it is not socialized medicine. All us wage slaves pay for it and the congress gets the best of it regardless of income etc. as they do with social security which many of them take without any shame at all even though many of them are millionaires.

Listen up corrupt politicians which means most of you. EVER hear of a sliding scale–Congress should vote themselves one first before they start belly aching about how much health care is going to cost. Just think how much money that would save the average Joe and Jane lunch pack!

So I am down with a common cold, doctoring it myself, and hoping to fight it off the old fashion way–Chicken soup anyone.

Went to the Caro lecture Tuesday night. A sold out event-actually free. Some times the best things in life are and this was one of them. He talked about how crucial “setting” is. I think this is true of biography and of fiction as well. If you can’t set the scene and get readers to picture it in their mind’s eye than you really haven’t conveyed the sense of a a person’s landscape. This goes for interior as well as exterior. Caro walks the talk. He actually spent three years in the Texas Hill country doing his research on Lyndon Johnson. I know Austin a little and have been to the hill country. There is some thing burnt out, enduring and elemental about it that you have to experience to really get a sense of the folks who live there. I was fortunate to meet Riba and Joe, both natives of the hill country. I liked them a lot. Riba has a great sense of humor and is as smart of a whip. So forget that old BS about how dumb those folks are–they aren’t and in many ways are far more savvy and fit for survival than me or thee. We could learn a lot from them and most of it is not in the books we read but rather in the hard earth they scratch a living out of and call home.

It was a great evening despite missing my connection with a writer friend due to a change in location of the room and a standing room only turnout. Read his biography–it’s masterful.

The rest of the week back to entering poetry contests and finishing my proposal for the Romaine Biography.