Puppies Up North

Health care is going to pass, and we are going to be fine.

Let's spend the weekend thinking about football, puppies, and children.

Pictured above are children of friends with small puppies.

Vatican Issues Instruction on Bioethics

Well, the Vatican has issued instruction on bioethics.

From ELISABETTA POVOLEDO and LAURIE GOODSTEIN in the Times:

The Vatican issued the most authoritative and sweeping document on bioethical issues in 20 years on Friday, taking into account recent developments in biomedical technology and reinforcing the church’s opposition to in vitro fertilization, human cloning, genetic testing on embryos before implantation and embryonic stem cell research.

I realize the Vatican's feeling towards sodomy, but in the face of what science can offer the world, the Vatican's profound ignorance and foolishness offends me.

So here are other instructions: Stick your suggestions up your collective ass.

Your child molester-protecting outfit is out of its league when talk of ethics arises. How about the Vatican issues a disclaimer on the bottom of every official document for the next 50 years apologising for its collective sin?

More Children Getting Health Insurance, Republicans Dread

If there is one evil that rightwingers pull out all stops to prevent, it's the terrifying thought that American children will have guaranteed health care.

That prospect is repugnant to the rightwingers; and the Bush administration, in the middle of a presidential vacation and a congressional recess, has made it impossible for states to use the Children’s Health Insurance Program to insure children of the middle-class.

Bush stopped the evildoers from expanding health care for children of the gold-plated American middle class, now he can get back to his vacation, and tell the health insurance industry: Mission accomplished.

Robert Pear in the Times:

The Bush administration, continuing its fight to stop states from expanding the popular Children’s Health Insurance Program, has adopted new standards that would make it much more difficult for New York, California and others to extend coverage to children in middle-income families.

Administration officials outlined the new standards in a letter sent to state health officials on Friday evening, in the middle of a month-long Congressional recess. In interviews, they said the changes were aimed at returning the Children’s Health Insurance Program to its original focus on low-income children and to make sure the program did not become a substitute for private health coverage.

After learning of the new policy, some state officials said today that it could cripple their efforts to cover more children by imposing standards that could not be met.

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Camelot, Snakes in Middleton, Wisconsin

Middleton, Wisconsin—Sunday, April 22, 2007. Earth Day.

In high 70-degree weather, the air is thick and humid; I rush across the beltline highway to Middleton to deliver to my young friend, Genna, a present for her 10th birthday.

Daughter of Mark and Amy, Genna is a sensitive child, blessed with the soul of a poet since she was a tiny baby.

When Genna played competitive soccer for a time as a seven-year-old, she would bore easily.

I remember in the middle of one game, she looked disinterested at the soccer ball and ran off the field and chased a butterfly she saw fly by, to the curiosity of her teammates saying, “Where’s Genna going?”

So, my girlfriend and I picked out from the Net (that my mother was able to find) the perfect present for Genna—the film Camelot (1967, writer - Alan Jay Lerner), that we believed would touch the heart of this natural romantic.

Camelot

If you have not seen the film, do yourself a favor, and take in the ironic, transcendental humanism of this love story/politically revolutionary vision:

ARTHUR: “This is the time of King Arthur, and violence is not strength and compassion is not weakness. We are civilized!”

and

ARTHUR: “Battle? I've won my battle, Pelly. Here's my victory! … What we did will be remembered … One of what we all are, Pelly. Less than a drop in the great blue motion of the sunlit sea. But it seems some of the drops sparkle, Pelly. Some of them do sparkle!"

But, as fortune would have it, the pretty, gift-wrapped Camelot DVD tied to the helium birthday balloon that I picked up at Bergmann’s were somehow sucked out of a three-inch opening in one of my windows while driving on the beltline.

The balloon exploded and the DVD ended up on the side of the highway.

I circled back on Gammon Rd. and Odana Rd. and retrieved the package, no longer prettily wrapped, dirty and bursting at the seams, and with a DVD that looked smudged at best.

I drove up to the house, got out and explained to Genna, her younger brother Nick and her father what had happened. We all laughed and vowed to get another one, if needed. But maybe we could get it cleaned at the Family Video store on Century Avenue.

Genna opens the in-shambles present and laughs, and says “thank you,” and laughs again.

Snakes

But before Family Video store, we need to run to the Middleton conservancy and find some snakes for Genna’s ShareFair program where she was to bring in an animal this week and explain it with facts and a story.

At the conservancy (a true paradise in a wonderful city), Nicky, an seven-year-old who apparently has an eye for snakes, catches five garten snakes, and we had a blast walking back in triumph, showing off the snakes to the interested, young families whom we ran into.

So, we dropped off Genna at a friend’s whom she was scheduled to visit, and then headed off to Family Video.

Restoration

Mark, Genna’s father, went into the store with the DVD, while Nick and I waited outside in the car with the snakes.

Improbably, the nice guy at the store was able to restore the video and repair the scratches using some $600 machine.

So we head home to Genna and Nick’s, said our good-byes, and then I take off to bring a late lunch to my girlfriend, Jackie, home and feeling under the weather.

At home, Jackie and I laughed, and now we await the reaction of Nick and Genna to this masterpiece of film championing love, romance, idealism, and egalitarianism.

A wonderful day in Madison, Wisconsin, and now I can mellow a bit and read Frank Rich.

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