I
My niece and nephew one a doc, one a resident, both in the
East, both had to work Thanksgiving. Rather than the usual drug ODs, they had a
lot of diabetes, overweight, proscribed low-salt diets, i.e. precarious health
to begin with, overeating and ending up in the emergency room on Turkey Day.
What do you say to a doctor who has to work a holiday to save people from a
self-inflicted excess? How are we supposed think about being in an insurance
pool with such folks?
II
Got an early dose of Black Friday Wed night at my little
X-mas gig. There is an employee store, and the company let us in to shop the
discontinued, 2nds and returns merchandise, most of which is brand new and
priced a fraction of what it originally cost. One person in particular acted
like a frenetic fool, shoving and grabbing. The fact that it was clearly an
immigrant makes me jaded about the “better life” bit. And how the immigrants are used to feed commerce in this country.
III
Holiday lights make me long for Berlin, Germany, where the
tradition is put the tree up on Christmas Eve, celebrate for a few days into
the new year or perhaps to the Epiphany. My dear friend there, Frau Eva-Marie
Welters was a quintessential secularist/atheist, yet she never failed to get an
Advent wreath. I rode my bike through the frigid Berlin dark, for breakfast
with her nearly every Sunday morning of the time I lived there. Together we disparaged
the excesses of traditional religion (think clergy sex abuse) thought and
talked about “real” spirituality. She didn’t hate religion per se; she hated its
excesses, was circumspect enough to see its advantages. Her genuine
spirituality shines sweeter than all environmental pollution X-mas excess.
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