Another insight into the health care absurdity back home: I went in search of one of those padded plastic boots people wear instead of a cast these days, as well as those shorter crutches that have a cuff that goes around your forearm instead of the pad that's designed for your armpit. I thought it might be easier to travel with those than the pair of vintage wooden crutches we had in the basement. At Fairview Medical Supply, the crutches cost $58. Each. And the boot was over 150. Surely it can't cost anything like that to manufacture them. I assume they get away with this because insurance companies will pay the bulk of the cost. Sounds an awful lot like the $300 toilet seats the military used to buy from defense contractors.
I did get a couple of unanticipated benefits from using those ancient crutches on my flight--I was invited to jump to the head of the line at immigration at Heathrow. And I found that a Boeing 777 has an amazing amount of legroom for the bulkhead seats. If you ever start to feel invisible, just get around on crutches for a day or two. People offer you their seats, call you sir or ma'am. It's still a kind world after all. (Yes, I know, with notable exceptions.)
"Large live rats"
You know how, when you sit on a plane waiting for takeoff and they run through the safety instructions (this is how you buckle a seat belt, etc.--I mean, really, come on), those times when you tune out and you're not really listening? I had a bit of a startle the other day as we were waiting to take off from Minneapolis. I heard the flight attendant say--or thought I heard--"Large live rats are located in the overhead storage compartments." Large live rats, you say? So I perked up my ears (wouldn't you?) and was relieved to hear the next part was about how to inflate your life vest. Never has the reminder of the possibility of a crash into Lake Michigan been so reassuring.
The Great Thanksgiving
Must be the Rick Steves in me, but whenever I go to a country where I don't know the language, the first things I try to learn to say are Hello, Goodbye, Please, and Thank you. And sometimes the word for Cheers or whatever it is people say when they toast one another. This, my children will tell you, is a big improvement over when they were young and I insisted that they learn the phrase for "Where is the bathroom?" (When in Rome, I may know little else, but I can say "Dov'e la tolletta?" with the best of them.) In Crete a couple of weeks ago for a friend's wedding, I was delighted to learn that the Greek word for "Thank you" is Eucharisto.
Had I taken even the most rudimentary Greek class in div school, this would surely have been no surprise to me. One of the humbling results of blogging is that you reveal your own ignorance. Perhaps a happier ripple effect is evoking an affirming "Well, even I knew that" response in many a reader. (If many readers there be.)
Another liturgical echo: From an essay in yesterday's Guardian looking back on the anniversary of the stock market collapse:
In the dock together, both in hock together, what answers have the English-speaking peoples come up with? They have duly shown remorse. They have drawn on the resources of a common cultural heritage in acknowledging the sinfulness of their ways. Like the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, the mode has often been that of general confession: to acknowledge and confess manifold sins and wickedness, without specifying personal lapses. Have we followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts? Guess so. Have we left undone those things which we ought to have done? You betcha--we should have shackled Wall Street and the City. And have we done those things which we ought not to have done? Yes, we too got a bit greedy, we too were had, we too have been burned and we won't forget it (unlike some folks who still expect their bonuses).
Many's the time I would have loved to insert a "Guess so" or a "You betcha" into a Sunday morning prayer.
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