It has taken over a week to read and respond to many of you, and I apologize for the delay. However, being Mother Cabrini and Nurse Kratchet all balled into one has been a learning experience! And at my age, learning anything new can be challenging—especially when it isn’t innate to one’s personality. The Nurse Kratchet part is a natural. Not so much for the ever patient and sweet Mother Cabrini. And just to be clear—all the yellow and purple bruising on Ash’s chest is from the surgery!
BOWLING WITH BI-CYCLERS ?
As we don’t get Fargo’s City Commission meetings on Moorhead’s Channel 12 Community Access, I have not seen or been to a Fargo Commission meeting in eons. However, after watching Joel Heitkamp’s interview with Commissioner Dave Piepkorn on internet I think everyone— bikers especially — should be grateful to Piepkorn for having the foresight to remove the motion from consent agenda.
Good grief! What nincompoop thought up this idea? Way back in 1976-77 I had a friend who moved to Fargo from the east coast and was attending (and graduated from) NDSU. Allen lived with his sister, who was already an architect student at NDSU. They lived down by the Bowler and the only transportation Allen had was a bicycle. Although mass transportation has grown and gotten 100 percent better (back then it was nearly non-existent and a bad joke), the only alternative Allen had to get to NDSU when he didn’t get up in time to go with his sister who owned a car was to use his bicycle. I couldn’t believe the moron actually rode his bike all the way up 10th Street to 12th Avenue North without getting killed. He did it on occasion when it was freezing cold, but even he gave up the bike in mid-winter when snow was a half foot deep.
I remember once he regaled us with a story about feeling like a ‘bowling ball’ trying to avoid the ‘gutter’ when someone decided to follow him slowly, getting ever closer to his rear tire. I think that’s when he began taking to the sidewalk area. That I could almost agree with. At least the bikers would not be impeding traffic going 30-plus miles an hour and completely out of the way.
I’ve written about bicyclists downtown before. Many, if not most, have a “I’ll do and go as I please” attitude, not paying attention to traffic lights or stop signs or, for that matter, even the direction and flow of traffic. And someone wants to allow them to use 10th Street and University Drive? Really? Well, if all the commissioners have lost your collective minds, and this is a decision you agree to pass, please also put aside a special fund for the funerals the city will need to pay for.
RONALD REAGAN WAS AN ACTOR
I swear if I hear one more Republican candidate running for anything refer to what President Ronald Reagan did or believed or put into law I might be tempted to blow off the top of my television! Get this straight, all you believers that Reagan was a presidential-God (and who apparently drank way too much of the kool-aide): Ronald Reagan was a HOLLYWOOD ACTOR. Not only was he an actor who lived among the rich and wealthy in Santa Barbara and Hollywood, he was also a DEMOCRAT and HEAD OF THE ACTORS UNION at one time during his career. That was before someone convinced him he could run for President if he would just switch sides —where the “real” money was that could get him elected. He started vying for the Presidency back in the 1960’s, for heaven’s sake. Maybe many of you don’t remember a song parroting his name as the “Rea-gunnnn” –who knows, maybe it never made it to your radio stations here, I don’t know. But I sure remember it.
President Ronald Reagan was a terrific “pump the masses up” fraud who could read a speech like the veteran actor he was and a teleprompter better than Obama. No one seems to remember all the times he was taped having difficulties staying awake during budget meetings and followed astrology readings and made world wide threats to countries that have nuclear arsenals. He also allowed many tax credits used by everyday taxpayers to be taken away during his tenure, one of which was allowing deductions for medications paid for by everyday people with chronic conditions to have to reach a certain amount before being used. When a necessary medication costs upward of $100 a month, and that’s AFTER insurance has picked up whatever they will pay for, that’s a lot of money out of a family budget. Imagine if there’s more than one medication or if the family has more than one person needing life-sustaining daily medications that have to be paid for off the top of any family budget? Forget needing or wanting a few “extras” these days. Generic medications are available for many medications that cost much less; however, some of the fillers used in the generics are not conducive for all patients. For some chronic conditions, there aren’t even generics yet available on the market. And in some cases, doctors do not want their patients to use the generics when they’ve had difficulties with many types of other medications and the one they are using is actually and finally working for them. I know this to be true, because I’m an example of one. I have adult on-set epilepsy. It took two neurology clinics, four different neurologists and six different medications to finally resolve my seizure issues. Thankfully, at an epileptic specialty clinic in St. Louis Park (Minnesota) called MNCEP, I finally found the answer. That was sixteen years ago. Today the medication I started using is now nearly three times what it cost sixteen years ago. My history of allergies to numerous medications tells me and my neurologists today “if it ain’t broke, don’t try and fix it.” Neither he nor I am about to go backwards with my trying the generic form of my medication that recently became available, which is about $80 less expensive than I now pay with insurance.
I am only one example. Many, many people have the same issue with all types of medications. Generics are terrific if you can use them. For those of us – and there are thousands – who simply cannot, give us the benefit of being able to deduct the ever-rising expenses of medications we must have to simply survive from our taxes each year.
For all comments or questions email Soo at: sooasheim@aol.com