A Tidings of Magpies

From Our House to Your House By Jack Ridl It is 1959. It is the cusp of the coming revolution. We still like Ike. We are still afraid of Sputnik. We read  Life  magazine and  Sports Illustrated where the athletes grow up shooting hoops in the driveway, playing catch in the backyard. We sit on our sectional sofa. My mother loves Danish modern. Our pants have cuffs. Our hair is short. We are smiling and we mean it. I am a guard. My father is my coach. I am sitting next to him on the bench. I am ready to go in. My sister will cheer. My mother will make the pre-game meal from  The Joy of Cooking . Buster is a good dog. We are all at an angle. We are a family at an angle. Our clothes are pressed. We look into the eye of the camera. “Look ‘em in the eye,” my father teaches us. All we see ahead are wins, good grades, Christmas. We believe in being happy. We believe in mowing the lawn, a two-car garage, a freezer, and what the teach...

Seriously... Death Panels. Pulling-The-Plug-On-Grandma Clauses. An enemies list. Home health care nurses coming to take away poor families' babies. Seriously? Is there ANYONE out there who really believes this? Ding-Dong... You know, back in the day, decisions whether or not to place a patient on dialysis went through a committee. And, more recently, decisions whether or not a patient met the criteria to receive a heart transplant went through a committee. The decision of whether or not a brain dead patient meets criteria to be an organ donor goes though a stringent algorithm and a committee. And for that matter, the brain death exam itself must be carried out by two different physicians from two separate services. A committee of two, although there are many, many others in the room. Committees are all over the damn place, and they make life and death decisions day and night. In a teaching hospital doctors travel in packs. For those of us actuall...