3/18/23

 Saturday, March 18, 2023

In bed at 9:30, up at 6:16, feeling drugged, brain-fogged, dreaming of flying into Budapest on a jumbo jet with some other guy, one of us (not sure) returning from a CIA/Special Ops training mission in Dubai, friendly woman on the plane with a beautiful cuddly baby.  I didn't "come to" and wake up for about 29 minutes or so.  12℉ outside with an 18 mph wind straight out pf the west, wind chill at -5℉.  Winds from 12 to 21 mph today, gusts up to 33 mph, and wind chills between -6 and +9℉, bitter cold.  Sunrise at 6:58, sunset at 7:01, 12+2.

Spring is Sprung.  At 9:32, I saw a male goldfinch with fully yellow plumage on the niger feeder.  Only one, but still . . .

Dementia, Feebeleness, Long-term Care and the Ballad of Narayama.  This morning's WaPo features an article with the title "Senior Care is Brutally Expensive.  Boomers aren't ready."  It reveals that assisted-living facilities "start at $60,000 a year on average, according to the National Investment Center for Seniors Housing & Care (NIC) — and costs go up as residents age and need more care. Locked units for dementia patients, which increasingly are being established within assisted-living facilities or as stand-alone facilities, run more than $80,000 a year on average." Additionally,  home-care aides are in very short supply, and nursing home care for the most disabled, costs about $120,000 a year unless you qualify for Medicaid which requires impoverishment.  Home-care aides for 40 hours a week cost about $56,000 a year if you can find one.

Another article in the same issue is "Americans are Knee-Deep in Medical Debt.  Most owe hospitals."  A third article warns "Financial Risks Grow in Shadowy Corner of Markets, Worrying Washington."  And yet another article asks "Why are so many Americans poor? Because we allow it, two books argue.  Sociologists Mark Robert Rank and Matthew Desmond examine the attitudes and policies that keep poverty entrenched.  All these stories reflect the real costs of our national commitment to winner-take-all Capitalism and our aversion to anything that 'reeks' of Socialism, i.e., anything that creates or increases governmental oversight, monitoring, regulation, or taxation of economic activity, or that in any manner redistributes wealth or income from the better-off to the less-well-off.  I have long believed that this American phenomenon is based in very large measure on Racism, specifically on anti-Black racism.  It has its roots in race-based slavery, emancipation, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and White Supremacy.  Race-based slavery is our Original Sin and our Persistent Sin.  To continue the religious metaphor, like certain sacraments, it has left "an indelible mark on the soul" of the nation.  We tend to blame the poor for being poor, blame the marginalized for living on the margins, and blame the disabled for being disabled.  We even seem subconsciously to blame Blacks for being Black and Browns for being Brown, other than White and privileged by not being Black or Brown.

What most caught my attention about the articles in this morning's papers was the article on care for the elderly, i.e., people like me and Geri.  We have lived comfortably in retirement for many years now but we know that we skate on thin ice and that with each passing day, each passing month and year, the ice gets thinner.  The statistics on the age-relatedness of Alzheimer's and other dementias are daunting.  Physical feebleness increases with age and with it the risk of falling, broken bones, concussions,, strokes, and the need for hospitalization or institutional care.  Is old age a blessing or a curse?  I always think of The Ballad of Narayama, the story of a poor mountain village with chronic food shortages that it addresses by an enforced custom of villagers who reach the age of 70 leaving the village to go up Mount Narayama to die of exposure and starvation so the younger, productive villagers will have enough food to survive.  In Peter Freuchen's book Eskimo, the author describes a custom of Eskimo families who must migrate with their food sources in the harsh climate.  When an elder becomes to sick or weak to keep up with the need of the other family members to follow their food sources, an igloo is built around the elder who is left to die in it so the rest of the family can survive.  What is the right 'disposition' of us old folks in America?  What should be done to protect them?  To protect their families, their caregivers?  What is clear is that our current policies, or lack of policies, can have devastating effects both on the old and on their families.  With the baby boomers moving into old age, the crisis is mounting, but we've known of it for years and done little, near nothing.  Same with the increasing crisis of health care for rural communities.  How can we be so callous about these dire needs staring us right in the face?  To my Republican neighbors of course, the answer is obvious: if they haven't accrued and saved enough money to buy needed care in their old age, it's their own fault.  If their families can't take care or provide care to their elders, it's their own fault.  Letting the government 'bail out' these old folks just creates 'moral hazard,' i.e., that selfish, lazy people will intentionally not work hard and save enough to provide old age care, relying on the government to provide what they should provide on their own.  God and the Government help those who help themselves.

A painting I did back in 1989 from a news photo of a mother and son outside the House of Peace with all their worldly possessions in a shopping cart on which they were resting., never thinking that a dozen years later I would become executive director of the House of Peace.