You Can Go Home Again. Iowa. March 23, 2010

But it will be different.

I haven't been back to Iowa since 2007, so naturally I expected some change. For one thing I had heard stories about a big developer who changed Storm Lake's shoreline by taking out an older, unprofitable restaurant, and replacing it with a hotel, waterpark, and some other frills. I expected to hate it, but it is actually less obtrusive than I had thought. The development includes some nice landscaping and park areas. The whole area looks modern and more economically healthy than before. Although there were a few closures, their business district looked healthy. I think the Midwest is making an economic comeback before the West coast.



Family

When I moved to the West Coast I left my immediate family behind. There is a great loss when family is unavailable for Christmas, Easter, birthdays and celebrations. I believe these are the essence of life and it is sad that I have had to give these up. Every holiday I feel this loss. So traveling with dad back to our home territory puts me on home ground, despite the fact the homes I lived in in Storm Lake are housing strangers, despite the fact my family's home base is Sac City instead of Storm Lake, it is still home. In the picture on the left above, Mike and Carol cook dinner.
Family is not territory. It is being welcomed and loved despite who you are and what you have become.

Health Care For More

As an independent with nine grandchildren, I have had difficulty during this long season of health care debate. It has not brought out the best of the human condition--Republican, Democrat, or Tea Party variety. Spitting, racial epithets, humiliation of patients who talked about lack of care---these are frightening examples of our right to free expression.
With the insurance and health care industry spending more than $1.4 million dollars a day in a media war based and lies and misinformation, it is no wonder that a greater portion of our population did not want reform. It took that campaign and the 350 former governors and retired political staffers to convince people with no insurance that it was in their best interests to be rejected by insurance companies for pre-existing conditions, to be dumped because they were too sick or had a limit on their care, to have no insurance for their 24 year old living at home, to lose their homes because of their need to pay medical bills.
I have family and former students who fear health care solutions, but most of them have insurance. Most of those complaining have no worries for their personal health care. Their concern is for government debt and taxes. With the Republican prescription drug plan running $1.2 trillion for the current decade, there is a certain amount of hypocracy in those objections. Obama and the Democrats have risked their political futures to gain some small measure of equality for the underclass and unlucky. True, many of these people have poor diets, poor spending habits, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't get their diabetes diagnosed, or get their children's asthma treated.
In this instance a courageous President and 219 Democrats fought to bring some reform to what many Republicans acknowledge was a broken system. Hopefully it is just the beginning of reform and the weak and flawed bill will grow into a system that will not bankrupt our country, but will merely entitle US citizens to the same health care as the other major powers of the world.