POSTING #113

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The Arab Spring

Recently, a friend who knew I had done some consulting work in the Middle East asked what I thought of the demonstrations taking place across the region.

"They're wonderful!", I replied.

I told him it had been very frustrating watching bright, well-educated young people coming out of universities and colleges with little hope of decent jobs.

As a result of the generosity of the US, Europe, Britain, Australia, Canada and other countries, most Arab nations were able to train professors and teachers and build colleges and universities.

But the creation of modern educational systems had not been matched by comparable changes in the political and business institutions.

Young graduates were not free to express themselves, to be creative, or to apply what they had learned.

And corruption and favouritism meant that whatever jobs existed were filled by the children of the rich and powerful.

I was upset that western aid was being wasted, and frightened that the frustrated young would feel that the only recourse was to join a terrorist group like Al Qaeda.

And the danger was real.

Early in my experience in the Middle East a man asked me if I could keep an eye on a relative who was studying in Canada. I thought at first that the man was worried about whether the young man  could cope with life (and the climate!) in Canada and keep his grades up. Pat and I had dinner with the student and it soon became clear that he was coping very well at his college.

When I reported this to the man in Jordan,  it turned out that his real concern was that the young man might fall under the sway of terrorist recruiters working among Arab youths in North America.

(I don't think the relative had to worry about that particular young man. He is probably working on his second or third million.)

Now that the political structures in many Middle Eastern countries are being reformed there will be a new openness in business.

I concluded by telling the friend who had asked what I thought of the Arab Spring that I was sure that the results would be messy as hell, in the short and medium term.

But democracy with all its bickering is a pretty hardy plant, well adapted to today's social, economic, cultural and technological changes---changes that will only accelerate in the years to come.

I remember feeling depressed thirty or so years ago when reading studies about South Africa. It seemed as though the whites would  never surrender their control and would even use their nuclear arms (remember they did have nuclear weapons!).

And the Africans would never give up their fight for freedom.

I could only see a calamitous blood bath.

I certainly never thought I would live to see the day when South Africa, controlled by Africans, would host one of the most successful World Cups ever.

Let's all welcome the Arab Spring!

We can continue to offer help and assistance but let's back off a little and let the Arabs find their own way to their own kind of democracy.

The Kingdom of Jordan and the Arab Spring

Jordan has had its own Arab Spring demonstrations but nothing comparable to those in other Middle Eastern nations.

I saw an article by one pundit who argued that this was because Jordan was a monarchy, and was therefore inherently more stable than the Middle Eastern nations that were controlled by family dynasties.

That seemed to me to be a pretty superficial analysis.

I think that a good part of the explanation is found in how the Jordanian monarchs have conducted themselves.

To illustrate that point, here are four stories I picked up while working in Jordan.

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A Palestinian friend in Jordan told me about how he and his young family were suddenly expelled along with several hundred thousand other Palestinians from Kuwait in 1991 after the Gulf War.

Angered at Yasser Arafat's support for the invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein, the newly restored Kuwaiti government gave all Palestinians one week to leave Kuwait.

My friend had been living in Kuwait for years, and had a good job with an oil company.

Having no choice, he loaded up his car with his wife and children and whatever belongings they could fit into the vehicle and headed to Jordan.

Despite being a poor country, Jordan accepted a huge influx of Palestinians. My friend was grateful that Jordan had taken them in but he and his uprooted family faced great hardships as their new country struggled to absorb them.

He said he would never forget King Hussein's response to the education of the displaced children. The King told his Prime Minister that places had to be found in schools for all the children.

School authorities protested they didn't have enough teachers, desks or space for the newcomers.

The King told them to fit the children in.

My friend said that children sat on the floor, stood against the walls, studied in the school yards but they all got an education.

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Another friend told me about King Hussein's respect for others. The King was to attend a school  ceremony at which one of his children would graduate. The King arrived early and sat in the audience, chatting with other parents. Some members of the Royal Family, intent on making a grand entrance, waited until the program was about to begin and then swept down the aisle.

That was not King Hussein's style.

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I heard this story from several people about King Abdullah when he took over after the death of his father, Hussein.

He used to dress in humble costumes and go out at night with a scarf covering part of his face. Apparently, he would stand in line in places where the poor sought to get service---for example in hospitals and bus stations---and he watched what happened.

The next morning he would tell his ministers what he had witnessed.

And about the changes they were going to make!

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This story happened while I was in Jordan in early 2001.

Leaving his palace one morning, King Abdullah stopped to chat with some men who were laying tiles. He found that the workmen were all from either Egypt or Syria, there were no Jordanians.

He called in his Minister of Labour and asked him to find out why, despite high unemployment, the contractor was not using any Jordanian workers.

When he was told that Jordanian workers didn't have the required skills, he asked that a training program be set up immediately. When the Minister said that his budget wouldn't allow for that, the King provided $5 million of his own money to fund the program.

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As the demonstrations in Jordan show, there are problems that the country must address. Accommodation and food are expensive. Jobs are scarce. There are allegations of governmental corruption. The political system has to be more transparent and responsible.

But I sense that there is an underlying feeling that the King is sincere in his efforts to correct the problems.

Ending on a Lighter Note

I enjoy bumper stickers and signs.

Here are two examples that were new to me.

A car hitched to a large Recreational Vehicle had a sign in its back window: "I go where I'm towed".

A sign appeared overnight on a neighbour's lawn: "House for Sale by Owner---Wife Included". When I stopped by to chat, it turned out that friends of the owner had put up the sign to 'celebrate' his 60th birthday. His wife was not amused

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See you on May 8th for Posting #114 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting,  or email me at johnpathunter@gmail.com.

POSTING #112

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Pat's Bingo Moment

I was working in my basement study when I heard my wife, Pat, shouting and shouting.

Racing upstairs (now that's a lie---at my age I don't race anywhere---let's just say I 'hurried'!) I found Pat sitting in an easy chair with her iPad on her lap shouting "Bingo, bingo, bingo!"

No, she hadn't found a new iPad app that lets one play bingo. (I have since discovered that there actually is a bingo app!)

She had been using Google to research a drop leaf table she had found in the attic of our  local museum, the Niagara Historical Museum. The table was off in a corner, with a rope around the middle holding its leaves together.

Pat, a volunteer at the museum, had been asked by the new curator to use the experience she had gained in years of buying and selling antiques to review the collection of tables, chairs and other pieces of furniture to see whether the description in the museum's database of artifacts was accurate and complete.

A couple of weeks after starting her task, Pat came across the drop leaf table with the rope around its middle. It had elegant proportions, with long, slender legs and neat brass feet. It was obviously very old and very beautifully made.

With the help of other volunteers, Pat was able to get a quick look at the underside and found two markings stamped into the wood. Markings on antiques are, of course, like pure gold as one tries to identify their maker and age.

The following Monday I went with Pat to help decipher the two stamped impressions using a strong light and a good magnifying glass (see Sherlock work!). We untied the rope and found that only minor repairs would be needed. The impressions were quite distinct, but unfortunately the "JME" and "J.Canabar" didn't mean anything to us.

We took photographs of the markings, tied the table back up and went home.

Pat then used Google to try to find the meanings of the markings.

After a number of unsuccessful tries she had her 'bingo moment', which brought me hurrying from my basement lair.

The table was made by Joseph Gengenbach between 1766 and 1797. He was a member of the JMF, the most highly acclaimed guild of cabinet makers in France at that time.

The curator is delighted as the copy of the article from a local weekly paper shows (you may have to click on the image to be able to read the article).

The table is in the big leagues of antique furniture. A slightly smaller Gengenbach table was sold at a Christie's auction in London on December 9, 2010 for $19,763.

Since the article appeared, a local woman has provided some clues about how the table may have ended up in Niagara-on-the-Lake and in our museum. The curator is exploring these tips.

Meanwhile steps are being taken to have the table restored---it is not a big job but it will require an expert with special training. The table will then be moved from its corner in the attic to a place of prominence in the public display area.

The Breakfast Club

The municipality of Niagara-on-the-Lake---of which Virgil is a component---is overrun with volunteers.

You try to have lunch with someone only to find that they are busy that day doing some volunteer work with the Shaw Festival Guild,  the Friends of  Fort George, the Friends of Laura Secord or with one of the dozens of other voluntary organizations in the area.

The supply of retired persons willing to work for nothing is so great that one has to pay an annual fee to work for certain organizations!

As an aside, I should say that younger members of the community sometimes joke about the growing number of retired people, and talk about the town becoming 'God's Waiting Room'. (I want to assure you that there's a lot of activity in this waiting room!)

In contrast to all this volunteering, and to all these good works, there is the Breakfast Club.

I first heard about the Breakfast Club after giving a talk on my Russian experiences as part of a lecture series put on by our library. A woman who had been in the audience asked if I would be prepared to talk about Russia to the Breakfast Club.

When I asked for more details on the Club, she said it was hard to describe. It would be better if Pat and I went to a meeting of the Club as its guests.

At 8 AM on the second Tuesday of the following month, Pat and I entered a bright, cheerful room at the Riverbend Inn. There were about 40 people, mostly men and mostly retired, but with a significant sprinkling of younger people and women.

Our host, the woman at the library talk, introduced us to the members and we chatted until the call came that the buffet breakfast was ready. It was a hearty breakfast with pancakes and syrup, ham and eggs, sausages, toast, fruit and excellent coffee.

After people had finished their breakfasts, Bob Waugh---one of the founders of the Club, a retired executive from GM, and 91 or 92 years young---welcomed the guests and explained a little about the Club.

With the wit and timing of a stand-up comic, he explained that the Club is best described by what it isn't.

It has no constitution, no board of directors, no Annual General Meetings, no secretary, no minutes, no membership applications, no dues, no bank account, and no fund-raising projects.

Bob looked down at his Blackberry to see if he had forgotten anything.

Oh, he added, breakfast is free for guests but $13 for members. Guests are welcome to attend future meetings but they will have to pay for their own breakfast. There is an honour system and members put their money in baskets on each table.

Bob added that if guests wished, they could give their email address to one of the members who had volunteered to send out meeting notices each month.

A member then introduced the speaker, who talked for about 20 minutes. There was a question and answer session with pointed, intelligent questions.

The meeting was over by 9 AM.

A few months later, I gave my talk on Russia, and we now go regularly to the monthly meetings. Some of the speakers are members while others are from outside the Club.

Recent topics have included a member's talk on a trip to Kenya, the ultra-modern cancer clinic that will be part of the new St. Catharines General Hospital, the future of the public library in the digital age, the upcoming program for the Shaw Festival presented by a member of its repertory company, the future of local independently-owned pharmacies, and hints on coin collecting.

We like the Club very much.

In chatting with a friend I mentioned a talk I had listened to at the Club. He hadn't heard of the Club and asked me to explain about it. I tried to remember all the points that Bob Waugh had made about what it isn't.

"But", my friend butted in, "what does the Club DO?'

I explained that the Club doesn't 'do' anything, that the members are very active in the community but the Club's monthly meetings are just fun.

He looked at me as though I was talking nonsense.

I would recommend the model to anyone who is feeling a bit over-organized.

But don't contact the club for any plans or documents on how to set up a Breakfast Club.

There aren't any!

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See you on May 1st for Posting #113 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting,  or email me at johnpathunter@gmail.com.

POSTING #111

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Follow-up to Posting #110, "Getting Sick in the South"

In last week's Posting I ended with a story about powerful but inefficient steam locomotives as a not very subtle way of suggesting that there might be things that could be done to increase the efficiency of the delivery of health care.

Click here for a recent article in the Washington Post on attempts being made by the State of Massachusetts to rein in health costs. One of the key methods being tried is to move away from the fee-for-service model.

I am sure that politicians, health insurance companies and health care providers across the US will be watching the State's efforts with enormous interest.

I am also sure that Canadian politicians and persons involved in health care will be watching just as avidly.

Good for Massachusetts!!

Stories from Yorkshire

The great majority of immigrants we selected at the Leeds, Yorkshire, Canadian Immigration office where I worked in the early 1960s became successfully established in Canada.

To be sure, they often had to overcome difficult problems: trouble in getting British credentials and experience accepted by Canadian employers; difficulties in finding affordable accommodation; and, problems in coping with the inevitable culture shock that moving to a new country involves.

But there were a few who didn't make it.

They stayed for a time in Canada and then returned to Britain.

I had to interview one such immigrant, a man who had received an Assisted Passage Loan from the Canadian Government to pay his air fare to Hamilton, Ontario, but had returned after only three weeks.

As I looked through the notes of the interviewing officer before meeting with the unsuccessful immigrant I couldn't figure out what had gone wrong. According to the notes he was an intelligent, well motivated person, and a highly qualified machinist---an occupation in good demand in the Hamilton area. He and his wife were in their early 30s with two young children. His wife seemed to be very supportive of the move. The officer had commented that it was a close family---he had liked them.

Cases like that upset us. Had our screening failed to identify a problem? Had our counselling been inadequate?

When I asked the man to describe what had happened, he told me he had flown to Canada in March. His plan was to find a job and an apartment, and then have his family join him.

He had no friends or relatives in Canada to meet him but he had found a room in a private house in a pleasant residential area with tree-lined streets.  The  companies he visited were positive and it seemed that it wouldn't take him long to  find a good job.

But three weeks after he had arrived something happened, and he decided he would have to return to Britain.

"What was it?, I asked.

"I was walking down a street in Hamilton with all those trees, those maples that you have in Canada. Suddenly, the smell of the juice that comes out of them hit me."

"The maple sap?"

"I guess so, but it's a sweet smell and it almost made me sick. And the footpath was sticky with the juice.  I just decided that I couldn't stand this."

I thought about his comments. He had arrived in March when the sap would start flowing in the maples. I remembered as a lad walking to public school in the spring and sometimes finding an icicle hanging from a broken maple twig (a sapcicle?), and how I had enjoyed the sweet taste as it melted in my mouth.

I had never noticed the smell of maple sap but perhaps that was because I had grown up with it.

In any event, he couldn't stand the smell and he had caught a plane and returned to Britain.

It would take a psychiatrist to figure out what had really happened but my theory is that he had one of those 'oh-my-god-what-have-I-done' moments that we all have experienced.

There were no friends or relatives in Hamilton that he could talk to. Long distance calls to the UK were hard to make and expensive, and his family may not have been 'on the phone', as they said in Britain at the time.

He panicked.

Whatever happened, it is ironic that it was Canada's national tree and national emblem that took the blame for his failed immigration.

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The Leeds Immigration Office received newspapers from across Canada that were used by potential immigrants to check the wants ads---to see what jobs were available and what accommodation would cost.

There was a slim, elderly man with sparse white hair who came in regularly and asked for the latest Toronto Star. He would spread the paper out on one of our tables and spend an hour or so browsing through it.

We didn't pay much attention to him, as we got on with our work of interviewing immigrants. I suppose we assumed he had some connection with Toronto, perhaps family or relatives there.

A new Canadian secretary arrived in the office---at that time Canadian secretaries handled the confidential correspondence while locally-engaged typists looked after the bulk of the application processing---a young woman from Ottawa with a gentle manner and a warm smile. She was at the reception counter one day when the man came in for his newspaper, and she began to chat with him.

It turned out that he and his wife had migrated to Toronto in the 1920s from Leeds. He had found a good job, they had moved into a comfortable apartment, and  he was thinking about buying a car. Things  were going very well for them.

Then his wife became homesick.

As a digression, in the 1960s immigrants to Canada often talked about 'the thousand dollar cure'. If a wife became homesick and wanted the family to return to England, the husband would buy an airline ticket for her.

Usually after a month or so in England she would find that the  'old country' wasn't quite what she had remembered and that Canada was better than she had thought.

In the 1920s, there was no easy equivalent of 'the thousand dollar cure', so the couple decided to move back to Leeds.

As he talked to our secretary, the elderly man became agitated.

"That damn woman forced me to come back. We would have had a better life in Canada."

He carried on for some time, berating his wife.

From then on he always looked around for the Canadian secretary. If she were available, he would start in again about his 'damn wife'.

And then he stopped coming in. We joked with the secretary, asking her what she had done to turn off 'her boyfriend'.

A month or so later, the secretary found an article in the Leeds newspaper with an accompanying photo of the elderly man. The article was reporting on a coroner's inquest into the death of the elderly man's wife.

According to the article, the husband had testified that he had come home from some shopping to find his wife lying in the dark at the bottom of the cellar stairs. He had immediately called an ambulance, but the attendants had found that she was dead.

He told the inquest that his wife always refused to turn on the cellar light before going down the stairs because she was concerned about the cost of the electricity. He said that he had often spoken to her about the dangers of going down the stairs in the dark, that the small cost of electricity was not worth the risk of falling.

The coroner ruled that the death was caused by misadventure.

Several of us in the office read the article and then looked  at each other.

Had the death happened as the coroner had determined or had the husband pushed his 'damn wife' down the stairs? Should we go to the police and tell them about his rants about his wife?

We finally decided that we didn't really have the kind of concrete evidence that would have persuaded the police, or the coroner, to re-open the case.

The man never came back to the office.

I still wonder sometimes, what really happened.

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See you on April 24th for Posting #112 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting,  or email me at johnpathunter@gmail.com.

POSTING #110

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Getting Sick in the South

Three rules are drilled into Canadians going south for a winter vacation.

Rule One: Don't get sick.

Rule Two: If you insist on breaking the first rule and decide that you must get sick, make sure it is between 8.30 AM and 5.30 PM, Monday to Friday, so you can go to a walk-in medical centre (center) and NOT to a hospital emergency department, which are all exorbitantly expensive.

Rule Three: Call your Canadian insurer BEFORE seeking treatment.

On our recent trip to Florida, I broke the first two rules.

Here's what happened.

On a Wednesday toward the end of our holiday I was feeling lousy---a temperature and a lot of coughing.

I called the Canadian insurance company hotline to find out what I should do if I had to see a doctor. The woman explained that if things got worse, I should call the company and it would find a walk-in clinic or hospital and make arrangements for me to be seen.

She offered to start a claim file 'just in case' but I said that it might be just a cold and that I would increase my asthma medication to try to reduce the coughing.

Early Saturday morning---about 3 AM--- I was much worse, couldn't stop coughing and was having trouble breathing. I called the insurance company and after listening to my symptoms the agent said she had a list of clinics and hospitals in the Bonita Springs area. She would contact them and call me back.

Half an hour later she called back to say that she couldn't find a clinic that was open but had found a hospital that would treat me in its emergency department. The hospital had agreed to bill the company directly so I wouldn't have to pay anything 'out of pocket'. She had faxed the billing details to the hospital.

Pat and I got to the hospital---owned by a private, for-profit company---around 6 AM. The ER receptionist told us that they had indeed received a fax but it was not satisfactory. I would have to pay for the treatment and then claim it from the insurance company.

She showed me the fax.

It said that the hospital was authorized to bill the insurance company directly and provided details on how to submit a bill.

It looked OK to me.

 I asked what was wrong with the fax. She said that it didn't have a statement saying that the insurance company would guarantee to pay 100% of all charges levied by the hospital.

"We've had trouble in the past with insurance companies from up there'", she said. "So if you want treatment, you'll have to pay yourself and claim it."

I tried to call the insurance company but after spending half an hour listening to classical music and repeated messages that 'your call is important and an agent will be with you shortly', I gave up.

I agreed to pay.

I was escorted into a palatial examining room, lined with marble and glass, with a single bed. In Canada, an examining room that size would have had at least three beds, with curtains separating them.

The staff, who were competent, didn't seem rushed and appeared to spend a good bit of time recording billable items and having me sign witnessed statements designed I suppose to cover their derrieres in the event of a malpractice suit. I signed individual statements agreeing to be examined, saying that I understood the diagnosis, and that I agreed to follow the drug and medical treatment being recommended.

In addition to an examination by a nurse and a doctor, I had an x-ray, some blood tests and a treatment to ease my breathing.

The diagnosis was upper respiratory infection and acute bronchitis, and I was given prescriptions for three drugs---an antibiotic and two asthma medications that were different from the ones I had been using---and an appointment to see a pulmonologist in three days.

Two hours after I had arrived I was released and directed to a booth to wait for the bill to be totalled.  

Twenty minutes later, the ER receptionist slid a bill across the counter---for $2372!

After she had waited for me to catch my breath, she said that there might be additional charges. She explained that this was just an interim bill but when I came back in a few days for the final bill---the one that I would need to submit to my insurance company--- I would be told what the extra charges would be.

I handed over a credit card.

On the way back to our condo, I filled the antibiotic prescription, and swallowed the first pills. I decided not to fill the asthma prescriptions until I had talked to my Canadian doctor.

By Monday, I was feeling a great deal better---just as the doctor had predicted. He had said that the antibiotic he was prescribing worked very quickly. I decided not to fill the asthma prescriptions or see the pulmonologist.

Later on Monday, I called the hospital business office to ask whether the final bill was ready. A snippy clerk told me that it wasn't ready because the business office didn't work on weekends.

I called again on Wednesday and was told that the bill was now ready and I could come in and pick it up.

"Oh, by the way, there will be additional charges."

"How much?"

"They total $345."

"What are they for?, I asked.

There was a pause, and I could hear the computer keys being tapped.

"Oh, you won't have to pay the additional charges, after all. The hospital will absorb them."

I was left with the impression that if I hadn't asked what the charges were for, I would have had to pay them.

Strange.

Anyway, she had said that the final bill was ready. That meant that I could take it home with us when we left Florida in three days and then submit my claim to the insurance company as soon as we arrived in Virgil.

Pat and I decided to rush to the hospital business office right away, before they closed for the day.

Half way to the hospital I looked down at my feet. In the rush, I hadn't switched to the deck shoes I normally wore outside.

I was wearing slippers.

Now, they are nice slippers, Lands' End, sheepskin moccasin-type slippers in a dusky blue.

But still slippers.

There wasn't time to go back and change.

I tried to reconcile myself to the fact that with slippers and elderly (but clean) shorts I would be going to the business office looking like an escapee from the hospital's ward for memory-challenged patients.

When we got to the hospital I shuffled down a long, marble-tiled hall to the business office. Bending down to talk through a small hole in a bullet-proof glass partition (two to three inches thick), I explained why I had come.

After checking her computer, the clerk told me that the hospital person I had been talking to on the phone was wrong---the final bill was not ready.

She explained that it would take several more days at least to collect all the charges and then they would have to be entered into the computer. Furthermore, the computers couldn't be updated until after midnight the day the bills were received. And then the bill would have to be reviewed by another unit to make sure all the charges had been included.

She told me not to worry about any additional hospital charges. The person I had talked to on the phone had been right about the $345 additional charges being absorbed by the hospital.

However, there would probably be some bills from doctors who had reviewed the x-ray and blood reports to make sure the ER staff had interpreted them correctly. The doctors would bill me directly. (In fact, two doctors submitted bills, but they went directly to the insurance company. The company tells me that it paid them, after requesting and receiving 'discounts'. Don't ask!)

I expressed disappointment that it didn't appear that I would be able to have the final bill before we left for Canada.

The clerk behind the bullet-proof glass didn't seem concerned---her hands were tied---but  perhaps she could do something. She worked at the computer and produced an interim bill that showed the amount I had paid. Unfortunately, it also showed the $345 dollars of extra charges as 'unresolved'. The computer wouldn't let her delete the $345.

I explained that if I submitted that bill to the insurance company, they would want an explanation of the unresolved charges, and this would delay payment of my claim.

The clerk shrugged her shoulders.

I then asked if I could talk to her manager. She made a phone call.

While I was talking with the clerk, Pat was studying a picture on the wall at the end of the corridor. In the centre of a water-colour of a pastoral scene was a bird, a shiny black bird.

Pat leaned over and whispered, "You don't suppose that shiny bird is actually a camera to monitor the corridor?"

I looked up for a security camera but couldn't see one.

Nodding at the bullet-proof glass, I used that very Russian expression, "Who knows?"

Soon a woman appeared from an office up the corridor and joined us in front of the bullet-proof glass.

"I'm the hospital's 'Patient Advocate'. May I help you?", she said, in a pleasant voice.

I started to explain the situation, but then thought it would be better if we could sit down somewhere. This would make it easier for Pat's artificial knees and perhaps give me a chance to hide my slippers (and my shorts) under a table.

She seemed disappointed that she wasn't going to be able to complete her 'advocacy' role in the corridor but led us to her office.

When we were sitting, I pointed out that I was sure that in a large, well-organized hospital like this, there must be some way to produce a final bill. I pointed out that one of her hospital's employees had promised me on the phone that I could come in and get the final bill.

She was very sympathetic but said there was nothing that she could do. Computers, and all that.

I said that I understood that at her level she couldn't solve the problem but that my experience of large organizations was that there was always someone who could cut a Gordian Knot.

I asked if we could see the hospital's CEO (in my slippers and shorts).

After some phone calls, she reported that the CEO was in meetings. She said that the Chief Financial Officer would have been delighted to meet us but he was in a conference call that would last at least another half hour.

I said that was fine, we would wait---in her office.

More phone calls and then she said the CFO had been able to end his conference call and would be right down. As we waited for him, she busily cleaned her desk, organizing files and papers into neat piles.

The CFO, a well-nourished young man in a good suit, listened sympathetically to me (the hospital did 'sympathy' very well---probably an empathy training course). Unfortunately, neither he or the CEO could over-rule the computers. He did think of a way of tricking the computer so they could give me an interim bill that no longer showed the famous $345. I could submit that to the company and in the meantime the hospital would complete the final report with all the costs broken down by codes for the diagnosis and treatment, and would mail that to the insurance company.

Accepting that I had got as much as I could get, I threw in the towel and walked out of the hospital, trying to pretend that I was wearing shoes, not slippers.

When we got home to Canada, I sent all the documents to the insurance company.

Nearly two months went by as the company requested and then waited for the hospital to send the final bill. It had to be an original and this meant it had to come by US mail---no faxing, or scanning and emailing.

Finally, after some prodding from us, the insurance company agreed to send a cheque for the full amount without waiting for the final bill.

The cheque has now been received and is resting comfortably in our bank account.

I have decided not to worry about whether the hospital ever sends the final bill to the insurance company.

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Originally, I had planned to end this Posting by offering some sage comments on the light that my ER experience might shed on the conundrum that has always puzzled me about the American health care system: how can a nation that spends far more per-capita on health care than other industrialized counties still have 40 million people without health care coverage.

However, I have decided to let you---the reader---try to solve that conundrum on your own.

Instead, may I end with a story that keeps popping into my head whenever I think about the ER experience.  

It's a story about steam locomotives.

I know, there doesn't seem to be any connection, but bear with me.

A friend with a substantial engineering background had a passion for steam locomotives. Happening to be in a  city that had a railway museum, he dropped in.

He loved the museum. He sat in the engineer's seat, wore the striped grey and white engineer's cap, leaned out the window pretending to look down the track, and pulled the chain to blow the steam whistle.

Then he went to an exhibit that showed the internal workings of the steam engineer, the cylinders, pistons and valves.

He told me that the exhibit was excellent but one feature bothered him.

A guide had described the tolerances that the machinists worked to in milling the huge cylinders and pistons. My friend, who was used to working on internal combustion engines with their tolerances of a few thousands of an inch, was astounded by the casual standards used in steam locomotives. I forget the numbers, but let's say the tolerance was an eighth or a quarter of an inch---that's the order of magnitude.

My friend's point was that a good bit of the steam that was injected into the cylinders to drive the pistons would in fact escape along the gap between the pistons and the cylinder walls.

The steam locomotives had been wonderfully successful in carrying freight and passengers from coast to coast.

But my friend couldn't get over how inefficient they were.

"I suppose', he said, shaking his head, 'coal was so cheap that it didn't matter."

We chatted about the diesel locomotives and how much more efficient they are, with their close tolerances.

But the introduction of the more efficient diesels was controversial. Railway unions fought to keep fireman in the locomotive even though there was no longer a steam boiler to stoke.

'Railway towns', protested the changes arguing that they would lose many well-paid jobs because fewer workers would be needed to operate and service the diesel locomotives.

Some towns, like Stratford,  found alternative ways of creating jobs but other communities have still not fully recovered.

In the end, change came. Efficiency increased dramatically, and society benefitted enormously.

Thus endeth the lesson.

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See you on April 17th for Posting #111 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting,  or email me at johnpathunter@gmail.com.

POSTING #109

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Stories from the Stash

Pat, an avid quilter, has a large stockpile of pieces of fabric left over from previous creations that she calls her 'stash'. She dips into the stash whenever she needs a bit of material of a particular colour, shape or size for a new quilt.

My 'blogger stash' is not as large---or as well organized as Pat's---but there are many stories that I have stored away that are not major enough to warrant a separate posting but are too good to throw away.

Here are a few stories from my stash.

A View of Global Warming from Emporia

While we were marooned in Emporia, Virginia, on our way home from Florida, I met a man in his 70s who had been born in the Emporia area, moved to the north for a successful professional career and then returned to his birthplace for retirement.

He seemed an engaging, well-informed fellow and we had a very pleasant give-and-take conversation about a variety of things.

Until we hit the weather!

I had mentioned that we were in a holding pattern in Emporia waiting for a series of snow storms to pass through further north.

He leaned forward in a way that suggested he was about to proclaim on a subject very close to his heart.

And proclaim he did.

On global warming.

He said he accepted that the earth was warming. "Thermometers don't lie", was how he put it.

But he didn't believe that the warming of the earth was caused by people.

"You can't blame it on the internal combustion engine and coal-fired electrical generating plants."

For millions of years, he argued, the earth had gone through cycles of warming and cooling. Glaciers had grown and shrunk, and, in response, ocean levels had fallen and risen.

His clinching argument was Greenland. According to him, it had been given that name by earlier inhabitants because it was covered with lush, verdant forests. It had gone through a cold period and was now on its way back to its former green glory.

The mention of Greenland rang a tiny bell in my head, a feeling that I had heard something about how that island received its name that didn't fit with his interpretation, but I couldn't pull the thought out.

The fellow carried on,

"The people of Norfolk", pointing east to the Atlantic coast, "will have to move to higher ground. That's the way it has always been."

I was surprised that a well-informed person would reject the views of scads of climate scientists, and also surprised at what seemed to me to be a pretty callous attitude toward the fate of coastal people.

His rant carried on until I found an excuse to leave.

That night I did some computer searches and found what had been bothering me about the Greenland argument. No one really knows how Greenland got its name but there are some theories. One is that Eric the Red, after murdering someone, was banished from Iceland to the cold, forbidding island in the north. Lonely, he decided that he could perhaps entice people to join him if he gave the place an attractive name. Ergo, 'Greenland'.

Another theory is that 'Greenland' is a mistranslation of 'Gruntland', which apparently means 'ground land'.

However it got its name, there is no evidence that an early group of humans named it Greenland because they enjoyed its idyllic green countryside.

And yet, of course, that hasn't stopped lobbyists for the oil, gas and coal industries from using the name 'Greenland' as an argument to prevent any reduction in the use of their products.

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The next day we drove to Norfolk to see this city of 250,000 people that, according to my informant, was going to be flooded---and if you believed him there was nothing that anyone could do to prevent it.

As I mentioned in an earlier posting, we visited Norfolk's large and marvellous Chrysler Museum of Art. It is only a stone's throw from the sea and presumably will be one of the first structures to be inundated.

The officials won't be able to move the massive stone building but one can only hope that they can remove the more than 30,000 paintings, sculptures and other works of art before the sea rushes in.

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For a time I assumed that my informant's rant was the result perhaps of a fight with his wife, or cold coffee and burnt toast at breakfast---that it was just a temporary fit of pique that he would disown when he had calmed down.

But then I read an article in the New York Times that started off "For nearly a year, Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, Virginia's crusading Republican attorney general, has waged a one-man war on the theory of man-made global warming."

The state's Attorney General!

The article went on to say that energy lobbyists and Tea Party stalwarts, like Mr. Cuccinelli, are arguing that the science that supports man-made global warming is "unreliable, unverifiable and doctored".

As Jon Stewart might say, 'Well that settles it then, doesn't it!'

A Gutsy Old Lady

On a visit to a Bob Evans restaurant somewhere in Florida---I won't be more precise for reasons that will become clear later---I ordered one of my favourite lunch items, the fruit plate. It always comes heaped with a rich variety of ripe and delicious fruit.

"Is that the one with yoghurt?, the server asked.

I explained that it used to be possible to get it with cottage cheese instead of yoghurt but that Bob Evans, without consulting me, had dropped the cottage cheese option. I would therefore settle for fruit with yoghurt.

"If you want, you can have it with cottage cheese---we have it.", the server said.

"How come you have cottage cheese when the other Bob Evans restaurants don't?"

She smiled and told this story.

One of their customers, an elderly lady, had been coming in every day for years and she always ordered the same thing---the fruit plate with cottage cheese.

A new menu came down from head office that deleted the cottage cheese option, the fruit plate would be accompanied only by yoghurt.

When a server broke the news to her, the old lady blinked, frowned, thought for a moment, and appeared to be about to protest. Then her chin went out defiantly and she said, "Well, in that case, I'll bring my own cottage cheese tomorrow."

When the server reported this to her manager, he mulled it over for a time, doing, I imagine, a quick calculus of how much trouble he might get into with head office if he changed the menu versus the cost of alienating a regular customer not to mention the risk of health and liability problems if customers started supplementing dishes with their own food.

He had his staff buy some cottage cheese.

And that's how I got cottage cheese with my fruit plate.

If any of Bob Evan's suits read this blog, I hope they will not try to find the insubordinate manager---good luck, anyway, there are a lot of Bob Evans restaurants in Florida---but instead they will listen to the people and reinstall cottage cheese as an option.

Another Gutsy Old Lady

There was an elderly widow in a town near Grimsby who had decided that the time had come to sell the large, old brick house in which she and her now-deceased husband had raised their children.

The real estate agent she called pointed to some sagging floors and recommended that she have a contractor jack up beams in the basement and install some steel posts. It would not cost much and would greatly increase the selling price of the house.

A contractor we know sent one of his foremen to have a look at the job and prepare an estimate. The foreman, a young man, came back and reported that they couldn't do the job. To get at the sagging beams they would have to remove asbestos coverings on some pipes and heating ducts.

The foreman said he didn't want to get asbestos fibres in his lungs. The woman would have to hire a licensed firm to remove the asbestos before they could do the job.

When our contractor friend broke the news to the woman, she asked, "How much will it cost?".

The contractor explained that trained workers in special clothes and wearing masks would have to block off the basement with plastic sheeting, install fans to create negative air pressure so the fibres wouldn't escape, and on and on. He thought that the cost would likely be in the $6,000-$8,000 range.

The woman laughed.

"Look, I'm 82, I'm not going to live forever. Get me lots of bags, I'll do it myself."

I don't know what happened---sometimes it's better not to know---but I assume she went ahead with her plan.

Now, I know that asbestos is a dangerous product (we spent a good bit of money having it removed from one of the old houses we owned) so I can't condone what the old lady presumably did.

But I think one has to admire her spunkiness.

"Papaya with what?"

During my consulting assignment in Malaysia in 1992,  Pat ordered a serving of papaya for dessert at the very fine hotel where we were staying.

"Could I have a scoop of vanilla ice cream with the papaya?", Pat asked the server, a friendly young Malaysian woman who had often waited on us.

"Oh, you can't have papaya with ice cream", the server replied scrunching up her nose as though Pat had ordered, say, sardines with chocolate sauce.

"But they're really good together", Pat said.

They stared at each for a few moments.

"Well", the server offered, "I can bring you the plate with the papaya and a bowl of ice cream".

Pat thought that was a great idea.

"And," the server said before heading for the kitchen, "I'm going to come back and watch you eat it".

A few minutes later the server came back with the papaya on a plate and the ice cream in a bowl---and with three other servers tagging along.

The four women watched as Pat put the ice cream on the papaya and proceeded to enjoy them. The servers covered their mouths in horror.

Pat wanted to say that papaya with ice cream was no stranger than fish head soup, a Malaysian delicacy.

But she refrained, and just enjoyed her dessert.

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See you on April 10th for Posting #110 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting,  or email me at johnpathunter@gmail.com.