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The Aberration vs the Honorable By Delinda McCann

9/24/2018

I believe that most people are honest and theft is not normal. I think we look at the news, reporting only on the bad things that happen, and we tend to think that we are surrounded by dishonesty simply because nobody reports on routine honesty. My business is an excellent example of how most of a community is content to behave with decency and honor.

I grow flowers organically and sell them at a little flower stand located at the main intersection in Burton. Burton is mostly an intersection with a store and a couple shops. Of course, we have a coffee stand and my flower stand there.

I don’t want to stay out in the heat or cold all day selling flowers, so I drop eleven bouquets at the stand in the morning and go pick up my money and any left-over bouquets in the evening. I have a small cash box with a slit in the lid for people to leave their money in. This operation is strictly on the honor system. Nobody passing by can really see what someone puts in the cash box.

On any weekend, about two thousand people pass through the intersection beside my stand. Most of those people live here. Some are children. Some are youth. Some are immigrants. Some are homeless. Some are wealthy. Some are drug addicts. The peculiar thing about this arrangement is that the honor system works. I rarely have someone take a bouquet without paying. If I do notice my income doesn’t match the number of bouquets taken, more often than not, I’ll find the missing money in the cash box within the next few days. Occasionally someone will stop me and explain that they were catching the bus to visit a friend and wanted a small gift but didn’t have money so they took flowers then brought the money to the stand when they got home. Sometimes people will put in twenty dollars with a long elaborate note about how they didn’t have anything smaller than the twenty, but really needed the flowers, and they want to run a credit with me. Each time they take flowers they’ll leave a note saying what they took and what their balance is.

Occasionally, we do have someone who isn’t honorable. For years one woman would visit the island in the summer and decorate her house with bouquets that she didn’t pay for. Once I almost caught her. She saw me coming, handed the bouquets to her grandchild in the back seat of her car and drove off with gravel and dust flying behind her. Note, this is someone who owns a house in the city and a beach house on the island—not a poor person. I told the local garden reporter about her. I complained about her to everybody I met. I emphasized the role of the grandchildren in the back seat of her nice car. Word gets around on a small island. Other people recognized my description as that of someone who shoplifted in their businesses. Years have passed and this person visits the island less and less, much to the relief of all the businesses, but I know when she’s here.

Aside from that one person, nobody steals from my stand. I’ve talked to other islanders who operate farm stands. Most stands are set up on back roads with nobody around. Yet they function because people will pay for what they take. We once had a group from off island who came on Sunday mornings and stole from stands. They got caught, and we all went back to business as normal-no theft or vandalism.

I think the emphasis of the media on reporting only bad news tends to normalize theft, cheating, lying, assault and any sleazy behavior that we do find in the media. The lying politician is as much an aberration in the totality of humanity is the one person who steals from my stand. The one in three thousand who is dishonest stands out simply because they do things nobody else would think of.

My conclusion is that most people are honorable. They don’t steal. They are not after something they don’t pay for. Children, youth, the homeless, immigrants, the poor, and drug addicts all respect the honor system. Perhaps stealing from a flower stand is one of those significant behaviors that Indicates the perpetrator is a sociopath because most people do respect the system. People are generally okay. The one person, out of two or three thousand people, who steals places a burden on the rest of the community, but does not define humanity.

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Grandpapa's New Woman By Delinda McCAnn

9/11/2018

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This is a bit of an afterward to my new novel, Lucy Goes Home, coming out whenever the publisher gets it done.

Grandpapa's New Woman

Grandpapa C’Tis sat in his room with the door closed and chewed on the heel of his thumb. Occasionally, he glanced at the letter on the table beside him. He bit the heel of his thumb and looked across his fields to the small cemetery high on the mountainside facing his home. His wife was gone, had been gone these past twenty years. He had children and grandchildren but they weren’t the same as having a wife. He glanced toward the cemetery again, knowing that His Elspeth wanted him to live. She valued love. He nodded. Elspeth would be happy knowing he had a new companion.

He watched his grandson, Young C’Tis, driving Lucy’s red convertible from her house to the place on the terrace behind his house where the cars were kept. Still gnawing on his problem, he followed his grandson. I should talk to him about Hallie. He caught up to C’Tis as C’Tis set the brake in the car. “How’s Lucy? Is she still asleep? Why did she drive home instead of taking the train?”

C’Tis turned toward Grandpapa. “Uncle Peter just called Kenny.” C’Tis pressed his lips together and looked away. When he looked back at Grandpapa he had tears in his eyes. “Some people tried to kidnap Lucy last night. They chased her half-way across the country. We’ve set a watch up on goat peak in case they try to come for her here.”

Grandpapa scowled and picked up one of C’Tis’s rags to wipe at the layers of dust on the sports car. He thought about his other problem. He couldn’t upset C’Tis with talk of a new woman now. Could he bring a new wife here if evil was still following his granddaughter? Would C’Tis think he’d forgotten Grandmama Elspeth?

Kenny soon strode up to the parking lot, trailing the shop-vacuum behind him. “I’ll get the inside.” Kenny chewed on the hairs in his new mustache. “Derran came up to visit Lucy. He said they made good time last night. He thinks the people following them were after him too because of his work in the prosecutor’s office. He says they were part of the same group that tried to kill the prosecutors.”

Grandpapa nodded. “Is Lucy still sleeping?”

Kenny paused before turning on the noisy vacuum. “Yeah, Derran said she hasn’t eaten or slept much all week because she was worried about her final exams.”

Grandpapa’s chin trembled. “Is Lucy safe now?”

Kenny nodded. “She’s safer than most people in this country. Nobody will dare touch her now that the leaders behind the troubles have been captured.” Before Grandpapa could mention his new woman, Kenny turned on the vacuum.

Grandpapa left the young men to clean the car and took his bigger problem back to his room. He read the letter on his table. Someone would have to pick the woman up at the train station in the morning. What should he tell the children? What if he didn’t like the woman when he saw her. What if her voice was loud and grating? What if she didn’t like his home? What if she didn’t like his adopted children because they’d been orphaned?

He paced for an hour before he climbed the mountain to the settlement at High Valley. He nodded to his neighbors as he made his way toward the shaman’s hut. He found his old friend laying on his back in the grass behind his hut feeding bits of leaves to a baby goat.

“I’ve come to ask your opinion.” He sat cross legged in the grass beside the wise man. “When I was on TV, this woman wrote to me after, and I wrote back." He poured out his problem. "…so, she’s coming. I haven’t said anything to anybody about her because we’ve written to each other, but I don’t know if she’ll have me once she sees me.”

The shaman still on his back rolled his head to the side to look at Grandpapa C’Tis. He considered his words. The woman would be a complete fool to refuse Uncle C’Tis. He was the richest man in the mountains. He had powerful friends. He was also naive for all his experience with the outside world. “Bring the woman home and give her a room at the resort. Now, if she wants to get in your bed, you tell her she must wait until the archbishop makes it all legal. Meanwhile, you watch her real close like. She’ll be nice to Miss Lucy, but watch how she treats Beulah. Watch Mr. Kenny. If she’s the wrong sort of woman, Mr. Kenny and Mrs. Irene will see that in a flash. I’ll come visit you day after next and see if she is the right sort of woman for your family. She must respect Mrs. U’Nice.”

“Ah, the right sort of woman for my family.” Grandpapa nodded and stood abruptly to return home.

When he came back down the mountain he ran his hand over the red convertible and imagined himself picking up his new woman from the train station in this car. He nodded. The convertible would be much nicer than the truck. He studied the instrument panel. Could he drive the thing?

Before the sun came over the mountains the next morning, Grandpapa, dressed in his second best suit, tiptoed out to the sports car. He winced when the motor roared to life. He watched the windows to see if he woke any of his grandchildren. Once started, the car was quiet enough to slip down the road and over the pass without waking the rest of the family.

As he drove down the winding road that would take him out of the mountains, his lower lip protruded farther and farther. What if she isn’t the right sort of woman? She sounds nice in her letters. How will we get rid of her if she’s bossy with Mrs. U’Nice? What if she doesn’t want me? She sounds eager to come, but maybe she’ll think I’m too old. Maybe she won’t have come, after all. I should have said something to C’Tis or Lucy. I hope she’s the right sort, but I don’t know. How will we …?” His thoughts felt like they were spinning faster than the wheels on the car.

Before the train came in, Grandpapa had gassed the car in the village and greeted his village friends, “I’m picking up a guest for the resort.” He parked the car at the station, then shuddered when he saw a curtain twitch in the second floor window at the new pharmacy his granddaughter, Sarah, owned. Should I go tell Sarah I’m just picking up a guest for the resort?

He didn’t need to tell Sarah. The owner of the general store popped in Sarah’s back door to get some aspirin and say, “I see your Grandpapa has a new car. He’s picking up someone for the resort.”

Sarah nodded. “That’s the car Lucy and Martha drive at university.” She glanced out the window toward the car. “You know, someone tried to kidnap Lucy when the prosecutor’s offices were attacked the other night. She drove all the way home.” She bit her lip. “Can you let us know if anybody is asking about the car, or her?”

Before the train came in, a boy about ten ran down the back path from the farm store to the pharmacy. “Miss Sarah, I’m to tell you not to worry about those people who are looking for Miss Lucy, we know how to give them what for.”

The train arrived and Sarah stepped out the door of her pharmacy with a sack of supplies for Grandpapa to carry back to the clinic at the resort. The owner of the bakery met Sarah in the middle of the road. “I heard about those people who chased Miss Lucy home. We have a plan for them if they show their faces in the village. We don’t like their sort around here.”

Sarah nodded at her neighbor and missed seeing the resort-guest throw her arms around Grandpapa and give him a hug somewhat more than warm.

Officer Burke came trotting up the only street in town. He reached the red convertible just as Grandpapa tried to open the passenger door for the woman clinging to his arm with both of her hands. “Elder C’Tis, we’ve heard about the attack on Miss Lucy. We consider her one of our own. Nobody’s going to be nosing around here looking for her or that car.” He pulled his belt back up around his waist.

A scrawny farmer with sweat stains under his arms and manure on his boots, stroked the convertible. “I saw this car come through my place the night before last. Was that Miss Lucy and her young man?” He scratched the back of his head, pulled a seed or bug from his hair and dropped it on the ground. “I guess I can put a chain and lock on my gate. I’ll put up a big bell. Anybody who wants to come through my land can ring the bell and explain to me why they need to come through.”

Sarah finally got a word in edgewise. “Grandpapa, I have some medicines and supplies for Kai.” She held up her bag.”

The woman beside grandpapa finally dropped his arm. “You must be Miss Sarah, the pharmacist. C’Tis told me all about you. I’m Hallie S’Kay from Argos City.” Hallie held out her hand.

Sarah dropped her bag on the front seat of the car and shook hands with Grandpapa’s friend. “I’m pleased to meet you.” She glanced at the stationmaster standing behind Hallie holding two large suitcases and thought that Mrs. Hallie had come prepared for a long stay.

The baker watched the new woman from under half-closed eyelids. The farmer scratched the back of his head again. Officer Burke hitched up his belt again and said what everybody else thought. “Now, Sir, don’t you worry about Miss Lucy, or anything. We know how to take care of our own, and there won’t be no outsiders coming in here harming Miss Lucy…or anybody else.”

Poor Grandpapa turned this way and that and wished these people would just go away and let him get on with it.

Sarah wanted to laugh over her protective neighbors. “Grandpapa, you can’t drive Mrs. Hallie up the mountain with the top down. We’ll have to put it up just to get her luggage in.

The stationmaster sprang forward to help Sarah with the convertible top and to stow the luggage, while Hallie stood beside Grandpapa and praised everything she saw. She finally hit on a topic to make everybody happy. “Oh I saw the paper in Mesa City this morning. I looked for the graduates, you know. That paper said Miss Lucy McKinsey graduated first in her class.”

Sarah puffed a little as she bent over the back of the driver’s seat and wedged her sack between the two suitcases. She looked through the far window. “That’s good news. I think we all knew she would, but school will be easier for the younger ones if us older ones do well.”

Grandpapa was finally able to tuck his friend into the car and close her door. He wondered why he thought he could drive to the village and pick someone up without everybody knowing his business. What would she think of him, and the village people almost threatening her. He felt heat creeping up his neck. What would A’Kee say? Would his grandchildren accept her? What if the children were too noisy for her? He turned the car toward home and stepped down on the gas leaving a trail of dust behind him.

Of course, Sarah pulled her phone out of her pocket before the dust settled. She debated a half-second over who to call first. She decided Lucy had the first right to know what was in the wind. “Lucy, I’m calling to tell you where your car is. Grandpapa is using it to bring a female friend home from the train.”

“What kind of female friend?” Lucy sat at her kitchen table and paused with her bite of waffle half-way to her mouth.

“The kind that looks at him like an adoring puppy, clings to him with both hands, and looks like she can’t wait to eat him.”

Lucy’s laugh sounded evil to Sarah. “Right. I’m all over this. If I don’t get any hanky-panky, neither does he. Do you know, he told me that I can’t get married at home, and that I have to go to the capital so Uncle Peter can be there, and that he has my whole wedding planned? He makes the rules. We’ll see how he likes living with them.”

Lucy got off the phone and called up the stairs to her sisters, “Everybody on deck. Family meeting in fifteen minutes. Important guest coming in.”

Fifteen minutes after Sarah called Lucy, the whole family gathered at tables in the outside kitchen. Lucy opened the discussion. “Grandpapa has a girlfriend, and he’s bringing her here. We need a nice room for her at the lodge.”

C’Tis hid his hands behind his face and sniffed. “Praise the mountains, the sky and the wind. He’s clung to the past ever since Grandmama died.” He shook his head.

Adele watched C’Tis. “Right. We need some flowers for her room, and maybe we should take her some of the extra rugs from Uncle Andrew’s room.”

Lucy’s phone pinged. She looked at the screen. “This is KA’Lee from the Argos orphanage. She says. Your Grandpapa is Mrs. Hallie’s new man? Sparkling! I’m so relieved. Everybody worried when she bought new clothes and left town to meet a man none of us knew. She’s a sweetie. You’ll love her.

Kenny had been standing behind where C’Tis sat. He let out a long noisy breath. “That’s a relief.”

Martha’s phone pinged, “This is from Cousin James. He ran a background check on Mrs. Hallie through the Federal Investigative Service Office. It came up clean.”

Lucy’s fiancé Derran stopped his truck by the outdoor kitchen. He waved his cell phone in the air as he hustled to Lucy’s side. “I just heard from Prosecutor LeMoin in Argos City. He knows this woman Grandpapa is bringing home. He says she worked as an aid at his son’s school.”

Mama U’Nice raised her hands in the air and said, “Hallelujah! Another pair of hands.”

Kenny looked at his brothers and sisters. “The poor woman doesn’t know what she’s getting into. Now that everybody has investigated something that probably wasn’t any of our business, we better get a move on to give this woman a warm welcome.”

As he drove the car down from the pass toward his lodge, Grandpapa wondered if he’d ever laughed as much as he had on the ride home from the village. Next, he wondered what kind of fool he’d been to think that a man living with twenty-six grandchildren could bring home a new woman without everybody in the family turning out at the lodge to inspect the new guest. He inventoried the family lined up outside the front doors. The little girls wore their party dresses. Lucy, Martha and Nicole had their hair pulled up on top of their heads. They waved to Grandpapa as he arrived. Mr. Kenny wore his suit and rushed forward to open Hallie’s door.

Grandpapa let out the breath he’d been holding for days. His grandchildren would help him impress this new woman. She’d love them. The worst of his worries were over.

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Medical Care USA: Why the Crisis By Delinda McCann

9/3/2018

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After finding myself with a serious and very painful infection and no medical services available in my community, I decided to find out what was wrong. When I moved to this island, we had two thousand year-round residents and another fifteen hundred summer people. We also had four doctors. We had lab facilities and minor surgery capability. We now have ten-thousand year-round residents and two doctors working at a clinic that can’t make ends meet. What happened?
As for the clinic, I couldn’t understand why it suddenly stopped making enough money to survive, so I attended a community meeting about health care on our island. The clinic administration sent a couple representatives to talk to us. The representatives agreed that the clinic was at capacity with only two doctors. They also said their goal is to provide primary care rather than stitching up minor cuts. If we cut a finger or a child falls off their bike and scrapes a knee, they are expected to go to an urgent care center off island. Because of ferry schedules, it can take up to two hours to get to an urgent care center. Old people with the flu are expected to ride the ferry to get their Tamiflu prescription. If you have an ear infection, strep throat, broken bone, or pneumonia, take the ferry off island.

One representative had a graph showing sources of income for the clinic. It didn’t look right to me. He had a pale green section for grants. City of Seattle gives clinics inside the city grants. We don’t qualify. They had a purple bar for Medicaid income and a blue bar for Medicare income. The orange bar for income from private insurance was tiny. That just couldn’t be right. Everybody, on the island young enough to work, has health insurance.

I raised my hand. “Why aren’t you bringing in more from private insurance.”

The rep answered, “They only pay about a third of what it costs us to see a patient, while Medicaid pays one hundred percent and Medicare pays about sixty percent.”

I didn’t believe him. Surely, that expensive health insurance we buy actually pays our doctors for the services we receive. Didn’t the ACA specify that insurers have to pay eighty percent of their proceeds in claims? Okay, having worked with human services agencies I know twenty-percent overhead and profit is outrageously high and can be manipulated by how you define services.

I went to the internet and started looking for articles on who pays what. After reading several articles I came to the conclusion that I was wrong and the clinic representative was correct. Health insurance companies make up their own schedule of what they are going to pay, and a doctor’s office or clinic receives a portion of what they allow. In most of the cases I read about, insurance companies pay about a third of what it costs to see a patient.

I’ve found rumors that big systems like Swedish in Seattle can negotiate with insurers to get a better level of reimbursement. They have a huge base. If someone wants to sell health insurance in Western Washington that policy must cover the Swedish system along with the University of Washington system. Everybody uses those systems for backup on complicated issues.

So with only thirty percent of their costs reimbursed by insurance, how can a clinic survive? As I mentioned, they get some government grants—read: our tax dollars. Both Medicare and Medicaid reimburse at an acceptable rate so Medicaid patients are sought after to offset the deficits cause by private insurance—read: our tax dollars.

My community doesn’t have enough Medicaid and Medicare patients to offset the costs not reimbursed by private insurance.

I have some serious ethical concerns about the funds people with disabilities bring into a system being used to offset the costs of healthy, wealthy people. The practice smacks of prostitution.

My youngest foster daughter who has multiple disabilities lives in the city now. I had wondered why she has such attentive doctors. She has appointments every six weeks. Sometimes she’ll see more than one practitioner at once. She is over medicated, and some of her chronic conditions never get better. Once, I got her a cream at the health food store for a rash. It cleared that rash right up. The doctors told her not to ever use it again. The rash is back, but she’s afraid to use her herbal cream. We can’t have this little source of income for the clinic get well.

So, we have clinics that are not sustainable without an influx of tax dollars to support those people who buy insurance through their work or the exchanges. We have clinics who use Medicaid patients to supplement their income. Because clinics and private practices are not sustainable, we have trouble hiring enough professionals to serve communities outside the big population hubs where clinics can attract more Medicaid patients to exploit.

What do people in rural or isolated communities do? On Vashon, we are exploring our options. Some people have suggested a medical tax district to subsidize patients who have health insurance—more tax dollars. Some people have looked at the system and said, “This is almost socialized medicine. Why not go all the way?” The eventual ethical solution to the problem is a national single payer system, but that is not likely to happen before I get sick again, despite the fact that it would be cheaper for the general population and is almost what we have now.

Curiously, one of our biggest road blocks to a single payer system is the person who buys insurance through their job then says, “Why should I have to pay taxes so that some person who doesn’t work can have health care?”

The real question is, “Why should someone with disabilities have to run to the doctor every six weeks and take more medications than they need or is good for them, so that you can have health care?”

In the meantime what can isolated communities do to attract medical professionals? We must be able to pay for our care. Before the ACA, Washington State had a program called Basic Health. It was funded through our tax dollars along with a sliding scale fee for those who qualified by being too poor to buy corporate health insurance. My proposal would be to resurrect that program with a few modifications. Basic Health would be funded by those people, who qualified to purchase their health care through the program, because they live in an area with inadequate health care services. The coverage could be purchased at the market rate for private coverage. The big difference between the state sponsored program and corporate health insurance companies is that providers would be reimbursed for what they bill or at least at the same rate as Medicaid pays. This program would need reverses that would need funding through Federal Grants until it could build reserves through premiums.

Until we can find some way to fully fund health care, many of us will go without healthcare despite paying for it. Some people will continue to be exploited for the dollars they bring into a system, and some people will continue to profit off of a broken system.

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The Aberration vs the Honorable By Delinda McCann

Grandpapa's New Woman By Delinda McCAnn

Medical Care USA: Why the Crisis By Delinda McCann

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