Education, energy and infrastructure...and updated.
I certainly don’t plan on being dead later today. It just happens to be the third anniversary of my very first stress test, which ended suddenly when my heart went into V-Tach (a heart arrhythmia, 220 heart beats per minute for me and a near brush with V-Fib, where the heart stops beating and just vibrates until it...just stops), which sent me to the hospital, which led to the installation of my lifetime partner- an implanted cardiovascular defibrillator.
Because I wasn’t paying attention to the date, I agreed to schedule my second stress test for today. My defibrillator is in good working order and well-charged. With any luck, it won’t be needed. I’ll exercise enough to raise my heart rate up to about 150 and the techs will take pictures of my heart and all will be fine. I’m a damn sight healthier at 51 than I was three years ago at 48. I walk or bicycle about six miles a day, I take all my medications and I do things to release my stress rather than carry it around.
Nevertheless, just in case, I thought of things in the hospital three years ago and wrote about them here at Dailykos later. They’re still important enough to think about.
Just thinking about three years ago makes me have what I call simply "the reaction." I become extremely aware of my defibrillator (it’s implanted just below the skin in an empty pocket right below my collar bone). Normally I can go days without being aware of it. Anyway, this attention leads to the strange feeling that the thing is trying to crawl out of my body through the surgical scar. Actually, I also get a bizarre irrational fear that someone is going to come over and pull the thing out of me. Ah, whatever- my reaction is to place my palm over the defibrillator until it...well, until I calm down. I look like I’m pledging allegiance to the flag but with the wrong hand (being left-handed, I decided to have the implant put on the right side).
Anyway, I wrote this three years ago after my first surgery:
...I want to address this obsessive demand that we all be afraid. In simplest terms, the right wing/Republican/Fox News combination offers absolutely no hope in our future. None. Therefore it is my feeling that every Democrat must incorporate hope, just raw we-can-fix-this, we-can-do-better, we-can-work-our-way-out hope into every speech from now till next November. Since I had a lot of time on my hands, I came up with three particular areas to focus on: energy, education and infrastructure. All three of these areas need reorganizing, retooling and lots of people can be employed, which is never a bad thing.
That's from this diary:
http://www.dailykos.com/...
And a link about implantable cardiovascular defibrillators, V-Fib and V-Tach:
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
When I wrote the above, I had been home a couple of days recovering from my first implant surgery. Little did I know that during the next week, I'd be back in the hospital for surgery to put in an electrode that worked (works). Anyway, during my first stay in the hospital, I’d been sharing a room in the cardiac ward with an almost-deaf older man who liked to watch Fox News and/or cooking shows 24/7. For you youngsters out there, this was 2007. Bush was still President. Obama was only some Senator. But for sure, the world was full of terrorists coming to kill you, me, everyone we know and our puppies and kittens. Fox News said so, over and over and over. That and we should all go see the then-new Simpsons movie. I was dreadfully afraid that the Republicans would win the elections of 2008. I think a lot of people at Dailykos were afraid of the same thing.
President McCain. President Romney. President Huckabee. President Giuliani.
And a Republican Congress.
Anyway, that hopey, changey thing of Obama’s that Sarah Palin (2007: who?) made fun of wasn’t even on my radar. When I thought every Democrat needed to talk about hope, it was because I didn’t hear any of them doing so. They all seemed desperately afraid of being noticed.
Heck, I was hoping Al Gore would run for President at least in part to excite the Democrats into a revenge strategy inspired by the election of 2000. Suckers looked dead in 2007.
Well, the Republicans lost control of the narrative, the economy and the elections of 2008. They left the executive offices of government with huge piles of horse dung on the desks and worse foulness in the computer files (at least that which they didn’t delete).
And my little triumvirate is still there: energy, education and infrastructure.
Geez, energy. The Gulf of Mexico is going to be an environmental and economic disaster for at least a generation and it’s all because the rules are weak, our hunger for oil is huge and lots of people still think large and rich means smart and capable.
Where’s all the talk about geothermal, wind and solar power? Where are the wonders, like the generators that are attached to buoys and use ocean waves? Where are the calls for taxes on the gallons of what can’t be renewed?
And education. Hey, you know what $10 billion would buy? Combining salaries and benefits, we could have 100,000 (maybe a few more) more teachers working. That would increase the number of teachers in the United States by about ten percent. The effect on classrooms would be amazing. I work at a middle school with fifty teachers. Having five more people on the faculty might mean I don’t have to have forty students in my classes. Imagine that.
But what a jump-start for the whole economy! You know what employed teachers do? They buy stuff. Those extra 100,000 teachers would be like a big rock dropped into the middle of a pond. The water ripples would spread in all directions and some would even bounce back. Having 100,000 more teachers working might give...what? Half a million? A whole million more people something to do?
And infrastructure. Level and pave a few roads and you save piles of money on tires and wear and tear on vehicles (and, yes, some people get to work for money to spend). The country is full of pipes and wires and circuits and grids and ports and levies and lord knows what else that is old, run-down, not efficient or just out-dated. It’s not like we’d be flushing the money down the drain, though many of our drains could use the enema.
Look, I’m just a teacher. I can talk education policies and standards; you probably know a whole pile more about how to put people to work and make things better than I do. I just know that there are a lot of smart folks who need some support, some leadership and some hope. The Republicans and the terrified elite think we’re under siege and the best thing to do is hide in a bunker, cut back on rations (except for tea, I guess) and wait for surrender or deliverance. They’re not protecting the castle. They’re imprisoning themselves and us with them.
What’s the quotation from the musical "1776?"
"Don't forget that most men with nothing would rather protect the possibility of becoming rich than face the reality of being poor."
The Republicans and useless elite are men and women who have something in their death grasp and cannot stand that the ambitious, the dreamers, the creative, the sacrificing and the hardworking might surpass them and emerge with something better than we have now. They say do nothing because they are afraid.
It’s time for war. It’s o.k. to go into debt if you are fighting for your survival. It’s o.k. to do battle with a spiritual, and physical, cancer. It's o.k. to risk for hope instead of whimper in fear (or lash out in unhinged, hysterical anger at their- you know, THEM- own failures of character; what else could explain their unwillingness to show caring and kindness to fellow Americans in need? Oh, right. The Bush tax cuts.). It's time to put everybody to work in order to win and not sit around waiting for miracles or the invisible hand. We need some points on the board, not more defense.
So, just in case something goes wrong today, y’all have another cup of coffee and keep fighting. If everything goes fine, I’ll be at work tomorrow teaching, an optimistic occupation on its face and in my heart, where it shares space with my i.c.d. electrodes (one that workks and one that doesn't).
Update: Everything is fine. Test was no big deal. I guess I have to show up for work tomorrow.