So, I just got this really wonderful email about a benefit concert. But it got me thinking: in a nation where we spent $700 billion a year on bombs, spies, trained killers, and predator drones, why does it have to come to this?
FOR PETE’S SAKE: YOU’VE GOTTA HAVE HEART
A Benefit for Pete Huttlinger
A Night of Great Music, Electrifying Jams & Cool Collaborations
Tuesday, July 26 at Mercy Lounge
Vince Gill, John Oates, The Long Players, John Jorgenson, Mark Selby, Joe Robinson, Baillie & the Boys, Sean Della Croce and others are coming together to lend their extraordinary talents to FOR PETE’S SAKE: YOU’VE GOTTA HAVE HEART – A Benefit for Pete Huttlinger on Tuesday, July 26 at Mercy Lounge (1 Cannery Row) at 8 p.m. Tickets are $20 and can be purchased via TicketWeb and at the door.
All proceeds raised as a result of this amazing night of music – sure to include once-in-a-lifetime collaborations and jams – will help diffuse costs associated with Huttlinger’s surgeries and treatment. The widely respected guitarist and Nashville studio artist is recovering from surgery and awaiting a heart transplant.
Huttlinger has a congenitally defective heart. His heart has slowly deteriorated over his lifetime, and in March, he went into extreme heart failure. Too sick to wait for a heart transplant, Huttlinger was life-flighted on April 29 to St. Luke’s Texas Heart Institute in Houston and underwent surgery (May 4) to have a heart pump installed. This cutting edge device is a mechanical pump that is implanted in his heart and is powered by a battery pack which Huttlinger carries with him. This undertaking is referred to as a “bridge to transplant.” When Huttlinger recovers from this surgery, he will return to Nashville and await a heart transplant which will take place at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Huttlinger suffered a massive stroke in November, but had recovered completely.
To make an online donation go to www.petehuttlinger.com.
Contact: Erin Morris / Morris Public Relations / 615.419.9988
I mean, don't get me wrong. This is a great feel-good story and it's wonderful that this dude, Pete, has friends who can get Vince Gill and John Oates to play benefit concerts for him. I mean, those are some serious connections.
But I don't know who Pete is. I don't know if he 'deserves' medical care more than 45,000 people who die each year because they can't afford health insurance, or why he apparently isn't getting his insurance company (if he has one) to pay for his care. All I know if that I think it's a good thing when people pull together and pool their resources to help keep other people alive and give them life-saving treatment.
I'm sure I'd love to hear some good music. I'd feel good about helping to save the life of a stranger.
But what the hell is going on in our country, when we spend hundreds of billions of dollars on endless wars that kill people? And we can't afford to provide life-saving medical treatment? We have to cut Medicare and Medicaid? Why? So that we have to host more life-saving charity concerts?
I mean, can't Vince Gill and John Oates play a benefit concert to save Medicare as we know it? Would it be too much trouble if some PR firm could send out an announcement about keeping thousands of older adults in their own homes instead of forcing them into a nursing home? Do you think maybe we could find the political will to put aside our differences about birth control, and focus on helping kids get a decent education?
Or would that be too much trouble?