Monthly Archives: January 2020

By Sara WilsonFor the Opelika Observer

Will Fairless, one of two interns working at the Opelika Observer this spring semester, is a senior majoring in journalism at Auburn University. After graduating in May, he plans to attend law school or potentially pursue a career in the journalism field.I have taken the LSAT and applied to some law schools. If that doesnt work out, my internship with the Opelika Observer will provide me with some experience to pursue a career in journalism, Fairless said.He is originally from St. Charles, Missouri, right outside of St. Louis, making him a big Cardinals fan. In his free time, he likes to play golf and basketball. Playing basketball is something he has in common with his younger brother, age 19, who plays college basketball.When he is not playing basketball or golf, Fairless likes to read and watch movies. Two of his favorite books are A Time to Kill and Atlas Shrugged. His favorite movie of all-time is A Few Good Men.Another way that Fairless enjoys spending his time is watching his favorite television show, the American version of The Office. He also enjoys catching up with his friends from back home through playing video games.

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Intern introduction: Will Fairless - Opelika Observer

The task seemed easy enough. I want a CT scan of your neck, the specialist told me. After months of tonsillitis, sore throats, and unnerving fatigue, Id grown edgy about the hard lump on my neck enough to make an appointment with him in December, before my health insurance had even kicked in. Hed looked down my gullet, but held off on running any tests, telling me to come back in January when it wouldnt cost me so much. A month later, he now agreed, it was time for some advanced imagery of the mass, just to be sure.

This shouldnt be hard. The insurance policy Id gotten for $557 a month, on the Healthcare.gov exchange, since I worked remotely for my employer as a contractor, sans benefits covered the hospital across the street, operated by my specialists healthcare group; I could walk over, get the scan, and he could access the imagery instantly.

Sharing the full story, not just the headlines

But of course, as hundreds of millions of Americans know, nothing in our privately managed healthcare system is that easy. The radiologist across the street considered me a hospital outpatient, so my insurance treated the office as an out-of-plan provider, which would cost me thousands upfront. The radiologist, however, did offer me a cash self-pay rate of $300 for the procedure.

Wait a minute, I said. How come self-pay is so much cheaper than if I use my insurance?

Self-pay is based on the lowest negotiated rate, the phone representative told me, which is the Medicare rate. Medicare, the government program that covers some 60 million American seniors and young people, has immense price-bargaining power, more than any private insurer. Its almost enough to make one wonder why Americans dont demand Medicare for all.

However, there was a catch to paying in cash, the phone rep told me: Reading the imagery would cost extra, and he couldnt tell me how much.

Fox News audience support Sanders Medicare for All proposal

So began a day-long odyssey of calling clinics and insurance reps, getting numerous approvals, reconciling conflicting and sometimes seemingly made-up information, just to find someone who could provide a fancy X-ray of the unwelcome swelling in my throat without bankrupting me.

As I worked my way through corporate phone trees and asked pointed questions to which there were apparently no answers, I live-tweeted the experience, and it apparently resonated with social media users (to the tune of 4.7 million impressions, a figure thats almost as inscrutable to me as my policys copay for in-plan advanced imaging.) Americans shared my viral thread, adding their own billing, pre-approval, and care-delay horror stories to it; foreigners replied too, expressing their disbelief that such a basic medical need, provided to them at low or no cost by their governments, could become so costly or time-consuming.

I was not always so dogged in dealing with healthcare costs. When I went off to college, I became the first member of my immediate family to have medical insurance. My father was a self-employed laborer with a middle-school education; my mother was a homemaker. There was no employer to provide insurance, and no extra money to pay for a policy. I never went to doctors as a kid unless I was sick as hell, and then we went to a doc in the box, an urgent-care clinic. The first time I remember seeing a dentist was when I joined the Navy. During enlistment, I was asked for the name of my primary care physician; I needed someone to explain what that was to me. The concept of having a dedicated doctor seemed like a wild luxury.

Despite my relative inexperience, I was a healthy young white man, free from most wants, and I assumed the system in which I grew up was the best of all possible systems. I spent those early years in college as an Ayn Rand-loving libertarian who believed in freedom over safety, individualism over collectivism, and false dichotomies over nuanced understandings. America was great not in spite of its worship of the almighty dollar, but because of it: Corporations, I imagined, didnt need regulations and laws to be honest, transparent, and decent to their consumers. The desire to make a profit kept us honest.

Healthcare was no exception to this fiscal-based ideology of mine. You got what you paid for, and medical innovation didnt come cheap. Rich people get better care? They earned it, Id tell people. To rely on government to provide your healthcare or cover its costs, I believed, was to give up your agency and dignity.

But if youre an American and youre reading this, be honest: Whens the last time you looked around in a clinic lobby, a specialists office, or a hospital waiting room, and saw agency and dignity?

We are all numbers insurance IDs, group plan numbers, medical billing codes, far-into-the-future appointment times. All our lives, we have been told that long waits, impersonal care, incompetence, and indignity are the province of other countries socialized healthcare systems.

What, then, do you call the Kafka-esque 21st century American medical badlands?

Since my Atlas Shrugged-reading days, Ive spent nearly two decades in the American workforce. I moved and changed jobs often, changing (or losing) insurance plans each time. Ive been misdiagnosed by specialists running the same tests and reinventing the same wheels over and over again. Ive lost weeks of my life and work productivity being an advocate for my own health, and, at times, my familys, in a system that does you no favors and often insists that there is no easy answer to the question: How much will this cost me?

Theres that old saw about how a conservative is a liberal whos been mugged by reality. Like most of the workers I know in my millennial generation, I've been mugged, beaten, and left for dead a couple of times by reality, but it's made me a believer in radical change. What Ive concluded is that you can care about people, or you can care about maximizing revenues, but not both. America is the proof.

The American health system is an insane patchwork of privileged, cash-hoovering cartels and fiefdoms, and everyone knows it. I worry about its ability to address my health, sure, but more to the point, I worry about its capacity to bankrupt me and the people I love. And I worry about a thin, pale version of national patriotism that believes the fault lies with the underemployed, sick and afflicted, rather than the system that's supposed to tend to them.

Visitors wear face masks as they sit inside the Venetian casino hotel resort in Macau, after the former Portuguese colony reported its first case of the new SARS-like virus that originated from Wuhan in China.

AFP via Getty Images

Marine One helicopter with US President Donald Trump on board arrives for the 50th World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland

Reuters

A man walks between burning tires during ongoing anti-government protests in Najaf, Iraq

Reuters

Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Congolese President Denis Sassou Nguesso, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, (second row, left to right) arab League Secretary General Ahmed Abul Gheit, African Union (AU) Committee Chairman Moussa Faki, European Council President Charles Michel, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo pose for a family picture during a Peace summit on Libya at the Chancellery in Berlin

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Sweden's Jennie-Lee Burmansson competing in the final run of the Freestyle Skiing Womens Freeski Slopestyle at the Leysin Park in Leysin, during the 2020 Lausanne Winter Youth Olympic Games

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Firefighters take part in a demonstration to protest against the attacks against them during interventions in Strasbourg. During the New Year's Eve night in Strasbourg, two firefighters were notably injured following a projectile thrown onto the window of their truck. Last weekend, three firefighters were victims of a stabbing by a person they came to rescue in the outskirts of the city.

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People enjoy the frozen lake of Houhai in Beijing ahead of the Lunar New Year of the Rat. - The Lunar New Year falls on January 25 this year and marks the Year of the Rat.

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Taiwanese soldiers operate a CM-11 battle tank during an exercise at a military base in Kaohsiung, southern Taiwan

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A resident who briefly returned home to retrieve belongings carries figurines of Jesus Christ and Mother Mary in Laurel, Batangas province, Philippines. The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology raised the alert level to four out of five, warning that a hazardous eruption could take place anytime, as authorities have evacuated tens of thousands of people from the area

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Mini's driver Jakub Przygonski and his co-driver Timo Gottschalk compete in Stage 8 of the Dakar 2020 around Wadi Ad-Dawasir

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People take photos of a phreatic explosion from the Taal volcano from the town of Tagaytay in Cavite province, southwest of Manila

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An injured Syrian child cries after being transported to a clinic for treatment following an air strike by pro-regime forces on the nothwestern city of Idlib

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Vets and volunteers treat koalas at Kangaroo Island Wildlife Park, southwest of Adelaide, Australia

AAP Image/Reuters

Devotees follow the carriage transporting the statue of the Black Nazarene during an annual religious procession in its honour in Manila. Thousands of barefoot devotees joined the religious procession hoping to touch a centuries-old icon of Jesus Christ, called the Black Nazarene, which is believed to have miraculous powers

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People stand near the wreckage after a Ukrainian plane carrying 176 passengers crashed near Imam Khomeini airport in Tehran

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Mourners gather around a vehicle carrying the coffin of Iranian top general Qasem Soleimani during the final stage of funeral processions, in his hometown Kerman. Soleimani was killed outside Baghdad airport Friday in a drone strike ordered by US President Donald Trump, ratcheting up tensions with Iran which has vowed "severe revenge". The assassination of the 62-year-old heightened international concern about a new war in the Middle East and rattled financial markets

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Actor Rose McGowan speaks at a news conference outside a Manhattan courthouse after the arrival of Harvey Weinstein, in New York. Weinstein is on trial on charges of rape and sexual assault, more than two years after a torrent of women began accusing him of misconduct

AP

Mourners march behind a vehicle carrying the coffins of slain major general Qassem Soleimani and others as they pay homage in the Iranian city of Mashhad

Tasnim News/AFP/Getty

Rescue personnel search for bodies among mud and debris following a landslide caused by heavy rain in West Java, Indonesia

EPA

A burning vehicle at the Baghdad International Airport is seen following an airstrike in Baghdad, Iraq. The Pentagon said Thursday that the US military has killed Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran's elite Quds Force, at the direction of President Donald Trump

AP

Boats are pulled ashore as smoke and wildfires rage behind Lake Conjola, Australia. Thousands of tourists fled Australia's wildfire-ravaged eastern coast ahead of worsening conditions as the military started to evacuate people trapped on the shore further south

Robert Oerlemans via AP

Photographer Matt Roberts reacts to seeing his sister's house destroyed by a bushfire in Quaama, New South Wales, Australia

EPA

A man rides a donkey cart against the last setting sun of 2019 in Lahore, Pakistan

Reuters

A Skycrane drops water on a bushfire in Bundoora, Melbourne, Australia. According to local media reports, thousands of residents and tourists were forced to evacuate in the state of Victoria as soaring temperatures and winds fanned several bushfires around the state

EPA

A jumper soars through the air during a trial jump at the first stage of the 68th four hills ski jumping tournament in Oberstdorf, Germany

AP

Revellers dressed in mock military garb throw eggs as they take part in the "Els Enfarinats" battle in the southeastern Spanish town of Ibi on December 28, 2019. - During this 200-year-old traditional festival participants known as Els Enfarinats (those covered in flour) dress in military clothes and stage a mock coup d'etat as they battle using flour, eggs and firecrackers outside the city town hall as part of the celebrations of the Day of the Innocents, a traditional day in Spain for pulling pranks.

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The Panamanian-flag cargo ship "Zelek Star" is pictured after being washed up on a beach in the southern Israeli coastal city of Ashdod during a storm

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Monks wearing solar filter glasses watch the "ring of fire" solar eclipse at the Gaden monastery in a Tibetan colony in Teginkoppa, India

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A participant in a Darth Vader costume jumps into the water during the 110th edition of the 'Copa Nadal' (Christmas Cup) swimming competition in Barcelona's Port Vell. The traditional 200-meter Christmas swimming race included more than 300 participants on Barcelona's old harbour

AFP/Getty

Children dressed as SantaClausduring celebrations on Christmas Eve at a schoolin Amritsar

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Palestinians wearing Christmas costumes distribute gifts to children seated atop the rubble of a house demolished by Israel, reportedly for not being built with official licensing in the village of al-Khader, west of of Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank

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A journalist gets pepper-sprayed after a heated exchange with police during a rally in Hong Kong to show support for the Uighur minority in China. Hong Kong riot police broke up a solidarity rally for China's Uighurs -- with one officer drawing a pistol -- as the city's pro-democracy movement likened their plight to that of the oppressed Muslim minority

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Children react as a Bengal tiger licks the glass surrounding its enclosure during the "Animal Christmas Party", where the youths were treated to a tour of the Malabon Zoo, in Manila

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In this long exposure photo, the United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket carrying the Boeing Starliner crew capsule lifts off on an orbital flight test to the International Space Station from Cape Canaveral

AP

A freediver wearing a Father Christmas outfit poses underwater off the coast of the northern city of Batroun

AFP via Getty

People rally in support of the impeachment of US President Donald Trump in front of the US Capitol, as the House readies for the historic vote

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Protesters set fire to dumpsters and tires as they block a road in the southern Lebanese city of Sidon

AFP via Getty

People ride a merry-go-round at the Christmas Market at the Red Square in Moscow

AFP via Getty

The Red Rebels, part of the Extinction Rebellion Australia demonstrator group, participate in a climate protest rally in Sydney. The group rallied in front of the landmark Sydney Opera House demanding urgent climate action from Australia's government, as bushfire smoke choking the city caused health problems to spike

AFP via Getty

Protesters block a road after setting buses on fire during a demonstration against the Indian government's Citizenship Amendment Bill in Howrah, on the outskirts of Kolkata, India. Protests against a divisive new citizenship law raged on as Washington and London issued travel warnings for northeast India following days of violent clashes that have killed two people so far

AFP via Getty

A huge cloud of black smoke raises over a burning warehouse in the southern outskirts of Moscow. There were no immediate reports of any casualties, but one fire fighter was injured and 25 ambulance cars and a special air testing vehicle are at the site, they added

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I used to be a libertarian. Then the US healthcare system taught me how wrong I was - The Independent

Palm Coast can finally be known as the home to some very, very serious and joyous book lovers.

Two weeks ago The New York Times Opinion department asked readers What book new or old, fiction or nonfiction has influenced how you think, act or look at the world, and to do so in no more than 200 words. On Sunday, the paper ran 14 responses that made the cut over a full page in its Sunday Review sectionjust 14 out of more than 1,300 submissions. Among those 14, and in third position no less, was none other than that of Rick de Yampert, FlaglerLives culture writer, resident oracle of pop, sitar troubadour and Palm Coast resident.

Others went for standards like Hellers Catch-22 and Camus Stranger, Aureliuss Meditations and Betty Friedans Feminine Mystique, the inevitable Dr. Seuss and the required Color Purple, or the occasional literary atrocity like Atlas Shrugged, as the contributor of that item herself realized: Who wants to live in a world where the weak are thrust aside and forgotten? Barbara Lipkin of Naperville, Ill., wrote. Her words allowed me to crystallize my own thinking. I grew up.

De Yampert chose one of the more unexpected titles to make the cut: Go, Dog. Go!, by P.D. Eastman. In his characteristic Kerouacian joy for words, de Yampert describes the 1961 childrens book as an epic that has it all: Drama where are those dogs going? Humor dogs on scooters, flying helicopters and driving cars! Existential angst why doesnt he like her hat? Its multicultural blue dogs and red dogs and green dogs! Its a love story why yes, he does end up liking her hat!

It was de Yamperts first book in prekindergarten, and from there it was only a short skip to William Butler Yeats, Camus, Robert Anton Wilson and the 10,000 mostly nonfiction books in my home library on Irish history, African-American history, my Pagan spiritual path, world religions and metaphysical matters, the Middle East, quantum physics, the Beatles and rock music, yadda yadda yadda.

Palm Coast doesnt often appear in the Times: in the vows section the occasional parent of the bride or groom is said to be living in retirement there, the town makes appearances in an obituary here and there (in December 1993, Rabbi Maurice Davis, an authority on religious cults in the United States, died at his home in Palm Coast), the wildfires of 1985 scored a mention for Palm Coast, so did of course ITTs conjuring of Palm Coast out of expanses of scrub, as with a long 1974 article about the developments environmental controversies and ITTs goal an investment of $1 billion and 600,000 residents by 2000, the Timess Jon Nordheimer reported.

The most recent mention of Palm Coast in a Times article was for dreadful reasons: the case of the Buddy Taylor Middle School teacher forcefully removing a student from a classroom and shoving him into a hallway, and the reaction the story, originally published on FlaglerLive, triggered (drawing a substantial amount of support for the teacher, but also condemnation.)

De Yamperts Palm Coast byline goes some distance to erase the black eye.

The Timess 200-word quota was not enough for us, so we asked him a few more questions about his books and his brush with The Times.

What are the titles on your nightstand right now? Its more a matter of books I have strategically placed throughout my home so that they will pester me and say, Hey, remember that you promised to read me soon! One is Earth God Risen: An Inner History of the Horned and Horny Ones, by British occultist-esotericist Alan Richardson. Its actually a curious reworking not a revision of his 1992 book Earth God Rising: The Return of the Male Mysteries. The earlier work was monumental for me as I was finding my way onto my Pagan spiritual path. Richardson explores ancient myths of the horned god, which figure prominently in the modern Pagan revival, while also giving his insights on how those myths come alive today such as the time he had a vision of Cernunnos, the antlered God of the ancient Celts, at a Rolling Stones concert. For the new work, Richardson reprints much of the original edition but also drops in lengthy new commentary, in boldface and at his whim, throughout the text. The result is that his current, older self is pondering and critiquing the thought of his younger self. Its a fascinating approach. I so wish Albert Camus had done the same with the essays in his The Myth of Sisyphus-another book thats always nearby for re-reading.

Another always-near book, a gift from my late wife Cheryl, is actually like a daily devotional for me: Kindling the Celtic Spirit: Ancient Traditions to Illumine Your Life Throughout the Seasons by Mara Freeman. Other currently nearby books: Many by mystic East-meets-West philosopher Alan Watts but especially his mountain journal titled Cloud-Hidden, Whereabouts Unknown, the collected poems of Yeats (always at hand), a hilarious doomsday book titled Criswells Forbidden Predictions by a joke psychic who I am certain some people take seriously, and the memoir Life on the Rocks: One Womans Adventures in Petroglyph Preservation by Katherine Wells, who lived 10 miles from where I grew up in Los Alamos, New Mexico.

Why these titles? I find that the majority of my reading these days somehow touches on spirituality. Thats true even of my fetish for the Beatles (I think I own every major work on the group). Another of my nightstand books I could have listed above is Steve Turmers The Gospel According to the Beatles, which examines their lives, music, history and pop-culture influence through a spiritual lens, and not just that of Christianity.

What took you to respond to The Times query? Like most book junkies, I love talking books. I came across the Times solicitation online and, to paraphrase Yeats, my wits went on a fantastic ride, my horses flanks spurred by childish memories, and my appreciation of Go, Dog. Go! wrote itself in about five minutes.

What other titles were in contention for the one book that changed your life? Savvy readers of my short essay about Go, Dog. Go! will realize I pulled off a common parlor trick for any of those scenarios in which one is asked to pick their one favorite of whatever category is under consideration. That is, I was able to sneak in multiple answers under the guise of picking just one life-altering book. So yes, the poems of Yeats, Camuss The Plague as well as his essay The Wind at Djemila, and Robert Anton Wilsons fiendishly clever romp through the occulture and metaphysical counterculture of the 1960s titled Cosmic Trigger I: Final Secret of the Illuminati all changed my life.

And I am pissed that I failed to mentioned Kurt Vonnegut in my Times piece. I will confess here that while I adore Slaughter-house Five, I am more fond of his novel Breakfast of Champions, and I absolutely love his essay collection, Fates Worse Than Death. During my 30-year career as an arts and entertainment writer at various daily newspapers in the South, I was able to review Fates. Uncle Kurt, as I lovingly dubbed him in my review, was kind enough to reply to me in writing when I sent him that article via his publisher. (By the way, Robert Anton Wilson and poet Sonia Sanchez also were kind to reply to me when I sent them articles I had written about their work.)

Does reading literature still have a serious place in our culture? As should be apparent in my replies above, I am somewhat of a freak: the bulk of my reading is nonfiction essays and book-length studies on subjects that interest me: metaphysical matters, alternative spirituality, world religions, Irish history, African-American history, the Middle East and especially the insights of Palestinian public intellectual Edward Said, the Beatles, critical discussions of the works of both fiction and nonfiction writers, etc. So, to address your question: If by literature you mean novel-length fiction, and especially serious fiction . . . hmmmm. I am reminded of Vonnegut talking about his sister in one of his essays: She was the sort of woman, he wrote, who might roller skate through art museums at a goodly pace and all the while say Got it! Got it! Got it!

I imagine I am sort of that way concerning lengthy fiction: My reading list, indeed almost my entire library, is designed to stimulate my thinking by engaging how others perceive the world, whether the subject at hand is rock music, Indian raga, the Yoruba religion, the weirdness of quantum physics, the amazing modernist paintings of Jack Yeats, tarot cards, or crows and ravens. (By the way, I am under contract to write my own book on those birds, tentatively titled Crows and Ravens: Birds of Myth and Magic.)

I think I am like Vonneguts sister: Why take a long, time-consuming trip through a novel by Philip Roth, Nabokov or Toni Morrison when I can digest an Alan Watts or Albert Camus essay in 20 minutes and then spend hours pondering the meaning of life? I got into daily journalism because I wanted to interview creative peoplewriters, artists, musicians, etc.about how and why they do what they do. Consequently, for whatever freakish reason, I would rather read an interview or critical study of Philip Roth than read one of his novelsalthough I must get to Operation Shylock: A Confession one day soon.

However, whenever I have to take a lengthy road trip by car, I go to the county library and stock up on two types of audiobooks on CD: Star Trek tales or the mysteries of Tony Hillerman, which are set in the Navajo lands of northern New Mexico near where I grew up. You can take my Tony Hillerman audio mysteries from me when you can pry them from my cold dead fingers.

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Rick de Yampert in New York Times as Palm Coast Book Lover - FlaglerLive.com