Author Archives: tom

General Shinseki: We're Not Doing Right By Him, Our Veterans, or Our Nation

Posted on by
Reply

We got word yesterday that Eric Shinseki, Secretary of the VA resigned his position. While we could all see it coming, I’m sorry that more members of Congress asked a few questions before demanding his resignation.

The story began earlier this month when it was learned that employees of the VA hospital in Phoenix were falsifying appointment records. If a veteran asked for an appointment at any VA facility, he or she was supposed to get that appointment no longer than 14 days out; this was shortened from 30 days as a way to cut down on long delays in getting appointments.

Unfortunately cutting the expected wait time by 16 days didn’t change anything else. The reason for the long delays is simple: we have too many patients and too few providers. Middle managers did what they normally do when faced with an impossible deadline: they cheated. The cooked the books to make it seem that they were hitting their numbers when they weren’t.

There are a few articles worth reading on this: The Associated Press and today’s Los Angeles Times give a much more complex picture of this scandal.

I had to do a little digging for this information. It seems the 24 hour news cycle has reduced the story to this: The VA is incompetent, we need to find a scapegoat, and it’s news to go to the top: Eric Shinseki. Congress followed suit and began clamoring for Shinseki’s resignation. It finally became clear that they could clamor (and get on TV) seemingly forever, and a good and talented man fell on his sword.

The problem with the VA is much more systemic. In the last half of the 20th century we had wars in Europe, the Pacific, Korea, Vietnam, along with countless other small actions. In the first decade of our current century we’ve already seen wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. According to the AP article, the VA has seen a 17% increase in enrollments since 2009. Right now the VA carries 9,000,000 patients with 85,000,000 appointments per year. The VA web page shows 2,962 job openings and 746 of these openings are for doctors.

Simply put they haven’t been able to provide enough staff to cover the patients they are tasked to care for. That’s the problem.

Congress needs to provide adequate funding and prevent staffers from having to do this.

And as for General Shinseki, he deserves better than this. We owe him an apology.

San Diego On Fire

Posted on by
Reply

If you accessed the news in any format this past week, you’ve been hearing about wildfires in San Diego. For those of us who live here, we’ve spent at least part of the week watching the news if only to know what to say to well meaning relatives and friends who think we are toast.

Every part of our country, and indeed every part of our world, brings challenges. Maybe it’s hurricanes, or earthquakes, or tornadoes, or blizzards. Here in Southern California it’s becoming wildfires. Many found their way here out of love for the weather and the false assumption that watered lawns and full taps magically appeared.

Many also falsely assumed that any fire would be put out before it costs us anything. Since I moved here in 1995 we’ve had a few years where we’ve had fires that have gone out of control. The years 2003, 2007, and now 2014 will remind me of uncontrollable fires. They will remind me that the price of a house with a spectacular view comes with the acknowledgement that a fire may begin far away but hungers for a house with a spectacular view.

Out of good luck more than anything, my home is generally pretty safe from these wildfires. But the homes of the patients I serve are not. I’ve gotten used to the process of learning about the location of the fires and determining which of my patients are in danger. I’ve gotten used to spending hours calling cell phones hoping to find where they went after getting word in the wee small hours of the morning that they have to leave. I’ve gotten used to preparing conversations with people in the last chapter of their lives who need to understand why they can’t die at home because their home no longer exists.

Is there something I can’t get used to? Yes. I can’t get used to hearing politicians who insist that dramatic changes in weather patterns are not due to our actions. I can’t get used to those who have the ability and willingness to trash the futures of our (and their) descendents because the cost of honesty is their re-elections. I can’t get used to the fact that their ambition for wealth or power is more important than anything else.

Nancy and I don’t have children. But we do have nieces and nephews. We do have neighbors, friends, and loved ones who do. We care about the world we’re giving them. We love Southern California. We love the idea that this is a part of the world that welcomed us. We grieve that this may well be a part of the world that will no longer be liveable. We grieve that, unlike our ancestors, we cannot give to the next generation better than we were given.

We don’t see the recent fires in the context of a random event. We see them as the natural result of climate change that our leaders choose to ignore. And we see the need to elect leaders who won’t do that.

Oh, and one more thing: a few days ago I had occasion to drive through one of the areas that burned. The burned areas look like the surface of the moon but I was amazed at how few homes were lost. Part of the reason is that the homeowners followed directions to keep brush away from their homes. But we also need to give a shout out to Cal Fire for their heroism in defending these homes. It’s going to be a long, hot summer and I’m grateful they are on our side.

Boston Strong? You Betcha!

Posted on by
Reply

I’m writing this on the evening of April 15, 2014. Last year at this time we were looking with horror at the Boston Marathon bombing. If you’ve never lived in Boston it’s hard to imagine how much the marathon means. Trust me, it’s a big deal.

And it was made even harder to see that two cowardly terrorists used this iconic event to spread terror. In the blink of an eye we lost Richard Martin, Krystle Campbell, Lingzi Lu, and Sean Collier. Officer Collier died a few days later, but he was every much a victim of the marathon as the others.

Of the terrorists, one is dead and the other is in custody. The justice system will deal with him, and I know the good people of Boston will do the right thing.

In the meantime the city moves on. The courage Boston showed 240 years ago when they formed the Sons of Liberty has been present over the last year.

Next week they will run the marathon again. Our prayers will be with all of them.

Good Passover to Our Jewish Brothers and Sisters

Posted on by
Reply

Tonight is the first night of Passover, the Jewish feast that remembers their liberation from slavery in Egypt. The celebration is tightly scripted and comes from the 12th Chapter of the Book of Exodus. Today anyone can purchase a book giving directions for this feast; it’s called a Haggadah. Last year I read about a new edition called the New American Haggadah and this year I purchased it.

In addition to giving instructions on celebrating the feast it also gives commentary and a timeline. One commentary grabbed my attention and I want to share it here. It speaks of slavery in Egypt and how slavery continues to exist. In a sense, anyone enslaved is still in Egypt. Here is what is says:

Who can say we’ve actually left? “Whenever you live, it is probably Egypt,” Michael Walzer wrote. Do you live in a place where some people work two and three jobs to feed their children, and others don’t even have a single, poorly paid job? Do you live in a community in which the rich are fabulously rich, and the poor humiliated and desperate? Do you live among people who worship the golden calves of obsessive acquisitiveness, among people whose children are blessed by material abundance and cursed by spiritual impoverishment? Do you live in a place in which some people are more equal than others? In America, the unemployment rate for African-Americans is nearly twice as high as it is for whites. Black people are five times as likely to be incarcerated as whites. Infant mortality in the black community is twice as high as it is among whites. America is a golden land, absolutely, and for Jews, it has been an ark of refuge. But it has not yet fulfilled its promise. The same is true for that other Promised Land. Jewish citizens of Israel have median household incomes almost double that of Arab citizens and an infant mortality rate less than half that of Arabs. Israel represents the greatest miracle in Jewish life in two thousand years – and its achievements are stupendous (and not merely in comparison to its dysfunctional neighbors) – and yet its promise is also unfulfilled. The seder marks the flight from the humiliation of slavery to the grandeur of freedom, but not everyone has come on this journey. It is impossible to love the stranger as much as we love our own kin, but aren’t we still commanded to bring everyone out of Egypt?

Enough said.

The Los Angeles Book Festival: Really Guys? Did You Think This Through?

Posted on by
Reply

For the past several years I’ve joyfully attended the Los Angels Times Book Festival. For many years it was held on the campus of UCLA but a few years ago it moved to USC. It was a weekend devoted to books, publishing, meeting authors, and just soaking up literary wisdom.

Also for the past few years I’ve gone there on a bus trip sponsored by my favorite bookstore, Warwicks here in La Jolla. A few weeks ago I learned, to my dismay, that Warwicks is cancelling the bus trip. My dismay isn’t that they are cancelling it, but why.

If you click on the “authors and performers” tab on the Book Festival page it takes you to a page that lists authors who will attend part of the festival. And then next to their name is a button to order their books through Amazon (I’m not hotlinking them. You’ll have to find them on your own). Yep, you heard it right. You can, with the click of a button, completely undercut the efforts made by Warwicks and hundreds of other independent bookstores.

I’m sure the festival will get a cut of books purchased through Amazon, and I’m sure this was a business decision. But so much of the flavor of the book festival surrounds independent bookstores and publishing houses, exactly the places Amazon is trying to kill. The festival should be promoting independents, not hastening their demise.

In fairness they later added a link to IndieBound which does benefit independent bookstores, but that still doesn’t level the field. If you click on the IndieBound tab it takes you to a page where it asks for your zipcode and gives you a list of independent bookstores in your area. If you click on Amazon it takes you to their webpage where you can order it at a deep discount and have it shipped. While it may not be the right thing to do, it is certainly the cheapest. The book I’m reading now, The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism by Doris Kearns Goodwin retails for $40.00 (and is worth every penny). You can buy it from Amazon for $22.60.

I won’t return to the festival until or unless they change this. I hope it’s not long.

What Would Happen If….

Posted on by
Reply

A few days ago I was talking with my father in law about Pope Francis. While the pope had been much more open and enthusiastic than Benedict XVI, he hasn’t changed or updated any church teachings. My father in law wondered aloud of he would give a new look to the Church’s current understanding of artificial birth control.

Most Christian Churches opposed artificial birth control until 1930. In 1931 Pope Pius XI wrote an encyclical titled Casti Connubii reaffirming the Church’s opposition to birth control. After the reforms of Vatican II many Catholics thought the Church would update its teachings. To this end Blessed John XXIII appointed a commission to explore this issue. Pope Paul VI expanded this commission and in 1966 they advised Paul VI to explore updating Catholic teaching. Instead he published Humanae Vitae that reaffirmed the ban.

This was a cause of great pain for couples of child bearing age (including my father in law). While some couples lived with this, many chose to ignore the teaching. The teaching has had a smaller and smaller place in the lives of most Catholics, and by the time I was ordained in 1994 the subject virtually never came up. Polls show that Catholics couples use birth control at the same rate as non Catholics in the United States.

So this has gotten me to wonder: what would happen if Francis updated the teaching? There is certainly a small but vocal minority who would go crazy. Perhaps this would give some couples the permission they’ve sought, but statistics show that this is a small number.

I suspect that since most Catholics of child bearing age were born after 1968 (if we think of child bearing until age 50), it wouldn’t make much of a difference. In that sense perhaps the Church should let this teaching just fade away. In a sense that’s what we did with Galileo; he was denounced in 1615 for claiming the earth revolved around the sun and the Church didn’t officially change that until 1992.

On the other hand it I think it would be a strong statement that would be of great benefit to the Church’s image. In a sense it would probably be seen as throwing Paul VI under the bus, but that may not be a bad thing. I have nothing against Paul VI, but I suspect that he didn’t update the teaching out of concern of throwing Pius XI under the bus. Some pope, some day, should have the courage to do what the overwhelming number of us think he should do. I’d like to this it’s Francis.

February 13th: Did You Ever Wonder If a Date Is Out To Get You?

Posted on by
Reply

I’m not sure why but this date is replete with events in my life. Some of them are good, but most of them are bad. In the years to come I’m thinking of just skipping this day.

On this day in 1994 my godfather died.

On this day in 1995 my grandfather died.

On this day last year my agency, San Diego Hospice died (it actually announced it was closing but spent the next month transferring patients).

Today two of my coworkers (who are co-survivors of the death of San Diego Hospice) were laid off.

On the other hand, some good things happened. Today a friend of mine celebrated 11 years of sobriety, and the daughter of my friends Mike and Dana turn 19 today.

Maybe everyone has a date like this, but it seems that February 13th is the intersection of lots of people and events in my life.

Next year I start the sleeping pills on the night of the 12th and hope to wake up on the 14th.

Benedict XVI: Thank You, One Year Later

Posted on by
Reply

One year ago today, Pope Benedict XVI announced he would resign as Pope, something that hadn’t happened in centuries.

It was a courageous act. His health had suffered greatly during his papacy and he felt that he could no longer adequately serve the church.

I was the exception: almost everyone I knew thought the conclave would elect a pope who would lead with the same agendas as Benedict and Blessed John Paul II. They saw a church that would continue to see purity of orthodoxy over the inclusion that Jesus sought. A church that saw itself as under siege by forces that wanted its destruction. They thought this because all 115 of the Cardinals in the conclave were appointed by either John Paul or Benedict.

I gave more credit to the Holy Spirit. I was reminded that Blessed John XXVIII was appointed Cardinal by Pius XII. He came out of nowhere and made more progress in the 20th Century than anyone expected. I prayed for another successor like John.

On March 13th we learned of the election of someone we’d never heard of: Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio. We learned that he is of Italian descent, but was from Argentina. We learned quickly that change was in the wind. A Jesuit, he chose (for the first time) to be called the name of St. Francis, a medieval saint who embraced poverty as a way of holiness. Then he took the bus back to his hotel and paid the bill.

In the 11 months since his election many of us liberal Catholics have rejoiced in him. He is humble, kind, and loving. Maybe we should take this for granted in a Pope, but it’s been a long time since we’ve been able to.

Yosemite 2014: No Bad Days (Though They Were Warm and Dry)

Posted on by
Reply

Last week Nancy and I made our annual pilgrimage to Yosemite National Park for the celebration of Chef’s Holidays. This year we ate food prepared by Kent Rathbun, Jessie Cool, and Mark Estee; it was moderated by Carolyn Jung. We expect the food to be incredible, and yet again we were right. Never, never pass up an opportunity to eat anything imagined, cooked, or served by any of these talented people.

The weather was a bit disturbing. It was probably the warmest we’ve seen (it got into the 60s during the day, dipping to the 30s at night), but we were disturbed by the drought. All of California is experiencing insufficient rainfall, but we really noticed it there. The falls from the high country to valley floor were practically nonexistent and the level of the Merced River was dramatically lower. We’re praying for rain.

Unfortunately this isn’t the only challenge Yosemite faced. The Rim Fire in August burned over 250,000 acres, mostly north of Yosemite. The valley was untouched but it prevented many tourists from coming to Yosemite.

If that weren’t enough, the government shutdown in October shut down the park. Most of the people who work in the valley aren’t federal workers, but employees of Delaware North. That meant that they weren’t reimbursed for lost wages when the park was closed. They were eligible for unemployment benefits, but many of them rely on tips and that’s hard to compensate.

Given that, we were disturbed by the response of Delaware North. Packages for the Chef’s Holidays include a 5 course dinner on our last night. It doesn’t include other meals and Nancy and I got into the habit of having breakfast at the Ahwahnee Hotel. They had both a menu and a buffet, but let’s face it: if you’re there for excellent food you’re not going to choose buffet food that’s been baking for 2 hours under a heat lamp.

To our surprise and disappointment we were told that this year we could only choose the buffet in the dining room. If we wanted to order off the menu we’d have to do that through room service. We’re pretty sure that they did this to cut back on the waitstaff and save money. That’s fine for the bottom line of Delaware North, but not fine if you work for them. It’s not an exaggeration to say that the corporation cut their losses by taking money out of the pockets of their employees.

We pray that Chef’s Holidays 2015 is better for those who serve us.

Jerry Coleman: The Streets of Heaven are Rejoicing

Posted on by
Reply

It is, perhaps, fitting that this afternoon I finished reading Tom Wolfe’s book A Man in Full.

I strongly recommend the book, but its title became all the more poignant a few hours later when I got the sad news about Jerry’s death.

Tom Wolfe describes a man in full as someone whose accomplishments are larger than life, someone who causes everyone in the room to stand up when he enters the room.

Jerry did that.

He didn’t command people to respect them. He lived his life in a way that caused us to see him that way.

He started his public life in baseball. He joined the New York Yankees in 1949 and played in the the All Star game in 1950. He also played in 6 World Series. His playing career ended after the 1957 season.

He delayed his entry into major league baseball for World War II; in the middle of his career he was called back for the Korean War. He was an aviator in the USMC. He traded some of his best baseball years to defend his country. Hard to imagine that would happen today.

For those of us who weren’t alive for World War II or Korea, Jerry was a fixture with the San Diego Padres, as both a manager and a broadcaster.

He never bragged about his accomplishments and was honestly embarrassed by the attention he was given. We who followed the Padres knew well the phrases “Oh Doctor” and “You Can Hang a Star on That.”

Jerry, you were a man in full and we will miss you.