Pilot's Log

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Did JASON TODD ever appear in the Gotham TV series? Yes, I did NOT mean Dick Grayson.

Alas, poor Emerson twenty-inch television set with integral DVD player, you shall function no longer. Thus Master Horner, technician of Morris Towne, doth declare, remarking that thine circuitry is irrepairable. And so, Rather Manor's forced transition from analog signal and ray of cathode to digital over air and screen of flat is complete.

The fate of Emerson's carcass is yet undetermined. My first thought is to donate it to the Tech School's electronics program, but I expect they have no lack of such material. Every January Knoxville holds an e-waste drive, so it will probably go there if no better alternative presents itself. I'll find out tomorrow.

If any among you still require a digital converter box, the one we used with the Emerson is still in fully operational condition, and I have re-set it, its cables and its remote, into the packaging in which it had come. Contact me privately if you want it.

FP

You may want to skip this entry if you have an aversion to TMI.

When my Mom had to choose a Medicare health plan, she picked Cariten because she didn't want to belong to Humana as she saw Humana being nothing but trouble. Soon after, Humana took over Cariten's business in Tennessee and it has proved to be just as troublesome as she imagined.

When she went through her terminal health emergency she was at a specialty clinic (covered by Humana) that had been prescribed by her surgeon (covered by Humana) who in turn had been referred by her Humana primary care doctor. The doctor in charge of the clinic determined that Mum's condition was so critical that either he or his staff arranged an ambulance to take her to the nearest hospital (also covered by Humana). Neither Dad, nor I, had anything to do with this choice.

Now Humana wants us to pay up for her ambulance ride, with their excuses being 1) the company operating the ambulance was "out of their network" (?!) and 2) her primary care doctor (who wasn't available!) had to approve or endorse the decision to transport her by ambulance.

No matter that Medicare should be covering this transportation, because the circumstances fit the Medicare rules and requirements on the matter.

We're looking at a bill in excess of $500, and paying it would hurt us. Dad's trying to challenge the charge, but the Humana lawyers are giving him the runaround.

Meanwhile, Humana's marketing division is still sending Mum junk mail asking her to expand her coverage to include dental care and other specialty services. What stupidity!

Or put another way, do I have any right to be depressed that I don't seem particularly depressed? Of course, I'm not happy, but I feel bizarrely calm and level and grounded. Given my history, I'm wondering if I should be worried. Have I done too much of a job internalizing and intellectualizing my emotions?

I am rooted in the reality of my situation, but there is a part of me who just wants to wake up from the nightmare, go downstairs and greet Mum as she walks back in the house from her garden.

I'm not ashamed of being a Mama's Boy. I can stand on my own two feet...but I still love her and I'm going to miss her.

As a Christmas gift, my sister and brother-in-law gave me a copy of the American Heritage History Of World War Two which I had never owned before, in spite of my long years of interest in the period of history.

What is sparking this particular note here is a table that was calculated by the corporate contractor that the Nazi German government had running the Holocaust death camps. (Yes, THAT Schindler. Him and his peers.) They had calculated the profit for an "average" inmate who was put to death after a mere nine months of slave labor. I won't reproduce it here, because I'm sure it's available on-line somewhere and I could probably come back and link it if I want.

I decided to interpolate the data in the table to the here and now. First, I found a site that had foreign exchange rate data, which told me how much a ReichsMark was worth in Dollars before hostilities broke with America. Then, I found another site to give me inflation figures for the last seventy years.

Care to guess? How much was a human life worth to Mr. Schindler and his kind?

$45.50 in 2012 money. Less than most of my friends pay for their TV programming per month, I imagine. About a week's worth of groceries for my household.

Would you kill somebody for $45.50? How many people on this world now would answer "Yes" to that question? The only way to guarantee that everybody answer "No" is to raise everybody's standard of living to the level that a human life is more than that figure. It is too cheap in too many places for us to say "Never Again" and mean it.

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That this life is all that I have, all that I will ever have, and all I could ever hope to have. That there is nothing more or better.