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The Institute of Medicine recently predicted that an average of 60 Americans die every day (every day!) due to lack of or insufficient healthcare. And this in the richest country in the world. Italy, which ranks in the double digits of richest countries, has an estimated zero deaths per day due to lack of or insufficient healthcare.

So, what is the solution? According to the majority of doctors, nurses, and health economists, the answer is single-payer healthcare. And, in 2003, Obama supported this as well. When he was asked then what it would take to enact single-payer, he said we would need to take back the White House, the Senate, and the House. Well . . . in case you missed it, we've done that. And now Obama is suddenly siding with the insurance companies who heavily funded his campaign (I know, I know, all we heard was that small donors, average Americans were driving his fundraising, but look at any report and you'll see he got tons more corporate support than McCain, mostly because it was obvious any Dem was going to win in 2008, so they wanted to own whoever it was, and now it's paying off big-time).

But why single-payer? Well:

1) there is no such thing as pre-existing conditions as an excuse to deny coverage, since everyone is covered from birth.

2) It will cost much less overall, since people won't wait until the last minute to get attention they need, thus allowing their diseases or ailments to progress to a much more difficult and expensive stage.

3) Did I mention that 60 people die every damn day because we don't have this?

4) The other options are what Dr Marcia Angell, former editor-in-chief of New England Medical Review, calls "the futility of piecemeal tinkering". And these solutions still leave millions uncovered and cost as much or in mosts cases more than single-payer.

So . . . write your congressmen and -women and tell them to stand up for real healthcare reform, not some meaningless tinkering.

So, it's sad, since there are so many cool features to MySpace that Facebook just doesn't have, such as the blog function (as well as the music player and others), but I've noticed my blog hits drop off from 400+ a week to about 50 or so a week in recent months here on MySpace.  I've therefore decided to start up a regular, non-networking-site-related blog.  I will continue to post the link to it here every time, for those civilized types who have refused the hegemony of homogeny that Facebook is, but I'll be writing my blogs at Blogger.com.

So please go to this link and become a "follower" of the blog (which does not obligate you to some cult-like activities despite the phrasing).

Oh, and click on the ads but don't buy anything.  I get money which I will donate to New American Press and Mayday whenever someone clicks on an ad.

Okay...more later.

I write to inform thee of the fortuitous birth of Mayday Issue 1.  Please go read the issue, and feel free to comment here about anything you find there.  We also have a Facebook group, if you're the kind who prefers Facebook to MySpace or have equal interest in both.

We're very proud of this first issue and hope it's only a fraction of the glory that is to come.  In fact, we're so happy about this first issue, we're almost jealous of ourselves for having put it together. 

Also, we are now open for submissions, so go to the site and read the guidelines and send us something.

Enjoy!

This past week has been a busy though very exciting one. I organized a literary festival here at Ohio Wesleyan University, where I've been a visiting assnt prof this year. The folks involved were Joshua Beckman, Steve Davenport, Kathy Fagan, Erin McGraw, and Kyle Minor. I feel enough books were sold and fun was had to call it a success -- and the hummus I got catered for the events was friggin amazing, btw. Now it is over, and the part of me that was stressed out as hell the whole time is happy, but the part of me that was having a blast hanging out with smart, cool people and feeling part of a community is sad. Oh well . . .

This week the current issue of Perigee also came out, in which I have a piece on John Updike in the special Updike nonfiction section of the journal (others who wrote pieces include Duff Brenna and Gordon Weaver). I would also like to cogratulate Perigee on 6 years of publishing and just recently being named one of the top-50 journals in America by Web del Sol, putting it such company as the Southern Review, The Literary Review, the Missouri Review, and other such topnotch publications. So . . . congrats, Perigee! May many more rewards for your hard work be forthcoming! (Okay, I'll stop addressing a journal as though it's a person now.)

Speaking of badass journals . . . the first issue of Mayday is about to launch, and, man, O man, is this thing going to be sweeter than chocolate-coated sugar balls. The interview I did with Matt Gonzalez is awesome (not because of me, but because Matt is pretty much the smartest, coolest, nicest human being alive). And the huge forum we have on poetry reviewing includes thirty-odd of the biggest names in poetry and poetry reviewing today. Keep your eyes out. It's going to be kickass.

Let's hope next week is as awesome as this one.

I recently re-friended a person on one of the social networks I waste a lot of time on and am happy to say that said person accepted my request after having deleted me.  Now, I had the sneaking suspicion that my critiques of Obama's policies and voting record -- and my even more aggressive critiques of Biden's voting record, ethical integrity, and intelligence -- were the cause of this deletion.  It turns out I was right.  Now, since said person is once again my e-friend and s/he is a really cool person with tons of talent, I am not interested in discussing that case per se, but rather what I assume has been a general alienation I've caused by making these critiques.  I therefore feel the need to explain/defend/whatever myself, since aside from about 15 or so Nader types and 1 McCain supporting friend I have, all several hundred of my 3-D and e-friends are Obama supporters (some of the rabid variety).  Now, there is a part of me that while knowing I've likely alienated colleagues and friends by critiquing, say, Biden's vote for the Iraq War, the Patriot Act, the Defense of Marriage Act, etc etc etc, has simply thought "fuck it -- these are facts and criticizing those in power is a greater ethical obligation than appeasing a colleague who probably doesn't even like you in the first fucking place."  But another part has thought "Dude (I often call myself 'dude' when talking to myself), what are you gaining by pissing off friends and potential professional allies by critiquing a guy no one wants to hear criticized?  I mean, really, dude, isn't this kinda effing stupid?"  (Apparently I also sound like a surfer/stoner when I talk to myself, but that is neither here nor there...)

So, I have picked the middle ground.  I will continue to critique and to praise Obama exactly as my political and ethical standards require (I have, after all, praised his closing of Gitmo, his increased funding for healthcare, his Keynesian economic approach, his diplomacy with Europe, etc), but I will now offer this apologia/explanation for such, and also tell everyone -- friend, frenemy, and colleague alike -- that my goal in critiquing our leaders is not to anger you, alienate you, piss you off, etc.  I like many of you and love a few of you out there.

But here are my reasons:

1) No democracy can exist without constant and rigorous oversight from the people, not the leaders, of a nation.  It's my citizen duty to criticize every move I feel is wrong.

2) If we don't criticize popular leaders out of fear of censure from friends and colleagues, then we are cowards.  My failings are motherfucking legion, but cowardice is not among them.

3) I think it is dangerous the way Obama has been given a free pass on everything from the FISA Bill to gay rights to increasing troops in Afghanistan to increasing military spending to clean coal.  I mean, really, clean coal?  When did this become okay?  Anyway...no free passes, even if we really like the guy and he's on the cover of every single magazine in the nation.

4) I think Joe Biden is a douchebag.  He has always been and will always be one.  I've ranted about him from day-one, so you all know what I find his failings to be.

5) I care.  I care more than I wish I did.  About everything.  I can't use paper plates, can't own a car, a TV, hate myself when I lapse and eat meat, can't buy new clothes except under extreme duress, etc.  Every thing matters.  A lot.  And, so, when I see something wrong, I feel an uncontrollable compunction to fix it.  This is true in literature as well.  I help run a small press and will be launching a lit journal to fix what I see as wrong with American letters.  Is there more than a little ego involved here?  Yes.  I think I'm right and think I have the power to fix shit.  Tons of ego there, but also tons of what cheaply could be called heart or love or whatever.  Call it the will to power or cuddly bunny feet, it's there and I can't help it.

So...defense over.  I hope the enemies I've made aren't lifelong unless I already didn't like you in the first place, in which case, so be it; but those whom I like or admire, please forgive my ornery ways.  I will close now because I feel the urge to quote Popeye...

Per usual, Chomsky lays down truth like it's his damn job (which, since so few others seem to be doing it, I guess it kinda is).

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Here is a poem by Updike that I admire quite a bit.  Updike is rarely talked of as a poet, but he was an excellent one.  Thanks to Duff Brenna's kind request that I write a piece to commemorate Mr Updike's passing, I am reading or re-reading his more experimental short stories and his poems to make the argument that while Updike was certainly a brilliant novelist in the realist tradition, he was also a brilliant experimenter with form and style and content in both stories and poems.  He was, in many ways, what I have come to call an "enlightened formalist" --  a writer with complete mastery of the tactics and skills of the craft but who knows the larger, truer, more difficult task the writer has before him and therefore uses all of his formal wizardry for the more essential and human concerns of literature.  Anyway . . . enjoy the poem.

Tao in the Yankee Stadium Bleachers

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?...

So many in my generation no longer like Updike.  The Oedipal father-killing necessity has caused so many to ignore the work of one of the greatest writers of the 20th century.  What's odd is that, to my mind anyway, he has something for everyone.  He has conducted the wildest experiments, has written the most traditional of stories, the most formal of poems, the most experimental of poems, the sexiest and the most uptight of characters.  He has worked in all the genres and in each he has shown a range no one besides Robert Penn Warren, Joyce Carol Oates, Fred Chappell, Margaret Atwood, David R. Slavitt, William Carlos Williams, and Reynolds Price have shown.  These authors I've just listed, along with Updike, have served as my models for what a writer ought to concern himself with, how he ought to conduct his business, and the range of ambition he should seek.

I won't waste your time enumerating Updike's awards or describing his writings (go read it, either for the first time or for the tenth).  Suffice it to say that I feel a great loss and American literature is impoverished by his passing.