The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Loren MacGregor:

There is a litany, and it is appalling, of events happening that are universally wrong. Please convey my thoughts, good wishes and prayers to Scraps and to Velma.

What follows is a rant; please feel free to stop reading here.

Lauryn and I were without insurance and surviving by the incredible support we received from Volunteers In Medicine. We are both diabetic and would not have survived without their almost-free medical care. (The cost was designed to offset a small part of their office space and utility bills.)

Until May of this year, we have had "company sponsored" medical insurance at a base cost to us of $12,000 annually with a $15,000 deductible. Several people told us this was very good insurance for the money. I hope that is not true.

Now I'm back at Microsoft and things are better, so that we are able to advance the $250.00 per month for my mother-in-law's out-of pocket medication expenses. These are the costs Medicare won't absorb, and the dollar figure is a minimum.

One political candidate wants to do for the medical insurance industry what he did for the banking industry. I'm voting for the other candidate.

At a charity event some years ago, I sat at the same table with a doctor who practiced in both the U.S. and in Canada. I asked him why. He said, "When I want to make money, I work in the U.S. When I want to practice medicine, I work in Canada."

Of all the crises facing us, though all of them scrape flesh to the bone, the crisis of medical coverage is the one that uses a flensing knife.

-- LJM

Teresa:

"Loren, if I had to guess who decided that White Fang Goes Dingo and Other Funny SF Stories was a good title, I'd say it was Disch himself. I'll bet you anything he thought some of them were funny."

Okay. I think you're right. They were funny, in a particularly Dischian way.

"I find myself being furious that we don't have a national health care system. Disch wrote some bestsellers, eventually, but what I heard was that his partner's last illness ate up everything they had."

I would not be surprised. One of the reasons I'm back working full time for Microsoft is that during the last year, when I had an insurance package offered by the vendor for whom I was working, our out-of-pocket costs for coverage, uncovered services and medication exceeded $15,000. I know of several people whose reasonable lives have been ruined by the failure of the medical system. I am outraged that this issue continues, and worsens, year by year. If it is true that Disch got caught by the slag, I am appalled.

"The thing I hate most about his death is that it feels like a goddamn Thomas Disch short story."

Someone should write the story as an official obit. I haven't the skill.

Crap.

As is often the case, there is coincidence; I have been in the (endless) process of reorganizing my office, with the result that last evening "Fun With Your New Head" surfaced, and was transferred to my "To be (re)read" stack. As I open it now, I find that Disch signed this copy for me, some time between the beginning of drink and the subsequent sobering. I don't remember it.

I intensely disliked some of his stories, which I suspect would have pleased him. They were meant to invoke emotion, not always positive. There was undoubted skill and power in his writing, and in his choice of words. (For example, I would say that "White Fang Goes Dingo," in the context of what follows, is a much better title than "The Puppies of Terra." And who decided that "White Fang Goes Dingo and Other Funny SF Stories" was the perfect title for a collection that includes "102 H-Bombs"?)

I respected his criticism, which was frequently savage but as or more frequently brilliant. Once the blood was staunched, there was much to think about. His columns in The Nation were also required reading for me, at a time when I had money to subscribe, and I am pleased to remember again that I took the opportunity to see his wonderful minimalist theatrical version of Ben Hur. His poetry sometimes escaped me, but I could (and do) return to his critical writings about poetry on a regular basis.

There were the elaborate literary constructions ("Leonie Hargrave") and the odd one-off novels (such as "Black Alice" by Thom Demijohn, a pseudonym for Disch and John Sladek).

I'm sorry you're gone, Tom -- but I salute your last ironical gesture, the leaving of this "nation of liers" on the country's anniversary.

You'll be missed.

-- Loren MacGregor

Hmm hrm hoorn. I had tell me quite seriously yesterday, "You can't have ADD! You're really smart!"

I don't know how well the poeredy works out in the end; I couldn't pay attention that long. I don't think Focalin was mentioned. Wellbutrin was. Paxil. Prozac. More. Less. Stop that one, try this one. Nausea, weight loss (hmm, could they be connected?), temperature spikes, sweating, freezing, jitters, paranoia, distractability, irritability, mood swings, hyperesthesia, headaches -- but I'm sure that with the next increase or decrease in dosage or med change or burnt entrails or engram or something I shall be all right again. I'm ALL RIGHT! Er. Yes.

Actually, I liked the poem. To Ritalin ... and beyond!

Best. Buzz. Whrr.

Coming late to this thread, which came up when I was doing a search for ADHD -- having recently been added to the list of those I know who have been so diagnosed.

I will cheerfully join in at least a tar and feathering party. After only a month or two, I finally begin to feel as if I might actually be able to do the job I've been faking for some time now. If someone were to take away one or more of the current set of drugs comprising my daily regimen, I ... no, I don't know what I would do. Anger were such to happen is the least of it.

I can now return to a task when I am interrupted. I can now remember that there was a task to return to.

For those who remember my temper, I am (shall we say) less psychotic these days.

I haven't yet done so (I'm at work, where my time for public posting is limited), but when I am home again, I'll read the entire thread to see if there are useful pointers to sites where I can register my own protest.

Good luck, Teresa. I am closer to understanding what you've been going through over the years.

(I'll also note that, personally, my heartfelt thanks go to an extremely good specialist in what an Elsevier journal refers to as "Neuro-Psychopharmacology & Biological Psychiatry." Although I was desperate, I was dubious that any treatment or therapy would be helpful -- until midway through our long first interview. The doctor paused for a moment, then said, "I am going to give you a list of symptoms. I'd like you to tell me if you've experienced these at any time in the past." The list mapped almost exactly to things I had experienced in my life 15 to 20 years ago. It was spooky. )

Again, my (belated) sympathies.

-- LJM (ADHD ... and other stuff)

Steve Taylor writes,

"And if I can be allowed two questions: have you ever personally received an ‘Adam and Eve’ manuscript - you know - 'We’re the last survivors of the spacewreck. My name is A’dam…'"

I have -- and I haven't actually been a science fiction editor as such at any time.

Terry Carr told me (and others) that he had once written a story just so he could legitimately use the phrase, "Oh, I guess I forgot to mention, he had wings and flew away."

If I had the wings of a plot device, over this logical obstacle I would fly.

-- LJM

Apropos of a very old post, I just moved to a new office at Microsoft, where I am pretty much directly opposite an office that is ... indescribable. Let me first say that hundreds of exposed peeps exude an odor. Let me next say that hundreds of peeps very carefully arranged in color format, row upon row, affixed to the ceiling tiles of a room, is eye-catching at the very least.

But it doesn't stop there. I stopped by the office (occupied by a Microsoft Publisher specialist) and said I felt I needed to take a picture. She looked up and said, "They're not mine. I inherited them." "But you kept them," i answered, and she grinned.

And it doesn't stop there, either. A co-worker tells me that she not only KEPT them when she inherited an office from the original owner, but she MOVED them to her new office, which involved removing the ceiling tiles and swapping them.

She felt it was important to keep the art installation intact.

Photos to follow.

-- LJM

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