A swim in the Y pool may not be a walk in the park

I am training myself to walk again. It's no walk in the park.

I looked up "walk meaning" and found some leisurely reading.

It's a verb (I walked to school) and a noun (It was a leisurely walk). It's a word you hear on almost of every episode of "Law & Order:" "We can't just let this perp walk!" If he does, I'm certain he will walk quickly from the building most likely in the company of his attorney.

Walk is quite popular. A chart on Google Ngram Viewer shows that the popularity of walk is at an all-time high in the 2020s. It may not remain there judging by our unfit population, all in need of a good walk or even a not-so-good one.

This brings this post to me. I cannot walk. My body revolted and, judging by a photo taken in a hospital ICU, I was revolting afterward. "That's not me" I said when my wife showed me the photo of the old man on the gurney. He was obviously out of it. IV tubes snaked from his arm. He had been intubated and fitted with a feeding tube. You couldn't see the Foley catheter or the heart monitor but they were there amongst the jumble of sheets and blankets.

That was Sept. 9. I can walk now, sort of. I get around with a standard walker complete with tennis-ball feet and I also have a rollator walker with four wheels. I sometimes scoot around on an electric scooter labeled Buzz Around XL. When Chris and I go for a walk on the bike path, she walks and I scoot. Still, we call it a walk. I do. 

But I can't walk, not yet anyway. Over the past five years, I hurt myself in ways that blunted my walking mechanism. That's a silly way to put it. I sometimes tell people I am partially disabled. I did that the other day. Jeff escorted Chris and me on an introductory tour of the Ormond Beach YMCA. We joined and wanted to see what we were getting into. A lifeguard about my age but looking 20 years younger, showed me the chair they use for hefting people like me into the pool's shallow end. I explained that I was partially disabled and that I could walk down the five steps into the pool to join each morning's water-ex class.. I plan to walk unaided or maybe with a cane in the near future. I aim to be a walker again. It will not be a walk in the park and it hasn't been. Still...

Hunkered down, somewhere in Wyoming

Homebound. For a week. Only ventured outside to drive to credit union drive-up and library book drop-off. Never left the car. Never interacted face-to-face with another living creature. A new way of living in the time of coronavirus.

I'm retired so I don't have to be anywhere on a regular basis. I'm at high-risk during the current crisis because I'm 69 and a heart patient. I am also writer and reader so long stretches of indoor time is not a hardship. Annie and Chris are here with me. Chris, 64 and a diabetic, is off work for the foreseeable future. Annie underwent surgery on Monday and is recuperating. From my office, I can hear Chris exercising to YouTube videos. Great part about 2020: YouTube exercise videos. I do chair aerobics with Hasfit duo Coach Kozak and Claudia. I could go to the YMCA, which is still open, but I'd be paranoid the whole time that I would inhale a spiky COVID-19 germ. No use risking it.

I cancelled this morning's appointment with my podiatrist. I no longer travel to my acupuncture appointments in Fort Collins. Medical appointments have been postponed or cancelled. I won't be volunteering in March at the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens. The city ordered that all volunteers 65 and older and those with serious medical conditions to stay away. Yesterday, the Botanic Gardens announced the closing of the conservatory and children's village. This gives kids out of school fewer things to do but parents are probably keeping them home anyway.

One aspect of the pandemic I hadn't counted on was a mad dash to the grocery store for everything from toilet paper to milk to boxes of mac and cheese.I had those very things in mind Sunday when I shopped King Soopers online. Toilet paper not available. Deli was closed. It listed the rest of the items I ordered groceries to last us at least until the next paycheck. I opted to pick them up but no times were available through Tuesday. Instead, I opted for a delivery on Tuesday afternoon. As my shopper reported Tuesday, many of the items I requested were gone. She texted my photos of empty shelves in the toilet paper and pasta aisles. When she finally left the groceries on the front porch later that day, some items were missing and some substitutions were a bit sketchy. A First World problem, to be sure.

As for sports -- spring training is cancelled and the MLB season is delayed two weeks. March Madness has been cancelled as has the NBA season. A bummer but they both take second place to the pandemic. High school tournaments have also been cancelled. As of this morning, our county now has two confirmed coronavirus cases. That puts Wyoming's count at 15.

The local community college is on spring break but is still deciding what to do when the kids return as pale as when they left -- No Cabo this year kiddos! Actually, some students are at beaches for spring break. A few were interviewed at Florida's Clearwater Beach. One young guy was asked about the risks associated with major partying and much touching. His answer was priceless. He and his cohorts were spending all their time in the sand so they didn't have to worry about touching doorknobs and other nasty things. I had this image of the kids spending day and night in the sand, all alone but for the crabs and the sand fleas and sandpipers which we know aren't COVID-19 carriers.

That's not how I remember spring break.

Levity is welcome relief during these trying times. Lord knows we've had enough bad news. If you listen to the president and his lackey Mike Pence, all is well in the U.S.A. as we have two such capable people in charge. No advice from Melania lately, not even BE BEST!

Rest easy, America.

Rep. Gingery's bill proposes much-needed boost in waiver program budget

From the Wyoming Public Media web site:

A Wyoming program that helps the disabled has a long waiting list, but a state bill to be introduced next year could help. 

Jackson representative Keith Gingery (R-Fremont/Teton) is the sponsor of the bill to be introduced during the upcoming legislative session would provide $28 million in state and federal funding for Wyoming's Home and Community Based Waiver Program. The waiver program provides services for people with disabilities. More than 450 people in Wyoming are waiting for adult, child or brain-injury waivers. 

Wyoming expects to spend about $214 million on the waivers over the next two fiscal years, with about half the cost paid with federal dollars. But Gingery said that the funding isn't enough to meet existing demand for the waivers.

This program provides much-needed support to those families challenged with long-term medical care that is usually only partially covered by insurance – if that family is insured at all. Guidelines of the waiver program are outlined here.

Support Rep. Gingery via e-mail at kgingery@wyoming.com

Wyoming Rep. Bob Nicholas, R-Cheyenne, arrested by Florida authorities for allegedly beating his disabled son

What can you say about an elected official (anyone, for that matter) who does something like this (as reported in the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle):

State Rep. Bob Nicholas, R-Cheyenne, faces a felony charge of abusing a disabled adult in Florida following a Nov. 23 arrest.

Nicholas, 54, was arrested in Boca Grande, Fla., while on vacation after allegedly punching and kicking his 19-year-old mentally disabled son, according to a Lee County Sheriff’s Office report.

The document indicates that multiple witnesses outside of a restaurant saw Nicholas hit his son repeatedly with a closed fist, push him onto the sidewalk and then kick him more than five times.

--clip--

Nicholas said his son became disruptive and combative during lunch. He said he was only trying to get his son out of the restaurant, and he described his response as "corporal punishment," according to the sheriff's report.

--clip--

"I accept I will have to explain my actions," he said. "And if I was too strong with my son, I will address that as well."

Nicholas, who lives in Cheyenne, is an attorney and was elected in 2010 to represent House District 8.

He serves on the Legislature's Joint Judiciary Interim Committee. The biography he provided for his last campaign listed that he has served for more than 10 years as a board member on the Caring for Children Foundation and is a Special Olympics coach.

Nicholas' son lives with him in Cheyenne. He has two other adult-age children.

The legislator said he has no intention of resigning his legislative seat.

"I don’t think I committed a crime, so why would I?" he responded when asked.

Read entire story at http://www.wyomingnews.com/articles/2011/12/03/news/20local_12-03-11.txt

When it gets personal, writers have to dig deeper

I don't need to be invited to write.

But it helps.

Last week, I was invited to attend a writing workshop by Sandra Root-Elledge, associate director of program development for the Wyoming Institute for Disabilities (WIND) at the University of Wyoming. Sandy and I serve together on the UPLIFT board. So I took Friday off and drove over the pass ("blowing snow, icy roads, turn off cruise control") to Laramie. Springtime in the Rockies.

On campus, a collegial group gathered to talk -- and write -- about their children with disabilities. One of us had physical disabilities, and she was accompanied by a scribe. Not all of us were parents -- several of the attendees work with populations with special needs and have many stories to tell.

Workshop leader was Kathy Roberson who, in 2008, started a writers' group for family caregivers at the Boggs Center in New Jersey. She has master's degrees in creative writing and social work. She also has a 20-year-old daughter with developmental disabilities. Kathy as in town with her husband, a fisheries biologist, who was attending a conference. She connected with Sandy at WIND and a workshop was created.

It is difficult to write well and honestly about those closest to you. Way back in the last century, I pitched several publishers and agents about my manuscript about our family's struggles with our son who has ADHD. I received little encouragement but many comments. "Dig deeper," one editor told me. "I don't want to dig any deeper," I told myself, and kept sending out the manuscript. Looking at it now, I realize that the critique was correct. There was lots of good stuff on the page. Nifty sentences, some insights, a bit of humor. But it was heady, my story as told by some person at a remove from my story -- and that person was me.

I've been able to publish some of the book's chapters, often after a lot of revising. One of the essays will appear this September in the anthology Easy to Love by Hard to Raise. That has prompted me to go back and look at the rest of the manuscript and dig deeper. That is at least partly what writing is about -- digging until the writer hits the mother lode.

Kathy Roberson's writers' group in New Jersey has bred some amazing poems and essays and stories. She shared some of them with us last Friday at the WIND workshop. Kathy uses a number of prompts as writing exercises. One was "Write about an article of clothing that holds a distinct memory or meaning." She tells the caregivers that they can follow the prompt or not. Most do, and come up with some amazing writing about quirky bathing suits or Navy blue Converse sneakers or a baby outfit with this script across the chest: "Thank Heaven for Little Boys." As you read this short memoir, you can't help thinking about the challenges as this little boy with disabilities grows up.

To read the prompts and some of the finished work, go to "Writing Our Journey: Poems and Essays by Family Caregivers."

On Friday, Kathy gave us this prompt: "Write about the word ambivalence."

I had to think about this one. Usually I just jump into the writing. Ambivalence, I think, is a term that many of us face daily. I love my children but they drive me to distraction. My wife and I have been a caregiving team for what seems like forever -- we just want to be a couple again. I try to be supportive with my daughter as she wrestles with homework and now tests for her G.E.D. At the same time I'm wondering why she has so much trouble with work that is so easy. I know the answer -- learning disabilities and ADD and a school career filled with failures. Still, I can't get over the fact that neither of my children graduated from high school. My son is on the lifetime plan at a community college. I'm not sure that my daughter will succeed in college or even get there.

This is the time of year when the graduation announcements arrive. The other day we received one from my nephew in Florida graduating from University of North Florida. I'm proud of him but his notice reminds me that I won't be attending a high school graduation this fall. I recall saying this the day my daughter was born: "When she graduates from high school, I'll be 60." Well, I'm 60 and she's not graduating. She'll have her G.E.D. But no diploma.

Where does my ambivalence lie? All over the damn place. I'll try to sum it up: "Enough already with the damn graduation announcements." That's what I wrote about.

Other workshop participants have children with severe developmental disabilities. These children and young adults cannot speak or take care of themselves. They have autism or Down Syndrome or very rare disorders of the brain and spine. They live in group homes and spend their days at the Ark, one of the best centers for the developmentally disabled in the region.

Faced with this, I remember one of my mother's favorite sayings: "Count your blessings, Michael." My mother had to count her blessings often -- she had nine of them, she said, with me the oldest. This didn't count my father, who would be the tenth blessing if you're trying to keep up. My mother was wise but I rarely counted what was good and dwelled instead on the negative. That was part of my depression, this inner turmoil. This is more curse than blessing, but I may not have become a writer without it.

Ambivalence is life. To see life in black and white is to be blind to the colors and shades of gray.

The poems and essays by the workshop participants were sad and funny. Filled with ambivalence.

Kathy left us with one of her poems. It's entitled "Ambivalent Living." It's very personal and does a terrific job of summing up the title.

Ambivalent Living
Kathy Roberson

It's October and the fluttering,
garish, dazzling display of color
defies the unmistakable scent of
melancholy settling; this time of
change resists easy conclusions.

Inside, on the warm couch, her long,
adolescent limbs curl along side me
while she contentedly sucks that one
calloused thumb; fear and faith in
the far future vie for voice, rise in
my throat and are swallowed just
as swiftly as I stand to plan the
fleeting details of our day.

A drawing called Love: a child
poised in mid-air, and a woman,
both arms stretched forward, ready
to catch, enfold, or else hold still,
risk release into open sky. I've mused
since about which way the story was
supposed to go and see now, in this
season of uncertainty, how either way
the name remains the same.

Kevin the Climber, Part II

Vedauwoo photo from climbing site vedauwoo.org

This is a good day to be recalling some of my adventures with our son, Kevin. He’s flying in from Tucson today as a 26-year-old man who has a life of his own a thousand miles away. He’s a groomsman at a good friend’s wedding, and he taking an elongated spring break. He’s on the lifetime plan at a community college. But it’s his plan and I’m glad he has one. He doesn’t do much rock climbing any more, but it was his passion as a youngster growing up in Colorado and Wyoming. This post is the second installment of Kevin the Climber.

I watch my son Kevin as he clambers up the tumbledown boulder field of Vedauwoo in southeastern Wyoming’s Laramie Range during the summer of 1996.  There is something natural about this 11-year-old’s ease with the billion-year-old rock, the way he picks his way through narrow passageways and finds just the right finger hold to get up and over a house-sized chunk of Precambrian granite.  You could say that since he is a third-generation Coloradan, born within the magnetic fields of dozens of mountain ranges, he was destined to climb rocks.  He could just have easily been born to yodel country-western songs or snowboard naked or speculate in Aspen real estate or a thousand-and-one things Westerners seem compelled to do.  Kevin prefers rocks.

Where Kevin sees a ladder to the sky, I see a rocky barrier. I will climb until I get to the top or get stymied by a “radical vertical,” whichever comes first.   The rocks seem to beckon Kevin, to welcome him in ways foreign to me.  I have suggested that he should take rope-climbing classes, learn the traditional roots of the sport.  “Why would I want to do that?” he asks, as if it never occurred to him to place something as foreign as rope between him and the mountain.

It’s possible his rock worship might date back to our Druidic roots, our Celtic ancestors’ reciprocal relationship with the natural world.  It may just be that he likes free-climbing rocks the same way I loved surfing during my teen years on Florida’s Atlantic coast.  The Druid Surfer spawns the Druid Rockhead.  If we could jump back in time a million years or so, we could both be engaged in our separate passions right on this very spot.  He could be climbing Mesozoic rocks, still bursting from the earth’s crust, and I could be surfing the bitchin’ waves of the ancient inland sea.

Because Kevin has Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, his love for rocks has physiological roots.  To concentrate is everything for this hyperactive kid.  He can’t do it for extended periods of time unless he is under the influence of Ritalin, a drug that helps him control an aggressive impulsiveness, one of the telltale signs of ADHD.  Right now, as he climbs toward the sharp blue Wyoming sky, the Ritalin, a central nervous system stimulant, is working on my son’s brain stem arousal system causing it to not be aroused.  Why is that?  Don’t look for any help from the medical texts.  Says thePhysicians’ Desk Reference:  There is no “specific evidence which clearly establishes the mechanism whereby Ritalin produces its mental and behavioral effects on children, nor conclusive evidence regarding how these effects relate to the condition of the central nervous system.”

Each time we climb, Kevin eventually disappears, leaving me to my own shortcomings as a climber.  I don’t mind.  Rocks offer him solace and solitude.  They do not call him names.  They do not mistake his energetic aura for anything else.  They are rocks and that is why we came here and why he will continue to climb long after I am sidelined by the aches of an aging Baby Boomer body.

Alone on the rocks, I get a chance to conduct my favorite climbing activity: sitting on a perch, watching the dark patterns that drifting cumulus make on the blue-green landscape.  Across the narrow valley, members of a rope-climbing class from University of Wyoming take turns rappeling down a cliff.  In the far distance on Sherman Hill, a line of trucks crawl along I-80 and a freight train crosses “The Gangplank” of the Laramie Range — a granite sheet that is a centuries-old thoroughfare for Cheyenne and Arapaho, pioneers, railroaders, vacationers and truckers, those transients that have been both boon and curse to the West.

I luxuriate in the feel of the cool breeze on my face, the tart taste of an apple on a July afternoon.  Hawks ride Vedauwoo’s complex air currents. A wonderful dream, to fly like a hawk.  Some time within the next hour Kevin will shout my name and I will look up to see him waving from a pinnacle, his lanky form etched against the blue sky. “Come on up!” he will yell, and I will return his wave and shake my head.

He goes some places where I cannot follow.

Cross-posted from easytolovebut blog. Way back when, this piece appeared in a longer and slightly different form in Montana’s now-defunct Northern Lights magazine.

Kevin the Climber, Part I: An ADHD Memoir

I’ve been blogging from Wyoming since 2005, but only a portion of my posts focused on our family’s experiences with ADD, ADHD, OCD and mental health challenges. This is fitting in a way because my blog is named hummingbirdminds after a description by Internet hypertext pioneer Ted Nelson. He said in Wired Magazine that people with ADHD have “hummingbird minds.” I always liked that. My blog, like my mind, flits from subject to subject.

Kevin the Climber, Part I

Our son Kevin was diagnosed with ADHD at 5. I guess you could say it was a pretty severe case because it was evident from the time he started walking at 9 months – maybe even earlier. Walking was too tame for Kevin. He was a runner and a climber.

He climbed out of his crib. He climbed out of his playpen. He climbed 100-foot trees. And that was all before he turned 2. Later he climbed cliffs and mountains and buildings. He was more interested in climbing on the top of playground swing sets than he was swinging on them. He liked to shinny up the metal bars that formed the arch that held the swings. Like an inchworm, he would creep along the poles until he was right over the heads of those kids below on the swings.  "Hi down there," he would say with a laugh.  Some kids greeted him; others just stared.  The parents had various reactions. Most seemed concerned for their own children, afraid that Kevin could slip and fall right on them. A falling body builds a tremendous velocity in a very short span of time. Broken bones could result. Concussions and worse.

One day I was at the playground with Kevin while my wife Chris worked. Kevin’s favorite park was three blocks from the university’s married student housing complex where we lived while I worked on my writing and my graduate degree at Colorado State University. When we arrived at the park, Kevin made a beeline for the swing set and climbed up the curve of the rusty red iron pole. Within seconds he was perched 20 feet up, poised over the head of a blonde five-year-old girl wearing a Minnie Mouse T-shirt.  Her mother looked worried.  I didn’t have to be a member of the Psychic Hotline to understand the look of concern that creased that woman’s face. She imagined Kevin losing his grip and falling through space for a collision with her daughter. I imagined a similar scene.  She was thinking: “Why doesn't his father say something to this menace of a boy.”  She pushed her daughter with both hands as she peered up at Kevin. What follows is the conversation as best as I can remember it:

-- Your boy sure likes to climb.
-- Yes he does.
-- He seems pretty good at it.
-- He is.
-- It's a long way up.
-- He likes heights. He climbs mountains.
-- Has he ever fallen?
-- From Mount Everest. But just that once.

Ha ha. I sort of regretted saying it. I just wanted to wound this mother slightly, to get back at her for thinking I might be a lousy father. I felt like it sometimes, that I was a terrible parent for letting my son climb on something that obviously was meant to swing on not climb on.

I felt guilty around these good parents. They all seemed so much more comfortable with their roles than I did with mine. They acted as if parenting is some snug undergarment that never slipped or became wedged in vulnerable bodily cavities. I used to think that parenting would be innate, that I wouldn’t have to learn a series of new dance steps to dance the parent waltz. I wonder if they had all received some sort of parenting gene from kind and loving parents that I did not.

But there was something else: their kids were classified as normal and mine was not. And I was constantly trying to deal with that fact.

Look for Kevin Climber, Part II, in upcoming posts. Also, find this post on the Easy to Love but Hard to Raise blog after Feb.22. 

UPLIFT presents Rodger McDaniel with public service award

Photos by Mindy Dahl

Wyoming Tribune-Eagle education reporter Josh Mitchell wrote about UPLIFT’s 20th anniversary celebration in Wednesday’s edition.

The celebration was held Tuesday evening in the Cole Elementary school gym. One of my fellow UPLIFT board members, Brenda Ducharme, teaches at the school.

UPLIFT, the Wyoming affiliate of Federation of Families for Children’s Mental Health, presented Rodger McDaniel (shown in lower left in photo with UPLIFT Director Peggy Nickell) with its public service award. McDaniel is the outgoing director of the Wyoming Department of Health’s Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services Division. He will be missed.

I served with Rodger in the early 1990s on the first board of Laramie County Habitat for Humanity. I moved on to other volunteer roles and a few years later, Rodger and his family were in Nicaragua directing that country’s Habitat projects. He returned to his law practice, became an ordained minister and was eventually tapped by Gov. Dave Freudenthal for public service. His retirement was announced last week.

Rodger’s been crucial in bringing vision to a state that struggles with some rotten mental health and drug abuse statistics. Crisis centers – even in the Capital City – are few and far between, as are clinicians. The division’s Medicaid Waiver program for children and teens have helped pay for residential treatment and, even more importantly, aftercare when the child returns home.

Here’s hoping that Rodger and his colleagues have put us on a course that even 2010-style regressive politics can’t change. Wyoming’s new “Code of the West” may be fine for ropin’ and brandin’, but it doesn’t help curtail alarming teen suicide statistics and the state’s shortage of quality children's mental health treatment.

Josh interviewed me for the Nov. 17 story. My two cents worth:

Mike Shay is an UPLIFT board member and both of his children received help from the organization.

UPLIFT outreach coordinators attend school meetings with parents, Shay noted. The organization helps navigate parents through the complex system and connects families with different services, Shay added.

“UPLIFT”s been crucial in Wyoming,” Shay said.

I’d send you to the WTE site to read the rest, but it’s not on there.

As I've said here before, my son struggled with ADHD and my daughter has mental health issues. Both were helped by the incredible UPLIFT staff. We need these professionals to navigate school and government and treatment centers. They serve as guides to us confused, stressed-out parents.

You can find out more about UPLIFT at http://www.upliftwy.org/

Carlton Davis, author of "Bipolar Bare," speaks April 20 at UW Disability Days

CIGNA logo before -- and after

The image at the top is the official CIGNA logo before Sick for Profit and Ryan O'Connell got their hands on it...

The one on the bottom is an artist's version of CIGNA's soul.

Which is the most realistic?

My vote is for the leaves falling from the CIGNA tree, leaves representing those who have been denied health care.

NOTE: CIGNA is my the company I pay my premiums to.

More on Sick for Profit at http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/sickforprofit?ref=nf

Blessed are the meek with pre-existing conditions -- insurers love you!

http://twitpic.com/m33zz (thanks to almightygod on Twitter)

Sen. Enzi just another Republican obstructionist from Wyoming

From Ryan Grim at the Huffington Post:

Mike Enzi, one of three Republicans ostensibly negotiating health care reform as part of the Senate's "Gang of Six," told a Wyoming town hall crowd that he had no plans to compromise with Democrats and was merely trying to extract concessions.

"It's not where I get them to compromise, it's what I get them to leave out," Enzi said Monday, according to the Billings Gazette.

Don't you wish you had free health care courtesy of U.S. taxpayers and delivered by the dreadfully inept U.S. gubment? Sen. Enzi of Gillette gets a cough, he gets a free health check-up. Sen. John Barrasso of Casper, M.D., gets a hitch in his getalong, he sees a doctor for free. Rep. Cynthia Lummis from Cheyenne has to undergo an operation (as she did recently) and she can recover in peace. No deductible to worry about. No bills from the hospital and later, when the payment is a few days late, no collection notices or annoying phone calls.

Ah, peace of mind. Don't you wish that you had a stake in that?

Jim Wallis at Sojourners remembers Sen. Kennedy

Jim Wallis remembers Sen. Kennedy's cause in a Sojourners' piece, "Honoring the greatest commitment of Sen. Edward Kennedy's life." Here's a sample:

On the occasion of his death, I pray that God may now move us as a nation to address the greatest commitment of Sen. Kennedy’s life — the need for a comprehensive reform of the health-care system in America — as a deeply moral issue and one that calls forth the very best that is within us. May we honor the life and death of Sen. Edward Kennedy by laying aside the rancor, lies, fear, and even hate that has come to dominate the health-care debate in America this summer, and regain our moral compass by recovering the moral core of this debate: that too many Americans are hurting and suffering in a broken and highly inequitable health-care system, and that it is our moral obligation to repair and reform it — now.

Read the entire column at http://blog.sojo.net/2009/08/26/honoring-the-greatest-commitment-of-senator-edward-kennedys-life/

Health care horror stories across the U.S.

Pauline Bartolone sent this:

I just came across your blog, hummingbirdminds, and I saw that you have been posting about health care reform. I am a video producer at Consumers Union,the publisher of Consumer Reports magazine, and I thought you might beinterested in some videos I've produced about residents in Wyoming and their access to health care.

Last summer, I drove around in an RV for 4 months gathering stories about everyday consumers' experience with the health care system. Wyoming was my favorite state in the lower-48! Seriously - it was just so beautiful!

Anyway here are a couple of the videos I did in Wyoming: Lori Donner in Cheyenne, who is uninsured with a thyroid condition. Go to http://bit.ly/12INcv. And Ken, an electrician in Thermopolis, who is uninsured and retirement age. Go to http://bit.ly/bsbur.

You can see the rest of the videos at: http://www.prescriptionforchange.org/video.html

Thanks, Pauline. Some hair-raising stories in Pauline's videos. Check them out. And keep working for a fair and just and affordable health care system.

Dr. Temple Grandin headlines autism awareness event in Cheyenne

Veterinarian and author Temple Grandin from Fort Collins will be the keynote speaker for the second annual Autism Awareness Evening beginning at 5 p.m. on Friday, April 3, at Barnes & Noble, 1851 Dell Range Blvd., Cheyenne. Grandin, who is autistic, is best known for bringing more humane practices to the slaughterhouse (if anyone has a better term for it, let me know). Her latest book is "Animals Make us Human," with Catherine Johnson.

Joining Dr. Grandin are local authors Heather Jensen ("Cup of Comfort for Parents of Children with Autism") and John Roedel ("Autism: Heartfelt Thoughts from Fathers"), who also is a member in good standing of the Ozymandian Theatre improv troupe in Cheyenne. Also speaking will be Helen Sumner, Autism Residential Habilitation Trainer.

This event is also a fund-raiser for the Stride Learning Center in Cheyenne.

FMI: 307-632-1164.