Video Vault: Samsara & Sugar Man

Voice of the Mountain

by Shawn K. Inlow

Here on The Mountain, we've got this imperative to see every film in the world which matters.  Today's Video Vault installment has ten features that range from things you really need to see to curios and oddities, from action to animation, from true stories to partly true stories, to ghost stories, from sci-fi to James Bond and one film that defies classification.

Let's start there.

Samsara

2011 /Ron Fricke

PG-13 / 102 minutes

"Samsara" is unlike any film I've seen, taking the viewer on a global journey of image and sound as if you are an alien who has landed on Earth and begun to look around.  The sights are strange and beautiful, disturbing and eloquent.  And all presented without a single word of dialogue.

I will wager that some will turn away.  Audiences need - they have been trained to need - a narrative; someone telling them the story.  "Samsara" simply shows you things and lets your imagination provide the narrative.

At first, I thought, "These are beautiful images, but this is going to be a long movie."  But after about ten minutes I found myself engrossed.  I was providing my own subtext to the film, bringing my own wonder, incredulity and meaning to the stunning displays of this world's beauty.

The word, "samsara," exists in the Buddhist culture: "Coming into existence as a mortal creature."  And in the Hindu culture: " the endless series of births, deaths, and rebirths to which all beings are subject."  But you don't need those definitions in order to set your mind adrift in this tsunami of image.  The film acts like a poem that jars emotional responses from you.

I found myself in turns mumbling things like, "Where is that?" or a quizzical laugh, "huh!" or gasping in surprise or even shock.  It is a film for film lovers.  Please try to see this film.  I watched it by myself and found it rather meditative.  I began to watch the film again with my wife and she got pulled in.  Just don't expect to be handed your entertainment, expect to participate in it.


Searching for Sugar Man
2012 - Malik Bendjelloul 
PG-13 / 86 minutes


"Searching for Sugar Man" is the story of an obscure record, "Cold Fact," and how the mysterious artist behind it, known only as "Rodriguez," vanished.

It is a story of how his music, never noticed in America and long forgotten since it's monumental flop in 1970, somehow caught on elsewhere and became the soundtrack to white kids' opposition to apartheid in South Africa.

It is the story of how fans of the record decided to find out what happened to the artist rumored to have died by his own hand in concert.  It is also the story of the redemptive power of music and a bit of a meditation on what constitutes failure and success.

The story begins with record store owner Stephen "Sugar" Segerman who begins to wonder about the record that helped shape his life growing up in South Africa and why nothing was known about its maker.  With only the gritty, urban lyrics of protest to go on, he brings the viewer along on his journey of discovery.

Segerman paints for the viewer how the music traveled and was shared clandestinely, how it was eventually banned and, thus, grew in importance and then, years later, how he traced the music to its American roots.

And what a cool musical soundtrack it is.  The songs have a Dylanesque lyrical vibe matched with a kind of studio production that is dated enough that it resonates today.  Songs like "I Wonder," "Inner City Blues" and "Sugar Man," happily, are all available for you on iTunes today.  Check the movie and I bet you wind up with the record yourself.  

Kwaidan
1965 - Masaki Kobayashi
NR / 182 minutes

Here is a curio that Mountain Junior discovered because of his fascination with 19th century horror stories.  The book, "Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things," was published in 1904 by Lafcadio Hearn and recounts 17 spooktacular stories from the Asian culture. 

The film, which won a Special Jury Prize at Cannes in 1965, uses four of the best tales:  "Black Hair," about a poor samurai who divorces his true love in order to marry for money; "The Woman in the Snow," about a wood-cutter whose life is spared by an icy spirit; "Hoichi the Earless," about a blind musician who sings for the dead and "In a Cup of Tea," about a man haunted by a vision in a tea-cup.

The film is a bit stagey looking, but the color and set design are very good.   The stories, being drawn from another culture, offer something new for an American audience running thin on horror ideas.


Wreck-It Ralph
2012 - Rich Moore
PG / 108 minutes

The animated film that should have won the Oscar this year in a weak year for feature length animation, "Wreck-It Ralph" takes place inside certain video games within an old-school video arcade.  (God, I miss old school video arcades.) 

The set-up is pretty standard stuff.  Ralph is a ham-fisted "bad guy" who wrecks things in his game only to have the hero, "Fix-It Felix," come on to save the day.  Ralph wishes he could win just once, but that's impossible in his game.

Ralph runs away from his game to find a chance at glory in another game, leading to the complications that could threaten the entire arcade.  Neatly, the film goes from relying on a pixilated 80's type nostalgia which begins to wear thin to a better than average payoff.

Brave
2012 - Mark Andrews, Brenda Chapman, Steve Purcell
PG / 93 minutes

The animated film that did win the Oscar this year is okay if you like the standard Disney princess who's fed up with her lot in life.  This one takes place in Scotland, so there's a lot of quarrelsome Scots in kilts.  There's a witch and a wish and a curse that needs undone, but it's pretty standard fare. 

Now, the LOOK of the film is just eye-popping.  There was so much detail (There's an awesomely done horse in this pic but with nowhere near the humor of the horse from "Tangled.") that the animated movie almost looked too real sometimes...  Which is an achievement, but an achievement that had me stepping back from the world of the story to look at the pretty details.  It did not feel right to me.

When you get animation that is too "good" you have to stop and appreciate the old Disney films or the films of Studio Ghibli.  Still, the movie's decent for the kids.

Argo
2012 - Ben Affleck
R / 120 minutes

Based on the strange but true story of a U.S. / Canadian plan to get six American diplomats out of Tehran during the Iranian uprising in 1980, this triple-Oscar-winner is an engrossing action picture.  Best Picture?  Not on my watch, but it is a fine film nonetheless.  

The film gained Oscar steam, I surmise, because it made Hollywood look so good.  The plot was that a CIA "Moses" would go into Tehran under a Canadian passport and come out - right through the airport and right under the noses of the Iranian authorities - with the Americans who would pose as his production crew for "Argo," a fictitious sci-fi movie.

In order for it to work, the CIA actually had to secretly enlist Hollywood's aid to actually launch the production of the film.  They had to have a script and a cast.  They had to begin production design and they had to create buzz about the movie in industry publications.  The production company had to have offices that could receive calls all so the cover story would hold up under a foreign government's scrutiny.

It was a hair-brained idea, for sure.  That they actually pulled it off is just ridiculous.  I would rather point you in the direction of smaller films that escaped your notice, but sometimes - and today's a good example - half my basket is full of A-Titles that really are worth your while.


Skyfall
2012 - Sam Mendes
PG-13 / 143 minutes

I got ready for the latest (possibly best) of the James Bond films by going back to the beginning, with 1962's "Dr. No."  While this film is a modern day bang-up job of an action picture, today's bond girls cannot compare to Ursula Andress as Honey Rider.  Neither can today's iteration match the camp of some of the early efforts.  But "Skyfall" does inject new life into the Bond cannon and I recommend it especially if you are not a fan of Bond films.

The film opens with a breathless chase where Bond is trying to stop the theft of information that would expose MI6 agents world-wide.  But the aging Bond (Daniel Craig) fails and operatives around the world are imperiled while the agency comes under attack at home. 

A mysterious villain (Silva, played by Javier Bardem) has got the agency on the run and only Bond, working in the shadows, can rectify the situation.  To me, it is the best Bond film to date.


Promethius
2012 - Ridley Scott
R / 124 minutes

A team of archaeologists discover a clue to the origins of human life on Earth, leading to an expedition into deep space where the big questions are supposed to get answered.

The crew of the Promethius encounters the race of giants who may have begun life on Earth but they also encounter an "Alien" life form on that distant moon that could destroy both races.

An exciting and well done prequel to the Alien trilogy that director Ridley Scott began in 1979, it bodes well for at least one more quality sci-fi adventure to come.


Hubris: Selling the Iraq War
2013 - TV Documentary
44 minutes

Commemorating the tenth anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq War, it has been of particular interest to The Mountain that the neo-conservative progenitors of said deception have been blathering all over the teevee touting their "War of Liberation."

Rachel Maddow hosts this important TV-doc to set the record straight.  The war introduced the idea of "pre-emtive war," a horrible Bush II doctrine that has now been exposed as a thin cover for war-mongers.  Cheney, Wolfowitz, Perle, Condi and Dubya can go on the talk shows all they want, but "Hubris" - based on the book by Michael Isikoff and David Corn - reminds that these villains lied our country into war.

From the whole weapons of mass destruction to the shocking and deceitful "mushroom cloud" comment to the sorry pimping of Colin Powell on the world stage at the U.N., "Hubris" reminds us that animals like Dick Cheney never leave power.  People like that always stay around, always scheming, always looking for profit at the levers of power.
 
Their kind are the worst kind of criminals in our world.  "Hubris" reminds us to beware when dealing with that kind of concentrated evil.  You can watch the whole documentary right here.

************************* 

HOUSEKEEPING:  In my next post I'll be featuring a story on a brilliant young artist who lives here on the mountain named Joshua Wilson.  He's got a new website up and will be putting some pieces on display at a gallery over in DuBois, Pa. soon.  We'll have all those details coming right up.

FUNDRAISER: Over here in Philipsburg, I want to let you all know we're holding a Wisecrackers Comedy Club at the Philipsburg VFW on Front Street on Friday, April 19 and you can contact the mountain in person if you'd like to buy tickets in advance.  We aim to sell the thing out to support our local soccer community here.  The show will feature two full sets by two great comedians and a dance will follow.

Now, I've tried to get a number of my good friends, "Serious Jones" and "Brand New Wings," to play the dance which follows, but they've got conflicts.  So, in case I can't find a band, I'll be DJing the thing.  You should know that I'll probably be setting up a blue-tooth system where I'll be picking music right out of the cell-phones in your pocket (if you've got your stuff set to share) but I've also got a mammoth collection of music.  ALSO also, you should know that I have long been associated with very good original theater productions and I'll be lighting this dance floor like nobody's business with my personal lighting equipment.  I just hope the VFW has heavy enough breakers to handle the light I'll be throwing.  We shall see. 

In any case, have a look at the benefit flyer and please come out to see us on April 19.  The tickets are by advance sale only, so follow the directions on the flyer, okay?  Thanks.

Shawn Inlow
Osceola Mills, Pa.
 

Dark Waters

 Voice of the Mountain

by Shawn K. Inlow

The water was black.  Well, not black, but the color of tea.  The lake was full of tannins from the acid loving plant life and it made the water dark and serene and reflective even in the broad daylight of a warm off-season day.

The surface was placid, reflecting like an impenetrable eye the world around it, a perfect beautiful dark looking glass.

The Trooper had driven his patrol car there on a serene, deserted patrol, seeking quiet.  Needing to sleep.  Mind wandering and numb.

The internal investigations just kept coming one after another.  It had gotten to the place where the Trooper had posted his most recent notice on the patrol room bulletin board so that the guys could read it without clandestinely poking through his mailbox.

It didn't matter that the Trooper was blameless in any of it.  It only mattered that he was an officer who needed to be hammered down like a stubborn nail poking its head above the flush of a wooden deck.  He was an officer who needed to conform.  An officer who needed to know that filing a grievance was not what team players did.

The officer nosed the cruiser up to the water's edge and cracked the window, letting in the meditative sounds of wind and calming black waves.  The water was a reflection.  It was an abyss.  He pushed the driver's seat forward and reclined it the few inches it would go before it ran up against the cage for back-seat passengers.

His uniform didn't fit very well.  He was getting overweight, a far cry from the boot that came out of the academy in the best shape of his life, and his gun-belt was on its last notch and spent its shifts digging into his gut and his woolen gray uniform was stuffy and uncomfortable.

He turned down the radio so it could barely be heard and fell into a troubled sleep sitting upright.  The Trooper could not dream.  He had not dreamt in years.

Back at the barracks, his corporals in the patrol unit and crime unit were conspiring on ways to stick it to him.  One of them kept a file on the Trooper.  The other kept downgrading his evaluations.  Every report that came across their desks bounced like a rubber ball back into the Trooper's box.  Do it over.   Review OM 7-2 regarding statements on domestic violence.  Familiarize yourself with blocks 7-15 regarding initial crime reporting.  Submit correspondence STD-501 explaining the lateness of this report.  One time, his report bounced because his signature was wrong.  The Trooper couldn't lick a postage stamp and get it past these guys and, after a while, even a sensible Trooper began to doubt whether or not he was capable of doing anything right.  After a while, even a sensible Trooper began to make unforced errors, failing at easy tasks.

And when the Bureau of Professional Responsibility came calling because one of his supervisors kept filing paper on him for whatever they could think of, the report always came back clearing the Trooper.  The Trooper had always acted with best intents.  It was the six months of not knowing where the complaint originated or whether the misstated and bent reasoning of the complaint would be discovered in the investigation or not.  It was six months of not knowing what the department was going to do to you.

And then another investigation would begin.  And another.  There was, for a sensible Trooper, no recourse.

There comes a time for a Trooper when he can no longer function.  When he can no longer manage the Chinese Water Torture of stress.  When you are driving but you don't know where and you wind up somewhere but you realize suddenly you have no idea how you got there.

The Trooper's mind thought in still frames.  In pictures.  And the thought crept up on him in the middle of a tripple-header - three eight hour shifts out of five - like shadow not wanting to be seen and insinuated itself.  The Trooper was not safe.

He saw in his mind's eye the picture of the bloody roof of the patrol car.  But in the picture he could not see his face.  Either he had become no one or his mind would not allow him to be in the picture.  But he could not see his face there.  He had disappeared.

His hand caressed the Beretta's grip in its holster.  The Beretta with the interminably long trigger pull.  The Beretta whose grip was too big for his hand.  And his thumb unsnapped his holster as his hands caressed the grip and his black leather holster.

In the picture, he could not see his face.

He had been fond of reasoning with people in his work that one should never make a decision while angry.  But this was not anger.  This was sorrow.  This was despair.  There is no one more unpredictable than the desperate.

It wasn't a moment of hatred for his co-workers that mattered so much, although the Trooper somehow was determined to not let them win out.  Somehow, the picture in his mind changed to the picture of his son.

What kind of a man would do that to his son?  What kind of a coward could leave his family a legacy like that?  This way was the way of the hopeless.  But it was the beautiful face of his son; he could see it clearly in the picture, it was love that was stronger than all of it.

The Trooper shook his head and began to weep.  And his hands went to his shaking head to deliver comfort instead of release.

He had to get out of there.  Terror and sorrow and love swirled like madness in him and he unsteadily backed his patrol car up from the boat launch and drove the winding, twisting road toward town needing someplace safe.  

Up ahead on the right was the home of someone who would have to do.  It was a place he was always welcome to pull in and park his car around the back of the house on the spacious forest lot and he did so on this day.  Most days he'd pull in and, even in the middle of a work day, one or both of the parents or some of the boys would be around if they were in town.  He was usually offered something to eat but he mostly declined except for coffee or tea.

He parked out of sight of the road and shut off the car.  He turned off his police radio and opened his cell phone and dialed.

"State Police, can I help you."  A female police communications officer.

The Trooper introduced himself.  He didn't sound good.

"I'm going to be off air on this number for a while."

"Are you okay?"

"I need to be left alone today, alright?  Call me if you really need me."

"Alright.  Let me know when you go back in service."

"Thanks."

He put his phone in his pocket and straightened himself up.  He took his clip-on tie off and tossed it aside, opening up his collar to breathe a bit.  He locked up the car and walked up the back steps to the kitchen.  He knocked lightly and walked in.

"Anyone home?" he called as he sat down at the big table.  The lady of the house was home.  She was a kindly type, kind of full of new age philosophy, a good person.  This was a healing place.

She came around the corner.  "Hi!  How ya doin'?"

"Good.  Just thought I'd come and spend some time."

"Great.  Can I get you some lunch?  I've got some tomato soup and some ham sandwiches."  She was used to feeding an army.

"You have no idea how good that sounds."

A Socialist Solution

Voice of the Mountain

by Shawn K. Inlow

A few months ago, I was operating in my own little world when I got a call from my friend Mario.  Mario lives in Boston.  He calls me sometimes on his commute.  Mario started me on this path, writing for you.  He chose the name of this blog from some ideas I had.  Mario wants me to write.  He's a friend.

The next day, a madman got loose in the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

The Mountain has been quiet for a time.  I need to explain.  As you, dear reader, have seen, I embarked on a prolonged creative outburst.  The fact of my retirement from the work world has coincided with a good friend telling me to write something and I have begun to think, to explode, to cry out, talk, share and be honest as much as I can from the top of this mountain howling down into the valleys below.

I have become very busy.  I have been doing a lot of research and reporting on a local landfill issue where I live and I have held the stories I've written.  More on this below, although not quite the final stories I intend to write on the issue.  

I have warned you that I'd try to do some music for you.  For the past month or so, I've been working with a few musicians toward that end.  The songs we are producing may or may not be very good, but they are taking shape and it is a time consuming process writing music.  I'll be posting those songs here on The Voice of the Mountain for you and you can inform as to whether I should stop singing.

I write songs.  Lots and lots of them.  But I haven't the training to single handedly produce them.  I love music but am a musical illiterate.  I'm a blind person leading you down a path.  I am deaf and shouting.  Some of the best musicians in the world didn't know how to write music, I'm told.  So I'm testing that assertion.

There is courage and fear and trust in making music, a language anyone can speak and have access to.  To make music, one must be able to be defenseless.  You have to open your heart and open your mouth and dream aloud.  One needs to destroy the barriers we so carefully construct in our lives and come down from the parapets into the open.  Most people are too careful or too risk averse to let go in such a way, to be free.

So, over the last month, I've been working on music.  Someone more accomplished would have something to show for his efforts by now.  I am not accomplished.  Yet.  

So I've been busy doing other creative things besides blogging.

By way of another excuse, I will mention that March is the worst of all months for me because planning for the upcoming soccer seasons takes all my time.  I am a registrar for a local football club and I'm busy helping to arrange for the spring seasons for hundreds of young association footballers.  The one thing I know I am is a soccer coach.  My game, the game I love, I spread like a happy Johnny Appleseed, planting sprouts and watching them grow.

And March sucks because I can't just have a game with our friends down the road.  We must get permission from someone in Pittsburgh to do that.  Or someone in California.  So tied has our society become to the idea of liability that I find myself collecting photographs and birth certificates of children to prove to someone in Pittsburgh who answers to an actuary somewhere that we are working within the requirements of the insurance industry so that we can play a game with our friends from a few miles down the road.

I call this the liability problem.  Back in the 1970s, all the parks around my home town of Clearfield, Pennsylvania, closed.  Someone came up with the brilliant idea that when a child falls off a swing, then somebody is liable.

I challenge the core assertion.  A child is liable to fling himself off the swing at the apex of its glorious arc.  But the insurance industry has imposed itself in the form of the invisible profit making straw-man that is liability.  It is a giant squid on the face of society deep throating us with its tentacle of fear.  

In our local soccer association, nobody can ever remember filing a claim against our liability.   This goes back decades.  Yet it is the primary cost of our local soccer associations and it is something WE DON"T NEED or use.  And it is the primary complicator and regulator of our lives.  If your child wants to play a sport, we have to know just how old your child is and you better not lie about it, so cough up your goddam birth certificate and pay the insurance premium.

Really.

Pa. West Soccer, I'm talkin' to you.  All you are is an insurance racket.

ON THE LANDFILL

I want to talk about this land use issue once more.  I have been examining this local political issue and what I've learned is you don't wanna stand between a rich man and a pot of gold.  That's what it comes down to.

I would rather be a Christian on the floor of the Roman Coliseum.

I went to a local meeting where everyone there was talking to the State Department of Environmental Protection board about whether they were for or against it.  Hundreds were against it.  A few guys who probably stand to gain money from it were for it.  There was an engineer who was paid to be for it.  Yeah, that counts.  Everyone else was just a neighbor who was watching the value of their homes and life savings evaporate.

The post I made after that was honest and frank.  I posited that the people who had the most to do with advancing this landfill that nobody wants consisted of some local money and a very few local politicians who are the stooges for the big money project.  You know who you are and you have to decide honestly if you are really serving the people who voted for you.  Who IS your boss anyway?

But I posted my very honest feelings of how I saw the problem.  I'm sure some facets of my budding understanding of the issue showed through.  I'm sure some of my guesswork was inaccurate.  But, on the whole, I think I was as close to being honest as I could.  But I was stunned that nobody would call a spade a spade on this issue when everyone knows the truth.  Everyone knows who Voldemort is.

Got some attention.  Made me very unhappy.  Saying true things is great for polishing your integrity but it will make you unhappy in this world.  Far better to be a coward and go along to get along and be quiet and sit in the corner and don't make waves and just eat your shit sandwich.  After I posted that little bit of opinion, people quietly approached me and said things like, "You'd better be careful."

So money can do that.  Money can make everyone cower down and be afraid.

But you know what?  It's these few people who are pursuing their life, liberty and pursuit of happiness at the expense of everyone else's.  In America, you are free to pursue whatever game you want as long as you're not hurting anyone else.  And those people who are supporting this landfill are stepping on the freedoms of others.  You are hurting others, and we've not been put on this planet for that purpose.

But if that's who you wanna be, then I think you suck and you are a lousy, lousy neighbor.

If those people who think building a landfill in the heart of the commonwealth so that people from New York and Philadelphia can take a shit and dump it on our heads is a good idea, I suggest they can tip this project in one of a couple ways.

One way is they can just stop doing harm to the environment here.  Just quit damaging things.  Stop your project. 

The second way is to make it worth everyone's while.  See, I keep hearing how this landfill is going to be this glorious bonanza of financial benefit.  Yeah.  For a few people it will be.  Whoever winds up actually developing and owning the project is going to be in for, idunno, half a billion dollars or more?  But everyone else is going to suffer.

People will get sick.  The environment will degrade.  Homes will devalue.  I don't know about anyone else, but everything I've ever made in my life is wrapped up in my little house here in Osceola Mills getting less valuable by the day.  Since we already have nothing here in Osceola Mills, I'd at least like it to be nothing minus the environmental hazards left from the ruined skeletons of mining and gas extraction and sewage sludge dumping and the burning of fossil fuels.

Yeah, Shawville is gonna close.  Well boo-hoo.  Because it was one of the filthiest polluters east of the Mississippi and the energy sector doesn't have to think about how many people have gotten sick and died of exposure to the burning of coal.

Yeah.  Let's have a war on coal.  It's about high goddam time.  Because The Mountain we all live on here is just one giant bony pile and everything is poisonous.  The kids all have cancer and asthma and neurological disorders and it ain't from the clean environment.  The fish are full of mercury from coal.

Sorry.

We were talking about making the landfill into a good idea.  Let's really make the landfill something that really does benefit our communities.  I propose a socialist solution.

Turn it over to the county.  Clearfield County should own and run the dump and all the profits from it should go toward making life better in Clearfield County communities.  If we're gonna have a landfill, how about everyone's taxes going down.  AND, as a good faith gesture, those folks who are living next to the dump should be offered fair market value for their land and the dump should subsidize their moving to a new location not affected by the associated truck traffic, airborn pathogens, traffic accidents, stink and environmental degradation.

That way everybody wins, right?  All you gotta do is buy off everybody.

If I had that much money, I'd do it.  I'd set it up as a county run program that truly would benefit everyone in a real way.  And all those people who currently oppose the project would think well of me for it.  And instead of being afraid of me they might build a nice statue of me in front of the beautiful new Shawn K. Inlow Elementary School.

So what's it gonna be, Voldemort?  One could arguably do some good in the community with this project.  But you could also do an immense amount of good in this community with this project.  The only thing that stands in the way is avarice.

Shawn K. Inlow

Osceola Mills, Pa.

Cancer Treatment for Opus

Voice of the Mountain

by Shawn K. Inlow

Opus: Has Prostate Cancer

A friend of mine has cancer.  Odds are someone you know has cancer too.  People who know me well will quickly identify the person I'm talking about, but I'm going to call him Opus, after my favorite cartoon character, just over there to the left.

So Opus caught prostate cancer in September 2012 when a test called a PSA test detected elevated levels of some indicator.

"I talked to the surgeon on the day I got my diagnosis," says Opus.  "I didn't realize I was talking to the top surgeon in Canada at the time.  My other option was radiation and I investigated that, but when the radiologist heard the name of my doctor, he recommended the surgery."

Today from the mountaintop, we're surveying the land for decent healthcare.  I put in the mast-head (that's the picture at the top) a cut-out of a Michael Moore film, "Sicko," that itself causes medical conditions in some people.  Before we move on with Opus's journey through Canadian health-care, I want to point out to you that Moore's film is accurate.  It's assertions hold up under careful scrutiny.  The man is trying to help.  Opus is proof.

In fact, let's stop playing this idiot game of calling the Canadian system "socialized medicine."  Because it is a slur used by the conservative noise machine to denigrate a system that works better than the corporate model employed here in the U.S.  Let's just call it "Canadian health care," shall we?

Opus is a U.S. citizen who has lived in Ottawa since 1995.  He's got a family and holds down three jobs and makes $30,000 a year.  His wife makes more, but the point is these are not rich folks or, as Opus says to me, "I'm not important."

From diagnosis to surgery was four months and my friends' prognosis is good.    He had what's called a daVinci radical robotic prostatectomy.  If ya wanna see some messed up video, click the link.  I promise, though, you will not see Opus's junk.  His journey through Canadian health care from diagnosis to surgical cure at the hands of the best team in the nation was four months and it cost him... 

Wait for it...

Nothing.  

Really.

Opus:  Junk Still Works

"This surgery in the U.S. can cost anywhere from $30,000 to $70,000 and that doesn't even touch follow up care," says Opus.  Imagine along with me if you're holding down three part time jobs in the U.S. how good the health care system might work for you.  It could eat up your house and your life savings and leave you flat.

But.  That's America.

Opus says he's walking around now and you wouldn't be able to tell there's anything wrong with him.  He says the surgery was so successful, the doctors are confident his junk will heal and he'll be able to ... um ... you know ... again.  Has something to do with damaging a key nerve in there.

There are drawbacks to the Canadian system, according to Opus.  He says you can wait for some things if they're not life threatening.  You might wait a couple months to get an MRI.

"When I called the surgeon back on November 25 having decided to book the surgery, I didn't hear back from him until January.  But once I booked the surgery, I went in on February 13th.  So it was pretty quick, altogether.  I was only  in the hospital one day.  I went in at 6, the surgery - a six hour proceedure -  at 8:30,  I was out the following day in the evening.  On Thursday, after six hours of surgery, I walked for an hour."

Opus says his medical journey wasn't exactly free of charge.  It cost his wife up to $13 per day to park at the hospital if she was staying longer than three hours.  

"The hospital uses that money to buy wheelchairs and stuff," says Opus. 

And his PSA test, which saved his life, cost him $35.

And you don't get private rooms in Canada.  You can, but they cost more.

"I had a semi-private room," says Opus, "And they cost more.  $180 per day I would have had to pay if I didn't have some work health care to pay for it."

So you're telling me you get some form of health care plan that goes with part-time jobs in Canada too?  Jesus.  How DO they DO it?

"We do pay 13% sales tax in Ontario.  But not on groceries," says Opus.  So the poorest of people don't get hit hard for the necessities.  Cool thing though, Opus says for a chocolate bar: 13% sales tax.  But for bread and milk and other necessary groceries, the sales tax does not apply.  Jeez.  It could drive a man from drinkin'.  It could make you eat healthy.  My GOD.

"The amount of income tax is not exorbitant here," he says.  "There are some write offs but not like in the US.  For instance, you can't write off the interest on a home loan here."

Of course, that write off helped me with taxes when I was paying for my home, but the thing here in the U.S. is that the other end of that deal is that's a big way for the very, very rich to hide their wealth.  You sink it into real estate and don't pay off your house and, voi'la!  Instant tax shelter.  It is how someone like Mitt Romney has umpteen bajillion mansions around the country.

And Opus says his taxes are manageable in Canada.

"My income tax is really low.   I'm a substitute teacher.  I work three jobs and my total income is $30,000 per year.  My wife's income is a lot higher.  My income tax is probably only 15% or not quite that."

Opus also points out that you might have a shorter wait in the U.S. but that the system, the way I read his statement, seems to discourage  hypochondria.  I know how often I've gone to the hospital just because I was having a panic attack when nothing was wrong with me except that I was enduring a lot of stress.  Apparently, in Canada, I'd have got there, waited around a while, felt better and then gone home.  No charge for that.

"You might have a shorter wait in the US.  If you are waiting for something that isn't major, or isn't life threatening, you can wait a while.  You can wait months for an MRI.  If you need something addressed quickly, though, you get the treatment.  They brought out two great surgeons.  Other surgeons observing.  Quite the team in the OR.  And I'm nobody particularly important.  So for me, it's been an absolutely incredible experience."

Getting CANCER has been an ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE EXPERIENCE??!!!

"Well," Opus qualifies.  "The biopsy was the most painful two minutes of my entire life."

Yeah.  Catheters up yer ying-yang can have that effect.

Goddam Canadians anyway.  Well, Opus is an American mooching off the Canadians.

"Yeah, I have to get around to applying for citizenship, I guess," says Opus.  "I'm considered a landed immigrant.  It's like having a green card."

And I'm wondering if you have to sneak across the border.  Or if there are walls being built to keep Americans out.

"I drove a car," says Opus, who launches into how he was downsized at a huge Canadian telecom but that came with a year's wages, which he used to go back to school and retrain as a teacher, which he loves.

And so now a non-Frech speaking American is living happily in Ottawa holding down three jobs and having earned three degrees.

"The educational system here is wonderful.  I've got a B.A. in History and English and a B.A. in Education and another bachelorate I got while working at the big telecom that they paid for," says Opus.

"School is very cheap here."

Oh, Christ.  Here we go again.

"It amounts to about $5,000 a year."

Sonofa...

"And while I was retraining, I stayed home with the kids and went to school at night and..."

We leave our dear friend, Opus, as he expounds on the wonderful, low-cost, educational opportunities he found in the Great White North.  While we, in the U.S., deride the quality of care he got in many realms of his life as "socialist."

Somebody needs to go throw a brick through the window at Blue Cross / Blue Shield.  'Cause congress sure isn't listening.

Wouldn't it be nice if our country provided for its citizens the way Canada does for an immigrant?  How about we provide universal single-payer health care for all Americans and stop having wars all the time?  Probably be able to balance the damn budget at the same time.

Goddam Canadians.

******************************

Canadian Commuters Ice Skate to Work on Rideau Canal.

Housekeeping:  I know my friend, Opus, enjoys The Voice of the Mountain.  So he's reading me from way up north where the chief export is cold air.  (No.  Really.  They export that shit.  And, weirdly, they don't seem to feel it.  I mean, dudes put on ice skates and they skate to work down the frozen over Rideau Canal wearing business suits and carrying briefcases.  Weirdest thing I ever saw.  And they have festivals where they celebrate ice.)

But Opus is looking on and I bet he'd be willing to discuss with you his experience of the Canadian health care system.  He lived here in the states most of his life.  Worked here.  Went to the hospital here.  So Opus has a wider view on the issue than some do here stateside.

If you choose to ask your questions, leave them in the comments below and I'll try to get Opus to chat back with you.  I think we could use his "absolutely incredible experience" to evolve our conversation in the U.S.

Until next time.

Enjoy!

Shawn Inlow

Osceola Mills, Pa.

Book Club Noir

Voice of the Mountain

by Shawn K. Inlow

It's six o'clock of a Thursday evening and the Osceola Mills Community Library is about to close.  Some are putting on their winter coats and getting outta Dodge while other more suspicious types drift in.

I'm middle aged and a bit flabby and I've taken refuge from the 18 degree temperatures outside in a ratty old brown winter coat and hood.  I've got holes in both knees of my unwashed jeans and a Uni-Ball vision pen clipped like a concealed weapon inside the collar of a t-shirt that is beginning to smell a bit too much like me.  A banged up pair of reading glasses clings there too by one of its stems as if my chest might be far-sighted.

Under one arm is a hard-bound edition big enough to require a wagon to carry it around.  Under the other is a green leather bound Kindle.  I roll in both worlds.

Another shifty character is over there in a brown parka trying to trade the cold for as much of the dry, musty heat of the dowdy little library as she can.  Underneath the massive coat she looks years younger than she might be.  She's carrying two volumes and tucked into a pocket are blank note cards and a cheap ball point.  She looks trustworthy.

A shorter, wise looking woman moves over to the entrance and locks us in.  She turns to us and looks at us through scheming, bespectacled eyes that hint of a liking of trouble.  Like she might be an informer or a double agent of some kind. And she cracks a half-smile and marches past me toward the reference room.

It's a dimly lit place but the walls are covered in this section by nicely bound books about and by the various Presidents of the United States.  We take up seats at a round table and take the measure of one another.

The woman across the table from me on the right is a tall drink of water of Polish descent and perfectly placed yellow hair framing bright red lipstick.  You wanna watch this one.  She's got a homespun looking bag that looks harmless as she pulls it onto her lap.  A hand drifts inside the lip and emerges with a bottle of Choco Vina.

"Its a good wine.  Flavored with chocolate," she says as her eyes dart around the table.  Some small plastic cups follow and the mood of the table warms.

The woman on my left claims to have been a school teacher.  I doubted her cover because she didn't have the crows' feet around the eyes or the worn down enamel of teeth grinding hard against each other like most teachers do.  I change my mind, though when she pulls a can of mace out of her bag and places it on the table to the left, a mystery novel which she places squarely before her atop three other paperbacks and a snub nose .38 which she places in easy reach on her right.  Obviously a teacher.

These are the dangerous types and thugs that you hang around with when you reach a certain dead end in life.  There are, to my knowledge, at least five book lovers in Osceola Mills, Pennsylvania.

A glass of the black wine is placed before me and I wave it off.  I'd been drinking Black & Tans earlier and a chocolate flavored wine would crash that party like a gorilla in a banana factory.  I couldn't risk it.  Too dangerous.

The Autobiography of Mark Twain

I screwed up my nerve and went first.  The thousand page tome I'd carried in was the Autobiography of Mark Twain.  The American humorist and author of "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" and "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" dictated his autobiography extemporaneously in his waning years and had finally gotten the thing off his chest by the time he died in 1910 with the proviso that his story should not see the light of day until 100 years after his death.

Thus to save the feelings of friends and churls alike, I think.  What an odd and prescient thing to do, to free oneself and one's story from beyond the grave to better serve the truth.  The long view.  So to read the tome, which meanders around like the Mississippi of Twain's childhood, is akin to hearing the man, himself, talk.  First person.  About the world he was in just then from the time of the old south, through the odd newspaper coverage of western duels, through the civil war to the turn of the last century, it is as if the great talker transports you there to see for yourself what it is to step back 100 years and look around.

Next up was the trustworthy woman, who'd sat down to my right.  It was hard to pay strict attention to the books she brought to the table because I felt a need, probably rising from my many years as a G-Man, to keep an eye on the .38 to my left.

From the Mixed Up Files of Basil E. Frankweiler is a Newberry winning story by E.L. Konigsburg for young readers about a girl, Claudia, who feels she isn't appreciated at home.  In order to give her parents a dose of "Claudia appreciation" she runs away with her younger brother to the Metropolitan Museum of Art; a wholly interesting place to live.

She also brought a book, Every Day by David Levithan, which has a tremendous premise.  The N.Y. Times bestseller follows the love story of "A," who wakes up every day in the body of a different person living a different life.

Things were getting going now, and the tall Polish woman who'd proffered the black wine unleashed on us a powerful true story about the lives of 250 women who fought in the French Resistance during World War II and who were transported to Auschwitz.

Our presenter noted her personal roots in that area as her father's hometown was the place where the infamous concentration camp had been built.  She noted that she'd even visited the places in the book.

The book is A Train in Winter by Caroline Moorehead and it reminded me of recent books of immense power on the subject of prisoners of war during WWII like "Unbroken" by Laura Hillenbrand and "First Into Nagasaki: The Censored Eyewitness Dispatches on Post-Atomic Japan and Its Prisoners of War" by George and Anthony Weller.

The double agent was next with a National Book Award Nominee, "Luna," by Julie Anne Peters.  This is the fictional story of a transgender teen, named Liam, who longs to be a girl.  And, with the help of his sister, he struggles for self-identity and acceptance.

The "school teacher" was next.  She fittingly presented us with a mystery in the Hitchcock vein.  "A kind of psychological thriller," she said without emotion.

"I'm an avid mystery reader," she said.  "And it irritates me when I know part way through."  She looked at the .38.

Sister is the first novel by Rosamund Lupton.  "I'm fond of debut novels," she deadpanned.  "The story is about a protective older sister who travels to London upon the disappearance of her younger sister and finds her dead, apparently by suicide."

"It kept me guessing right up 'till the end," said the teacher with the handgun.  I swear, I almost saw the corner of her mouth turn up ever so slightly into the hint of a precursor of a smile.

Osceola Mills Community Library

It had been a good night.  Spirits and stories had been shared and the chill of the long winter nights had been replaced by humor, mystery, tragedy and love.

We gathered our things.  Some books were left as donations so the library could lend these stories and more to a public hungry for danger or murder.  I'm told that at closing of the third Thursday of the month, these grim story-tellers convene at the library, which looks and feels haunted after sundown.  Bring your own protection.  Bring your own spirits.  And you'd better bring a tale worth telling.

I didn't see the teacher quietly pick up the gun and I got a chill.  One doesn't like to lose track of who's packing in tense situations like these.  In such close quarters.  We went up front and unlocked the front door and drifted off into the night.  Thinking.  Wondering.  About the stories we'd just shared.  About the dangerous types who'd shared them.  And who had wound up with the gun.

Shawn Inlow

Osceola Mills, Pa.

Waitresses of the World Unite!

This Chocolate Float with the Cherry on Top is Brought to You by American Slave Labor

Voice of the Mountain

by Shawn K. Inlow

 

So I'm sitting at The Waffle Shop in State College, Pa. where I often have my breakfast:  a bowl of fruit, a side of bacon, coffee and water with no ice.  My order always comes out to $8.88.  A "generous" tip is considered 20% these days and that comes to $1.76.

While I'm checking out, I notice one of the wait staff, Robin, is pictured, her face plastered on a tip jar.  Robin is suffering a second bout with cancer and, if you happen to have enjoyed a nice breakfast in the Waffle Shop, don't be a jerk and walk by Robin's tip jar without putting something in.  I don't know Robin, but I've been worrying about her.

I've put in a $5 or a $10 on a few occasions.  But this got me wondering whether this poor girl had any healthcare.   I am happily informed that The Waffle Shop is one of the rare restaurants that offers a health care plan to its employees.  They do not, however, pay a minimum wage.

The national minimum wage is currently $7.25 an hour.

This is not to criticize The Waffle Shop, which is a super good restaurant and I encourage you to go there.  Restaurants are an exception to the minimum wage rule.  And, since I know many people who have operated restaurants, - some successfully, some failed - I recognize the difficulties inherent to the business model.  Many restaurants employ wait staff "under the table" to avoid payroll taxes and other like obligations so they can make the ends meet.  But if the restaurant ownership is playing by the rules, you have to do a lot of business to keep costs down for the customers and still make a dime at the end of the week.

You should go to The Waffle Shop not only because the food's always good, but you should go there simply because they go above and beyond by offering health care to their employees.  Good on them.  Now, about that college fund...

I've worked in food service some.  I've been a cook and a dishwasher and I've waited tables.  And the wait staff has it pretty bad.  Let's say I screw up an order and the waitress takes it out and it's wrong and the plate comes back, odds are the waitress is watching her tip evaporate.  Worse, while the government sees fit to pay slave wages to wait staff, they amusingly find it okay to tax their tips.  Priceless.

Here's perhaps the most famous discussion of tipping in cinema history.  It's from Quentin Tarantino's "Reservoir Dogs."  (NOTE: The clip includes a lot of coarse language.)  And I'm tellin' ya, Mr. Pink is a jerk.

So, let's consider that you've got a couple Penn State Top Feeders - instead of the diamond thieves from the clip above - sitting there hogging up a waitress's section and they're having coffee all morning and the waitress smiles and is being nice to them and is refilling their coffee for, say, two hours, and when they get done they've not only deprived the waitress of better customers but they've also left one lousy buck folded under the cup of coffee - amounting to maybe a massive 50%.

Never mind that these guys are probably writing off the meal on an expense account to begin with.  Y'all are inconsiderate.  Go to the back of the line and sit with Mr. Pink.

The Mountain says if it's okay for the government to go along with paying wait staff less than minimum wage, then the government ought to get it's grubby mitts off their tips.  Fair is fair. 

We didn't have a lot growing up in my family, but one thing my father always instructed me on was never to be cheap with people.  You might be surprised how many ways a person of little means can be generous.

But here's the thing.  If you find yourself in a position to be sitting on one side of the counter, take a moment to consider the person on the other side of the counter.  You have enough that you can afford to have a servant come and feed you and you needn't lift a finger.  Why not hand the waitress a $10 spot right up front?  Then place your order.  Then you can be satisfied that she's made a living wage for at least one hour on your watch.

And you know what?  Here's another little kindness you can think about:  Tip in cash.  When you put the tip on your card, sometimes your waiter has to wait until the end of the week or payday to collect the tips.

Okay.  Waitresses of the world!  Unite and take over!

I'd love to hear your wait staff horror stories.  ("So a tour bus pulls in at five 'till closing....")  Feel free to type them in at the foot of this article.  Perhaps all our readers will become a more refined and generous wave of customers.  Perhaps a legislator somewhere will introduce the Waitress Tip Exemption.  One never knows.  And, if you've found the writing useful today, please feel free to forward the link on to your friends.

Shawn Inlow
Osceola Mills, Pa.

State of the Union

Voice of the Mountain

by Shawn K. Inlow

You know you're getting older when you get a big bowl of popcorn ready to watch a State of the Union address.

The Mountain thinks President Obama had a little bit of his Bill Clinton on in that the speech was wide ranging and rather detailed; maybe not quite as wonky as Bubba used to get.  (I seem to remember some of Clinton's speeches going way past bed-time.)  I expected the man to talk a lot about the economy, immigration and about gun violence (check, check and check), but I was happily surprised to hear the man talk about the climate issue AS an economic issue.

HERE is the link to the full text of the President's speech for your use.

Obama started out with a tone of bipartisanship, saying the major political parties need to work together.

"The American people don’t expect government to solve every problem. They don’t expect those of us in this chamber to agree on every issue. But they do expect us to put the nation’s interests before party. They do expect us to forge reasonable compromise where we can. "

The president was more polite than I'd have been.  (Insert long rant about bi-partisanship.)

Republicans hate any democratic president with extreme prejudice, but what they've shown Obama has been little more than obstructionism and party politics, the country be damned.  After the catastrophe of the Bush II presidency, with the country teetering on the brink of economic collapse and bearing the credit card expense of two wars, the republican legislature did everything in its power to stop anything from moving in the gears of government.  They simply could not allow Obama to get credit for anything and they had to make sure the lousy economy stayed lousy and was perceived as Obama's fault come election time 4 years down the road.

The GOP used the filibuster at an unprecedented rate on everything from appointments to good ideas that had once been sponsored by republicans.  Numerous republican legislators have been in the untenable position of voting against their own bills simply because Obama endorsed them.

No greater example is the Affordable Care Act which was the nearly identical plan implemented by Governor Mitt Romney in Massachusetts to good effect, but which became Socialism! when Mr. Romney ran for president.

And this myth that Obama is a tyrant and is acting unilaterally is a coin with two interesting sides.  When Obama came into office he constantly met with the opposition and constantly courted republican ideas and compromise only to get stabbed in the back.  Obama was so willing to compromise that he started out the health care debate by throwing the one thing the liberals really wanted - a public option - under the bus.

No.  The republican party was the intransigent party.  They wouldn't play ball not no way not no how.  They took extremist positions and wouldn't budge and used the filibuster to stop anything being done at a time when the country needed it most.

When it came to the budget ceiling debacle last year, the republicans refused to do something that had been done without question dozens of times for presidents for decades.  The republican shenanigans resulted in the downgrading of the U.S. credit rating which - surprise - devalues our dollar and drives up the debt.   Think of it as the republicans screwing with your retirement fund in order to make a political point.

So when the president finally gets fed up and signs an executive order or makes a recess appointment and Fox (News) starts yelling Czar! it's only because something has to get done and the republicans are not going to allow anything to get done.  It is a fact that the most recent congress has passed the fewest laws ever by any congress (at lest going back, say, 100 years) and has floated the most threats of filibuster ever by a very wide margin.

Hopefully that changes.  (End long rant about bi-partisanship.)

We were talking about the climate issue.  Here are some excerpts from the speech that caught my eye.

"Today, no area holds more promise than our investments in American energy. After years of talking about it, we’re finally poised to control our own energy future. We produce more oil at home than we have in 15 years. We have doubled the distance our cars will go on a gallon of gas, and the amount of renewable energy we generate from sources like wind and solar -- with tens of thousands of good American jobs to show for it. We produce more natural gas than ever before -- and nearly everyone’s energy bill is lower because of it. And over the last four years, our emissions of the dangerous carbon pollution that threatens our planet have actually fallen."

"But for the sake of our children and our future, we must do more to combat climate change."

"Now, it’s true that no single event makes a trend. But the fact is the 12 hottest years on record have all come in the last 15. Heat waves, droughts, wildfires, floods -- all are now more frequent and more intense. We can choose to believe that Superstorm Sandy, and the most severe drought in decades, and the worst wildfires some states have ever seen were all just a freak coincidence. Or we can choose to believe in the overwhelming judgment of science -- and act before it’s too late."

"Now, the good news is we can make meaningful progress on this issue while driving strong economic growth. I urge this Congress to get together, pursue a bipartisan, market-based solution to climate change, like the one John McCain and Joe Lieberman worked on together a few years ago. But if Congress won’t act soon to protect future generations, I will. I will direct my Cabinet to come up with executive actions we can take, now and in the future, to reduce pollution, prepare our communities for the consequences of climate change, and speed the transition to more sustainable sources of energy."

"Four years ago, other countries dominated the clean energy market and the jobs that came with it. And we’ve begun to change that. Last year, wind energy added nearly half of all new power capacity in America. So let’s generate even more. Solar energy gets cheaper by the year -- let’s drive down costs even further. As long as countries like China keep going all in on clean energy, so must we."

That was far more than I'd ever expected to hear on the climate, and I like the rhetoric.  But, let's face it, if the republicans keep playing like they have, we're doomed.

Paul Broun (R) of Georgia, Thinks Science is From Hell.

I mean, come on, this is the same party that appoints guys like Representative Paul Broun (right), who is famously quoted as saying "Evolution is a lie straight from the pit of hell," to the House Committee on Science.

Really.  You can YouTube it right here.

I'm not denigrating the man's faith.  Just that the republicans see fit to put someone who does not believe in the scientific method on the science committee.

It would be like putting a tobacco lobbyist on a committee to discuss the dangers of smoking or putting a timber industry guy in charge of the healthy forests initiative or putting a fracking lobbyist on the committee overseeing water quality issues.

You get my depressing point?

But here's the thing.  I think the president can talk pretty on the climate all he wants, but getting action on the climate is another matter altogether.  The United States has failed to lead on the issue of climate change and has put this world we live in in very real danger.  One of the reasons the U.S. has done nothing is because of the powerful grip of the fossil fuel industry over democrats and republicans alike, but especially over republicans. 

And if the republicans won't wake up, we can all go to climate hell together.  And if I do have to live in climate hell because of these idiots who prise money over responsibility, I will hunt them down and hit them - repeatedly - with the Louisville Slugger of Reason until these chowder-heads finally admit how stupid they have been and how dearly they have cost everyone.

Maybe the president knows about the big Climate Protest coming to D.C. this weekend and he was trying to calm us down, but, you know, I'm hopeful and I'm not hopeful.  Because I believe in the power of people to effect positive change.  But I also believe in people's utter greed and stupidity spoiling everything.

As a side note, The Mountain is trying to get Mrs. Mountain's permission to go join that protest against the XL Pipeline this weekend, where they wrap a giant pipeline around the White House, but she won't budge.  (She's a republican.)  I've even promised not to get arrested and everything.  No sauce.  I really wanna get my protest on.  I think that would be fun to cover for you, dear reader, but the boss is agin' it.  Might have to go AWOL.

Later in the night, Obama aimed his big rhetorical flourishes at the issue of gun violence and he had the house rockin'.   He talked about the 15 year old girl who was shot a mile from his house in Chicago.  About Newtown, CT., about Gabby Giffords and vociferous cheers were loudly ricocheting around the chamber and it seems like at least some common sense proposals have a chance of overcoming the torpid conventional wisdom of the NRA.

That's a serious issue and something might get done about that.

He talked about fixing the voting system instead of the republicans' idea of, you know, FIXING the voting system.  I mean, really, do you think Tom Corbett and Dom Pileggi (scroll down: Electioneering II - Feb. 7) are really interested in fair elections?  Me neither.

That's a serious issue and something might get done about that.

But progress on climate change?  I'll believe that when I see it.  Progress on climate change requires republicans to wake up.  And they are very heavy sleepers.

Shawn Inlow
Osceola Mills, Pa.