Any road to profit.

On my mind this week even more than a bright hope of a better America, has been the idea that a corporation, even in a capitalistic economy, should not take any road to profit. This question leads in an Associated Press article this past Thursday:

What does a company do when there's anecdotal evidence that two of its drugs are equally effective in treating a leading cause of blindness in the elderly, one costing patients $60 per treatment and the other $2,000?

What this corporation did was not seek FDA approval for the less expensive drug. They chose outrageous profit over making available a cure for blindness in a wider population. The whole article is here for you to read:

Those two carat flawless square cuts that women are told they must have to marry Mr. Right are still dug out of the earth with slave labor. This story was well documented in the movie Blood Diamond. The corporation, concerned with they profit, accumulated diamonds and withheld them so that they could control the market and get the highest price.

Along the shore of a remote country derelict ships are abandoned by design. Imagine being the pilot of a ship you are driving to its death. Children work in breaking up the ship. The parts are sold for scrap. The corporation has no care about the consequences. The children have no childhood. The corporation gets the profit without the responsibility for their actions.

This activity is done worldwide. When American corporations do this, it makes me mad. We should be better than that.

I am not finisihed.

Dara is back home today. She had been away from her daughter for seven weeks while she worked to win a medal at the 2008 Olympics. This morning it was back to making breakfast and taking her daughter to school for her first day of pre-school. When Dara walked down the school hall to her daughter’s classroom, the teachers applauded.

Later in the morning she went to the aquatic center. Her friends there congratulated her as she showed them her medal. After that she began training again. She says she is not finished and is thinking of competing in the 2009 World Games. A forty-one year old Florida mother is going to lift weights and swim and train and I have no doubt that she will swim and win and give an example to many of just what you can accomplish with hard work and determination.

Oh, and next month she’s speaking to the AARP !

A place to sit.

The bench I finally moved from the garage to the tree, calls to me each day. It’s the only spot I can enjoy outside, as there’s nothing like it near where I live. Hidden, unless you know where to look, yet affording me a full view of the place. I sit with my newspaper after I return from the mall and if I’ve been forward thinking enough, I have a cup of McDonald’s coffee with me. Evenings, I’ll bring a glass of wine or a cup of water and ice, sit reading my Audacity of Hope book. If it is a humid evening, I’ll light a citron candle to discourage the flying bugs.

In the mornings the sun rises behind me, over the berm that protects the land in this holler. In the evenings the sun sits behind the building and in both times the bench is in shade. I’ve thought of putting a metal mobile fire pit nearby so I may enjoy the bench later in the year when evenings are cool, even cold. I may do that.

Rain

Rain among other things is heavy and loud and wet.





Approaching rain in the country is smelled as well as announced by the sound coming through a field or a copse of trees in a wood. In the city rain is not heard until it arrives.

One day this week after some time of dryness, rain fell just as I left the front door. As I pulled on socks and tied my shoes I had put the ear buds in for the iPod, so instead of rain I heard a poem read by Garrison Keeler. Stepping out the door turning to lock up, I stepped from under the roof into sprinkling rain. I walked to the garage and stood just inside the door watching as that little bit of rain tuned into a downpour. I’ve heard rain and thunder and lightening described in mythological ways; thunder was God bowling or lightening was anger being thrown and rain was water poured from a bucket onto the earth.

Rain in summer is welcomed to satiate a thirst.

That morning I was accompanied by hard rain. Into and out of buildings, the rain seemed to slow when I was under cover. Out the door of the mall or the post office, it started again dampening me and beating onto the truck so hard it filled my ears with its sound. I stopped for gas putting in my usual ten gallons. All the while the rain fell onto the asphalt outside the metal cover at the pump. I pulled into the bank drive-in up close to the window and my favorite teller called my by name remarking on the rain.

I arrived home again and put the truck in the garage. When I again stood at the garage door the downpour had become a gentle sprinkle. I walked over to the door and as I unlocked the rain stopped.