More about Eagles

What magnificent creatures! When they were released, my spirit soard with them. I knew why my ancestors revered eagle feathers and gave them mystical powers. The experience of watching these birds rise in freedom and disappear was ineffable. It is about time that we remembered the power of nature to renew our spirits.

The joy of eagles

Today I am going to Mason Neck State Park and watch the Wildlife Center of Virginia release three bald eagles back into the wild. This occasion is historic. The first time in the 27 year history of the Center that they have released three eagles. This once-in-a-lifetime event reminded me of this extraordinary quotation from Herman Melville's Moby Dick.

"...and there is a Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny spaces. And even if he forever flies within the gorge, that gorge is in the mountains; so that even in his lowest swoop the mountain eagle is still higher than the other birds upon the plain, even though they soar."
— Herman Melville

It's about time we remembered the eagle that lives in all of us and recapture that sense of amazing joy that visits us every day.

Fun in the emergency room

I have to admit that I have become really, really bored with the ongoing discussion on health care reform. I have been listening to the same arguments and the same lies for most of my life (and it has so far been a long one). Some things I know for certain. It is broken. It has been broken for years. We need to fix it. Last night I spent several hours in the emergency room with a friend. I discovered one aspect of our current system that is expensive and unnecessary. People use the emergency room as a primary care facility. In the entire three hours I was there, I saw only one real emergency. A young man had crashed his motorcycle and hit his head. He needed the emergency room. Emergency rooms are expensive. It would be much more cost effective if we provided inexpensive primary care for everyone and saved the expensive emergency room facilities for real emergencies. It's about time that we realized the value of good preventive and primary care or everyone.

Nancy Drew

An editorial in the Washington Post and several recent news stories reminded me that books can have an amazing impact on young readers. Seems some very prominent women were huge Nancy Drew fans during their most impressionable years. While I cannot claim prominence, I can include myself in this group. What did I learn from Nancy? That girls can take risks and succeed, be smart and self sufficient. Nancy could and did do anything, and so could I. For a young woman growing up in the fifties when gender bias and stereotypical roles were the accepted norm, the lessions learned from Nancy were invaluable. I have a Ph.D. because Nancy Drew taught me that I was clever enough and strong enough to rule! Those hours spent with the girl detective were some of the most productive of my life, and it's about time I said thank you!