Shovel, shovel...bureaucracy

What a week for Woody. It has snowed three more times, not huge snows this time but still he has to shovel all the way down to the road and all the way up past the house to the generator. Even with a light snow, it takes him an hour and a half minimum. But we were able to get an oil delivery that we really needed. And yesterday the guy came for the semiannual check of our generator. He came to the house to thank me for Woody’s shoveling. He said he goes to most houses and the generator is under four feet of snow and ice. He can’t get at it. He was very pleased that he could work on ours. He finds it frustrating when people put in generators and then don’t keep them able to function. Next October Woody says he’s buying a snow blower. It may not be ecologically good but he can’t face another winter of shoveling all the time. His back won’t take it. He went to a seminar on getting Medicare since he’ll be turning 65 in early April. He has been getting misinformation that really makes everything harder. He discovered, however, that Social Security had the wrong birth date for him. He called them and was told to go to the SS office in Hyannis and bring his passport. He did so, driving an hour there and waiting an hour when he got there. He was then told that he couldn’t fix anything because he only brought his passport and not his official birth certificate and then drove an hour through a snowstorm back here. Now he’s trying to find his official birth certificate. He has a copy but SS insists on the original with some kind of stamp on it. He’ll have to try getting the original out of New York. is is only a bit less frustrating than his attempts to get signed up for health insurance this year, since they make you do it all over again every year. About 23 phonecalls, endless paperwork, over and over again and again. It took him a month and a half to reup his policy from last year. On the other hand, reuping our gun permits took five minutes. Some things are obviously more important than health. I’ll be leaving Tuesday for a poetry reading at Buffalo State – Buffalo SUNY. Then Wednesday in East Lansing at Michigan State. Unlike most alumni of the U of Michigan, I bear no ill will toward Michigan State but like the place. They’ve always been good to me. I’ve given many readings there over the years, always enjoyed it. Then Thursday I’ll be reading at Eastern Michigan U in Ypsilanti. I wonder if there’s still any Greek food there. I love Greek food. I spent three months in Greece many, many years ago. I cook a number of Greek dishes, especially in the summer. I have one nonreading stop on Friday and then come home Saturday from upstate New York. I have been working on my Haggadah for Pesach, editing, putting in new stuff, revising. I also started working on the introduction to the paperback of my short story book from PM Press THE COST OF LUNCH, ETC. Two of the three short stories I’ve written since the hardcover came out last spring are in the paperback. The third is in the Jewish Noir anthology also from PM Press this fall, so I couldn’t include it. This has been a hard week as two friends have gone into the hospital with serious just-diagnosed cancer. One is in New York. The other, a good friend from here, is in Beth Israel in Boston where I had my knees replaced. It was a shock as he’s very strong – practically a jock. Tonight we have seven for a turkey dinner. I started brining the bird yesterday. One of the people coming tonight is recovering from a cancer similar to the case of our friend now in Beth Israel. So we have great hope. Half my friends of all ages seem to be getting or to have already gotten cancer. What a toxic environment we live in, even out here where the air is fairly pure – but we live in the cone of fallout from Fukushima clone, badly run Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant.