Booking Along at the Fairgrounds

This afternoon was the last day to take advantage of the VNA’s semi-annual rummage sale at the Fairgrounds in Far Hills.  Twice yearly in the spring and fall, I religiously attend, browse around and enjoy the variety of people who are also there seeking bargains of their own.

Volunteers arrange books as patrons peruse shelves, (File, 05-06-2011)

Everyone has different tastes and a desire to pick up good buys.  Mine is books.  Because of my ever-growing library and the clear fact that I’ll never be able to read all of it, I almost passed up on the opportunity this year. 

 

Then I realized that no one can possibly read all of the books that constitute a good private library, but that is not the point.  Like good friends, one can never have too many in a lifespan, even though time and circumstances will take a person away from some of them.

More about Christie

If ever there was a dark horse in the GOP primary race for the presidency, it’s our very own governor Chris Christie.  Although he does not fit within the strict meaning of that term, Christie is not generally considered to have much of a chance of garnering the nomination and, should he do so, even less of a chance of becoming president.

That is why I consider him a dark horse should he decide to run.  However, those probabilities don’t concern me much, because I think that the country could use someone with his style in the upcoming debates.

There’s been too much phoniness in the last two presidential debates.  Yet at least one person in those verbal exchanges was genuine and providential: 

Why Not Christie?

Governor Chris Christie’s favorability numbers in New Jersey have plummeted from their post second-election highs to their current lows.  Yet, he continues to act like a contender in a crowded field struggling for position in the race for the GOP 2016 presidential nomination. 

 

Whether he decides to run or not, he is unlikely to garner the Garden State’s vote in the 2016 general election against whomever the Democrats choose as their candidate for U.S. president. 

 

New Jersey is a true-blue state, covered from nearly one end to the other with Democratic Party influence.  Moreover, Christie’s entanglements with opponents to public sector pension reform have not endeared him to those committed to the status quo on this third-rail-of-politics issue – none of this comes as a surprise to Christie.

Medicare on the ropes.

When I read this morning’s article by Mike Deak that emphasized the funding threat that faces home health care services such as those provided by the VNA of Somerset County (Visiting Nurses Association), I was appalled.

 

But it was no surprise.

When the Affordable Care Act was signed into law by President Barack Obama, Medicare became one of its first victims.

The Congressional Budget Office issued a report estimating that passage of the ACA would result in from $500 billion to $716 billion that would be drained from Medicare in the years between 2013 and 2022 to help fund the Affordable Care Act.

Dishonoring Vietnam women vets.

At the Vietnam Memorial late in 2009.  Photo speaks for itself.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is one of the most iconic and sacred of sites in Washington, D.C.  The Wall itself bears the names of over 58,000 American men and women who died or who went missing in action.

Their memory is chiseled into that wall’s black marble, never to be forgotten; always to be honored in perpetuity each day, as scores of grateful Americans and others walk by, sometimes pausing to make an etching of a loved one lost in the far-away jungles of Vietnam.

Across a grassy space away from the wall stand two statues commemorating the service of thousands of draftees.  The first is the “Three Servicemen Statue” depicting fighting men standing shoulder to shoulder.

The second sculpture is that of the Vietnam “Women’s Memorial Statue.”  It portrays volunteer military service women painfully in the midst of a combat area of operations:
 
One is seen holding a severely wounded American soldier in her arms, consoling him while another is looking desperately at the skies, anticipating the descent of a helicopter to whisk him to the nearest field hospital.  (MASH:  Mobile Army Surgical Hospital.)