Letter from Slim Wolfe
Politics – August 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine
Editors:
Is health care a right? Or is it just plain ridiculous to debate the topic while the bulk of the nation wallows in a toxic sludge of junk foods and drinks, cigarettes that taste like ether or formaldehyde, carpets and building materials that exude nasty gasses, and sedentary lifestyles? Is there any hope of mental health for a population bombarded by commercials and sleaze TV? Should taxpayers carry the burden of health care while free enterprise is free to foist degeneration on the body public?
How much longer can we pretend that health is a matter of pharmaceuticals and high-tech appliances, or that safety comes from flashing icons or disembodied warning voices? What’s the point of extraordinary measures to prolong lives consisting of frozen dinners, pills, soaps and snacks? Why even raise children if we’re just going to stuff them with sugar cocoa puffs and video reality? Should the public share the liability for a hiker with a twisted ankle and also the liability of major broken bones incurred by reckless operation of a snowmobile? Should a bacon-guzzler and a vegetarian be cared for out of the same common fund? Maybe there’s no way to achieve equity in an unequal world, short of a bloody revolution against the stupid, and I doubt if three of us could agree on what defined stupid.
Until World War Two it was fairly common for people to lend sane free-enterprise-driven and healthy lives in community with neighbors and the land, but the massive military industrializations of the mid-20th century, flowing on the heels of earlier industry, left little room for the self-sustaining individual. But as our currency becomes more and more unstable, more folks may realize that a chicken is still a chicken and an egg is still an egg no matter how many baskets of dollars or marks it takes to treat a client to lunch. We can’t turn back the clock but maybe we don’t have to let it drag us over the precipice into total madness.
Neither BarackObama.com nor JohnMcCain.com (nor Ralph Nader) can lead us to the promised land. Our bodies and our planet are our common birthright; if we kneel at the altar and take the pill of corporate health and welfare on our tongue, we only get what we deserve.
Slim Wolfe
Villa Grove
Recipe for Rabbit by Isabel LeNoir
1 Find baby rabbit in bush, 3- to 6-week-olds are best.
2 Secure between teeth and drag into house through cat door, making insistent howls of triumph.
3 Either a) hide carcass behind couch where it can fester and grow maggots or b) drop on floor directly in path of human traffic.
4 Chew through neck entirely. Eat heart, lungs, brains as desired. Leave the rest for the servants to dispose of in the morning.
5 Bound into bed, breathe bloody breath in sleeping human’s face, purr, and demand to be petted.
6 Repeat nightly, varying routine with kangaroo rats, etc., being sure blood and gore dries on floor. Flash angelic smile at people every chance you get.
Isabel LeNoir is the resident wildlife manager for the Slim Wolfe Wilderness.
