We Interrupt This Blog For An Announcement.

You guys, Justina Pelletier's family has just filed suit against Childrens' Hospital Boston for civil rights violations and medical malpractice.  Here's the link. (It's a short story but there will probably be a press release later.)   If it were my petition I'd throw in negligent and intentional infliction of emotional distress, loss of consortium, gross negligence and reckless endangerment, but I'm sure the lawyers know what they're doing. (And I just have to say, I'd give a very valuable body part to be on that legal team right now.  Which one do they want?  We can discuss.)

I realize my point of view is a little jaundiced because I write about institutional stupidity, of which there seems to be no end, but still, thank God and it's about time.  (Though, I might have waited until Justina turned 18.  Just in case, you know.)  You shouldn't get to abuse a child for 18 months, threaten her life and her health, lock her up when she hasn't done anything wrong, and then just walk away like nothing happened.  I hope by the time it's over, the family ends up owning this hospital and the whole medical-kidnapping thing comes to a screeching halt because everybody's afraid to try it again.

If you missed my posts on this case, you can find them here, here and here.  I won't bore you with a recap.  Let's just say, I've done my own writing on this thing, and maybe something will come out of that and maybe it won't.  And I'm sorry the religious right has seized on this case and made it one of their pet issues (meaning you have to wade through a bunch of hysterical rantings from so-called "persecuted Christians" and anti-vaccination insanity to find out much about it) but since they have, maybe they've done something good for a change. Even Mike Huckabee, with whom I virulently disagree about practically everything, took on Justina's case as a personal cause of action.  And isn't that what we should be doing, us human beings (never mind us Buddhists)?  The right thing, even if we have to hold our noses and do it with people we don't like very much?

Meanwhile, back at the Flaming O Ranch, things are unusually copacetic. Calm, even, sometimes. We're almost done with the painting of our Spare Room, just the chair rails and the trim to go, and after we let that sit and "cure" for a few weeks, we can start moving back in. Finally.  I'll post photos.  I'm still rolling around on the floor fighting this sugar addiction thing tooth and nail, but nothing's really changed there; sometimes I win, sometimes the sugar wins. I'm paying basically no attention to the election except for stuff people post on Twitter, and I've stayed out of Yahoo chat rooms almost entirely since, let's see, January.  At which time my mood seems to have lifted. Coincidence? Probably.  Oh, and we marked the passing of David Bowie. Rest easy, Mr. Bowie.

Anyway, I'll try to come up with something substantive to write about next week.  Maybe some obscure point of admiralty law.  Or maybe Buddhism.  I think I'm supposed to be writing about Buddhism.