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Most of what I've written has been published as e-books and is available at Amazon. Match Play is a golf/suspense novel. Dust of Autumn is a bloody one set in upstate New York. Prairie View is set in South Dakota, with a final scene atop Rattlesnake Butte. Life in the Arbor is a children's book about Rollie Rabbit and his friends (on about a fourth grade level). The Black Widow involves an elaborate extortion scheme. Happy Valley is set in a retirement community. Doggy-Dog World is my memoir. And ES3 is a description of my method for examining English sentence structure.
In case anyone is interested in any of my past posts, an archive list can be found at the bottom of this page. I'd appreciate any feedback you may have by sending me an e-mail note--jertrav33@aol.com. Thanks for your interest.

Monday, April 26

Pigs & Other Propositions

Wow! I’ve been neglecting these blogs lately. Guess I haven’t had anything very important or insightful to say. Some would say I’m engaging in puffery by suggesting that what I say is insightful, but I think sometimes what I have to say is worth repeating. Or not.

First, my wounds and their care. I’m just completing my fourth month of treatments at the Wound Care Center in Sun City. If they had told me at the beginning that I might be only partway healed after four months, I’d have said, “You’ve got to be kidding!” But now it seems that I’m in for the long haul. Today my doctor, Matt Essary, told me he thought they were making progress, especially the small one. I said wonderful. Then he cleaned them out and scraped them (oh, how I hate the scraping, a necessary step in the healing process . . . or at least that’s what he says) and told me he was going to continue the treatment he started two weeks ago, putting pig intestine in the wounds, that it was called “stacking” by putting the pig intestine in three or four times over one or two week intervals, that my body would absorb the pig goop and react by building up a platform at the bottom of the wounds, thus eventually allowing new skin to grow across the top. I figure, at the rate established in the first four months, that I have at least another four months to go. Damn! I want to say to him (but I won’t), “Do you realize that these eight months could very well represent 6.7% of the rest of my life?” He’d probably reply, “How do you figure?” I’d say, “Assuming I have about ten more years to live, or 120 months, eight months is 6.7% of that total.” Oh, well, I still have lots of books to read.

Several days ago we received in the mail a ballot for voting early on a special election about a 3-year, 1% increase in the state sales tax. Two things about this ballot bother me. First, every word on the ballot is in both English and Spanish. Second, nowhere in any of the literature or ads telling us to say yes is there a word about how unfair an increase in a sales tax is. First, the language thing. Almost everything sold in Arizona now has descriptions and instructions about how to use or construct products in both languages. I realize that almost half the population of Arizona is now Hispanic, many of whom are first-generation, having lived here anywhere from thirty years to one day. But the language of the U.S. is English. In our melting pot history of immigrants from all over the world, we have always expected these new citizens to learn our language, and in almost every case, they have, without expecting all publications and documents to be written in their native tongues. Not so anymore, at least not in Arizona. Second, the most unfair tax levied has always been a sales tax. The actual amount of one’s livelihood makes 1% a disproportionate amount, a far greater amount to someone earning only $15,000 a year compared to someone earning $200,000 a year. This 3-year tax will be used to support our school districts, retain teachers who will otherwise have to be released. A worthy use for this money, and it will pass without a doubt. But why hasn’t anyone pointed out how unfair it is?

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