Written by Ed Weingold   

Dear Friend of Ed:

On Dec. 25, 1776 George Washington led his demoralized and freezing troops in a daring pre-dawn crossing of the Delaware River from Pennsyslvania into New Jersey to attack the Hessian garrison at Trenton. It was one of the first signs that Washington's army could prevail. The fanciful painting of Emmanual Gottlieb Leutze is one of those images every American schoolkid has seen. The painting is filled with anachronisms from the time of day to the type of craft to the wrong flag--a little like the anachronism of this country, a modern industrialized nation without universal healthcare.

The painting (see the attachment) stands for standing up for what right. I can't help but think that it will take a revolutionary spirit and a lot of drumbeating to get something so radical as a public option passed as part of healthcare reform. Tomorrow I hold forth on rocking the boat on the NPR station in Santa Cruz. I hope you'll lend an ear.


Where: KUSP-FM -- 88.9 in the Santa Cruz region; http://www.kusp.org for anyone outside the FM radio listening audience (Listen Live > Choose your delivery bandwidth/media). KUSP-FM is a local NPR affiliate.

When: Wednesday: October 28, 2009 at 7:33AM and 4:32PM (Please do the math if you're outside the Pacific time zone.)

What: First Person Singular, the KUSP feature produced locally that tempers the PBS national and international news with my 90 seconds of my not so left-of-Central-Coast viewpoint once a month.

An MP3 of the piece is attached.

This piece is really worth listening to, but for those who'd like to read along or to proofread my text at your convenience here it is...

(Oh, and if you really don't want these heads-ups sent on to you, please let me know and I will remove your email from this list.)

Best wishes,

Ed

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Rocking the Boat

In the second grade I was fascinated by a picture that hung in my public school auditorium, a reproduction of Washington Crossing the Delaware.
The dynamic energy of the Father of Our Country standing against the wind, braving churning waters and ice floes with his rowing crew of patriots always made me nervous.

“Why is he standing in a rowboat under such conditions?” Even I learned that message quickly in a tippy rowboat on the Bronx River. “Siddown, don’t rock the boat,” my father bellows. I dutifully obey.
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To think that George Washington risked his life with such a grandstanding gesture makes me certain I am in the home of the brave not to mention the foolhardy. The anachronism in this painting done in 1851 by a German artist shows the flag of the 13 colonies which hadn’t become the standard for six months. The thought occurs…did anything happen the way it is portrayed?

So I wonder why democracy is so messy. While a majority of Americans favors a public option to break the stranglehold that insurance companies have on our healthcare, it takes massive amounts of rocking the boat to get the Senate to get it.

We have to be very noisy to get a progressive agenda enacted in this country. All that energy and effort… to make sure those representatives recognize that in the end their jobs depend on the ballot box and not the size of a corporate campaign buy.

Even now I have to brave disobeying my father’s standing order and I rock the boat every chance I get by standing up for the 44 thousand Americans who die each year without health insurance.

I’m Ed Weingold