Notice: Undefined index: HTTP_REFERER in /home/stparch/public_html/headmid_temp_main.php on line 4394
Newspaper Archive of
Barnstable Patriot
Barnstable, Massachusetts
HOME Browse Search List Of All Titles New! Global Image Search
Free Search  Subscribe  Sign In
November 17, 2006     Barnstable Patriot
PAGE 7     (7 of 30 available)        PREVIOUS     NEXT      Jumbo Image    Save To Scrapbook    Set Notifiers    PDF    JPG
© Publisher. All rights reserved.     Upgrade to access Premium Tools
 
PAGE 7     (7 of 30 available)        PREVIOUS     NEXT      Jumbo Image    Save To Scrapbook    Set Notifiers    PDF    JPG
November 17, 2006
 
Newspaper Archive of Barnstable Patriot produced by SmallTownPapers, Inc.
Website © 2025. All content copyrighted. Copyright Information
Terms Of Use | Privacy Policy | Request Content Removal | About / FAQ | Get Acrobat Reader




Boston hospital doctors shut doors: 'How here?' .CO F^ l _l CORNffl « ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ By Paul Cauwin I pgauvin@barnstablepatriot.cor A man tells his doctor he wants a vasectomy."That's a serious decision to make by yourself," says the doctor. "Have you talked it over with your wife and children?" "I have," replies the man, "and they're for it 15to 2." * * * But seriously folks, the Boston Globe had a troubling story in Sunday's edition saying primary care physicians working at Boston's hospitals have shut their doors to new pa- tients because they are already inundated, oversubscribed. In the old days of journalism, the city edi- tor, in a case like this, would clip the story from the paper and attach a note to it that said simply, "How here?" and give it to a reporter to follow with a local story. How here, indeed. Want to see a dermatologist on Cape Cod that takes your insurance? If you do find one, you're in for a six-month wait, and that's with a reference from your primary care physician -that is, if you have one and are not forced to use the local emergency room as your source of primary care. Other recent news stories declare that there is a nationwide shortage of primary care, or family doctors, we used to call them; or that we have an aging population requiring more of the doctors' time, or that many female doctors shorten their hours to care for family.Also, there's the news that more student doctors are opting for special- ties, leaving the primary care field wanting. There are primary care groups that choose for pecuniary or philosophical reasons not to deal with insurers -which causes more of a burden, it would seem, on those who do. One townie who prefers anonymity said he has had five different primary care physi- cians in about 10years at a revolving-door office owned and operated by the local hos- pital. The last doctor he had in that office, a nice enough fellow from South America, found the climate here not to his liking and moved south to Florida. So much for the Cape Cod attraction bit. Having a doctor in Florida would be fine with him, the man says, if his insurance would fund his flights to the Sunshine State for his annual vaca -err -physical.Wishful thinking. Instead, he signed on with another overburdened doctor in the same office but has never seen that doctor, being serviced instead by a competent nurse practitioner under the license of the doctor, one sup- poses, and an accommodating office staff and liberal referral policy. What has all this got to do with Iraq? Well, like the military there, it would appear the medical profession here needs more troops on the ground. But as in many things, every apparently simple solution creates a com- plex problem of its own. There were stories years ago -true or false - about limiting the number of medi- cal school graduates to insure that those who did graduate earned a decent living. Too much competition would lower earn- ing potential, which in turn would lower the number of people entering the medical profession. The Democrats say they want to do some- thing about this growing demand upon the medical professions. They will specifically try to deal price concessions from the drug industry -but what else, as far as service is concerned? Even emergency rooms, accord- ing to Parade Magazine , are stretched to the limit, requiring long waits as "hospitals struggle with more patients and fewer doc- tors." The layman hasn't a clue on how to solve the myriad, complex problems of health care delivery and its escalating costs. All that he knows for sure is that he'll never get out of this world alive and that, after all, humor perhaps is the best medicine of last resort. To that end... * * * After waitingfour hours for service in the emergency room, the bearded man with the placard and long robe begins shouting and making gestures over the heads of other patients waiting for service. "I am John the Baptist and I have come..." whereupon the guards gently take him to an observation room and lock the door. Another man is sitting in the corner of the adjoining observation room "I am John the Baptist," the new arrival calls. "Jesus has sent me to save you," whereupon the other man replies, "I did not." By Michael Daley columnist@barnstablepatnot.com The recent election provided ample material for an enormous number of columnists all over the world. As the second week kicks in, even local monthly guys like me can still get some mileage. To me the recent election provided sev- eral valuable political les- sons. Some of these lessons should be sampled and savored by all elected of- ficials. This is true for the locals. One of my lessons learned was that the partisan bickering and the compul- sive one-upmanship that permeates our national and state political arena are not playing well in Peoria. This election proved it isn't playing very well anywhere else across the country for that mat- ter. The no hate approach will get more results. The tone and viciousness that spewed from many candidates and political action committees was tenacious. There were ample examples from one end of the coun- try to our own state. There seemed to be a new all time high in the level of scare campaigns. They seldom work well. I found that the level of negative media bombardment did little to suppress the morale of voters. In fact the record turnout seemed to be a byproduct of the highly negative advertising. Clearly our own Lt. Governor suffered lower perfor- mance numbers due to a voter backlash. It amazes me how much of her children's future she wasted on a poorly crafted neg- ative campaign. It is ironic that she could have spent less of her family's assets and enjoyed better election results. Connecticut showed us that you can lose your party's primary and still retain your senate seat. However, it is the politi- cians in DC that have now showed us the most on this subject. When it comes to that private club in DC known as the Sen- ate, we learn so much more. We now know that you can be an independent Demo- crat. That status is obtained when you get beat in the Democratic Party primary but win a three-way popular election as an independent. Who knew you can win as an independent and still keep your former level of rank and privilege within both your former Democratic party and the senate. Now that's a real lesson in loyalty. Or is it? Clearly the largest voice we all heard was speaking to our commander-in-chief. CONTINUED ON PAGE A:9 Election lessons learned j FTTFRS 1** 4 I ll4l\J 'Sin' finds Ash Girl review deadly As a cast member of the play, The Ash Girl, I found the review done by Bethany Gibbons highly presumptuous and it wasn't because it was a bad review. Bad reviews happen and every actor knows that it's not always a true reflection of them or the play they were in. It was how it was written that bothered me and my fellow actors the most. First off, had this particular reviewer come when the show had actually started -which was 8, not 8:30 -she would have realized that the play did not start with the Seven Deadly Sins, but with the step- sisters giving a background on how they love food despite their mother's wishes for them to be thin and them tormenting Ash Girl (Cinderella) that her father had vanished into the woods and forcing her to eat. In the second scene it went further with Ash Girl describing how she had this wonderful relationship with her father un- til his marriage to her step-mother, when he then was overcome with monsters (particularly Lust) that he had to fight himself, hence why he was in the forest for so long. The next scene provides insight into how the step-mother "tries" to be nice to Ash Girl so people won't think of her wrongly, even though she is resentful for Ash Girl's father not providing for the family while he was away like he had promised. The following scene, which happens to be the scene prior to the Seven Deadly Sins scene, tells how Prince Amir, his mother Princess Zehra and his friend, Paul, were exiled from their homeland and how they have felt very unwelcomed since they have arrived to their new home. Had Ms. Gibbons seen this, she would have been able to have the full experi- ence of play. Maybe then she would have understood that Sins, including Sadness, were important to the play. Without us, and I say that because I was one of the Sins, it would have been another Dis- ney-esque version of Cinderella. We were representing what every person has inside of them, the inner monologue if you wish, of our fellow actors. To call us unneces- sary was unnecessary in itself. In the eyes of us, our fellow actors, our director and more important our audience, we helped the story become more realistic, more easy for people to relate to. And furthermore, to say that the ac- tress (Morgaihne Huntress) who played fairy in the mirror saved the show was also just a bit rude, when we all put in a lot of hard work playing roles we weren't accustomed to. Don't get me wrong; Morgaihne is an amazing actress and I feel very privileged to have been able to work with her, but speaking for the Sins and Sadness, it's not so easy to play an emotion and only an emotion. We won't even get into the fact that most of us played animals as well, i.e. a snake, a toad, a bird, an otter, and it's not the easi- est thing in the world to go from human to animal and not use everyday human traits so natural to us but not natural to the animals we played, such as pointing or crossing our arms. Maybe next time Ms. Gibbons should be a little more constructive with her reviews and perhaps show up on time for a play she's being paid to review. Jayme "Angerbird" Mattoon Editor 's note: Our reviewer reports that she did not attend an evening performance. She entered the theater at 2:12 p. m.for a 2 p.m. matinee. Was reviewer in the dark? I read Ms. Gibbons' review of Ash Girl that was recently put on in the Tilden Arts Center at Cape Cod Community College. She calls it a "dark and spooky" Cinderella story. Granted the theater was dark, but it set the mood of the play. Maybe if she took her job more seriously and showed up at the beginningof the play instead of 20 minutes after the play started, she might have gotten the true meaning of the play. True, this story did parallel the story of Cinderella, but only in the use of the basic concepts of the story itself.Ash Girl tells a story of a young woman who, in the course of finding happiness within herself , has to endure the hardships of the seven deadly sins. It also tells a story of how sadness, lust, anger, envy, greed and pride all play a huge part of everyday life. I thought the actors and actresses portrayed the characters of this play bril- liantly, and did an excellent job of getting the moral of the story across to the audi- ence and at the same time entertaining them. Thank your for you time. Ken Mattoon West Yarmouth RETROSPECTIVES FROM THE ARCHIVES ALEXANDER BACON HOUSE - PARKER ROAD,OSTERVILLE -1890 -The Alexander Bacon House on Parker Road inOsterville as it looked in 1 890. Also as his daughter,Ida (Bacon) Hall,looked that same year.The house,built in 1 842,was the first in the village to receive a plaque from the Osterville Historical Society in 1964. ACROSS TIME 6 PLACE ^^^Thanksgiving ^ //^ w T* W ili ST0CI^% J?PINNACLE%, *§« W*m CERAMIC f| Jf HARDWOOD 1 | J^* *fA *4 49 mm 2ijli9sqA J™ J! vvdnU^^B ^^ rim vJ) ^ W ^" nm vJ) $£L /^ANNINGTO^C Payme"^N STOCK% v j*W *£* m LAMINATE ^& $2 CARPET ^ft T J * flLM eOQQ M M c A AQ iTOjfe ML J&K Floorcovering jfc ^; 800 Falmouth Road • Route 28 • Summerfield Park • Mashpee " W" J9B I mile (torn Mashpee Rotary on me left towards Falmouth) JRV W* !—^™ra 508-477-4080 ^ *V \ nr^ j ,n 11 1 | Store hours: Mon-Fri 8-5. Sat 10-3 wkm2^3sss. .. ^k« ^*- -tfify*^*.. npEH Ur -LU