Margie Robben

If you had told me two years ago that I would ever be interested in the health care bill I would have said you were crazy. In the past, when the mail came with a big fat envelope containing car, house, or health insurance I would throw it in some kitchen drawer, never to look at it again. Those insurance contracts were totally boring and I wouldn’t waste a minute looking at them. On the other hand, there were times, when I would spend hours a week on the phone with insurance companies fighting for “injustices” and their unfair practices. But that was the extent of my interest.

So, how did it happen that I played hooky from work on Thursday, February 25th to watch the health care summit on TV, which was being broadcast from the Blair House in Washington, D.C.?  I anxiously waited for the 10 a.m. start, and except for occasionally getting up for some food, getting dinner prepared, etc., I was glued to the T.V.set until after 5 p.m. I became annoyed when a station stopped the debate to show a commercial and I found myself switching channels looking for a commercial-free cable station. I went back and forth from MSNBC to CNN to FOX

The feeling I have inside myself is that I am watching history being made. The lucky part for me is to have the time to experience it. Being present while history is being made is invigorating. The debates, and the difference of opinion going along with the process, are energizing.

The health care decisions being made in our Capital involve much more than what it looks like on the surface. The issue goes to the core of our being. Life or death, sickness or health, what do we want for ourselves and for others? On one side we see people able to understand and empathize with the dilemma who want to do whatever it takes to fix the health care system now. The other side says they understand the problem and want to reform the present system too, but they want to start the debate all over, throw out 13 months of work already done, and start from scratch with a “clean sheet of white paper”. The latter group talks about not raising taxes and letting the private sector fix the problem. It is said that the people in Congress have the best health care system in America and many of them don’t know what it’s like to have what 30,000,000 Americans don’t have. Nothing!

I am not alone participating in history being made.  For over a year now I have seen people all over the Country in heated debates about health care. Like others, I have written articles about what I have seen and gone to town hall meetings on the subject. I have been asking myself, “how come the entire country has gotten involved in such a boring subject?” Hot and boring just doesn’t seem to go together.

So, who is to blame for this nation-wide involvement?  How about blaming President Barack Hussein Obama? President Obama is taking the hit for everything going wrong in America anyway, so let’s just blame him. I think he can handle it. I believe he expects it. More debate, more resistance, more passion, more interest, more action, more change – exactly what he wants. How else could things possibly get done in America?

President Obama has said during his campaign for President and many times after, “I cannot do it alone!” I guess he meant it! He needs the American people to help him. Change needs emotion. Change needs energy. Change needs action. Change needs everyone interested and working. Everyone working toward a more perfect union.

Whatever finally happens to the health care bill, the President has succeeded in getting an entire country worked up over a subject that is intrinsically boring. All Presidents should have in their resumes “community organizer”. So, let’s give President Obama his due. Just blame him for it all.

 I guess I will have to start reading all those boring insurance policies now. Ugh!

I was introduced to Pepperidge Farm Bread by Thirza Ferris, an Irish immigrant from County Sligo. She would buy the Connecticut bread “unsliced” and make her fantastic stuffing for the Thanksgiving turkey every year. That year was some time in the early l950′s. She would cut off the crust, crumble the bread up with her fingers, add a little butter and chopped onion, salt and pepper, resulting in the most glorious fluffy light colored, best tasting stuffing in the world. Unfortunately Margaret Rudkin’s Pepperidge Farm bakery was bought by Campbell Soup in the early 1960′s. Since then, the bread’s taste and consistency has changed, but very gradually. So small were the changes you would hardly recognize it.

The same goes for Levy’s Jewish Rye Bread, with or without seeds. The bread was firmly delicious with a little ham and Swiss cheese and Gulden’s mustard inside.  The changes in taste and consistency happened fast. Levy’s Jewish Rye is now a soft, mushy consistency, something like the old Silvercup or Wonder Bread.  Levy’s was purchased by Arnold Bakery more recently.

The bread that seemed to make life worthwhile in the 1990′s and 2000’s was Beyond Bread in Old Greenwich. Harvey Edwards, the baker and man who owned Beyond Bread was a very special guy. When he first thought about opening a bread store he knew the only oven he would bake his bread in was an oven imported from Italy at a tremendous cost to him. He sold his french bread and rolls to many stores and restaurants around town.  For years, the teenagers who were out late roaming Old Greenwich  would stop by Harvey’s back door and be treated to leftovers from the day before. His back door was always opened to the neighborhood kids.

Michelle, Harvey’s wife, said Harvey got very sick, had some difficulty breathing and she had to close the doors to the store. She thought Harvey got his lung disease from working and breathing in flour for so many years.  Flour in the lungs can be as damaging as asbestos. He also smoked. Harvey will be missed as a great baker and as a humanitarian.

Good things in life don’t seem to go on forever. Some good things are sold to big companies and repackaged and can’t maintain the original high quality – like  Pepperidge Farm Bread and Levy’s Jewish Rye Bread. And then there are good things, like Harvey Edward’s Beyond Bread on Sound Beach Avenue, that probably will not be bought and repackaged.  We can only remember the many good years Harvey has given us when we sipped cappuccino and ate a buttered roll on one of his little round tables.

Abortion!  I don’t know a woman who has ever had an abortion who didn’t feel badly that she had to have one.  To listen to the issue debated throughout America, you would think that women had no problem aborting.  To read the rhetoric and to see the anti-abortion crowd holding up their hateful signs you would think it was an easy decision to make. Yes or no. Abort or not abort.

It is not an easy decision for a woman to make. For some, the decision means life or death. To others it may be inconvenient. To others it may be a result of rape or incest. To others it may come at a time when a woman is still a child herself. And to a great many women it may be just one more child too many that she can’t handle.

Another part of the complexity is the potential father of the aborted baby. Does he want the abortion?  Will he help the mother nurture the child?  Was “sex” the extent of his commitment? Was the close encountering just another notch in his conquest belt and he did not expect a pregnancy?

Then…….you throw in fragility, physical illness, mental issues, no job, no money, no insurance…..and the decision mushrooms into a decision that no one but the woman can and should make.

It is positively okay for Sarah Palin and Pam Tebow, mother of Heisman trophy winner, Tim Tebow, to rejoice at their decision to bring a child into the world. Sarah says she thought about abortion first but then decided against it. Tebow’s mother was sick with a serious infection and was counseled by her physician to abort. She decided against it. There are many women like them. They thought they could do it despite what people may have said.  Other women decide differently.   They may have too many additional problems working against them.

Women are nurturing by nature. The God of all has given them the responsibility of carrying a child to term, delivering the child, and then nurturing the child until they reach adulthood. Women intuitively know when they can do something and when they can’t. They can make their own decisions. Everyone should leave them alone and stop with the “murder” rhetoric and “killing babies” signs they hold up during their anti-abortion marches.

We must have confidence in women to make their own difficult decisions. You can counsel, advise, or support, but you cannot decide for a pregnant women and tell her she has to go through with a pregnancy.  

To use abortion as a political issue is unconscionable. Holy people help and support. Holy people do not accuse, point fingers, and call women horrible names. Holy people have confidence that others will do what is right and only a woman will know what is right for herself.