SINGLE-PAYER HEALTH INSURANCE SYSTEM

           

With the President and most Republicans in Congress calling for repeal of Obamacare, and Republicans not able to get consensus on a new plan, we should consider the options that could easily solve our healthcare problems.

Canada and most of the countries of Europe have single-payer health insurance systems. I’m sure they are perplexed by our pretensions of being the world’s leading nation when we don’t even have a modern health insurance system. Under a single-payer system the American Government could provide health insurance for all citizens just as it does now for those on Medicare. It would also cover dental, eye, and psychiatric care.

There is another possibility. With the “Public Option,” a single-payer system would allow people who are not eligible for Medicare to purchase Medicare insurance from the government for prices far lower than they would pay under the current system. Although there was a strong effort made in Congress to include a “Public Option” when the ACA (Obamacare) was enacted, that effort was defeated by senators like Joe Lieberman from Connecticut--the insurance capital of America.

The main reason we do not have single-payer system is not that the public opposes such a change. Many polls show that Americans would prefer a universal health insurance program comparable to the system in Canada over the current system. Some 58 percent of respondents in a Gallup Poll support replacing ObamaCare with a universal healthcare system.

Nor is the reason we do not have a single-payer system that such a system would be more expensive for taxpayers and the government than the kind of private insurance system we have now. A single-payer system would actually save billions of dollars in health insurance costs. Private insurance companies in the U.S. spend about $400 billion a year on administrative costs. Under a single-payer system, in which Medicare takes-over payment of all healthcare costs, virtually all of those administrative costs would be swallowed by the Medicare department of the government. The government would simply provide Medicare for everybody, not just seniors.

 Medicare for everybody would also save billions of dollars for taxpayers. It would cost individuals only an extra 2 percent in taxes, or around $1,200 per year for someone earning $60,000 a year. That’s substantially less than most people currently have to pay for health insurance under the ACA.

The reason we do not have single-payer system is not that the quality of healthcare under a single-payer system would suffer. The truth is that our current healthcare system is very far from the best in the world. The countries with single-payer systems are doing far better than we are. The World Health Organization ranks the United States healthcare system 37^th in the World, behind Canada and all of the single-payer health care countries in Europe (We did beat-out Slovenia and Brunei).

The main reason why we do not have a single-payer system is that such a system would reduce the revenue of private insurance companies, and those companies have used their enormous power and wealth to strong-arm Republican and conservative Democratic legislators into blocking it.

A single-payer system would not put all health insurance companies out of business. They would be able to go on providing several types of health insurance, including the kind that we call “Medigap,” which is used by seniors today to pay for costs not covered by Medicare. They would also still be able go on selling Life, Property, and many other kinds of insurance.

           Right-wing demagogues will argue that a single-payer program is “socialized medicine.” That is mendacious nonsense. The same people argue that Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare are socialized medicine. A single-payer system would not do away with private doctors. Under a single-payer system, people would be able to choose their own doctors, specialists, clinics, and hospitals.

Do we want to save lives and make it possible for everybody to have quality healthcare under an inexpensive system, or do we want to preserve the profits and privileges of the private insurance industry?

VIRTUAL IMPEACHMENT

There are a lot of anti-Trump demonstrators out there carrying signs saying “Not My President.” They are so disturbed that this ignorant bully got elected that they refuse to recognize him as President of the United States. I think they have something there. Call it “Virtual Impeachment.” It now seems unlikely that the Congress will impeach the Donald despite his many moments of vulgarity, stupidity, and simple-minded tweeting. But a majority of Americans voted against him, and it is possible for them to show their rejection by means of virtual impeachment.

There are many powers, rights, and responsibilities built into the laws governing the Presidency. But there are no laws or regulations saying that we have to accept him as president in our hearts. We have to obey all the laws governing the presidency, but we do not have to refer to him as 'President.' We are not required to show him the respect ordinarily due a president or play “Hail to the Chief” when he appears.

We certainly are not required to equate him with his predecessor, who displayed all of the class and leadership lacking in the current inhabitant of the White House. We are not required to turn-out for his rallies and gatherings. I would suggest that people who oppose him as I do should turn our backs and shun him whenever and wherever he appears.

Most presidents recognize that they were elected by fewer than a unanimous public, so after being elected they try to unify the country behind them. Not this jerk. If anything, he has attempted to antagonize the majority of Americans who voted against him. Reza Aslan, a scholarly writer on religion and a commentator on CNN, recently said of Donald Trump’s response to the London terrorist attacks: “This piece of s*** is not just an embarrassment to America and a stain on the presidency. He's an embarrassment to humankind.”

If all of the people who voted against Trump and all of the people who have become disillusioned by his behavior since the election ignore him and show no respect for him it will be as if he was impeached and thrown out of office. It will be Virtual Impeachment.

EASTER AND HUMAN SACRIFICE

         Today we celebrate the return of Jesus from a death ordered by God as a human sacrifice.
The holiday was named “Easter” after Eostre, the Saxon goddess whose feast was celebrated at the Spring equinox.
        Ancient people would not be surprised at our celebration of the resurrection of a living god at this time of year. The death and resurrection of gods was a well known scenario in ancient myth. The death and resurrection of the Roman god Attis was celebrated on March 25th. Attis was the son of Cyble, known as “The Great Mother,” whose worship was introduced into Rome from the Phrygia (in today’s Turkey) around 204 BC.
         The Greek god Dionysus was killed by his enemies and died. He descended into Hades and arose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of Zeus.  His festival was celebrated in the Spring around the time that we now celebrate Easter. Other gods and goddesses who died and arose again from the dead are Adonis, Mithras, Persephone, Semele, Heracles (or Herakles), Osirus, Tammuz, Ishtar, and Melqart.
Christians today believe that Jesus was the omnipotent and everlasting god who created the universe. The Catholic Church and others believe that as the “Son of God,” Jesus is a manifestation of God himself through the Holy Trinity. The idea of a holy trinity did not originate with the Christians. Hundreds of years before the birth of Jesus, the Egyptian goddess Isis was worshiped along with her consort, Sarapis, and their child Harpocrates (Horus), as members of a Holy Trinity.
The central belief of Christianity is that Jesus was a human sacrifice for mankind. Somehow, Christians have accepted this teaching from an ancient, barbaric time, and still believe it today. They believe that Man committed something called “Original Sin” and that the only way he could achieve salvation from original and other sins was by means of a human sacrifice. They believe that the almighty and eternal God, who is a merciful, loving, and forgiving God, could be appeased only by this hideous and grisly torture and lynching of a human being. Because an ordinary human sacrifice would not be sufficient, the Son of God had to come down to Earth to be the sacrificial victim. He had to be scourged, driven to Golgatha under the weight of the cross, nailed to the cross, pierced with a spear, and slowly suffocated hanging in great pain on the cross until he bled to death. Crucifixion was one of the most horrible forms of execution ever devised.
Human sacrifice was an integral part of much early worship of the gods. Today many religions still use an altar, but the first altars were used to sacrifice human and animal victims. References in literature to the sacrifice of human individuals harks back to the days when this was a routine and deeply reverent practice. In the story of the Trojan War, Agamemnon tells his wife to prepare his daughter for her marriage. He then takes her to the shore and sacrifices her to the gods in order to obtain favorable winds for his trip to Troy. You can be sure that the story is not pure whimsy. Human sacrifice was well known in ancient Greece, as it was in Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, Canaan, and Israel. At the time of Jesus, human sacrifice was a recent memory.
       It is clear that back in the early history of the Israelites, human sacrifice was customary. Consider the stories of Abraham and Isaac in Genesis 22:1-19,  Japhthah and his daughter in Judges 11:30-31, King Ahaz and his son in 2 Chronicles 28:3, and King Manasseh and his son in 2 Chronicles 33:6. Later in their history, the Israelites turned away from human sacrifice and declared it an abomination.
Nevertheless, the New Testament repeatedly refers to the idea that Jesus was a sacrifice for Mankind. For example, John 1:29, “Behold the Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the World;” John 2:2, “He is propitiation for the sins of the world;” Matthew 20, “Á ransom for many;” Matthew 26:28, “This is my blood of the New Testament which is shed for many for the remission of sins;” Hebrews 9:23-28, “Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many;” (See also Philippians 2:17, 4:18; Romans 12:1, 15:16; 1Peter 1:18-19, 2:5; Ephesians 1:7; and Titus 2:14).
The dogma that Jesus was crucified as a form of atonement for Man’s sins did not become established as a doctrine of the very early Church until the fourth century AD. Saint Augustine (354-430), who laid down many of the Church doctrines, including the doctrine of atonement, said that man was doomed to Hell until Jesus redeemed him. He regarded Jesus’ sacrifice “Not as payment of a debt due to God, but as an act of justice to the Devil in discharge of his fair and lawful claims.”
Like many other aspects of Christianity, the idea of propitiating god with a human sacrifice, and even having the god himself be the sacrificial victim, was not new when the Church dreamed up this explanation of Jesus’ crucifixion. It was borrowed from old pagan myths. I have mentioned the human sacrifices carried out by early Israelites. The Canaanites sacrificed to the gods, and the prophets inveighed against the sacrificing of Canaanite children to Moloch (See Samuel 17:17; Jeremiah 7:31; Ezekiel 16:20, 20:26).
In Egypt, the priests performed human sacrifice when the Pharaoh died. The Pharaoh was believed to be a god. His family and servants were buried alive with him. Eventually the priests started substituting animals, dolls and other forms of art for living victims. In ancient Mesopotamia archiologists have found the tombs of kings with entire households that were buried alive when the king was interred.
In India, it was the custom to perform human sacrifice in order to guarantee a good harvest and appease the gods. The victim was believed to be the god sacrificing himself, in the form of a man, to himself as a god. The ancient Khonds of India believed that their sacrificial victim died for all mankind and became a god.
The ancient Greeks sacrificed a criminal at Rhodes after putting him in royal robes. They did this in memory of the sacrifice by Kronos of his “Only begotten Son.” Themistocles sacrificed Persian youths to Dionysus.

HOW I FEEL

HOW I FEEL

            I’m not mad at Donald Trump. I’m not mad at the people who voted him into office. This should not, however, comfort them. What I feel toward them is not anger, it is something else. I feel sorry for them. That is because I understand what motivated them to vote this stupid, racist, sexist, jerk into office. For the most part it was class hatred. They felt that the idiot Trump spoke for them, the common people, and that Hillary Clinton spoke for the elite, the educated people. For most of the Trump voters, it was his opening remarks that got them on his side. He declared that the undocumented Hispanic immigrants were rapists and criminals. That appealed to his supporters’ xenophobia, bigotry, and ignorance. The trouble is, he does not speak for them and they will probably feel down the road that he is their worst enemy.

            Most white people are prejudiced against Black people to one degree or another. They will deny it because they do not believe that they are bigoted. They will point-out that they have friends who are black and that they get along well with African Americans. But the simple fact is that no matter what they say, they are prejudiced against Blacks, and often, despite having Black friends, they have strong feelings against Blacks. They are not a small group like the KKK, but they include probably 99% of the people who voted for Donald Trump. I know many such people. They would be offended if you said that they were bigoted. But if you listen to their conversation you will hear them express anti-Black feelings. Most of them are also bigoted against Hispanic people.

            I understand how those people felt when Barack Obama was elected President. They had always assumed that because Blacks were so inferior to White people a Black person would never be elected President. When he was elected, they were shocked. They felt that they had not been paying attention and that as a result a member of the hated and despised Black race got into the White House. In a sense, that is how we liberals felt about the election of Donald Trump to the presidency. We never imagined that he could win. He comes across as a dumb bigot. But that is exactly what his supporters like about him. He will go on making outrageous statements, doing outrageous things, and instead of his followers being offended by him they will love it all. They hated political correctness of every kind and when they heard about some of the rules and restrictions on campuses, they were furious. Trump made them feel that they would be able to say whatever they wanted and to behave toward minority people the way they wanted.

            In his first few weeks in office Trump has done nothing to ease the aversion better educated people feel toward him. One thing that is beginning to stand out is hat he is emotionally lacking in confidence. His show of machismo reveals not self confidence, but rather, insecurity. It is hard to imagine any of his predecessors arguing about the size of the crowd at his inauguration. The problem is, how will this failure of confidence affect his administration? As a reader of history I have noted that many leaders who felt insecure in their position used attacks on perceived enemies as a means of distracting the public from their fears. Could this apprehensiveness of Donald Trump lead us into a nuclear war?

            Apparently, Trump supporters do not notice his obvious failings. They like what he has done so far. A reader of history will note that common people often love the leaders who lead them into disaster. The people who supported Trump are like the ordinary people of Germany who hailed Hitler all the way to the total destruction of the Third Reich. It was not the educated, sophisticated elite who supported Hitler. It was the ignorant common people, the mindless type who always admire the tyrants who lead them into Hell.

ATHEISTS' CELEBRATION OF CHRISTMAS

How do atheists celebrate Christmas? The long nights and short days of the Christmas season can be quite depressing. It would be an even bleaker time of year if those of us who do not believe in the myth of Jesus were unable to celebrate the happy Christmas season. I certainly do not believe that the eternal and almighty God who created the universe came down to earth and allowed himself to be born as a human being. That is a myth of many religions, not just Christianity, and it speaks to man’s inner needs rather than to any historical happening. It is possible for the nonbeliever to celebrate Christmas, however. Christmas as a holiday has a long and ancient history that goes back long before Jesus.

For thousands of years before Jesus, people celebrated the Winter Solstice. This was the period around December 23-25. It is obvious that ancient people began celebrating the winter solstice because that was the time when nights were longest and days were shortest. The long nights made people depressed and sad and no doubt motivated the need for some kind of celebration to rouse people’s spirits.

The history of Christmas dates back over 4000 years. Many of our Christmas traditions were celebrated centuries before Jesus was born. The 12 days of Christmas, the bright fires, the Yule log, the giving of gifts, carolers who sing while going from house to house, the holiday feasts, and the church processions, can all be traced back to the early Mesopotamians. Many of these traditions began with the Mesopotamian celebration of New Years. The Mesopotamians believed in many gods, and their chief god was Marduk. Each year as winter arrived it was believed that Marduk would do battle with the monsters of chaos. To assist Marduk in his struggle, the Mesopotamians held a festival for the New Year. This was called Zagmuk, the New Year's festival that lasted for 12 days.

In ancient Germany people honored the pagan god Oden during the mid-winter holiday. Germans were terrified of Oden. They believed he made nocturnal flights through the sky to observe his people, and then decide who would prosper or perish. Because of his presence, many people chose to stay inside. The Germans brought trees inside the house at the winter solstice and hung gifts on the trees to placate the gods and in hopes of keeping green things alive for the coming Spring.

There were mid-winter festivals in ancient Babylon and Egypt, and Germanic fertility festivals also took place at this time. The birth of the ancient sun-god Attis was celebrated on December 25th. Attis was the son of the goddess Cybele. The worship of Cybele, known as “The Great Mother,” was introduced into Rome from Phrygia (in today’s Turkey) around 204 BC. She was worshipped in Greece in the 5th century BC. The adherents of this religion celebrated the death and resurrection of Attis, who was Cybele’s, lover, eunuch attendant, and driver of her lion-driven chariot. Attis was killed by being castrated. After fasting on the “Day of Blood,” on which Attis was mourned, sorrow was turned into joy with the Hilaria celebrating his resurrection on March 25. The celebration included a sacred meal of thanksgiving, or, in Greek, “eucherista."

The Romans celebrated Saturnalia, a festival dedicated to Saturn, the god of peace and plenty, that ran from the 17th to 24th of December. Public gathering places were decorated with flowers, gifts and candles were exchanged and the population, slaves and masters alike, celebrated the occasion with great enthusiasm.

One of the the myths which closely resembles the story of Jesus was that of the God Mithras (or Mithra). Many aspects of Mithraism parallel Christianity. It is not known exactly when Mithraism began, but it preceeded Christianity by hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Although some scholars claim that it goes back to the Persian empire fourteen centuries before Christ, when the Persians worshipped a god “Mithra,” others claim that the worship by Romans of Mithras originated much later in Tarsus of Cilicia (today’s Turkey). Mithras was the god of light, or the Sun, and was born of a virgin. He was identified with a bull who had to die as a sacrifice for all humanity. His worshippers believed that Mithras promised resurrection from the dead and that he ascended into heaven. The worship of Mithras included forgiveness of sin by baptism of initiates and a communion of bread and wine to commemorate Mithras’ last meal on earth.
Evidence of Mithraism can be found in the ruins of Pompeii. It was popular among the Roman soldiers.

The early fathers of the Christian Church did not know the date when Jesus had been born, so up until the fourth century AD there was no celebration of Christmas. The worship of Mithras presented a real problem for the Church fathers because of the similarities to the worship of Jesus. In around 353 AD, the church fathers decided to combat Mithraism and other pagan holidays by celebrating the birth of Jesus on Mithras’ birthday, December 25. Merry Mithramas!

Biblical scholars agree that the Christian story of the Nativity is fictitious. In the first place, the story says that Caesar ordered a census to levy taxes and that Joseph, as a descendent of David, had to travel to Bethlehem, the city of David, to register (Luke 2:1-5). This was supposed to fulfill the prophecy that the “Messiah” would be “from the house of David.” The story is inherently preposterous!

There is no evidence that Augustus Caesar ordered a worldwide census at the time of Jesus’ birth. There was a census under Quirinius, the Governor of Syria (Luke 2:2), but that occurred after the death of Caesar and years after the birth of Jesus. The late Raymond E. Brown, S.S., a Catholic priest, internationally regarded as the dean of New Testament scholars, and former Professor of Biblical Studies at Union Theological Seminary in New York, said in his magisterial The Birth of the Messiah, “Luke’s reference to a general census of the Empire under Augustus which affected Palestine before the death of Herod the Great is almost certainly wrong.” Said Brown, “Luke begins his story with a reference to a census of the whole world ordered by Augustus, conducted by Quirinius, and affecting Joseph, a Galilean inhabitant of Nazareth, so that he had to go to his ancestral city. This supplied the occasion for the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem....this information is dubious on every score...We have no evidence of one census under Augustus that covered the whole Empire, nor of a census requirement that people be registered in their ancestral cities.” In a census, they counted people at their place of domicile, not where they were born. They would not have required Joseph to travel to Bethlehem. The Romans cared nothing for genealogies. They would have wanted him to stay in Nazareth and be counted where he lived

The distinguished biblical scholar, E.P. Sanders, points out that David lived 42 generations before Jesus. He asks, why would the Romans require Joseph to register for a tax in the town (Bethlehem) of an ancestor who lived 42 generations earlier? He describes Luke’s story of the Nativity as “Fantastic!” Bart D. Ehrman, another renowned biblical scholar, asks: “Can it be possible that everyone in the empire was to return to the place their ancestors lived a thousand years earlier?”

Another mistake by the authors of the Gospels is that they place the census of Quirinius and the birth of Jesus during the Reign of Herod. Scholars know that Herod was already dead at the time of Quirinius’ census. Raymond E. Brown says, “...the one and only census conducted while Quirinius was legate in Syria affected only Judea, not Galilee, and took place in A.D. 6-7, a good ten years after the death of Herod the Great.” Moreover, Caesar would not have taxed Judea while Herod was king. And, at the time of Jesus’ birth, Bethlehem would have been in an area that was exempt from taxation.

The world renowned biblical scholar and Catholic priest, John P. Meier, notes that it would have been impossible for Mary to travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem in an advanced state of pregnancy. Meier says, “Somewhere around 7-6 B.C. a Jew named Yeshua, a shortened form of the Hebrew Yehoshua (Joshua), was born in the hillside town of Nazareth in lower Galilee. The Infancy Narritive traditions that locate his birth in Bethlehem of Judea (traditions isolated in chap. 2 of Matthew and Luke respectively) are probably later Chriustian theological dramatizations of the belief that Jesus was the royal Davidic Messiah.”

There are many reasons to disbelieve in the Christmas story as recounted in the Christian Bible. The whole story is absurd. Nevertheless, it has given us the modern holiday of Christmas, a joyous celebration of the winter solstice. I may not buy into the Christian story, but I happily join in the celebration of the season.

TRUMP AND THE UNEDUCATED

          I don’t think that the tape by Donald Trump in which he made vulgar statements about women, or the fact that a number of women came forward with accusations of Trump groping them, or his many outrageous statements had much of an impact on his campaign for the presidency. Sure this information offended many women, especially women who were already planning to vote for Hillary Clinton, but for the most of his supporters they had no adverse effect.

 They say that most of the people who supported Trump are uneducated. I’m sure that many of the people who voted for Trump do not think of themselves as low class or uneducated. Nevertheless, by the mere fact of supporting and voting for Trump they have defined themselves as low-class.

 Mel Robbins is a CNN commentator, legal analyst, best-selling author, and keynote speaker. She wrote that neither Trump’s statement that he wanted to grab women’s “pussies,” nor his other outrageous acts and statements, made any difference to his supporters. She said: “This election isn’t about greatness, the future, or even Donald Trump. It’s about defiance. To his supporters, a vote for Trump is a way to flip the middle finger to the system, the media, the elite, the liberals, the know-it-alls, and the people who pretend they’re better than “us.”’

 For many of Trump’s supporters his lies, verbal abuse, insults, and foul language were not to be held against him, but rather, were reasons to admire him. They felt that he was sticking his thumb in the eyes of the hated upper-class who graduated from colleges, read books, enjoyed the arts, had some sophistication, and basically ran this country.

 While we may not have an institutionalized class system in America, most people understand that they are either upper-class, upper middle-class, lower middle-class, or low-class. I have known people who have both money and college degrees, but who act like they are lower class and even look at themselves as lower class. Their speech is rough like that of the working class. They have no books or tasteful works of art around the house. They do not go to art museums, or sit for classical music concerts, or travel abroad. These people probably voted for Donald Trump.

 I think that today, social class is not so much a matter of money as it is a matter of education and sophistication. Better educated people may not be wealthy in the classic sense. They may be writers, musicians, artists, college professors, social workers, or teachers. They may also be highly sophisticated and well educated. Despite lack of great wealth they are often looked upon as high-class in modern society. Some very educated people are not wealthy, and may not have even been able to afford college. Instead, they may be self-educated. Autodidactic people are often readers of books, periodicals, newspapers. They may visit museums, Broadway-shows, classical music recitals, and other art forms. People who know them count them as educated people.

 Because the well-educated people are big readers they are usually very well-informed. They are not influenced by the idiotic conspiracy theories that sway the less educated. They realize that there really is a global warming and that it is caused by human actions. They look with horror at the wild statements of Donald Trump. Their politics are usually liberal. Likewise, because the less educated people do not read, they are easy prey for purveyors of odd conspiracy theories and phony stories about politics.

The uneducated people of America resent the government and the leaders of the media, arts, universities, women’s groups, and others because they feel that those people look down their noses at them. Maybe they do. Trump, who has been very wealthy and has attended college, gives evidence of being one of the uneducated. That makes him low-class. He appealed to the low-class people of America, many of whom are not poor but who are uneducated.

I think that we may be in the first stages of a class war in America. It is not a war between the rich and the poor, but rather, a war between the educated and the uneducated. This may be the beginning of a long dark period in American history.

Switzerland

We woke up in the small skiing village of Zermatt at the base of the magnificent Matterhorn Mountain. The Matterhorn is a sublime icy finger of snow pointing up to the sky and attempting to contradict the disbelief of doubters like me. The air is clear and clean, devoid of the pollution of American politics.

We had come from Geneva on a train with broad, high Windows, along lush green valleys beneath ice-capped mountains. One's only comparison would be an idealized imagination of Shangra La. My lady, Julie, said it was like being on another perfect planet.

The people of Switzerland are all slim. The women are all lovely and the men are all handsome. As Garrison Keelor might say, the children are above-average. The residents favor cheese fondue, croque monsieur, (or ham and melted cheese sandwiches), and good French wine. So do I. Geneva is surrounded by France, and everybody speaks french. The people are friendly. Everything is frightfully expensive. They speak German in most of eastern Switzerland and Italian in the South. In a couple of isolated mountain villages they speak something called "Romansh" which is like ancient Latin.

Surprisingly, there are Pizza restaurants everywhere. One doesn't know whether this is because of tourist preference or local taste. The pizza is thin-crust and delicious. You can pick-up a Rolex watch anytime for a few thousand bucks. Everything is clean and orderly. The chalets are brown and white and charming. There are occasional castles and chateaux, and the chateaux of the great misanthrope, Voltaire, is in nearby France. 

Because Switzerland remained neutral during World Wars I and II, most of the structures are preserved from long ago (I question the morality of neutrality against the Nazi horror, but I can see the advantages of avoiding the barbarity of war's mass slaughter and destruction). 

The people are among the wealthiest in the world. You better be to afford the prices. The banks hold much of the world's money. Every bakery and candy store makes its own chocolate. The chocolate is outstanding. So is the cheese.

Geneva is at the foot of Lake Geneva and a huge spout called the "Jet d' Eau" springs up out of the harbor. The harbor is bejeweled by gorgeous balconied hotels. Word is that many of the mansions along the east coast are owned by billionaire Russian oligarchs. You can eat at one of the hotel restaurants if you cash-in you 401-K retirement account.

We took pictures everywhere and sent them to friends and family. One beloved friend wrote back, "Stop sending the d....d pictures. I'm on my way to Kiwanis."

Well, it would be nice to live in this lovely corner of the world, but it will be good to get home to Xenia.