“Non-profit” Hospitals in Seattle

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KUOW has a lovely piece on the profits of some of Seattle’s non-profit hospitals. Not surprising, but Swedish Medical Center (which is currently on my sh*t-list) is one of the hospitals they talk about.

Nurses at Swedish start at about $25 an hour. But for top doctors and executives at hospitals like Swedish, the paychecks dwarf that figure.

KUOW has learned that 15 nonprofit hospital leaders in the Seattle area earned at least $1 million in 2007. This elite group includes the CEOs of Swedish, Providence, Virginia Mason, Group Health, Seattle Children’s and MultiCare in Tacoma. Another three dozen hospital officials in King, Pierce and Snohomish counties earned at least half a million that year.

I think the question we need to be asking, when we’re talking about health care reform, is where is the money going? I mean this from every single point, from the doctor’s time and his liability insurance, education, home, golf, etc. to the prescription meds or procedures – the elements to make them, legal costs, patents, etc. How much money does Astra-Zeneca spend on pens for doctors alone?

Maybe I’m the only one curious about this – but I think these are important things to ask when you’re asking for an overhaul.

Malware Problem?

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Though I’m pretty frickin’ sure I don’t have malware on this site (not of my own design!), apparently there’s some go00ogle.net stuff snuck in here somewhere. I’m not tech enough to know how or why, I just know I need it dealt with. Please let me know if you have anything show up – give me a screen cap if you can. I’ll try to make sure this is taken care of ASAP.

Personal Update and a word from our sponsor…

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My week has started off with a small success: my craft caddy of tremendous hugeness has been picked up by either the Salvation Army, or someone else who liked the size of the monstrosity. I’ve been wanting this thing gone for something like 5 months. It continues to be really hard for me to put any energy into cleaning/transforming this space, since that was the project I was in the middle of right before my plans derailed.

I’ve been busy trying to craft up rewarding (and profitable!) ways to spend my time. I haven’t gotten very far with these plans, though – mostly due to my urge to have my home-space figured out before I try to do anything extra. I have some drafts for a painting series (or, as it might turn out, a single diptych) in the works. I’ve become lax on my paper journaling, and on my hope to hand write and send a bunch of letters. The day to day seems to intervene, and in other times, the emotional energy just doesn’t seem to be there.

I continue to spend about 12-15 hours a week volunteering at 826 Seattle. Not only are they wonderful people, who open their doors to me and put me to work when I needed it, they provide an amazing resource for the community. Please check out their site, visit the Greenwood Space Travel Supply Company, make a donation, get involved, get your kids involved… they do great stuff. If you’re not local, there are 826 chapters across the nation.

Finally, this weekend Jon and I have tickets to see Pema Chodron at the University of Washington. It’s a weekend-long teaching session. I’ve never been to anything of its kind. I first ran across Pema Chodron thanks to picking up her audio Getting Unstuck while I was still working at Whole Foods Market. I’ve listened to it a few times, and find her voice and her message thoughtful and calming. I recommend her work to anyone who has a tendency towards criticism of others or themselves. I’m excited to have the opportunity to see her in person.

I’ve hopefully got more blog posts on the way. In the mean time, why don’t you pick up a copy of How to Cook Everything and/or Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home. How to Cook Everything is the bible of our kitchen, and Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home is a great, no fuss, easy to manage book of tasty vegetarian recipes, perfect for farmer’s market weekends. (BTW, all y’alls who dig the Trader Joe’s balls of pizza dough – Bittman’s pizza dough recipe takes <10 min to make w/ a food processor, makes two pies, and is freezable.)

The Seventh Seal – Criterion Collection Blu-Ray

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Jon and I recently watched The Seventh Seal on Blu-Ray. It was my first time watching it, and I actually knew very little about it. I did not grow up on fine cinema. While I did watch some great movies, classics such as The Seventh Seal weren’t part of my repertoire the way Monty Python and the Holy Grail and Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey might have been (sadly, both not on Blu-Ray.) Neither of those movies are high art, but thanks to my familiarity with both of them, it wasn’t too long into The Seventh Seal that I realized that Monty Python and the Holy Grail and Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey shared The Seventh Seal as inspiration.

Death really does play chess. The Seventh Seal is a rumination on death. Given my current tendency towards acknowledging impermanence, this movie couldn’t have come at a better time. I asked myself a few days ago, how do you adequately express your emotional experience so as to conjure an empathic response in others that may give way to understanding? Big question, no?

It seems that with the really big things, it’s like shouting “The sky is blue!” louder and louder in the hopes that who ever may be listening may stop and understand the miracle that is living, breathing and seeing. That not only is the sky blue, but look at the amazing mystery that allows us to share in this moment of not taking that blueness for granted. How does one translate the leap in the heart, the moment of joy that one can experience with acknowledgment of the world, to someone who, for what ever reason, isn’t sharing that experience?

Ingmar Bergman tells the story of his own fear of death in The Seventh Seal. A fear so potent, that it is packed within each scene, giving you the terrible sense of foreboding, at first inclined towards hope for the knight, and as the film progresses, realizing that hope may be lost. I’m finding it is marvelous and rare that an individual’s personal emotional experiences can be translated effectively into art and brought to be a communal experience. The Seventh Seal is perhaps, so enduring, because it stands as a solid allegory for Bergman’s (and others) fear of death and search for spiritual fulfillment.

The Criterion Collection features for The Seventh Seal include the commentary track, as well as a few shorts from over the past few years. I found that the commentary track didn’t hold my interest in the way that The Third Man or Chungking Express did, which means that though The Seventh Seal is a fine film, I’m not inclined to purchase it for my own collection. However, it’s very well worth watching, and worth buying if you’re into the idea of having the complete Criterion Collection, or multiple viewings for your own analysis.