CommonCare: Medicare for the rest of us

Bill Maher was railing the other night at how bad Democrats are at naming things. "Single Payer" is about the least sexy name for a program ever, whereas "Death Panels" and "Pull the Plug on Granny" conjure immediate, visceral images that everyone understands. I was listening to a BBC program about African development, and someone being interviewed said something about the communal nature of African values, to explain how there is a different work ethic on the continent. :
Hence, CommonCare. It's got the ring of Meidcare, the most efficient and successful government program in US history, and it ultimately means what Single Payer ought to be called: Final Payer, meaning, ya'll go ahead and fuss around with all your complicated insurance plans and whatever, but anyone someone doesn't get the basics paid for through one of those schemes, it goes to the Final Payer, the "public option" [a close second for least sexy moniker] known as CommonCare.

It can even be bundled as part of immigration reform as a way to extend coverage to the undocumented: they can earn "points" towards status normalization by fulfilling Preventive Care requirements, and save money that otherwise goes to emergency room visits.

whimsy, like paisley, is incredibly unflattering on me

From my Google feed on memoir writing, a review on the NPR blog by Linda Holmes of Quinn Cummings' Notes From The Underwire:

Have you ever had the experience of reading a single line and realizing that a book has just won you? That you and the book are now friends, you are on the same side, and you are taking the book with you everywhere until you finish it? Cummings won me on page 16 with this:

At the height of the dot-com frenzy, I took a job in San Francisco. After several weeks of dead ends, I left Los Angeles without having a place to live in San Francisco. I figured I'd get there, stay in a hotel for a few days, find a sublet, and move in. That seemed like the kind of whimsical thing people I knew did all the time, and it always worked out fabulously for them. I had forgotten that whimsy, like paisley, is incredibly unflattering on me.
I read and reread "whimsy, like paisley," rolled it around in my mouth, and gulped the rest of the book. It's a delightful and genuine mishmash in the best way -- a little mom stuff, a little showbiz, a little about how everyone feels cooler at the farmer's market. Again, it's not so much the story you're telling as the way you tell it.

Urban Coyote TeeVee

The Google alert for digital storytelling on my home page led me to Urban Coyote TeeVee, especially his piece on the Canadian Resettlement Schools for First Nations children.

I was struck by his use of a group of children, they alone reversed into negative, for the image to the infamous phrase "kill the Indian in the child." He does a lot of collage, and his video style is collage-like. Here's the original article from the feed about Chris Bose.

Problem: move an iMovie '09 project to a different computer

I'm stumped by what should be a trivial task--taking a project created in iMovie '09 (newest version, 8.0.4) on one computer over to another. Apple's forum pages list a solution with the page closed as "solved," but it didn't work for me...

Our just completed digital storytelling

Graciela Vega and I just completed a wonderful digital storytelling workshop, "We all have stories to tell," at Renaissance High School. One of the stories is already posted at
http://digitalstory.pbworks.com/The-stories-we-told
More to come...

Bulging touch screens

Evil roots, bitter fruits?

Evil Roots, Bitter Fruits? The role of money in public life

A proposal for PVAC's 2011 Calendar

The premise of this exhibit is that artists can provide us with telling insights as we navigate the confrontation within America's value system between the heritage of do-it-yourself, dog-eat-dog capitalism which has defined America for most its history, and the re-emergence of the underdog populism and community activist/organizer traditions in which a mostly marginalized left has labored in obscurity through most of the same decades. Obama's community organizer credentials have precipitated a lively debate around values, fueled even more by the near collapse of the global financial system. Is money truly the root of all evil? Can a system based on competitive, bottom-line thinking be managed to meet the real needs of the entire community? Or do we need a new way of thinking about how we measure and evaluate the impacts of our economy on people's real lives?

Good money, bad money, no money

Charity, poverty, community

There is a deep resonance to this debate about money and values for artists in particular, because of the wide ranging and intense debate around issues of copyright and payment for intellectual work. The DMCA in the USA is an example of one extreme, where the fruits of art are essentially treated as commodities in commerce, and corporate giants wage battles and face down unions. Lewis Hyde's "The Gift" enunciated the artist's creed of freedom from the constraints of the money culture decades ago: "the premise that the work of art is a gift and not a commodity." He is now at work on a treatise on the cultural commons.

Another strong voice in the copyright/copyleft/creative commons argument has roots in Santa Cruz--Nina Paley, "America's Best Loved Unknown Comic."

Ira Glass on storytelling

There are four parts to the interview:

Part 1, 2, 3, 4

The lessons of the writers' strike

As I try to get kids to see the power of writing, I often hark back to the period of the Writers' Strike, when those clever talking heads on the big shows had nothing to say, because it was never them talking to begin with...

The digital stories they create are "mini-"films, and like [almost] any film, they begin with the script, the work of the writer.

Ira Glass' wonderful pieces about his maturing as a radio producer, inspiring as they are, are still vague as to what the difference is between his early ramblings as a reporter and his recent ramblings as a star. I wanted to know what changed in his writing process, or in him as a writer, to hone the work.

I can't find the YouTube piece right now, here's a long interview...

Digital storytelling resources

Hi, just getting updated on Blogger with links to resources for digital storytelling.

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