Baker's heartbeat

Jerry Van Dyke who starred in television and movies, was one of those remembered during Monday's Emmy Awards ceremony. Here we are with Van Dyke in Mexico, after playing beach volleyball. After sitting (pretty) still and watching the television awards ceremony for more than three hours on Monday, this occurred to the blog author: The Emmy Awards event is mainly a validation of one's personal viewing choices. Is it not? The 70th annual awards ceremony tonight was the 70th annual one; dating from 1949. So it's gone along 10 more years than the author has been alive. Back in the day, our family of seven had a black-and-white television set, and as a family, I remember watching "Bonanza" on Sunday nights. Much of the other early television memories are muted as our father forbid television watching (in favor of reading books) for about three years. Yep, we Cox children went without in the 1960s, even as we lived in a neighborhood full of homes with televisi...

Paperwork from the voucher program; if you need a voucher for a mammogram, prepare to review your monthly income level with the staff. At 60 years of age, women like me are deeply encouraged to get a yearly mammogram test for breast cancer. It is a test many of us hate. Going through a mammogram is extraordinarily uncomfortable. But it's a necessary pain, we are told, and gritting our teeth, we do it, year after year. This year I'm without an health insurance plan that covers preventative tests like a mammogram. Called a "skinny" plan, it's affordable and covers me in accidents, etc. Thankfully I've been very healthy to date. I work hard at staying healthy, especially with this "skinny" insurance plan. But I also know a lot about mammograms, mostly because for 10 years I focused on health and wellness as a daily newspaper reporter. In that time I wrote numerous stories about breast cancer, including to promote the Race for the Cure, the...