End of the Year

End of the Year

The January All Point Bulletin is out with its recap of what we’ve all been through this past year in Point Roberts.  Although it's been a kind of crushing year for many, many people, the Point has come through pretty well, I’d think.  The library and the Parks Board got their levy increases, and there is a move afoot to try to encourage the County to do something about restoring the dock/boat launch at Light House Park.  All good things.  More of Lily Point was conserved and it appears that the historic remains will remain where they historically have been.  There have been deaths of course, perhaps most notably,  that of Irene Waters, but that is the truth of every year.  And we haven’t lost anything --other than dock and the curbside trash collection--that we formerly had, although one of the banks is looking a little poorly.

The newspaper also has a bunch of cheerful letters, thanking people for good things that came to pass recently.  And then, at the very end of this letter string, there is a downer:  a letter, initially about the Aydon Wellness Clinic, which the letter writer is hoping will soon go out of existence, because, apparently, it is a great burden on his existence.

Of course, many other people—probably most residents of Point Roberts-- find the clinic very helpful, find its staff knowledgeable and resourceful and able to get them to more complex health care when it is needed.  Thus, it’s a little hard to sympathize with whatever personal burden the letter writer feels about the clinic’s existence. 

Not content with hoping for the end of the clinic, the letter writer takes on health care reform as well, which he also hopes will go out of existence.  I spent a lot of years working in and around health care, so I’m pretty sympathetic to those who are frustrated with how the ‘system’ (or ‘no-system’) works.  But our letter writer’s grievance is largely that he is going to have to buy health insurance, even though he’d rather spend his money on gym membership and natural food supplements.  But he’s not going to buy health insurance, he says.

Well, I doubt if he’s discovered the secret of eternal life, either in gyms or health food stores or organic vegetables.  But I certainly hope that he’s willing to follow a life of true principle such that when and if he should experience the ominous chest pain that might precede a heart attack, or the strangely slurred speech that can appear as a sign of stroke, or the grievous loss of blood and the intense pain that can occur after, say  an accident involving cars or in homes with guns...well, I hope he proceeds immediately to his gym for a workout, or calls his health food store and asks which supplements can be delivered to him ASAP.  The unprincipled alternative, of course, would be to get himself to a hospital, where the rest of us will have to pay his bill.