Let's support health education and local farmers!

I'm an adjunct at a local community college. I haven't had health insurance since I was laid off from my full time job in 2008. Back then, I was an educator working with folks on welfare who didn't really want to get off in the first place. Our goal was to train them on how to get and keep a job, which is funny, because I rarely came across a client who actually shared that goal.

Ironically, I make too much money to qualify for healthcare assistance, but not enough to pay for even the basics of my own healthcare (like maybe a check up once a year). Meanwhile, my former clients keep getting free care at emergency rooms and neighborhood free clinics.

It's a good thing they can get care, though, because the crappy food they buy with their food stamps - mostly sugary and refined carbohydrates that are cheap and provide name-brand comfort - is sending many of them to the emergency room on a regular basis to be treated for hypertension, diabetes and gastrointestinal problems. My piddly wages, on the other hand, are spent not on doctors but on preventative measures - whole foods - in order to maintain my health and avoid costly medical bills and a life of chronic illness.

Don't you think there's something wrong with this?

Before, when I had health insurance, I weighed 420 pounds and was a ticking time bomb for many of the health issues mentioned above. But fortunately I read a book back then that was a wake up call. I learned from Michael Pollan's book, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto, that what I was doing to my body by maintaining a healthy diet. More importantly, I learned that by changing my diet I could reverse the damage I had already done.

What's my point? Instead of allowing politicians to fight a battle for more healthcare for poor people, we should be spending money on health education and supporting small farmers so they can provide good, whole foods at an affordable cost to local people. That's the only way to lighten the growing burden currently crushing our health system and robbing health care consumers who are able to pay for care.

Let's shift the conversation - we must do something about this crisis now, before more than 50 percent of our population is officially obese or otherwise chronically sick. If we do nothing, or continue on the path of building bigger hospitals to deal with more and more food related diseases, it will turn us into a third world country.

Dance to Death

by Brian Schwarz

Dying things are all around
As soon as birth, then death abounds
Not just in the devil's touch
But God, through death, has taught us much

To love and care and fill our days
With life and laughs and curious ways
And all the time we've got is ours
Till finally we've marked the hours

So dance to death; fly, be free
March your way down to the sea
Then back again to mountain tops
Take on life with all you've got!

Passionate about hiking - and burning fat!

I'm so psyched to have found a new fitness passion - hiking - out on the trails of eastern Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire. On top of experiencing the sheer joy that comes from climbing to new heights and seeing the world from inside the woods, I'm thrilled to see how quickly I'm burning fat and building lean muscle. Playing outdoors beats working out in a crusty old gym any day of the week!

I live in Weston, which, like nearby towns like Lincoln, Lexington and Concord, is replete with conservation lands, some with hills, great for a moderate walks for fitness. My favorite close-to-home hill is Cat Rock. Also Misery Mountain is just up the road. I plan to check it out tomorrow.

In the greater Boston area I've been enjoying the hilly Middlesex Fells north of town and the even hillier Blue Hills to the South.

And at a two hours or so drive I've climbed Wachusett Mountain here in Massachusetts and Mount Monadnock just across the border in New Hampshire.

Before winter sets in, I still hope to get out to the Berskshires in western Mass., up to the Green Mountains of Vermont or the Whites in northern New Hampshire, and to Acadia, on the coast of Maine.

In the spring, I'll be heading out to New Mexico to hike Sandia, the Sangre de Cristo and others as I learn about them.