23, Recent College Grad, FIB, Singer, Baker, Traveller, and Occasional Writer Of Things You Should Dig For In My Feed
i sing of Olaf glad and big whose warmest heart recoiled at war: a conscientious object-or his wellbelovéd colonel(trig westpointer most succinctly bred) took erring Olaf soon in hand; but--though an host of overjoyed noncoms(first knocking on the head him)do through icy waters roll that...
Thank you, Olaf.
Corey Ewing - “What I’ll Say to Myself” (Rustbelt 2013)
"I’m tired of people telling me that they pray for me only to pray that we win."
Performing during individual finals at the 2013 Rustbelt Regional Poetry Slam.
Renee Schminkey - “For Nikii” (Rustbelt 2013)
"To think that you were literally born into blood and pain and shit, and somehow, you grew up to be this beautiful."
Performing for Macalester College at the 2013 Rustbelt Regional Poetry Slam.
Rachel Wiley - “10 Honest Thoughts on Loving a Skinny Boy”
"I say I am fat. He says No, you are beautiful. I wonder why I can’t be both.”
Performing for Columbus Writing Wrongs at the 2013 National Poetry Slam in Boston, MA.
Michael Lee - “Anvils” (TGS 2013)
"Do not call yourself a Christian nation and forget Christ was a carpenter. Do not oppress the people closest to the man you pretend to worship: the humble, the poor and the working."
Performing on finals stage at the 2013 Texas Grand Slam Poetry Festival.
Words of our generation and words of truth.
Rudy Francisco - “Chameleon”
"This is an apology to every woman that I changed colors to get inside of."
Performing for DPL at the 2013 National Poetry Slam.
Amir Safi - “Brown Boy. White House.” (NPS 2013)
"A boy approaches me in a high school hallway and says, If you were from Afghanistan, I’d beat your ass. The three words I should’ve said were, I love you. Instead, I said, Wish you would.”
Performing during semifinals at the 2013 National Poetry Slam.
Wow.
Alex Dang - “Times I’ve Been Mistaken for a Girl” (NPS 2013)
"When my father found out that sometimes I like looking at boys, he told my mother that he lost a son."
Performing for Portland, OR at the 2013 National Poetry Slam.
<3
Neil Hilborn & Renee Schminkey - “One Color” (NPS 2013)
"They didn’t teach me that I could be with someone but not always want them, that being curious about sex doesn’t mean I was asking for it."
Performing for Minneapolis’s SlamMN! at the 2013 National Poetry Slam.
if only we’d known.
Shane Hawley - “Sequins”
"When you sleep with your high school crush… eleven years after high school… not everything about it is magical."
A surprisingly touching poem from National Poetry Slam champion and professional beard-grower Shane Hawley.
I’m telling you elephants are chill motherfuckers. They fucking love being helpful. They once defended a man with heatstroke from a truck that came to rescue him. They knew he was sick, laying against a tree for shade. They were watching over him and petting him, and they threatened to charge the vehicle for coming towards him. Another person passed out, and elephants cried over her and buried her body in a traditional elephant funeral. (Piling branches on her). And were quite spooked when she got up later.
And an elephant was helping workers to put logs in holes for a wall. On one hole, the elephant absolutely refused to set the log in, despite being punished and goaded. Turns out there was a sleeping dog in the hole.
There are so many good elephants stories. They will even help zookeepers wash other elephants– literally, a zookeeper can be like “[Name 1], please wash [Name 2]” and he will go wash that elephant correctly.
Listen guys. Not only are elephants people, but they’re largely better people than us. I’m 10000% serious.
npr
Sarah Witter couldn’t catch a break even though her leg had gotten several.
As she lay on a ski trail in Vermont last February, Witter, now 63, knew she hadn’t suffered a regular fall because she couldn’t get up. An X-ray showed she had fractured two bones in her lower left leg.
A surgeon at Rutland Regional Medical Center screwed two gleaming metal plates onto the bones to stabilize them. “I was very pleased with how things came together,” the doctor wrote in his operation notes.
But as spring ended, the wound started to hurt more. In June, Witter returned to the doctor. “He X-rayed it and said it broke,” she said. “And I was thinking, what broke? And he said, the plate. He said they do sometimes.”
The doctor performed another operation, removing the cracked plate and replacing it with a larger one.
Witter said she had been dutifully following all the instructions for her recovery, including going to physical therapy and keeping weight off her leg.
“I was, of course, thinking, ‘What did I do?’ ” Witter said. “The doctor said right off the bat it was nothing I did.”
Then the bill came.
Patient: Sarah Witter, a retired teacher and ski buff who had moved from Pennsylvania to Vermont for the outdoorsy lifestyle.
Total bill: $99,159 for emergency services, therapy and hospital care, including $52,587 for the first surgery and $43,208 for the second surgery. Altogether, Witter’s insurer, Aetna, paid $76,783. Witter paid $18,442 — including $7,808 for the second surgery. About half of Witter’s total expenses were copayments; another $7,410 was the portion of hospital charges that Aetna considered unreasonably high and refused to pay.
Photo: Matt Baldelli for KHN
