Hammer Mill Days

Looks pretty moribund to me. Did you kick the tires? Here – take the ignition key and give it a few cranks. Nothing? Right. This will be harder than I thought. Hey, hello. Welcome to the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill in central New York state, an out-of-the-way corner of an out-of-the-way place if ever there was one. (And there was one.) Still in the midst of an archive summer – not that much of a novelty around this place. Seems like every summer I find myself diving through boxes and bins of old tapes, moth-eaten notebooks, forgotten scraps of paper, and old biscuit tins filled with souvenirs of a bygone age. You know what they say about idle hands. Don’t you? Hell, I don’t know what they say. I was hoping you’d tell me. Something like, idle hands build false … idols. Who knows? Actually, it was Marvin (my personal robot assistant) who reminded me that we haven’t posted an episode of THIS IS BIG GREEN, our podcast , in over seven months. Something of an oversig...

Here’s a little update on my health crisis from a couple of months ago: I’m still paying the price. Not physically, you understand – nothing noticeable in the way of lingering after-effects of my non-COVID illness. No, I mean I’m literally still paying the price of the hospital stay I experienced in April, the week after my birthday. I think I’ve gone over the numbers before on this blog, but let me just frame it in again so that there’s no mistake: the hospital fee – not the surgeon or anesthesiologist, just the hospital – added up to more than $50,000 for four days. The negotiated rate they charged was more like $37,500, but my portion of it was in excess of $5,000. Once again – I have employer provided health insurance … and the direct cost to me was over $5,000. I am currently garnishing my own wages to cover this massive fee, adhering to a five month payment plan I agreed to with the hospital. Fortunately – and this is important – I am financially able to afford su...