And then I wrote...

by Dick Schilling, "Editor Emeritus"

... that it is my custom to read the sports pages of the two Sunday dailies I receive while eating breakfast. It only spoils my appetite when Iowa teams lose Saturday contests I think they should have won.

I take the editorial pages with me to read before going to church. They often provide me with food for prayer!

This past Sunday, my favorite(!) Register columnist Rekha Basu opined that it would be wrong to give Iowa high school students an opportunity to take a class on the Bible as a social studies elective.

She said that’s for only religious schools, not public schools.

I don’t know where Basu was in the early 1950s, probably not even born yet, or maybe still in her native India, but the very secular University of Iowa offered freshmen who scored high enough on an entrance test to avoid taking a basic English course that their high school had failed to provide, a choice of electives. I chose a literature course. Some of my Protestant friends, better versed (no pun intended) in the Bible than this Catholic kid, took the course called The Greeks and the Bible. It dealt with the effects Greek philosophers and the Bible as an historic source had on American thought. It was said to be a snap (that is, easy) course, and it was for most.

Basu says she doesn’t think her “appreciation” of American values has suffered as the result of not having been taught about the Bible. As I continue to read her values, I might beg to differ.

Someone once asked me why I continue to read her column if I seem to always disagree. I suppose it’s the same reason some of you read this column! And it’s somewhat like passing the scene of a bad accident on the highway. You know you shouldn’t look, but you can’t help it.

Part II of Sunday morning was a signed editorial by Lynda Waddington of the Gazette. In it she suggests the solution to medical care and medical costs might be to close most rural hospitals.

There are 82 Critical Access Hospitals in Iowa. Waukon’s is one of them. They receive some special consideration for providing certain levels of care. That’s not even one per county, by the way. She says that’s too many, and that the expenses of providing some of those required services drives up costs, when in reality all they should be is centers for emergency care.

I suppose if you live in a large city which has a choice of many hospitals within a short drive over paved and traffic controlled streets, that’s an easy choice. For Waukon, the hospital and its associated Mayo and Gundersen clinics, you are talking about the largest non-governmental work force in the area.

Waddington’s solution? Try it and see if it works. What have you got to lose? Your hospital and most of your medical professionals, that’s all.