john campbell library

by John

Commentary by John Campbell

by John

  • MED MAL PRACTICE

         It’s election time, and other than the Supreme Court antics, the for and against Obamacare is alive once more with the left still believing that everybody is covered with health insurance and the right knowing that is not true. I have heard from my liberal friends about their love for the Affordable Care Act, but all who love it are insured by their employer and have never had to go to the website to get insurance. They have not seen those who did and can’t use it because of the high deductibles. So let’s leave this for a while, and let me tell you a story about our modern healthcare system.

  • WHY ABBA

         I listen to very little music now because radio stations are not playing anything that I like. Do not like rap and do not think it is music rather ugly poetry with a drum beat. I guess that if you recited a Shakespeare sonnet real fast and played the drums at the same time it would be classified as music. I still would not like it.  I started piano lessons in the first grade, the violin in the second grade and the tuba in the sixth grade. Stayed with the tuba and received a music scholarship in my junior year by playing "Carnival of Venice" at a state contest. I did not want to be a music teacher so skipped the scholarship and went for chemistry. During my school years there was very little listening time on the radio and most of my music was classical or Church. Later I started to listen to Elvis, Doris Day and most of the bands playing in the fifties and sixties. When I bought a record it was classical, broadway or big band. I never collected the popular music of the day. My favorite classical music was the pipe organ and I had records then cds and now nothing but what I can download on my I-phone and then play them via Bluetooth in my car. I tried the satellite radio but the selections of classical were very slim and repeating what I heard in my younger days did not appeal to me. I had been tuned to music written by the masters and couldn't get used to less than that. Growing up much of the new music was actually taken from classical pieces and I used them to teach my daughters to listen to classical. In the seventies there were four songs taken from the 1812 Overture and "Stranger in Paradise" was taken from the Russian composer Borodin. I played both the classical and the broadway version to convince them that popular music and classical were much more alike than they thought. They wore out some of my LPs after that.

  • WHY THANKSGIVING

         My wife and I had a great Thanksgiving with family in central Ohio. There was food, wine, movies, football and, of course, shopping. We gave thanks for our blessings through prayer. As we drove home, I started to think about blessings and wondered if the reporter that compared Trump with Charles Manson was thankful for anything or was the reporter that went after Pres. Obama’s daughter thankful for anything. Were the NFL players who knelt during the national anthem thankful for anything since they seem to dislike the country that gave them the chance to make millions playing a game?