The Generation Gasp

JIM:

"Sicko" is the title of Michael Moore's 2007 documentary about the flaws in America's health care system. My wife and I have always been blessed with good health insurance plans through our employers. Consequently, five years ago I didn't pay too much attention to Moore's film. What a difference five years can make!

JIM:

When I was a youngster, growing up in Jim Thorpe, my family always had a favorite game that got played nearly every night after dinner. Parcheesi was the hot ticket for a long time. Later, we graduated to card games: 500 Rummy, then Pinochle. Video games, of course, didn't exist.

JIM:

Maybe it's that my folks had kids relatively late in life, after the Great Depression and WWII were behind them and when they were already in their forties. Or maybe it just came naturally to me. Whatever the reason, I was a sissy when I was a kid - and the Fifties was no decade for sissies. This was the Cold War at its most frigid. Nuclear war often seemed just a push of the button away. We kids did "duck-and-cover" drills at school, while our parents priced fallout shelters.

JIM:

In last week's column, I reported on how the students I led on a study-tour of China over my university's spring break managed - within three hours of their arrival in Beijing - to have Mickey D delivered directly to their hotel rooms. Closely rivaling this passion for fast food was their penchant for shopping.