Some of you might be wondering why I've been around only sporadically for the past couple of months.  Observant readers have undoubtedly noticed that no small number of my posts lately have had identical timestamps - sometimes five or six posts all in one day that went live days or weeks apart.  You may also have noticed that some of my posts are "gimme" posts, which is to say that they're just photograph dumps from months in the past, with few captions and little (usually no) attempts made to clean them up.  Friends near and far have noticed that I've been …

On Friday, US President Barack Obama transmitted instructions to his secretary of Health and Human Services to draft rules requiring that all hospitals which receive Medicaid or Medicare payments allow patients to designate who may make healthcare-related decisions regardless of sex, gender, or sexual orientation. For many years, same-sex couples have been at a distinct disadvantage here - it was not uncommon for the partner of a patient who had been designated someone's caretaker to be completely disregarded in favor of the patient's family. It is sadly not unheard of for the orders given by the patient's family to be completely …