Grid is a sequel to a story and an essay by Tolkien: “Leaf by
Niggle” and “On Fairy-Stories.” It fuses a sci-fi story about a bio-engineered
road that takes over the world with a lit-crit essay discussing ideas about
language and perception from Tolkien, Thoreau, Kirk and Spock. Both essay and
story focus on the nature of a possible future in which human beings are
connected to the world in a way that would be explained today as technological
but in such a way that it would be impossible to determine whether the world
controls us or we control it. Two paths lead to that future: one dark in which
the mechanism of control is magic, a quest for power and domination; and one
light in which the mechanism of control is enchanted, equally present within us
and it. Which evolutionary path will we take? In the survival of the fittest,
we are what we read. Grid is a connect-the-dots game based on a deleted blog by
an anonymous author debated by a defunct message board re-created by the
reader.
The story is told by a son who needs to write a
screenplay for his father. A young man from an archetypal well-grounded
Midwestern family wants to go to film school in Hollywood to become a screenwriter. A young
woman, once a child star from an archetypal screwed-up show business family, is
trapped in a pattern of self-destructive behavior. The inevitable drunk-driving
accident, intersecting her life with his, should have landed her in jail,
wrecking her career. She put his mother in a coma. His father is a prosecuting
attorney. Instead, the prosecutor offers her a surprising lifeline—provided she
can live with the family, caring for the mother, anonymously, for one year. Two
lives intersect: one must know love as a daughter before she can be a woman and
actress; the other must lose his father’s voice before he can find his own as a
man and writer. He writes a short, sweet, sentimental story. Can he make it
into successful film?
“During the long history of the mostly failed
attempts to reform healthcare in this country, physicians have constantly
lobbied against universal healthcare coverage. Today, having seen their
individual autonomy eroded and their sacred relationship with patients
compromised, physicians are increasingly likely to favor any reform that will
allow them to concentrate more on patient care and less on the often hopeless
task of navigating a sane course through the dysfunctional current system.”
–Paul Taylor,
CEO Ozarks Community Hospital
Published in 2009, Ozarks Community Hospital CEO Paul Taylor’s “Healthcare Reform White Paper”
provides an enlightening take on health care reform and offers
new ideas on how to bring the best care to the most amount of people. To read
the complete version, click on this link: OCH Reform White
Paper.
