I just had dinner with Peter Yarrow, ask me anything!!! [View All]

[liberalhistorian]

My boss, an attorney, is the former law partner of our local state rep, who happens to be good friends with Peter Yarrow. Knowing that I am the ultimate, all-time, true-blue Peter Yarrow and Peter, Paul and Mary fan (I've seen them in concert three times now, and at age four was listening to their albums in my grandmother's basement, I credit their music with helping to awaken my activist side), he invited my boss and I to a private concert and dinner at a local restaurant tonight. I didn't know it was coming until my boss, who left this morning for vacation in Mexico with his wife, casually mentioned it on the phone this afternoon, then had to hold his cell phone away from his ear while I whooped and hollered and danced about the office, lol!

Folks, it was ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC!!!!! Never in my wildest dreams did I ever imagine I'd be sitting two feet away from him while he sat at a restaurant table with his guitar, singing and interacting with his small, invited audience, after sitting at the same table with him to eat dinner!!!! I'm still pinching myself to make sure it really happened, lol! I told him about the times I'd seen Peter, Paul and Mary in concert; I also told him about how I used a verse from his anti-war song The Great Mandella as one of the quotations by my senior picture for my high school yearbook, (Take your place on the Great Mandella, as it moves through your brief moment of time, win or lose now, you must choose now, and if you lose you've only wasted your life), which he got a real kick out of. He's one of the most down-to-earth, unpretentious, unassuming, sincerely friendly person I've ever met, which, given his forty-plus-year career, was really refreshing to see. I STILL can't believe it, what a great way to start the weekend!

The only sour note was arguing about the phony-baloney malpractice "crisis" with a couple of doctors who were there, and who assumed that, because I was a paralegal, I was a greedy money-grubber who worked for a greedy, grasping, money-grubbing attorney.

I loved the looks on their faces when I told them he was a real estate and business attorney who probably wouldn't have any clue at all how to handle a personal injury or malpractice case, and who barely made enough money to pay me and his overhead and that if it weren't for his title company he'd be pretty much broke, and that that was the case with an awful lot of attorneys in solo practice or small firms.

I also politely but firmly made clear that the REAL health care crisis was the total meltdown of the system, the millions of uninsured and underinsured, those lacking access to health care because of its for-profit nature, the people getting thrown in jail by hospitals using "body attachments", if they're uninsured and can't afford their treatment, the horrendous overcharging of the uninsured, the 18,000 deaths a year due to lack of insurance (which I believe is a conservative estimate), the fact that half of bankruptcy filings are due to medical bills, the fact that we don't have health care in this country, we have "wealth care", etc., etc., etc.

Then they started in with that bullshit about European and Canadian "socialist" system being a mess, people waiting years for treatment, etc., etc., and I politely but firmly rebutted that as well. I had to explain that most lawyers do not, and cannot afford to, take "frivolous" cases, that there's a lot of work and expense involved in even the simplest legal matters, etc., etc., and the doctors explained about the constant stress and strain of their jobs as well.

It really made me think about how both professions have a totally different idea of what the other involves and stereotypes and misconceptions abound on both sides, and got me wondering what could be done about it.