I actually began this a couple of weeks ago and wrote about 10,000 words when----it pains me to go on, but I must, lest you not know what sort of things can happen, except that if you have used a computer, they have happened to you any number of times. Norton 360, while exercising its authority under the Patriot Act to insure Homeland Security for my computer, simply snatched it all away and the entire production vanished, like an apparition of the winning numbers in Megamillions Lotto. Even now my computer is acting up in a way that suggests that I should end this and continue it at another time, which is what I shall do.
It is now 30 March and I must get to work on this, as I leave Tuesday for Austria, where I spend a week with friends from Budapest. I shall try to re-create what I lost in the earlier draft that got lost.
I saw a simply splendid performance of Il Trovatore at the National Theater in Szeged earlier this month, conducted by Gyudi Sandor, who just happens to be an acquaintance of mine, in addition to being the Musical Director and Principal Conductor of the Szeged Philharmonic. He is also a classmate of the specialist who attended me when I was hospitalized two years ago. This past week we also attended a performance of the Bruckner Fourth Symphony, an epic work, which is the case with virtually all Bruckner symphonies. The following day we went to a recital of the pianist, Fellegi Adam, for which we have a season ticket also. If I may boast, he is also an acquaintance. We had a very nice conversation together with a professor from Szeged University, who is a renowned physicist here and has appeared on numerous TV programs.
Anna was in Italy until this past Monday and had a very enjoyable time. If you know Anna, then you know that Travel is her surname. She will go anywhere at the drop of a word so long as there is something architectural, natural, or historical to see. The group had a true misfortune in that there was a snow delay at the airport and when they arrived to Milan there was no bus to meet them. They ended up staying at a hotel in Milan, but did not get to see Venice, which is where they would have gone had there been a bus for them at the airport in Milan. Since Anna, however, was to meet them in Venice, and would have arrived several hours before them in any event, she got to see the city (which she knows very well anyway) on her own.
I may not have mentioned it but we have had a complete revamping of the health delivery system here. The government is the primary insurer, and, like insurers everywhere, it decides what it will pay for and how much. Until now it worked like this. A hospital had, say, 300 beds. It was paid a fixed sum for maintaining those beds, whether there were patients in them or not. In addition, it was paid for services rendered to the patients who occupied those beds which had patients in them. There was, as you can see, a great incentive for the hospital to keep you in the hospital as long as possible, and to be sure, persons were admitted to the hospital and remained in the hospital for conditions for which they would not be generally admitted in the USA, nor kept for that period of time if admitted. Yes, we had DRGs here, too. But as a practical matter, the hospital collected whatever they billed for. You can imagine what the cost of health was in the national budget under such a system. Under the present system the Ministry of Health decided how many beds could be allotted to the various types of treatment conditions. This resulted in some beds being eliminated entirely---for example, there are no longer beds for the Eye Clinic in our local hospital, if you need to be admitted for eye surgery then you must be admitted to the hospital in Szeged. Others were reduced, and some others, notably those allotted to the treatment of chronic diseases, were substantially increased. Thus, the number of beds supported under the revision have actually increased in our town, but if you are a nurse in, say, oncology, you may have to switch to geriatric nursing if you want to continue working at the hospital here. This, as you can imagine, has been the source of much outrage among hospital staff, for Hungarians, unlike Americans, take a very, very dim view of having to travel any distance to go to work. Szeged is 20 minutes drive, a half hour by bus. That is nothing to those in USA, but it is psychologically equivalent to having to go to Cincinnati from Hartford to most Hungarians.
Now the good news. We did not have a revolution of the Right, as many feared, on our national holiday of March 15. There were some demonstrations, but they were nothing compared to those of last October, and in fact the demonstrators were greatly outnumbered by the police. Yesterday, while walking through the Square in our town, I noticed a woman collecting signatures for---believe it or not---a petition seeking to have an early election, a mere three years ahead of the scheduled election. Although Hodmezovasarhely is a very strong supporter of the Right and could be expected to provide the most vigorous support for this idea, I was pleased to note that not even in our town could she find many prepared to ask for something which is so blatantly unconstitutional. Really!!!! You cannot call an election every time a group, however sizable, disagrees with a government policy, or becomes dissatisfied with the government. It leads me to question whether or not Hungary is mature enough to be governed under a democratic system. I am not thrilled with Bush, but it would never occur to me to demand that there be an election next month, even though I cannot imagine that he would not be ousted from office. I am going to drop off now and finish this on..... Monday? No, that is not possible, for I have too much to do then. So I am going to end this now. Later this month a colleague of Anna will arrive to Hungary and we shall all (Anna, Pat, Sari, and I) spend a week in Hortobagy National Park and do some sightseeing in that area, after which we return to this area and do some sightseeing in our region and nearby. This will carry us into May, so you must be prepared for the May Edition to be a bit late, perhaps not before 15 May.
