Last Sunday was the first time I ever participated in canvassing, let alone in staunch Republican country in the Appalachian mountains of Western North Carolina. Teamed with other volunteers from Knoxville, TN, we drove bright and early to Swain county to join the Democratic office in Bryson City. The town was empty as everyone was still in church. Marc, the Bryson City lead organizer welcomed us and sent us to lunch until 12:30 PM. At the briefing, we found out that Swain county was on the bleeding edge of the campaign and one of the very last areas in the country to be reached. We felt like pioneers on the frontier. Marc explained that the most frustrating for earlier volunteers was to find the addresses. As we found out later, many mailboxes are missing digits or have no names and numbers. Houses are often far and hidden from the road at the end of steep driveways with lots of potholes. We were also warned that, since no canvassing had taken place on a Sunday, we may get comments about attempting such activities on a church day. <P>Making our way to the location, focussing on programming the GPS helped push back the rising apprehension. The most difficult was indeed finding the houses, and after passing back and forth on the same road, I was very aware that my new Volvo was becoming very conspicuous. The people we managed to talk to, about 7, were polite, distant, and would not talk about politics with strangers. Some had already voted. Only one pitbull came out to sniff us and a goat halted my car uphill in a perilous pothole. After driving the same loop from both ends several times, we realized that the road had two different names, starting at each end, with apparently no distinction in the numbers. On another road, the GPS insisted that the address was on the right side of a road that run parallel to a four lane highway (no house there).<P>The most disturbing visit was to a nursing home who had a couple of residents listed. We were told by the campaign office to go to the front desk and identify ourselves first. However, the main glass door to a decent looking building opened without warning onto a long hospital-looking corridor with patients lying in their beds or sitting in wheelchairs. The center of the corridor was a community area where I expected people to be watching TV. A booming man's voice came out in a weird rhythm and before I realized it I was walking in the middle of a preaching. My volunteer partner said that it was a Pentacostal preacher, and while I stared in amazement, he found someone in a nurse's outfit who said she was only the weekend watch. It appeared that she was the only one there. <P>One resident who was lying on his side in bed was hooked to many machines and nodded with recognition when we approached him. He tried to rise up on his pillow with great effort but did not have enough strength. The room was reeking with a strong urine smell. The nurse made no attempt to help him but, to be fair, she could not have moved him by herself. The second man was not coherent. On the way back, the preacher was even more out of breath and sometimes, an English sentence was intelligible. I was agast to hear him say that "Jesus is for white people." My partner did not hear it so maybe I misunderstood.
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Does the Obama health plan contain provisions for regulating and supervising nursing homes?
