Flute Flamingo and Gretna Semiotics

You have heard stories about patients in hard times paying doctors with a chicken or a head of cabbage. In my view that's a better system than the Byzantine one in the US under which we spend part of our fee to justify it to the insurance company and the insurer tries to find reasons not to pay.

In Gretna, however, we bring humor and sophistication to the exchange, not just farm produce, and cut the insurers out of the transaction. Here, for example, is payment for a comprehensive neurologic "Evaluation and Management Service," E & M 99206.xxxxx. (Don't bother with 12 pages detailing what the service entails. If any of its required parts, say "one fact each about past, family and social history," are not properly documented, the hapless doctor can go to jail.)

Flute (piccolo) Flamingo, parts contributed by other instruments

The artist is my neighbor, Max Hunsicker, a drummer and musician who has has introduced generations of school children to the joys of music and Broadway plays and shows. One of Max's many talents is fashioning a flamingo for any occasion: to advertise the annual homeowners meeting, the beginning of the school year, or to mock the "Shitauqua," a sewage pumping station that sprouted last Spring to greet drivers as they emerge in our Shangri-La out of the long tunnel of trees on route 117. 

Any resident may awaken to find a pink flamingo nailed to a tree in his yard. Ours is a pair, one playing a piano, the other a flute. When I broke my leg, a flamingo appeared on a pair of crutches. The practice has gone on for over 20 years, but the flamingos have only recently achieved three-dimensional form.

We presented another member of the musical flamingo family to Susan, another neighbor, to reward her for her fine service as our board president.