"I am a lesbian and it was a later-in-life recognition," Meredith Baxter told Matt Lauer this morning on "Today." “Some people would say, well, you’re living a lie and, you know, the truth is — [but] not at all. This has only been for the past seven years.”

Recently, the tabloid media has been hinting at Baxter's orientation, with Perez Hilton posting photos of Baxter with her girlfriend, contractor Nancy Locke. Probably best known for playing the liberal mother of Michael J. Fox's young Republican on "Family Ties," Baxter told Lauer, "I don't want to be worried all the time." Locke, she said, is openly gay: “I had to reach a level of comfort because it wasn’t fair to push her back into secrecy.”

Baxter, 62, has been married three times, and she told Lauer she was consistently drawn to men with whom she clashed. “It never occurred to me to think, oh, [the problem is] me,” she said. Then, seven years ago, she met a woman. “I got involved with someone I never expected to get involved with, and it was that kind of awakening,” she said. The mother of five, Baxter recalled telling her kids. “I said, ‘I think I’m gay,’ and my oldest boy said, ‘I knew.'"

"The support from my family and anyone close to me has been so immediate and unqualified. I’ve really been blessed.” Baxter goes into much more detail about her process -- including a lesbian affair 13 years ago, before her third marriage to a man -- in a long Advocate interview that was posted today. For those who are interested, here's the link.

...The resulting Tower of Babel has good news and bad news for would-be populists. The good news for them is that the dissemination of outlandish ideas is easier than ever. Where cranks were once limited to red-ribbon typewriter rants or maybe a radio show, they now have unlimited potential to get their message out. The bad news for them is that they have nothing to say. They say nothing loudly, colorfully, and sometimes even charmingly, but it still doesn't amount to a new vision for the country. If their means of communicating are dramatically enhanced, their ends are hopelessly conventional.

One day, a California woman woke up to discover her t-shirt soaked in blood. The source? Her breast. She immediately went to the emergency room, and the cause of the bleeding was eventually found to be a benign tumor. However, her health insurance denied the claim, stating that she "reasonably should have known that an emergency did not exist." Yes, copious amounts of blood flowing from your nipples is really something you want to wait out.

Not surprisingly, the woman's insurer, Blue Shield of California HMO, plans to review the case after being contacted by a local television station.

Scotland (Edinburgh)
The Grand Canyon
Napa Valley, CA

Cruise itineraries I want to do:
Southern Caribbean
Galapagos Islands
Panama Canal
Bahamas
Bermuda
Greek Islands

Posted via LiveJournal.app.

ATLANTA — Uninsured dialysis patients who could be cut off from their life-sustaining care lost a court challenge on Friday when a judge ruled that Grady Memorial Hospital could close its outpatient dialysis clinic. But the hospital gave the patients a temporary reprieve.

Ruling largely on technical grounds, a state court judge dissolved the restraining order that prevented last weekend’s scheduled closing of the clinic at Grady, the Atlanta region’s safety net hospital. The hospital, which is deeply in debt, quickly announced it would close the clinic within a week. It agreed, however, to pay for up to three months of dialysis at private clinics for the 51 patients who will be dislocated.

Grady will continue to assist the indigent patients, many of them illegal immigrants, in seeking care in their home countries or in other states where they may qualify for emergency Medicaid coverage.

Vincent D’Onofrio, Kathryn Erbe, Eric Bogosian and Julianne Nicholson all go.

Jeff Goldblum stays. Joining the cast is… Saffron Burrows? Hm, finally someone on the cast Jeff can just about look in the eye!

Kinda sad to think of the show without Goren. Remember how oddly sexy he was in the early years? I don't know if it was the actor or the character, but he hasn't really seemed happy in a long time. End of an era.

Posted via LiveJournal.app.