"What the caterpillar calls the end of life, wise men call a butterfly."

Listening to the radio this morning, I realized yet again how much we are being kept in check by fear. This time it's fear of not getting one of only a handful of the needed flu shots. Democrats are saying it's Bush's fault for relying on offshore companies. Republicans are saying it's the trial laywers' fault for driving up liability insurance rates.

But for the elderly and sick it doesn't matter who is at fault - they won't get their shots this year and so they and their families will cower in fear. They will be afraid of people in public places, fear will grab their hearts every time they hear someone cough, terror will reside in the simple act of picking up someone elses pen in the supermarket.


"I have almost forgot the taste of fears.

The time has been my senses would have cool'd

To hear a night shriek, and my fell of hair

Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir

As life were in't. I have supp'd full with horrors;

Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts,

Cannot once start me."

---- Will - Macbeth