Simonton Says

Chewing the fat: Handwringing about obesity

Is obesity a disease? I don’t think so.

The rhetoric around obesity got more frenzied last week after the Department of Health and Human Services announced it was changing the language in its Medicare policy. The policy now considers obesity to be an illness.

To its great credit, the department made the change in order to allow Medicare to cover some weight loss treatments. That’s a good thing, because obesity-related diseases need to be prevented. However, it has succeeded in muddying the waters in a vast linguistic swamp.

Books at the beach: A laundry list

We slipped away from the egg-yolk hotel on a hot, bright morning last week. We found a little condo at Crescent Beach near St. Augustine. Finally, relaxation at the beach could begin again. And I remembered what I had meant to tell you.

My mother used to entertain my father at the dinner table by reading out loud certain portions of my grandmother’s letters. My grandmother wrote weekly. In her letters, she never failed to list each item of clothing she had hand-washed that day. My father never failed to find this litany of teddies and slips amusing.

In the spirit of my grandmother, herewith is a laundry list of sorts, not of clothing, but of beach reading. It may not include the long, lazy novels recommended by newspaper feature writers, but it’s idiosyncratic enough for me.

The egg-yolk hotel

Sitting poolside at an unnamed St. Augustine hotel.

Nearby is what the hotel calls a tiki bar. It sells hot dogs, hamburgers and an impressive array of mixed drinks.

Next to the bar, a well-amplified guitarist, a skinny guy in a white T-shirt, plays Jimmy Buffett tunes. I wish I could say they are mellowing me, but the fact is that this hotel is not quite what I had bargained for.

On the beach in Ponte Vedra

Warning: The following posts are about a vacation (with a little politics thrown in). If you prefer other fare, come back next week.

Contrasts are illuminating.

This past weekend, my family drove down to Jacksonville. We stayed the first night in a friend's little place there. A retired sportswriter and copy editor, he had shelves of books on sports. What caught my eye, however, was his framed poster of Elvis advertising Elvis' last scheduled concert, the one he never made it to. Our friend also had a framed picture of himself in his younger days, looking rugged and charming.

Not your father's Oldsmobile

Hurtling down the interstate on the way to Florida, we passed a car that looked just like mine. It was a wide, older-model white Oldsmobile. It was filled with people, and the back end seemed to be riding low.

We slowed down to take a look.

What kind of people drive a car like this, I wondered.

Summer ripens

On June 21 we turned on our air conditioner. Why do I tell you this? Because it’s important. Each year, it signals the end of something.

Each summer when the heat descends, my family relaxes into it. We push the windows wide open, pull off some clothes and turn on the box fans. We drink iced drinks and let the sweat trickle down. We shift into a lower gear.

On those summer nights, the outdoors is tantalizing. Two streets away, the night air is awash in gardenias. Their deep, clinging scent wafts up from the tiny front yards of my neighborhood.