LFS: The Storyteller

©2015 by LeeZard This is a rant, a well-deserved rant. My younger readers – both of them – may think this piece doesn’t apply. Take it as a cautionary tale, however; sooner or later our screwed up health care system will jump up and bite you in the ass. As for my fellow Medicare inmates, read it and weep. It started simply enough on the early September day when I went to pick up a couple of prescription renewals. For years I’d enjoyed my Medicare Complete Plan through AARP and United Health Care (UHC) with great benefits and a more than reasonable premium. For a brief 18-month period, I utilized my employee benefits through Starbucks and Premera Blue Cross. That ended when I left the company in July 2015. I simply assumed my UHC plan would revert and become my primary carrier. Assumptions – always dangerous. On that day, I went to co-pay for my prescriptions and I received a whopping bill for more than $300.00! “Your insurance lapsed on August 31 st ,” the pharmacist inf...

©2014 by LeeZard I arrived in soggy Seattle February 9, 1974 to become News Director for the brand-spankin’ new KZOK-FM, “OK102-and-a-half.”  It was a hokey tag line then and it still is today. Wouldn’t you want to be more than just OK? As usual, I digress.  I left Renton, WA, just east of Seattle, on August 11, 2014, relocating to Colorado Springs, CO where, I hear, they have four seasons each year.  Garden of the Gods, a city park in Colorado Springs Has it really been 40 years?  When I arrived in Seattle I was just shy of my 27 th birthday, newly married to (I thought) the love of my life and riding the crest of success as a broadcast journalist in the nascent Progressive Rock format on the FM band (can you say Hippy Radio?). Back then you could use the words “broadcast” and "Journalist” in the same sentence with a straight face and we used the burgeoning commercial FM boom to pioneer a style of journalism heretofore unheard of on the airwaves. ...

©2013 Text & Photos by LeeZard Thursday July 25 – Denver, CO The State of Colorado actually did better than the rest of the country over the course of the recession and, according to a report from Chase/JP Morgan, its recovery is pacing that of the nation. Yet, Colorado’s unemployment in 2012 still hovered between eight and nine percent.  I looked up these figures before heading to Denver today and the State Capitol. Unfortunately my busy schedule did not allow time to interview Governor John Hickenlooper, nor did I have time to return more than 15 calls from his office (Ahem). I decided to "stakeout" the capitol's parking area for mucky-mucks with the hope of "ambushing" him. It's an old reporter's gambit.  Unfortunately  The Hickenlooper was a no-show but I was able to talk to some state employees on their way into the capitol building. Even though the state fared better than most over the course of the recession, at...

©2013 Text and Photos by LeeZard Tuesday July 23 – Superior, CO-Granby, CO The Colorado Rockies might be my favorite region in America. Maybe that’s because I’m here now but it’s always been special for me. I’ve driven through the Rockies many times; it’s always been on Interstate-70 – nice, but not like this. Today I am winding my way through the mountains on U.S. 40 twisting and turning upward to The Continental Divide at Berthoud Pass (elev. 11,307 ft.). There are spectacular views at almost every turn as the speed limit varies from 45 MPH on the safer curves down to 15 MPH on the hairpins.  I am heading for Granby, CO in Grand County, 93-miles west of Boulder. I chose Granby because it is the largest town in a county with a per capita income of $38,000 compared to Boulder County’s $52,000. And, don’t mistake “largest town” in the county with “large town;” Granby’s population today is 1,857, down from 2,080 in 2008. Winter Park, CO While only 20-...