Daily Archives: March 15, 2007

Poetry

Poetry Friday: “Letters from a Father”

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I love this poem by Mona van Duyn and was so happy to find it online, in full, at the Poets.org site. Here’s a taste:

We enjoyed your visit, it was nice of you to bring
the feeder but a terrible waste of your money
for that big bag of feed since we won’t be living
more than a few weeks long.  We can see
them good from where we sit, big ones and little ones
but you know when I farmed I used to like to hunt
and we had many a good meal from pigeons
and quail and pheasant but these birds won’t
be good for nothing and are dirty to have so near
the house.  Mother likes the redbirds though.


Read the rest. The closing line is a jewel.
 

Household

Heckuva Markup

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Hubby just forwarded me this Boing Boing post:


On the Freakonomics blog, Stephen Dubner (co-author of the wonderful Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything) digs into the pricing on generic drugs and finds that the main-street pharmacies mark up their offerings by 975 percent!

Even once you factor in the cost of buying a membership at Costco and
Sam’s Club, the price differences were astounding. Here are the prices
he found at Houston stores for 90 tablets of generic Prozac:

Walgreens: $117

Eckerd: $115

CVS: $115

Sam’s Club: $15

Costco: $12

Those aren’t typos. Walgreens charges $117 for a bottle of the same pills for which Costco charges $12.

Yowza! I’d be interested in seeing the differential for asthma medications (the only prescription meds we buy on a regular basis here).


Click through to Boing Boing to get the link to the whole post quoted above, which is quite interesting.  A commentor chimes in that Costco does not require membership for pharmacy purchases. Is that correct? I don’t shop at Costco (yet) but I have always heard good things about it (including its corporate policies). I keep meaning to go check out diaper prices there. I’ve been getting them via Amazon Grocery, and with the 15% discount for subscription service, I’m paying 18 cents a diaper. I used to get Target’s store brand for 17 cents per, but the doorstep delivery is totally worth that extra penny, in my book.

Except this time I cut it too close, and the baby is wearing the last diaper in the house, yikes! We are nibbling our nails while waiting for the doorbell to ring this morning…