Movies: this summer, drawing a blank……
Streaming: The Bear on Hulu is hard to watch but has fantastic acting. I could not binge it but broke it up into digestible (no pun intended) pieces.
Line of Duty on Acorn TV is an old series but strangely compelling. We have been binging this for days.
Books: I reread The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver for the second time (first time was when it was published) and cannot recommend it enough. It was better than the first time and has aged very well. It inspired me to look at my diaries from my family’s trip to Africa. A poignant scene: a daughter in Sunday school questions why African Children would be damned to hell for lack of a local Baptist Minister to bring them the word. Her punishment for raising this point was to kneel for some hours on uncooked rice and she concludes that this experience found her no longer believing in God……..Another was a metaphor described by the family father/preacher. Sending a girl to college is like pouring water into a nice leather shoe—the water is either spilled and wasted or if left in the shoe, will ruin it forever……
I cannot recommend Fourth Best Hospital, by Sam Shem. This is a sequel to his famous House of God which was a coming of age book for doctors like me. The book is a bit preachy and misses the magic of the first book but many of his points are spot on. The electronic medical record being designed to capture charges vs provide care is a special target as is corporate owned medical systems. In that light, consider this article from the web: https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/healthcare-medicare-illness-privatization/. It identifies something I did not know, living in a county where the local Catholic hospital system provides hospice services. A majority of Hospice systems in the US are now owned by for-profit non-necessarily health care business entities. What can go wrong with that?
News Articles from the Atlantic: COLORADO’S INGENIOUS IDEA FOR SOLVING THE HOUSING CRISIS.
This article identifies the NIMBY (not in my back yard) sentiment we all have despite our thoughts on how to solve a number of problems. For example, California voted three strikes and you are out laws by referendum but tax hikes to pay for the penitentiaries to house all these criminals are extremely unpopular—and trying to build a new prison near you? Nope! Western Washington needs more commercial airport space and recent planning found three rural sites as logical places to consider building them. The outcry in all three areas was predictable and remarkable despite agreement that the growing population needs that infrastructure. Housing likewise finds my neighbors in arms over a multi family complex proposed on a nearby lakeshore. The county needs the housing, and housing to be affordable needs to be built up to scale (apartment buildings) as it is in almost every other modern country of the world—and yet there is no denying this changes a community that already exists—and is unpopular. The answer in Colorado is to take the decision away from local zoning authorities with the greater good and a long view towards managing growth in the state……
MY NEWSFEEDS have been overwhelmed with opinions and arguments regarding the current supreme court and the judgements reached prior to the end of session. A typical example: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jul/11/supreme-court-republican-justices-shame-power-thomas-alito-roberts. OR https://www.axios.com/2023/07/02/supreme-court-rulings-justices
I reviewed my notes on an article I wrote about Critical Race Theory (also in the news). A pillar of the many concepts supporting CRT is that people of color cannot rely on the law to support them in their struggle for equality. I think the historical record supports this view (consider the 14th amendment and a century of laws designed to make it divorced from reality in the day-to-day, the disenfranchisement of blacks across the nation a century after the civil war, etc). I think the broader lesson of this supreme court is that an accepted sense that the judges are dispassionate, unprejudiced, and using accepted legal logic to solve legal problems— and then come to judgement does not look credible. They are human beings. They were selected specifically for their points of view. They are evolving…….
Comments