Armchair Travel
Friday, November 27, 2009
Roman Skaskiw - A Faceful of Truth
Back in ought seven, as associate editor at GoNOMAD.com, an alternative travel website, I received a story called 'A Brief Tour of the Holy Land' from a US Army officer named Roman Skaskiw.
I figured since he had served his country in Iraq and Afghanistan, he had a right to be heard. He has since served a second tour in Afghanistan.
The problem was, it was about seven times as long as all our other stories. So I made a deal with the boss to put it up off the clock, as it were. I mean, it added a whole new dimension to the website, but then, I really couldn't justify the time I wanted to spend fussing over it.
We have hundreds of great stories from all over the world, and most of them take about a half a second to put up.
But Roman's story was positively worth it for me as an editor. I could tell right away that this was the real stuff, the next Ernest Hemingway, in this respect -- the guy can't lie.
So just after posting Roman's Holy Land story, we find his Email From Afghanistan has been published by the Atlantic Monthly, probably the most prestigious literary magazine in America. I emailed him that he is exactly what America needs: a faceful of truth.
Our country is hearing a lot of patriotic palaver from scoundrels and chicken hawks, and when the day comes when the American public can hear from honest soldiers like Roman Skaskiw and Andrew Bacevich, I believe our country will be better off.
Dr. Bacevich, who served in Vietnam, lost a son in Iraq. He has some very insightful ideas about American Exceptionalism which you probably haven't heard.
Anyway, after GoNOMAD published his story about the Holy Land, Roman sent me an email saying he had story about hiking in Afghanistan.
"I'm in the army," he said. "Does that count as travel?"
"Travel's travel," I replied, and GoNOMAD became the only travel website with an article about hiking in Afghanistan. It's not much like your typical hikes because you have to wear body armour and you have to crop out all the local residents, even the tea guy, because they might be killed.
Then Roman sent us two great travel articles, climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro and canoeing in Iowa.
Now he has a superb article in the New York Times which I think every American citizen ought to read, and here's the really good part -- I have his best work yet, a story about his trip to his family's farm in the Ukraine, and I'll have it up on GoNOMAD next week.
I don't want to give away anything, because this will be a blockbuster of sorts for us, coming, as it does, in the wake of the Times article. But it's exactly what I have come to expect from Roman, and it's a privilege to present it to the public.
Roman's grandfather got tipped off that the Soviets were about to arrest him and he swept up his family, including Roman's mother, then two years old, and escaped to Poland and then the United States.
Some of the questions he raises relate to the Soviet genocide in the Ukraine. Nazi war ciminals were brought to justice. but not Soviet war ciminals.
Large historical questions like this are interwoven with a deeply personal journey to Roman's family homeland and his meetings with those who stayed behind. And there are lots of great photos.
For an editor, it's a real pleasure to work with great material. ¶ 7:28 PM 1 comments
I figured since he had served his country in Iraq and Afghanistan, he had a right to be heard. He has since served a second tour in Afghanistan.
The problem was, it was about seven times as long as all our other stories. So I made a deal with the boss to put it up off the clock, as it were. I mean, it added a whole new dimension to the website, but then, I really couldn't justify the time I wanted to spend fussing over it.
We have hundreds of great stories from all over the world, and most of them take about a half a second to put up.
But Roman's story was positively worth it for me as an editor. I could tell right away that this was the real stuff, the next Ernest Hemingway, in this respect -- the guy can't lie.
So just after posting Roman's Holy Land story, we find his Email From Afghanistan has been published by the Atlantic Monthly, probably the most prestigious literary magazine in America. I emailed him that he is exactly what America needs: a faceful of truth.
Our country is hearing a lot of patriotic palaver from scoundrels and chicken hawks, and when the day comes when the American public can hear from honest soldiers like Roman Skaskiw and Andrew Bacevich, I believe our country will be better off.
Dr. Bacevich, who served in Vietnam, lost a son in Iraq. He has some very insightful ideas about American Exceptionalism which you probably haven't heard.
Anyway, after GoNOMAD published his story about the Holy Land, Roman sent me an email saying he had story about hiking in Afghanistan.
"I'm in the army," he said. "Does that count as travel?"
"Travel's travel," I replied, and GoNOMAD became the only travel website with an article about hiking in Afghanistan. It's not much like your typical hikes because you have to wear body armour and you have to crop out all the local residents, even the tea guy, because they might be killed.
Then Roman sent us two great travel articles, climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro and canoeing in Iowa.
Now he has a superb article in the New York Times which I think every American citizen ought to read, and here's the really good part -- I have his best work yet, a story about his trip to his family's farm in the Ukraine, and I'll have it up on GoNOMAD next week.
I don't want to give away anything, because this will be a blockbuster of sorts for us, coming, as it does, in the wake of the Times article. But it's exactly what I have come to expect from Roman, and it's a privilege to present it to the public.
Roman's grandfather got tipped off that the Soviets were about to arrest him and he swept up his family, including Roman's mother, then two years old, and escaped to Poland and then the United States.
Some of the questions he raises relate to the Soviet genocide in the Ukraine. Nazi war ciminals were brought to justice. but not Soviet war ciminals.
Large historical questions like this are interwoven with a deeply personal journey to Roman's family homeland and his meetings with those who stayed behind. And there are lots of great photos.
For an editor, it's a real pleasure to work with great material. ¶ 7:28 PM 1 comments
Monday, November 23, 2009
A Field Hospital in North Africa
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I recently experienced a book collector's delight when I found a second copy of Ernie Pyle's book This is Your War. I was able to pass it on to another historian of my acquaintance who I hope will enjoy it.
Reading Cornelia Hancock's account of tending the wounded at Gettysburg, and her remark that she never felt better in her life, I was reminded of a field hospital Ernie visited many times in Algeria.
A hospital in Charlotte, North Carolina, had been transported lock, stock and barrel to Africa and set up in an oat field. Everything was in tents that could be struck and set up again in three days.
"They were like a giant medical Ringling Brothers," Ernie writes. "Everybody worked like a slave. Doctors helped dig ditches. Nurses helped unload trucks."
"One amateur electrician among the enlisted men started wiring the office tents for lights. A couple of carpenters-by-trade made themselves known, and went to work. A professional sign painter turned up among the first patients , and painted the street signs that helped to give the hospital a civilized touch."
Reading Ernie Pyle is a lot like being there, and what strikes Ernie, and the reader, is how great these people feel because they're making such a big difference for so many people.
The chief surgeon tells him, "I never go into town. I feel better out here than I've ever felt in my life. We were all prima donnas back home. We had every comfort that money could buy. We would have been shocked at the idea of living like this. But we love it. We all do. I suppose we'll be making our families live in tents when we get home."
The chief medical officer tells him, "We have only a quart of water a day to wash, shave and wash clothes in, so we don't take many baths. Maybe we don't smell so good, but when we're all in the same boat we don't notice it. And it sure feels good living out like this."
"At the far end of the hospital, behind an evil-looking barricade of barbed wire, was what Colonel [Rollin] Bauchspies called 'Cassanova Park.' Back there were a hundred and fifty soldiers with venereal disease."
"What's the barbed wire for?" Ernie asked. "They wouldn't try to get out anyhow."
"It's just to make them feel like heels," the colonel said. "There's no damned excuse for a soldier getting caught nowadays unless he just doesn't care. When he gets a venereal he's no good to his country and somebody else has to do his work. So I want him to feel ashamed, even though at the same time he does get the finest medical treatment."
. ¶ 8:29 PM 0 comments
I recently experienced a book collector's delight when I found a second copy of Ernie Pyle's book This is Your War. I was able to pass it on to another historian of my acquaintance who I hope will enjoy it.
Reading Cornelia Hancock's account of tending the wounded at Gettysburg, and her remark that she never felt better in her life, I was reminded of a field hospital Ernie visited many times in Algeria.
A hospital in Charlotte, North Carolina, had been transported lock, stock and barrel to Africa and set up in an oat field. Everything was in tents that could be struck and set up again in three days.
"They were like a giant medical Ringling Brothers," Ernie writes. "Everybody worked like a slave. Doctors helped dig ditches. Nurses helped unload trucks."
"One amateur electrician among the enlisted men started wiring the office tents for lights. A couple of carpenters-by-trade made themselves known, and went to work. A professional sign painter turned up among the first patients , and painted the street signs that helped to give the hospital a civilized touch."
Reading Ernie Pyle is a lot like being there, and what strikes Ernie, and the reader, is how great these people feel because they're making such a big difference for so many people.
The chief surgeon tells him, "I never go into town. I feel better out here than I've ever felt in my life. We were all prima donnas back home. We had every comfort that money could buy. We would have been shocked at the idea of living like this. But we love it. We all do. I suppose we'll be making our families live in tents when we get home."
The chief medical officer tells him, "We have only a quart of water a day to wash, shave and wash clothes in, so we don't take many baths. Maybe we don't smell so good, but when we're all in the same boat we don't notice it. And it sure feels good living out like this."
"At the far end of the hospital, behind an evil-looking barricade of barbed wire, was what Colonel [Rollin] Bauchspies called 'Cassanova Park.' Back there were a hundred and fifty soldiers with venereal disease."
"What's the barbed wire for?" Ernie asked. "They wouldn't try to get out anyhow."
"It's just to make them feel like heels," the colonel said. "There's no damned excuse for a soldier getting caught nowadays unless he just doesn't care. When he gets a venereal he's no good to his country and somebody else has to do his work. So I want him to feel ashamed, even though at the same time he does get the finest medical treatment."
. ¶ 8:29 PM 0 comments
Surrealistic Sculptures
My friend Anne Stewart posted a link to this site on Facebook. It has some incredibly lifelike sculptures by Ron Muek and others.
¶ 2:06 PM 1 comments
¶ 2:06 PM 1 comments
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Looking for Lincoln
We have a nice new housemate, so I'm trying to tidy up around the house and get rid of some clutter, and I tackle this pile of magazines from my mom's house, old New Yorkers where I've already read the cartoons. Maybe I could get rid of them.
I open up the first one and there's one of those great New Yorker drawings, full page, of two little kids, one white and one black, playing on their skateboards in front of the Lincoln Memorial. One of them is looking up at the statue, checking it out, possibly wondering, "Who's that guy?"
Then there's the article, "Set in Stone: Abraham Lincoln and the Politics of Memory" by Thomas Mallon. I read on a bit and find it's about a book called Looking for Lincoln: The Making of an American Icon by Philip B. Kunhardt III, Peter W. Kunhardt, and Peter W. Kunhardt, Jr.
Great! That means that not only can I not get rid of the magazine, I have to go out and buy the book. See why I never get anything done around here?
This blog is about used books -- great reads for a quarter -- but as Archie Goodwin says, "There are times when a principle should take a nap." This is a book that everyone who admires Abraham Lincoln and should go out and buy new.
It's about how our country, in an effort to patch things up with the South, went back on just about everything Lincoln ever stood for. Blog entries aren't too great for going into detail, but here's one: in 1908 one of Lincoln's friends, a bootmaker named William Donnegan, was lynched in Springfield, Illinois.
A year later Springfield held a 100th birthday party for Lincoln and no African Americans were invited. The country was yearning for reconciliation and the rights of black people seemed a small sacricifice for that great end.
The book also chronicles the career of Lincoln's son Robert, who declined to go to Ford's Theater with his parents o that fateful night because he had to study Spanish. Oddly enough, he was present at the assassinations of both Garfield and McKinley, in 1881 and 1901. How weird is that?
The Kunhardts are scholars of the first order, chips off the old block of their father (and grandfather) Philip B. Kunhardt, Jr., the editor of Life magazine for many years (and also the creator of People).
Their grandmother, Dorothy Kunhardt, was the author of Pat the Bunny, a perpetual bestseller, and an avid collector of Lincoln memorabilia, especially photographs.
¶ 8:05 PM 0 comments
Monday, November 16, 2009
The Enemy is Retreating; It's Time to Charge
I believe it's time to take over the party of Abraham Lincoln and restore it to its original principles. I believe the best thing people of conscience can do right now is to join the Republican Party.
I am an ardent supporter of President Obama, but that's because he's carrying our flag. He's carrying the flag of the very first Republican president. Need some time? He's on the money.
I don't know a single Democrat who has not at one time or another been disgusted by a party that is wedded to futility. You probably don't rememberr Eleanor Roosevelt refusing to support JFK and throwing her support to two-time loser Adlai Stevenson, but we all lived through the last expensive months of the Hillary Clinton campaign...
On top of that, a significant percentage are on the take, as you can see clearly from the health care debate.
What if we had principled opponents on the other side of the aisle instead of right-wing nut jobs? The answer is (and Charles Dickens noticed this in 1840) that the principled candidates gain no support... Why? Not enough moderate Republicans.
What if we had a wave of moderate Republicans? Especially a wave of moderate women Republicans? That would be a nightmare for Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, because they would no longer have a party organization to glorify them.
The first thing that's needed is to get moderate Republican candidates into the pipeline as school committe members and selectmen and city councilors and state reps. We should have a (chaperoned) internship programs to educate moderate Republican young people who have an interest in serving their community and their state and their country.
At this early stage, they might have to serve their internships with Democrats, but that's only because, as I said, the Democrat are carrying the flag of Lincoln.
Now the Republican strategists, if they're smarter than I think they are, might counter by running a bunch of right-wing nutjob Democrats like Joe Lieberman. But I don't think they have the resources to do that, and if they do, the Lincoln Republicans can always cross back over.
If you want to identify a moderate Republican, you need only ask one simple question: "Do you believe that dinosaurs roamed the earth for hundreds of millions of years?" A moderate Republican will answer yes.
Do you see where I'm going with this? Who's with me? The enemy is retreating in disarray. Let's fix bayonets and charge. I'm speaking here for Abraham Lincoln and Vesta Roy and Susan McLane. Let's cleanse the Augean Stables and restore the party of Lincoln to the principles of decency. ¶ 8:30 PM 0 comments
I am an ardent supporter of President Obama, but that's because he's carrying our flag. He's carrying the flag of the very first Republican president. Need some time? He's on the money.
I don't know a single Democrat who has not at one time or another been disgusted by a party that is wedded to futility. You probably don't rememberr Eleanor Roosevelt refusing to support JFK and throwing her support to two-time loser Adlai Stevenson, but we all lived through the last expensive months of the Hillary Clinton campaign...
On top of that, a significant percentage are on the take, as you can see clearly from the health care debate.
What if we had principled opponents on the other side of the aisle instead of right-wing nut jobs? The answer is (and Charles Dickens noticed this in 1840) that the principled candidates gain no support... Why? Not enough moderate Republicans.
What if we had a wave of moderate Republicans? Especially a wave of moderate women Republicans? That would be a nightmare for Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, because they would no longer have a party organization to glorify them.
The first thing that's needed is to get moderate Republican candidates into the pipeline as school committe members and selectmen and city councilors and state reps. We should have a (chaperoned) internship programs to educate moderate Republican young people who have an interest in serving their community and their state and their country.
At this early stage, they might have to serve their internships with Democrats, but that's only because, as I said, the Democrat are carrying the flag of Lincoln.
Now the Republican strategists, if they're smarter than I think they are, might counter by running a bunch of right-wing nutjob Democrats like Joe Lieberman. But I don't think they have the resources to do that, and if they do, the Lincoln Republicans can always cross back over.
If you want to identify a moderate Republican, you need only ask one simple question: "Do you believe that dinosaurs roamed the earth for hundreds of millions of years?" A moderate Republican will answer yes.
Do you see where I'm going with this? Who's with me? The enemy is retreating in disarray. Let's fix bayonets and charge. I'm speaking here for Abraham Lincoln and Vesta Roy and Susan McLane. Let's cleanse the Augean Stables and restore the party of Lincoln to the principles of decency. ¶ 8:30 PM 0 comments
Hadley History
I went to two very interesting lectures in Hadley yesterday. Hadley is just south of Sunderland, where I live, and the town recently celebrated its 350th birthday.
Part of the observance was the publication of a book called Cultivating a Past: Essays on the History of Hadley, Massachusetts, edited by Marla R. Miller, which I'm rarin' to read.
Two essay authors spoke at the Senior Center Sunday, Elizabeth Chilton, who co-authored the chapter on Hadley from 100,000 BC to 1700 AD -- quite a span! -- and Alice Nash who wrote about the multi-faceted interactions of Europeans and Native Americans.
I love reading about history and archaeology, but it's even more fun to have actual real-time conversations with historians and archaeologists. Both talks were really fascinating for an archaeology / history buff like me, and I learned a lot I never knew before.
¶ 3:12 PM 1 comments
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Moments of Delight
My daughter Sarah is just back from Oaxaca, Mexico, and I'm just tickled that she went there for GoNOMAD and had a great time. It's not exactly a free vacation, because it's work, but it's the kind of work you want.
Just talking about Sarah, I noticed this urge to shut up. It goes back to her earliest childhood. I told some other parents that Sarah liked to play happily in her crib until seven or eight or even nine o'clock in the morning. They gave me nasty looks and never liked me after that.
Then Tyra Banks picked her for her model show, and if you want people to not like you, try bragging about that for sixty seconds. Frankly, my reaction was, "God made them all. They're all beautiful."
There are lots of ancient taboos against bragging about your kids, and there's a lot of sound reasoning behind them.
I just want to make an exception for moments of delight. I think when people experience moments of delight, they should tell their fellow humans all about it so everyone can be on the lookout for them. They're easy to miss if you're not on the lookout.
And studies show people who have been delighted are less likely to commit crimes and more likely to make important contributions to society.
When Sarah was a toddler, she would toddle into my room in the morning and say, "Daddy, the darkness is over." That was a moment of delight, every time -- little apostle of the sun.
Sarah's first day in first grade, a big girl pushed her down and called her 'buttface.' We talked about it.
"Do you think she made that up herself?" I asked.
"No," she said. "I think someone did that to her." Sarah figured out that the big girl didn't have any friends, so she made friends with her. When I spoke to her teacher about it, she said it made her job a lot easier.
When she was in fourth grade she tutored second graders in reading and the parents of the second-graders said she helped their kids as much as the remedial reading teacher.
When she was thirteen, she found that Grace Metalious, in her bestseller Peyton Place, actually plagiarized several paragraphs from an earlier book, There's One in Every Town by James Aswell.
I was thinking about Sarah's year in first grade because my feelings were hurt this week by some close friends -- no sense in going into particulars. But I remember when some boys were teasing her on the bus, and we talked about it, and she went in the next day.
And they teased her and she told them that they hurt her feelings, and then she said, "I feel sorry for you because you don't have any feelings."
I wasn't there, but I gather that shut them up. Just hearing about it definitely counts as a moment of delight in my book. And now, many years later, I see that I am glad I have feelings that can be hurt, and I feel sorry for those who don't have any.
¶ 8:31 PM 2 comments
Just talking about Sarah, I noticed this urge to shut up. It goes back to her earliest childhood. I told some other parents that Sarah liked to play happily in her crib until seven or eight or even nine o'clock in the morning. They gave me nasty looks and never liked me after that.
Then Tyra Banks picked her for her model show, and if you want people to not like you, try bragging about that for sixty seconds. Frankly, my reaction was, "God made them all. They're all beautiful."
There are lots of ancient taboos against bragging about your kids, and there's a lot of sound reasoning behind them.
I just want to make an exception for moments of delight. I think when people experience moments of delight, they should tell their fellow humans all about it so everyone can be on the lookout for them. They're easy to miss if you're not on the lookout.
And studies show people who have been delighted are less likely to commit crimes and more likely to make important contributions to society.
When Sarah was a toddler, she would toddle into my room in the morning and say, "Daddy, the darkness is over." That was a moment of delight, every time -- little apostle of the sun.
Sarah's first day in first grade, a big girl pushed her down and called her 'buttface.' We talked about it.
"Do you think she made that up herself?" I asked.
"No," she said. "I think someone did that to her." Sarah figured out that the big girl didn't have any friends, so she made friends with her. When I spoke to her teacher about it, she said it made her job a lot easier.
When she was in fourth grade she tutored second graders in reading and the parents of the second-graders said she helped their kids as much as the remedial reading teacher.
When she was thirteen, she found that Grace Metalious, in her bestseller Peyton Place, actually plagiarized several paragraphs from an earlier book, There's One in Every Town by James Aswell.
I was thinking about Sarah's year in first grade because my feelings were hurt this week by some close friends -- no sense in going into particulars. But I remember when some boys were teasing her on the bus, and we talked about it, and she went in the next day.
And they teased her and she told them that they hurt her feelings, and then she said, "I feel sorry for you because you don't have any feelings."
I wasn't there, but I gather that shut them up. Just hearing about it definitely counts as a moment of delight in my book. And now, many years later, I see that I am glad I have feelings that can be hurt, and I feel sorry for those who don't have any.
Baby With Spaghetti
This photo is by Jordan Kauffman, whom I do not know. My Groton buddy Stanley Matthews posted it on Facebook.
¶ 2:16 PM 0 comments
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Cornelia Hancock's Rosy Cheeks
I'm learning a lot from Cornelia Hancock, the 23-year-old New Jersey woman who arrived at Gettysburg three days after the battle. [Letter of a Civil War Nurse] She almost didn't get there. In Baltimore her party met Dorothea Dix, superintendent of Army nurses.
"She looked the nurses over and pronounced them all suitable except me. She immediately objected to my going farther on the score of my youth and rosy cheeks... In those days it was indecorous for angels of mercy to appear otherwise than gray-haired and bespectacled."
Miss Hancock settled the issue by getting on the train, and apparently it was decided that it would be too indecorous to drag her off it by main force, especially considering there were acres and acres of dead and dying men to be attended to.
So we get a sense of who Cornelia Hancock is before she arrives, and I think that's important because then, when she describes what she sees and hears and smells, it's like you're hearing it from someone you know.
And her account -- in letters to her mother and sisters that she never intended to publish -- is exactly the kind of thing that keeps me foraging in old book bins. This book is a resource for anyone who wants to understand war and its human cost, and, for that matter, anyone who wants to find insights into the human spirit.
She tells us about heroism in its true form -- gravely wounded men urging her to tend to a comrade in greater need. And she notes that the regiments that played the most heroic part in the battle suffered the most casualties.
She finds a town denuded of food, clothing and everything else necessary to life. She sits with dying men and writes their letters home.
It's a walking tour of the battlefield at Gettysburg, one of the greatest fields of carnage in human history. When Lincoln gave his famous address there five months later, arms and legs were still sticking up out of the ground.
By the way, Dorothea Dix's concerns about Cornelia Hancock were entirely unfounded. She was as safe as she might have been at home, and there is documentary evidence to show that the wounded men of the 12th New Jersey Regiment had no objection whatsoever to her youth or her rosy cheeks.
"She looked the nurses over and pronounced them all suitable except me. She immediately objected to my going farther on the score of my youth and rosy cheeks... In those days it was indecorous for angels of mercy to appear otherwise than gray-haired and bespectacled."
Miss Hancock settled the issue by getting on the train, and apparently it was decided that it would be too indecorous to drag her off it by main force, especially considering there were acres and acres of dead and dying men to be attended to.
So we get a sense of who Cornelia Hancock is before she arrives, and I think that's important because then, when she describes what she sees and hears and smells, it's like you're hearing it from someone you know.
And her account -- in letters to her mother and sisters that she never intended to publish -- is exactly the kind of thing that keeps me foraging in old book bins. This book is a resource for anyone who wants to understand war and its human cost, and, for that matter, anyone who wants to find insights into the human spirit.
She tells us about heroism in its true form -- gravely wounded men urging her to tend to a comrade in greater need. And she notes that the regiments that played the most heroic part in the battle suffered the most casualties.
She finds a town denuded of food, clothing and everything else necessary to life. She sits with dying men and writes their letters home.
It's a walking tour of the battlefield at Gettysburg, one of the greatest fields of carnage in human history. When Lincoln gave his famous address there five months later, arms and legs were still sticking up out of the ground.
By the way, Dorothea Dix's concerns about Cornelia Hancock were entirely unfounded. She was as safe as she might have been at home, and there is documentary evidence to show that the wounded men of the 12th New Jersey Regiment had no objection whatsoever to her youth or her rosy cheeks.
Labels: cornelia hancock
¶ 6:46 PM 0 comments
Friday, November 06, 2009
Futile Care
When my mom was in the hospital in Springfield, we asked them to provide what is called "comfort care only." That means they don't do a lot of invasive tests and IVs and catheters.
A doctor came over to us and told us we were doing the right thing for Sally and he wished more families would do what we did.
A huge percentage of American health care costs are incurred in the last year of life, and much of it is what can be called "futile care" that might make life a little bit longer, but not better.
Here's what an experienced nurse has to say: "As a retired hospice nurse, I can validate the beauty and effectiveness of palliative care. Both the patient and the family get the kind of individualized support and care that makes the end of life a time of peaceful letting go in the serenity of a calm, well-supported family. As an ex-ICU nurse, I can tell you that we not only waste incredible amounts of money on futile care, we torture our dying patients."
President Obama has taken a lot of flack for even discussing the idea of palliative care. He's been accused of organizing "death squads" to decide which elderly people shall be deprived of care and left to die.
But anyone with any actual knowledge of end-of-life situations understands that prolonging life at all costs doesn't help anyone, except the people who get rich from it, and it often amounts to torturing people who just want to die in peace. ¶ 2:37 PM 3 comments
A doctor came over to us and told us we were doing the right thing for Sally and he wished more families would do what we did.
A huge percentage of American health care costs are incurred in the last year of life, and much of it is what can be called "futile care" that might make life a little bit longer, but not better.
Here's what an experienced nurse has to say: "As a retired hospice nurse, I can validate the beauty and effectiveness of palliative care. Both the patient and the family get the kind of individualized support and care that makes the end of life a time of peaceful letting go in the serenity of a calm, well-supported family. As an ex-ICU nurse, I can tell you that we not only waste incredible amounts of money on futile care, we torture our dying patients."
President Obama has taken a lot of flack for even discussing the idea of palliative care. He's been accused of organizing "death squads" to decide which elderly people shall be deprived of care and left to die.
But anyone with any actual knowledge of end-of-life situations understands that prolonging life at all costs doesn't help anyone, except the people who get rich from it, and it often amounts to torturing people who just want to die in peace. ¶ 2:37 PM 3 comments
Thursday, November 05, 2009
Spartacus and the Essene
He stuck up for the lowly and the oppressed. He preached a new kingdom of peace and justice. He was crucified but he lives on. You know who I mean... Spartacus!
I'm reading The Gladiators by Arthur Koestler and I'm getting caught up in his rendition of this famous story. He has Spartacus, early on, meet up with an Essene prophet who ended up in Rome. That was the group that wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls and plagiarized the words of Jesus before He was even born. Shocking!
The Essene traces a long line of people who have spoken up for truth and justice for the little guy, starting with King Agis of Sparta, who was hanged, and a bunch of others through the ages who met a variety of grim fates. I wonder why that is? Cui bono -- who benefits?
The Essene prophesies as follows: "Neither their silver nor their gold shall save them in the day of the wrath of Y...., but the whole land shall be devoured by the fire of his jealousy.Woe unto them that join house to house and field to field till there is no room, till they possess alone the lands of the earth.
"Woe unto them that decree false laws and take the right from the poor of the people so that these poor may be their prey. Woe for your heads [magistrates] judge for reward, your priests teach for hire, and your seers prophesy for money.
"For he is come, sent by Y...., He who is anointed by the Lord to mend broken hearts, to bring light to the eyes of the blind, to free the oppressed."
"I never heard of a God that curses like that Y.... of yours," says Spartacus.
"Prophecies do not count," says the Essene. "He who receives them counts."
"He who receives them will see evil days," says Spartacus.
"Aye," says the Essene. "He'll have a pretty rotten time."
Made me think of Lincoln and Gandhi and Martin Luther King and Benigno Acquino.
This is turning into a heck of a book.
¶ 7:51 PM 0 comments
Monday, November 02, 2009
The Will of God Almighty
I have written before about my friend Daoud Nassar, the founder of the Tent of Nations near Bethlehem, a center for international peace and understanding.
The Israelis have been trying to seize Daoud's land, despite the fact that his grandfather paid taxes to the Ottoman Turks and has the receipts to prove it. Still he has to pay thousands of dollars to go to court in Israel to prove that his family owns the land.
Saturday 25 soldiers from the Israeli Defense Forces broke through the gates on Daoud's farm and rousted out his family and 45 international visitors at gunpoint. (Daoud was not there at the time.)
Kay Plitt of the Friends of Tent of Nations, North America writes, "The family members who were present were made to leave the house and stand outside in the cold and dark. There were 45 volunteers and international visitors sleeping in the tents, including a group of young German women ages 18-21 and their group leader.
"The group leader was lead outside and held at gunpoint as the soldiers went through the house and the compound searching for who knows what! This took a couple of hours, and was, of course, a terrifying experience - which it was intended to be."
One particular focus of the soldiers' frustration was a large rock inscibed with the words "We refuse to be enemies." They tried to efface the inscription, but were unsuccessful, so they rolled the rock into a crevasse.
I read in the Bible that the Israeli army is doing the will of Almighty God, but it does make one curious why Almighty God would be annoyed by a rock with some writing on it. ¶ 2:35 PM 2 comments
The Israelis have been trying to seize Daoud's land, despite the fact that his grandfather paid taxes to the Ottoman Turks and has the receipts to prove it. Still he has to pay thousands of dollars to go to court in Israel to prove that his family owns the land.
Saturday 25 soldiers from the Israeli Defense Forces broke through the gates on Daoud's farm and rousted out his family and 45 international visitors at gunpoint. (Daoud was not there at the time.)
Kay Plitt of the Friends of Tent of Nations, North America writes, "The family members who were present were made to leave the house and stand outside in the cold and dark. There were 45 volunteers and international visitors sleeping in the tents, including a group of young German women ages 18-21 and their group leader.
"The group leader was lead outside and held at gunpoint as the soldiers went through the house and the compound searching for who knows what! This took a couple of hours, and was, of course, a terrifying experience - which it was intended to be."
One particular focus of the soldiers' frustration was a large rock inscibed with the words "We refuse to be enemies." They tried to efface the inscription, but were unsuccessful, so they rolled the rock into a crevasse.
I read in the Bible that the Israeli army is doing the will of Almighty God, but it does make one curious why Almighty God would be annoyed by a rock with some writing on it. ¶ 2:35 PM 2 comments
Sunday, November 01, 2009
The Most Beautiful Road in the World
I just took a drive down what for me is the most beautiful road in the world, New Hampshire Route 153. For some it's the road to Freedom (about four miles south of Eaton) but for me it's the road to South Conway, where I have traveled for more than 50 years.
We had a wonderful memorial service for my mom in Tamworth on Saturday for all her friends in the Mt. Washington Valley. On Sunday we went to the family home in South Conway to look over and start thinking about what we're going to do with Sally's books and papers and other family stuff.
I took a kind of preliminary inventory of Sally's books and papers, found some priceless mementoes and set off down Route 153. It was a beautiful fall day with not a cloud in the sky.
I stopped to say hi to her pal Phil at the Eaton Store -- he's a big Boston College guy and she taught there -- and then drove on past the beautiful little Eaton Church, past the place that used to have the sign we always noticed that said "Rideing."
Past Round Pond where my dad and I caught a huge trout on a fish eye, and Long Pond, where I foolishly went fishing on an island barefoot and cut my foot open on a broken bottle and was rescued by a former Navy medic who dressed my foot and took me to the hospital.
Past the chain of ponds that make up Purity Springs Resort in East Madison, where many families have been going for more than forty years, a place where time has stood still.
Past a little stand in Effingham where I remember buying my daughter Sarah an ice cream cone when she was a little girl.
Then I turned onto Route 25 in Ossippee where Sarah and I collided with and killed a mother bear -- five feet tall, 350 pounds of solid muscle. Some guy stopped and helped straighten out my bumper so I could drive on, so I gave him the bear. What would I have done with it after all?
Then down Route 16 to the Ocean Job Lot discount store Sarah and I always stop at which we call Oceans Eleven, then onto Route 28 past Small World Miniatures, where they have everything for your doll house, including tiny dart boards and tiny money and even -- get this -- tiny toilets.
On down Route 28 past Chiang Kai Shek's old sumer place and the the WWII museum with the tank busting through the brick wall, past the giant pet cemetery in Alton Bay to the Epsom Circle where the clever Indian guy patched our tire, to Concord, where I worked in the State House...
You build up a lot of memories over 50 years and I was taking them in for maybe the last time. I didn't feel like taking pictures. I believe I can remember them well enough. ¶ 4:35 PM 2 comments
We had a wonderful memorial service for my mom in Tamworth on Saturday for all her friends in the Mt. Washington Valley. On Sunday we went to the family home in South Conway to look over and start thinking about what we're going to do with Sally's books and papers and other family stuff.
I took a kind of preliminary inventory of Sally's books and papers, found some priceless mementoes and set off down Route 153. It was a beautiful fall day with not a cloud in the sky.
I stopped to say hi to her pal Phil at the Eaton Store -- he's a big Boston College guy and she taught there -- and then drove on past the beautiful little Eaton Church, past the place that used to have the sign we always noticed that said "Rideing."
Past Round Pond where my dad and I caught a huge trout on a fish eye, and Long Pond, where I foolishly went fishing on an island barefoot and cut my foot open on a broken bottle and was rescued by a former Navy medic who dressed my foot and took me to the hospital.
Past the chain of ponds that make up Purity Springs Resort in East Madison, where many families have been going for more than forty years, a place where time has stood still.
Past a little stand in Effingham where I remember buying my daughter Sarah an ice cream cone when she was a little girl.
Then I turned onto Route 25 in Ossippee where Sarah and I collided with and killed a mother bear -- five feet tall, 350 pounds of solid muscle. Some guy stopped and helped straighten out my bumper so I could drive on, so I gave him the bear. What would I have done with it after all?
Then down Route 16 to the Ocean Job Lot discount store Sarah and I always stop at which we call Oceans Eleven, then onto Route 28 past Small World Miniatures, where they have everything for your doll house, including tiny dart boards and tiny money and even -- get this -- tiny toilets.
On down Route 28 past Chiang Kai Shek's old sumer place and the the WWII museum with the tank busting through the brick wall, past the giant pet cemetery in Alton Bay to the Epsom Circle where the clever Indian guy patched our tire, to Concord, where I worked in the State House...
You build up a lot of memories over 50 years and I was taking them in for maybe the last time. I didn't feel like taking pictures. I believe I can remember them well enough. ¶ 4:35 PM 2 comments
