Category: Current Affairs

GOOD NEWS ABOUT A VA HOSPITAL. NO, REALLY

Va2_3Since I married a doctor while he was still a med student rotating from specialty to specialty, I’ve been in plenty of hospitals.  Among them, VA hospitals.  Most of those are enormously sad; dark, often smelly and grim, especially compared to private institutions.  And we all read those terrible stories about Walter Reed Medical Center.

So, much as I love our friend, (we’ll call him Fred here) I dreaded my visit to him yesterday; dreaded entering the kind of public hospital environment I knew from our years in New York.  Boy was I wrong.  The DC VA seems to be sunny, with lots of windows, very nice people, well-informed volunteers and committed and apparently knowledgeable medical staff. Even the guards were nice.  Granted, Fred is so lovable, well into his 70s, that it would be tough to be mean, or even impatient, with him, but believe me, harried hospital staff can be, well, brusque.  Not here.

I didn’t do an expose, go examine day rooms or rehab floors, food services or ICUs but from my limited exploration, and the karma in the lobby and the halls, reception by volunteers, charge nurses, orderlies, other patients and even the doctors, it was, for a hospital, a pretty good place to be.   No big news bulletins, but when there’s so much bad news out there about how our veterans are treated, this is just a little bit of the better.

LUST FOR THE MACBOOK AIR – BUT IS IT GOOD FOR YOU?

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I usually do enormous research before buying a new laptop.  Last time I moved from Windows to a 12 inch Powerbook mostly for the 3 lb. weight at the lowest price.  I dropped the darn thing and the disk drive broke so I have to do something — but what? 

Apple has quit making Powerbooks under 5 lb and now I know why.  They want the market for the super-duper groovy looking, skinny MACBOOK AIR.   I’m totally psyched by it, although the price is really stiff – $1800 and there’s no disk drive so you need to spend another hundred on the external one.  I don’t know…  Here’s what Walt Mossberg says:

I guess I could just get a Vaio – and I don’t know if I have the bucks to do either.

When my husband brought me a surprise – an iPhone I took it back because I couldn’t insure it OR search contacts (you still can’t) and the ATT rates were so absurdly high, so I know that even with Apple, looks aren’t everything.  But the idea of a light machine with power (even without a disk drive) is so seductive.  And it’s so damn gorgeous.  What  are you thinking about this BEAUTIFUL new toy?

Now Is the Time: Martin Luther King, Neshama Carlebach and the Green Pastures Baptist Church Choir

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Every year we celebrate the birthday of
Martin Luther King in a joint concert between our synagogue and Reverend Roger
Hambrick and his New York-based  Green Pastures Baptist Church Choir.  DC and New York, white and black, Jewish and Christian… we gather to honor the holiday for
this man who meant so much to all of us.  This year, the choir was joined
by the legendary Neshama
Carlebach, daughter of the revered Sholmo Carlebach and a talent in her own
right.

It’s a strange thing really – Orthodox Jews
and Bronx Baptists dancing in the aisles singing Kivo Moed — Now is the
Time… quite remarkable.  It’s always moving – and no
less so tonight — just not much original to say about it.  Just take a
look and enjoy it for yourself.

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Audience_wide_cropped
Then stop over to this week’s boomer blogging carnival.  It’s fun to read and I am really enjoying being part of it.

FABULOUS SCRABULOUS, LAWRENCE LESSIG AND A FACEBOOK CRISIS

ScrabulousWay back a million years ago in the 1990s, the Internet mantra was "information wants to be free."  In other words, if you could figure out how to get something up on the Web, it was meant to be there.  So there was Napster – all the music you could grab.   Books, games,  news, music, images — whatever you wanted you could find. — for free.  Just like, right now, you can find the wonderful Scrabulous on Facebook.

Then attorney and — really — guru of the Information Age Lawrence   Lessig launched an entirely new way to define copyrights and began to institutionalize a new perspective on information.  Basically, since musicians, film makers, visual artists and authors were all sampling previous works within their new creations, Lessig demanded a new approach to the protection of intellectual property. 

So our beloved Interweb offers us a chance to find out anything about anything and gather any information from any source, but it also offers us real ethical problems:

For most of my life, I’ve made my living producing television news pieces and being pretty well paid for it.  Now, I’m often compensated for my work on the web – except for this blog.  I wrote and published a book, published book reviews for years and have written and published other features.  I get paid for my work; that’s how I live.  If all information were to break free — who would pay the creators?  Or, for that matter, the distributors.  Even if books are published online they need to get there; advance URLS have to be sent to reviewers, someone has to edit and proof-read.  That work, unlike information, does not want to be free.  Lessig would say it’s too late to worry about that – online access has released the information so stop complaining and find another way to monetize your work.

Fair enough.  I have heard Lessig speak about this and it’s thrilling.  The 60’s girl in me loves the anarchic idea — after all, information does want to be free.  But the analysis and creation of that information – not so much. Right now Hasbro and Mattel are trying to get a restraining order against Facebook, requiring the removal of the Facebook version of Scrabble, Scrabulous, for copyright violations.  Created by a couple of brothers in India and posted for free, it’s one of Facebook’s stars.  I’ll be devastated if the game is actually removed because it’s such a kick.  At the same time, I understand the concept of getting paid for distributing content, not just for creating it.  The Scrabulous brothers chose to built and post Scrabulous for free.  That’s their decision.  But even company employees (including the people who make Scrabble boards and design their labels and ship the game to gift shops and Toys R Us, also have to eat.  It’s as if all sides are right.  Lessig’s exploration of all this is invaluable, but there’s no answer yet – except of course in the law, which currently favors the terrestrial owners of such properties.  Josh Quittner, in his Fortune blog, has another perspective.  We’re on a journey here just as we’ve been with the rest of the wonders and miracles that are the Web.

What do you think?  It’s worth a comment here, no?   

THE STORY OF STUFF: DOES IT WORK?

Story_of_stuff_2
This film was screened in Berkeley in early December so I’m a little late (a lot late?) writing about it but it’s worth a conversation any time.  The Story of Stuff *is an extremely effective exposition on the consequences of overconsumption – and the origins of the habits that led us to our current environmental crisis.   It’s riveting.  And most of it makes horrifying sense; it’s the accumulation of so many common sense facts that has the power.

Somehow though, I wish for a bit more.  Much of the rhetoric, while the facts may be real, is intense.  I keep thinking that if the data were relayed in a way that gave us a second to breathe and absorb the most impressive**, and if the relationship between government and business were described a bit less simplistically (as almost a conspiracy,) the effect would be greater.  The problem is that all those businesses are where people work.  The first thing many will hear when we talk about villainous companies is the threat to their livelihood.  That doesn’t make the facts less true; it just means that we have to talk about the issue in ways that address these fears.  Otherwise, the film provides a great vehicle for the converted but not much firepower to reach those who may buy into the issue generally but not into the condemnation of what keeps their family alive.

I’m only dwelling on this because the film is such a great tool – and its flaws will reduce its impact.  Those passionate about the environment, especially now, when people seem so much more ready to listen, want to get everything into the conversation.  But I’m afraid, in this very good job, they’ve included elements that will prevent those least engaged from joining the battle. Take a look – what do you think?  Here’s the introductory chapter.  You can see the rest here or on You Tube in chapter elements.

*Funded by the Tides Foundation

**     For example, these:
*In the past three decades, one-third of the planet’s natural resource base have been consumed.            *In the United States, we have less than 4% of our original forests left.
*The U.S.has 5% of the world’s population but consumes 30% of the world’s resources4 and creates 30% of the world’s waste.
*The average US person now consumes twice as much as they did 50 years ago. 
*In the  US, we spend 3-4 times as many hours shopping as our counterparts in Europe do.
*Each person in the US makes 4.5 pounds of garbage a day – twice what we each made 30 years ago.

BOY DO I HAVE SMART FRIENDS: MORRA AARONS CALLED IT WHEN NO ONE ELSE DID!

Hillary_election_night_nh
Yup.  There’s lots more to say about the Hillary victory and I’m sure there will be plenty of time.  It was pretty damn amazing, and her speech, I thought, was good and more like the woman we think she really is.  I have admired for years her work with the Children’s Defense Fund, foster care advocacy and the innovation of HIPPY (Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters) in Arkansas.  She’s always been a champion of children and so I’ve seen her as a force for good.  hat’s what she needs to continue to communicate along with the rest of her message — she’s done a lot of what Obama is talking about too.

Now, before I show you how right Morra, of Women and Work, and TechPresident and Huffington Post, was, I have a very superficial but interesting question.  Remember all the crap Al Gore got for getting fashion advice from Naomi Wolf?  Well.  Last night was the first time I remember seeing Mrs. Clinton wearing other than a solid color. I only noticed because it struck me how much it had reduced the severity of her look.  (And because I never learned to dress in a way that looked good on me until I was well into my 40s so I notice these things.)  So I wondered if it was on purpose.  That does not take away from any of the substance of her candidacy or victory – it’s just an interesting question.

OK Now – listen to Morra – from January 6 in New Hampshire (the prediction is near the end):

OBAMA, CLINTON, NEW HAMPSHIRE AND PRIMARIES – 1968 AND 2008

Mccarthy_winsIn the 1968 New Hampshire primary, 40 years ago, Senator Eugene McCarthy got 42% of the vote running against Lyndon Johnson .

That was enough to be viewed as a win, since no one thought he’d get anywhere close to those numbers.  That  victory by the only national politician with the guts to run against the Vietnam War sent a shock through the Democratic Party.

McCarthy’s effort, often called “The Children’s Crusade,” was comprised largely of college students (including me) who abandoned their studies to come to New Hampshire and work to help to stop the war.  Now, as I watch Barack Obama, and see the the numbers of young people propelling his success, I know just how they feel — and what awaits them if they fail. 

Then too, win or lose, things will be tough for Senator Clinton. Obama, seen not only as a change agent but also as someone who offers the hope and optimism of a JFK, has captured the imaginations not only of young people but also of many journalists, most notorious of whom is the conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks.  That means that anyone who wrests the nomination away from him will be perceived as the breaker of young hearts, standing in the way of idealism and the candidate who brought young people fully in to the system.*

That’s exactly what happened in 1968.  The New Hampshire victory brought Robert Kennedy into the race – establishing, until his tragic death, a three-way battle – two dissidents against the juggernaut of the Democratic establishment.  Then later, Hubert Humphrey, candidate of that establishment and for years, as Vice President, public and energetic supporter of Johnson’s war, won the nomination.

To all of us, he had stolen the nomination.  Many (not me) were so bitter that they refused to vote for him.  Remember, for most of us, as for many of Obama’s young supporters, this was our first presidential campaign.  Hillary Clinton, should she prevail further down the line, will face the same broken-hearted campaigners.  Once the anti-establishment, anti-war student and Watergate hearing staffer, in the eyes of these young people she’ll be cast as the villain.

Mccarthy_poster

For evidence of how long that bitterness lasts, take a look at this quote from the American Journalism Review, from the 1968 Chicago Convention, riot and Hum prey coronation recollections of veteran Washington Post columnist  David Broder.  It’s about me – but it’s also about any young American who takes a stand and loses .

He recalls coming into the hotel lobby from the park where demonstrations were underway and spotting a woman he had first met during the Eugene McCarthy campaign in New Hampshire. “Her name was Cindy Samuels,” Broder still remembers. “She was seated on a bench crying. She had been gassed. I went over and I put my arm around her and I said: ‘Cindy. What can I do for you?’ She looked up at me with tears on her face and said: ‘Change things.’

NOTE:  As I searched for links for this post I found a David Corn piece saying much the same thing.  I want to take note of it since the ideas came to me independently but I didn’t want it to seem that I drew from his.