"The earthquake woke me up this morning, and I ran for the exit mostly because that is what I do when I see other people running and I don't know why. In the back of my mind I wondered, as I do with earthquakes in California, why the train is operating at that time of day? This aftershock led to a few important events.
First, a Portuguese reporter got scared and jumped from the balcony of our dwelling (1 story). He was promptly surrounded by doctors and had a blanket around [his as Capone precautions?]. He might have fractured his ankle and told us that he was embarrased by the whole event. Another doctor in our group said that he should be because 1) he demonstrated his failure to excersize good judgement and 2) demonstrated his failure to fly.
Secondly, no one at the hospital would return to the buildings. One lady told me before that when she heard a door open she would shudder with terror. No, an aftershock and people would rather die than be treated in the hospital and that's what seemed to be happening.
In the morning very sick patients were exposed to too much sunlight. We worked to adapt and overcome by building outdoor tents, but it was still hot. Luckily supplies and help is picking up so we could get IV fluid to patients. One translator was moving beds and patients outdoors as the ones that couldn't run refused to stay. Though he smiled in this picture he told me he was warn out by the early morning. He was healthy."
I have not posted in a long time. Just being lazy.
I have a lot of new drawings, but have not scanned them yet. I'll post them soon. Hopefully.
This past weekend I went to get Elsa in New York, where she started a new treatment. On Sunday, before coming home, we stopped at Strand Bookstore on Broadway and 12th Street. What an amazing bookstore. The selection was mind boggling. I had been looking for the English version of Samarkand, by Amin Maalouf, but had not been able to find it anywhere. I went into a huge Barnes and Noble and it did not have it, Borders did not have it, so I did not expect Strand to have it. But they did. An excellent used version for nine bucks. Needless to say I was very happy.
I also got a book titled "How to write and sell true crime." I began to read the introduction and the author describes how he got into writing about crime because he was contacted by Pat Piscitelli, the defense lawyer who defended Anne Capute, a nurse who was accused of killing one of her patients. This was in the early 80's and I remember the story well. Pat Piscittelli was a lawyer in Brockton, MA, where I went to High School, and the nurse was accused of killing a cancer patient in a hospital in Taunton, MA. The interesting thing is that a few years after that, I was out of college already, I used to work out at the YMCA, very early in the morning, and so did Pat Piscitelli. I used to run on the treadmill and he used to cycle on the stationary bike next to me. I remember that he was very skinny and used to cycle for ever and ever. Once day, long after I stopped going to the YMCA, I read a story in the newspaper that he had died of a massive heart attack while riding that stationary bike. The story said that the heart attack was so massive that he died before hitting the ground. He was a typical case of someone who you would never expect to die of a heart attack, if you took the likelihood to be commensurate with the amount of exercise he did.
Racism is so much part of American society that we do not realize that when we qualify Henry Louis Gates' scholarship with the color of his skin, we are, in fact, expressing the latent racism that so characterizes current discourse.
One thing that I am coming around to believe though, is that racism may not have played a part, or maybe not the most prominent part, in the decision to arrest Professor Gates- stupidity did.
I recently finished reading "Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War" by Tony Horwitz. The book captured my interest, for I was curious to know more about the feelings, held by Southerners, towards the Civil War and the Confederacy. The book satisfied my curiosity and shocked me, for I never imagined that right here in America there were so many enemies of America. I think the whole effort to rid Afganistan of Talibans is misplaced. More should be done to rid America of Southern revanchists.
The extent of the ignorance, bigotry and fantasy, held by the Southerners depicted in the book was, to me, quite startling. But I never expected to find this sort of behavior in the North. Certainly not in Massachusetts. Yet, it happened just last week, in Cambridge, the supposed bastion of liberalism. Henry Lous Gates, Jr., was arrested for entering his own home.
The police was called due to a reported break in attempt, and ended up arresting Henry Louis Gates after entering his house, uninvited. It did not matter that he identified himself to the police, only that he showed some indignation at the insistent questioning after he properly identified himself.
Some friends vehemently chastised me for being cynical regarding race relations in the USA, after Barak Obama was elected president. Unfortunately, the Horvitz book and the Henry Lous Gates incident show, it is not I that is cynical, but them that are exceedingly pollyannaish.
It's been an eventful week: exasperating, sad, and funny.
Watching Elsa struggle to recover from surgery is exasperating. The strength and presence of mind it takes to overcome the pain, the drain and the tortuous onslaught of nausea, leaves anyone drained and realizing that one should really not make a fuss over the little mishaps of everyday life. Particularly disheartening are the moments of hopefulness, when she is feeling a little better, interspersed with the inevitable set back, when she is ravaged by an onslaught of nausea or pain. The only consolation is that it does get a little better every coming day.
Sadly, this past week, or so, saw the passing away of several cultural icons, beginning with Ed McMahon, then on an emotionally packed Thursday, a courageous Farrah Fawcett, whose battle with cancer was well known, passed away, followed by the news that Michael Jackson, the King of Pop, had also passed away.
Sad as the news were, I cannot help but notice that in one case, Farrah, there was no choice involved. Cancer comes for many reasons, some certainly aided by choice, such as cigarette smoking, but mostly due to unknown reasons, that no one can predict or prevent. In the case of Michael Jackson, however, it leaves me wondering what role the many plastic surgeries and other weird and unnecessary medical interventions and the abuse of prescription drugs, all things that were preventable, had on his eventual demise. Regardless, the impact Michael Jackson had on popular culture far outweighs the many detractors that, in the last few years, made him a far from exemplary figure. At the end of the day, not many people will live to be fifty and leave behind such an influential body of work, and for that I will miss the man.
But there was also some very funny stuff. In Nevada, Republican Senator John Ensign started things off by admitting to an extramarital affair and apologized, thus making things alright in the minds of the family values crowd. So easy. Later in the week, the Republican governor of South Carolina bested him by adding dereliction of duty to his extramarital affair, and then apologized, thus making things alright in the minds of the family values party.
It leaves me wondering if shenanigans is not the new righteousness.
