Bad Medicine

patience.

In the midst of the growing national debate on health care reform, I have been a patient. I participate in two diametrically opposed health care systems. Traditional western medicine, where my appointment is cancelled and I'm charged a fee if I'm late while I frequently wait up to two hours to be seen for my appointment, and non-traditional/naturopathic healing, where I usually can just call and talk to my health care professional in person, and I often don't even need to be seen in person. I understand that both sides bring things of value to medicine. But only one of them allows me to retain my humanity.

I can't even bring myself to summarize the statistics I have in front of me regarding the state of medical care in the United States. But we all know, without the numbers or references, we all know that we pay more for a less efficient or effective system than almost any industrialized nation in the world. We also know that we're fat and getting fatter, and suffering the health repercussions. We know that our health care system is entrenched in the treatment of symptoms rather than causes, and that we are more likely to demand a prescription than suck it up and make a lifestyle change. We know that the current system values the prolonging of life far beyond the preservation of quality of life. And we all know, that even giving its failings, it's the only system we have fiscally available to us. And we still can't afford it.

So we need to go off the grid. All of us. Before our collective health and well-being goes the way of climate change, way too little, way too late. There's too much money invested in the "western system" to expect tangible and substantive changes, the ones that will make us happier and healthier, in our lifetimes. So, make the lifestyle changes you need to make to be a healthier person. Eat whole foods, that you prepare yourself. Exercise. Get massages instead of muscle relaxants, eat garlic instead of taking antibiotics. Meditate. Get a naturopath, they are true healers. Laugh. Take care of your body, it's the only vessel you're given.

A Nice Ride

spotted.

For the last few months there has been ongoing debate over a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decision to neither designate critical habitat nor develop a recovery plan for the endangered jaguar. A recent ruling by U.S. District Judge John Roll said the agency did not use the best scientific evidence available in deciding that critical habitat for the jaguar was "not prudent" because Fish and Wildlife contended that its main threat in the United States was from being hunted, not from lack of habitat.

Jaguars once roamed from the southern tip of South America north to the region surrounding the U.S.-Mexico border. Today significant numbers of jaguars are found only in remote regions of South and Central America—particularly in the Amazon basin. In fact, of the three to five jaguars believed to still spend any portion of their time within the United States, only one is considered to have the majority of its habitat in the U.S.

That cat, known as Macho B, may have been the oldest know jaguar in the world.

On March 2, the Arizona Game and Fish Department resolved the issue independent of the legal system. Macho B was captured on Feb. 18 in a snare placed by the Arizona Game and Fish Department in an area outside Tuscon. The cat, which was described in field reports as healthy and robust, was tranquilized, equipped with a radio-tracking collar, and released.

Macho B was recaptured on March 2 after wildlife personnel reportedly feared that it might be in poor health. It was transported to the Phoenix Zoo, where a veterinarian said it had irreversible kidney failure and was euthanized the same day.

The federal government has opened a criminal investigation into the capture and death of Macho B amid accusations that a biologist working for the state illegally baited a trap to attract the cat.
The tragedy in this is that we will now spend more in legal fees, press coverage, and public outrage and debate far more resources than would have been allocated to the protection of critical habitat in the first place. And all the noise and outrage in the world will do nothing to help the few remaining jaguars whose range extends into the United States. Lets hope that what we learn from this is that we can’t afford to wait, or rather, the species with whom we share our home cannot afford for us to wait. Habitat protection, hunting restrictions, and recovery plans are crucial to maintaining biodiversity and our own quality of life. Do something.

To read the endangered species act:
http://www.fws.gov/laws/lawsdigest/ESACT.html

To take action:
http://www.worldwildlife.org/
http://www.nrdc.org/
http://www.wildlifeimages.org/


References:http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/jaguar.html
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/04/02/macho-b-jaguar.html
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/2009/04/01/20090401jaguar0401.html
http://travel.mongabay.com/colombia/600/co06-1366.jpg

Now I See

grace.

I spend a lot of time chasing grace. I find the physical manifestation of grace, grace of the body, comes far more easily to me than its less tangible partner, grace of the soul. To have a graceful soul requires the exercise of love, kindness, mercy, and forgiveness to the benefit of others. It requires an uncommon generosity that often lies just outside my grasp. I am becoming increasingly convinced that our current modern way of life discourages, if not renders completely hopeless, the exercise of grace in our day to day lives. Until, that is, I'm proven wrong, most often in the small and simple gestures of good and common people. This week I am acutely aware of the grace in those around me, and the largeness of their souls. And I am thankful.

Listen:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3f-mzWy-lT0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMF_24cQqT0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJg5Op5W7yw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rfkXbVcudc

Something Called Weather Forecasting

eruption.

Last month, the Louisiana Governor, Bobby Jindal, in a sad and pathetic attempt to find something tangibly wrong with the stimulus package lambasted congressional democrats for trying to fund “something called volcano monitoring,”. Yesterday, Mt. Redoubt, near the Kenai Penisula in Alaska did a beautiful job of explaining to the poor fool exactly what volcano monitoring is and why it's needed. Even in its remote location the eruption of Redoubt, anticipated, tracked, and foretold by the geologists at the Alaska volcano observatory, has disrupted domestic and international air traffic, both rerouting and canceling flights. Had the prevailing wind direction been different, significant amounts of ash may have disrupted the communities on the peninsula, and if it were closer to a larger population center, the threat of serious damage and loss of life from mud flows would be real. Jindal's attitude is even more distressing when taken in the context of the presumed support that he and everyone else in his state has for continued funding for the National Weather Service. Even with the economy the way it is, we can't actually afford to be ignorant or knee-jerk in our allocation of funds, because, well, shit still happens.

photograph courtesy of the USGS, 2009

http://danielcima.com/Image.asp?ImageID=10095&apid=1&gpid=1&ipid=1&AKey=dgwhcn5e&imode=PaD

A Portrait of the Artist

chameleon.

The art of self portraiture has a long and varied history. It's practice is well documented primarily as a technical tool and lesser form of realism from early Chinese history before it was revitalized by the likes of Van Gogh and Frida Kahlo. Samuel Fosso, the Cameroon-born photographer, takes it a step further. Fosso creates portraits of other, often famous, people from the context of his own self portrait. To put it another way, he takes pictures of other people by taking pictures of himself. He presents himself as Nelson Mandela, Malcom X, Angela Davis. It's uncanny. A beautiful manipulation. His art takes on renewed potency when viewed in light of the current socioeconomic situation. A lot of people, by choice or not, are scrutinizing themselves and looking for a way to be reinvented as someone altogether new. Fosso's work presents us with a tangible representation of this metamorphosis and begs the question, who might you become?

sources:

http://thedreamhunter.blogspot.com/
www.cccb.org

New York Times

Friday Night Fish Fry

dam.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, in conjunction with the Bonneville Power Administration and several other federal and state agencies announced last week that they will resume "Sea Lion removal" along the Columbia River this week. To be clear, "Sea Lion removal" is not the transportation of Sea Lions to alternative habitats without dwindling sources of food or radioactive water, its just killing Sea Lions, either with a rifle if you're a good shot, or by lethal injection (if you're not). Why, you might ask, are we killing Sea Lions? The official story is because they have migrated upriver in search of food, depleting the increasingly fragile salmon population. But really, its not how much salmon they eat, it's that they won't pay $10 a pound for it. So you see, the Sea Lions have to go.

Don't get me wrong, the decreasing salmon population is distressing, both for the salmon and as an indication of the overall health of our waterways. After constructing 25 dams on the Columbia and an additional 250 more throughout the watershed, the wild salmon population has dropped from 10 million to 300,000. The last thing the salmon should have to deal with on their long and treacherous life journey is a natural predator. Besides, this policy clearly reflects an acknowledgment of the impacts of human consumption and energy generation on natural systems while restoring balance between species and promoting biodiversity.

Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out

apathy.

This week, the Nielsen media-trackers announced that the average American now watches an all-time high of 151 hours of television a month. Five hours a day. This number is up from last year, when we only watched 145 hours of television a month. This number, of course, does not include movies, anything on-line, video phones, or the eight hours a day most of us spend in front of a computer at work. This number, as frightening as it is, does not tell us the more important piece of information, total screen time. But if you work a desk job and watch your five hours a day of tv, you're already spending more than half your day, and ultimately your life, staring into a screen. As something of an understatement, we need to consider the connections between our 25% rate of obesity nationwide, the rising occurrence of diabetes, and the estimated 10 percent of the population suffering from depression at any given moment and how much screen time we get. But more than anything, we need to get up. Stand up, walk around, do your dishes, some tai chi, taxes, whatever. Life is short, participate.


References:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/TV/02/24/us.video.nielsen/index.html?iref=newssearch
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/1926814/Depression-Statistics-in-US-Households
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/02/tv-usage-grows.html