Monday, September 12, 2005

new orleans

yo i am on the end of my neurology stint. thinking like everybody else in the country probably about New Orleans and Sept 11th. seems like with internship you sink into a ahistorical, timeless warp where the news ceases to exist. only the patient in front of you and whether she will improve or get worse and running the list on your patients and figuring out what needs to get done for them before you leave on your 30th hour and what will get you out by that 30th hour. i guess it makes sense that the sick's world shrink considerably to self preservation and taking care of them there is a tendency to move in that direction.

and it is the first time i have watched television in a long time and seen images of Katrina. I just listen on the way to work and read articles on the web when i can. there is so much to say about this country and the direction it is taking. the levee broke and the market didn't figure that one out. seems like the capitalist market doesn't work when the good being provided is for one and all. you can't make a levee for just the rich. it has to protect the rich and the poor so it doesn't get done.

In the heart of uninsured Los Angeles we see health care workers tell patients if you dont like the wait, get health insurance. There is a disconnect in this country on priorties and what every person should have a right to. Where are the links between big companies not providing health insurance to their workers or the lack of any decent national health care plan?

In New Orleans, I hope there is more discussion on race and class and what the market fails to provide. and the uses of development. who should decide how New Orleans should develop. it should be the poor, the displaced, the black. not the Red Cross and FEMA and power whose priorities are skewed and usually irrelevant for the majority of the suffering.

there are so many pandits out there and the best i have heard so far is Kanye West.

Saw Kanye West say Bush doesn't care about Black people. What a gutsy truthful statement. I love that guy. His album is great too. I heard it two nights ago for the first time.

ss