Cell 2 Soul: The Humane Health Care Blog

Palms and Clouds: Kauai

Mark While
Kauai, Hawaii
November 2008

Tempest over Teddy

Sudan Accuses Teacher of Islam Insult

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN (NY Times)
Published: November 27, 2007
NAIROBI, Kenya, Nov. 26 — The Sudanese police arrested a British schoolteacher and accused her of insulting Islam after she allowed her 7-year-old pupils to name a class teddy bear Muhammad, Sudanese officials said Monday.

One expects this to blow over; but it would, all the same, be ridiculous if Khartoum were not such a scary place.  Where is Khartoum's compassion for the people of Darfur? 

For full article see: Permalink   Read this article to marvel at how bizarre this planet is.  Then, if you have the inclination, read the comments on the BBC Website.  The last one is pithy: "From BBCArabic.com: My name is Mohammed. Should my parents be tried for insulting Islam?
Mohammed"

A Mantra

One should focus on this daily.

               

Do something for somebody every day for which you do not get paid.

Albert Schweitzer  (1875-1965)

Did I?  Yesterday???

An American Story

A 21 year-old college student runs the elevators at the Capitol on which the U.S.senators ride. Whenever the Senate is in session, he is on duty.  He is presently struggling with $255,000 of medical bills incurred by his mother before she died in April 2007 from an aggressive form of brain cancer at age 61.

A local hospital and its collection agency have been hounding him in an effort to collect from his mother’s estate. To pay the bills, he must sell the Maryland home where he lived with his mother.

This article highlights the problems of the uninsured, from which members of Congress are usually insulated. The leading Democratic presidential candidates say all Americans should have coverage as good as what Congress has.

This is a sad American story.  Many are left outside the health care system.  Any physician who practices here knows the crazy-quilt pastiche of insurance plans (federal, state, private, HMO etc.) just doesn't work; yet change seems too daunting.

Read this piece for a reality check. Uninsured Intrudes at the Halls of Power

Do Angels Cry?

Many books have been written about war, maybe just as many as love. “Do Angels Cry?” takes a standpoint of a learned man who witnessed the war that ravaged his country in the last decade of the 20th century. What does and what can a physician do in war? What can a 45-year-old man contribute to the defense of his homeland? When, and if at all, should the country be put before the family?

Dr. Ravi Shankar's fine review of this work can be found at: Download Angels.doc

Reunion with the Dead

"As I entered the room I was suddenly confronted with every patient who had died under my care in the 26 years I had served the community. They appeared in order, the first person I hardly knew: he died shortly after I arrived in the village as the community physician, but the last to appear had died just a month previously. I had known this vivacious young girl since her birth 18 years previously. Surely, if this were a dream, it would be the nightmare of any clinician even if the treatment of each patient had been beyond reproach..."

In Reunion with the Dead, Richard Sobel, a kibbutz doctor in the Negev, describes the unusual and discomfiting experience of walking into a room and being confronted with the photographs of all the patients who died under his care during the 26 years he was a kibbutz physician.  The full story can be accessed here: Download ReunionSobel.pdf

THE SEA OF OUR RETURN

                              SUL MARE DEL NOSTRO RITORNO

Nel castello incantato di Atlante
Vago affannato per ogni dove
Accorro al fragore dei duelli
Là sul campo dov'è l'amor mio.

Aveva i colori dell'ocra il Novembre
che ti vide partire, io giacqui
Nella branda come un infante
Da sera a mane guarda il mondo cambiare.

Andrei in fondo all'Ade per chiedere
A una madre, se avessi risposta
Ma quassù nulla è più eguale
al passato, di cui solo vedo fantasmi.

Corri, canzone, a credere in lei;
Erato o Calliope, io vi confondo
Canta tu, per mio mezzo, per lei
Sulla riva del mare che vo traversare.

For Englsih translation by author click: Download Mazzarello.pdf

By Giuseppe Paolo Mazzarello, M.D.
Bio: Dr. Mazzarello, a native of Genoa, Italy has spent his entire life there. A trained psychoanalyist, he has been in practice since 1996.   His novel 'Una vita alle porte' was published in 2004, and  'Canti per te', a collection of poems, appeared in 2005. Email:  GPM

Righteous Woman

Johtje Vos, Who Saved Wartime Jews, Dies at 97 Permalink

Johtje Vos, a Dutch woman who with her husband hid three dozen Jews in their home during World War II, shepherding them through a tunnel under the backyard and into the woods whenever the Gestapo pounded on the door, died on Oct. 10 in Saugerties, N.Y. She was 97, and had lived in Woodstock from 1951 until a year ago.

When one visits the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. there's a wall honoring these unsung heroes. This obituary of a courageous Dutch woman is worth reading.  It gives us a chance to honor Ms. Vos and her husband.  Permalink

That time of year

Sonnet 73

That time of year thou mayest in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire
Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by.
     This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
     To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

Dawn Patrol

Shay Bintliff, an intrepid wild wahine of Hawaii, popularized the term Dawn Patrol for her morning at the surf breaks.  I like to think of my morning runs in the same way.  This photo and poem are dedicated to Shay and all others who are addicted to the magic of early morning.

GOD’S GRANDEUR
GM Hopkins

THE world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell:
the soil Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs –
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.