Posts Tagged urban
Again and again
Posted by redlinedoc in Universal HealthCare on August 13th, 2009
Why can’t we pay for health care for everyone? Why is it that is this country we have such a divide? Is it our puritanical upbringing which says work hard and you’ll get your rewards?
Sadly folks, the Puritan’s didn’t have it all that wonderfully. Life was hard but it was short. There were no antibiotics, no x-rays, no casts, no real surgery (with anesthesia). Hospitals were to be avoided as pest houses and physicians themselves at the time knew they did little for their patients. Some cures were probably worse than the diseases.
If we have modernized medicine, why can’t we modernize the way we provide care for our citizens. Why do we in the land of the brave, home of the free, live with a 3rd world medical care system. Sure people come here. The Sultan of Brunei came here and got wonderful care. M. D., a fictional name, in the north end of Hartford got turfed. Hmmm. Would the divide and provision of care have to do with money?
Indeed it does. The wheels grind exceeding slowly for those with limited funding.
Its Monday — everybody works on Monday
Posted by redlinedoc in Commentary of the times on July 8th, 2009
That line from the movie “Dave” would be poignant if it were not so sad here . Most of the people I see want to work — but there is no work. “Work was something that used to exist” — Jean Sheppard — and he was talking about the ‘Great Depression’. Alas it was neither great nor did we learn from it. But I digress.
Yesterday one of my patients arrived all smiles and cheery… yes.. he just got a job. A real job in a field (food service) he wanted to work in. There’s something radiant about someone who just got a job, a glow and an aura about them. He had been jobless for nearly 1 1/2 years, looking looking but not finding much of anything. A sniff a lead and he was overjoyed.
I hear much talk about how the poor make themselves that way. I see something quite different. I go to the stores in the neighborhood where change is made poorly and incorrectly. At first I thought this an oversight but it happens so frequently that I realized that this is a way of doing business to increase profits, since many don’t check the change. There is loansharking for food, an egregious plot on the poor where 30$ in groceries on Thursday becomes 60$ (or more) on Monday. It doesn’t need much enforcement since there really isn’t much alternative place to go. Additionally the stores carry such small cans of items (2 ravioli in a can), that the prices end up enormous for minimal nutritional value.
Work is hard to find in this poor urban area. Transportation is available but not always convenient. There are dangers, the indolent prey on the poor. There aren’t many but ripoffs and knockdowns occur regularly. Most people travel with one hand free.
My guy. All smiles. He’s looking forward to work. I think most are. Its depressing being marked ‘poor’ and then no places to work. Poor areas become poorer. Business shys away from the area. Poor areas become poorer yet. The spiral continues.
I wish that all the folks here could feel the joy … pleasure … of work, of a job.
Its Monday. Everyone SHOULD work on Monday
From My Window
Posted by redlinedoc in Commentary of the times on July 20th, 2009
Its sometimes a sad view, a view of contrasts, a view of contradictions, a view of humanity. I look out into the swirl of mad colors, through the colors of people, through the colors of spring turned summer, through the bright signs to the monochrome lives of the poor on our block.
She must be 15, maybe. She swirls out the door of the rattrap that fucntions as home slamming the door, wearing nothing to deceive the immagination. She would be pretty but she has mean and hungry eyes. They aren’t child eyes of wonder, that luster long gone. The inquisitiveness of memory is locked away. Hunger. Money. Use me. Now.
She clambers to a car, her high heels a misery to satisfy yet another customer. Hunger. Money. Use me. Now. They are off but it is not long that she appears again, on the street, long legs up and down the block this child lost grown too fast. And yet again in but a few minutes she is gone from sight. Hunger. Money. Use me. Now.
And so this long afternoon progresses. From time to time, as we all do, I look out my window at some block familiars and some I haven’t and will probably never again see. They are all hungry. All waiting. And then she appears but in new colors and new shoes, striding out with her hard child-long-gone eyes.
I see her walk down the block. A throw away child. I doubt that there is a want ad which reads “Join the fun life, you too can be a street prostitute at 15″. Yet. There she is.
Hungry. Money. Use me. Now.
Child, poor, poverty, urban, vulnerable
No Comments