What I'm Reading: Guns and America

A few recommendations for thoughtful and intelligent information in the wake of another mass murder by a mentally ill individual with unlimited access to assault weapons.

I am biased in favor of gun control, particularly in the form of making assault weapons unavailable to civilians. It's hard to keep a truly open mind on this; I can't comprehend the mindset that assumes a genuine, personal need -- or, worse, a 'right' -- to own these types of weapons.

After all the rhetoric and the passionate pleadings and the data and the discussions, I have to ask the anti-gun control proponents one simple question: "Hey -- how's this been working out so far? Think we might try something else for awhile?"

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How research on the effects of guns in relationship to violence has been suppressed in America:

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2012/12/gun_violence_research_nra_and_congress_blocked_gun_control_studies_at_cdc.htm

How the proponents of 2nd amendment rights to bear arms are whistling in the wind:

http://www.salon.com/2012/12/17/guns_have_never_saved_us/

How American gun culture is viewed in at least one European nation:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/commentary-newton-and-the-fatal-national-identity-of-america-a-873350.html

How America could potentially limit and control guns and their access without resorting to a values-based campaign:

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/the_big_idea/2012/12/newtown_massacre_bloomberg_not_obama_knows_how_to_beat_the_nra.html

One example of a country that instituted serious gun control restrictions and the effects of that decision:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/crime/2012/12/16/gun_control_after_connecticut_shooting_could_australia_s_laws_provide_a.html

What I'm Reading

Serious stuff. Maybe because, for me, the relentless hot hell of a Texas summer brings out the gloomy. I’ll perk up in, say, late October when the temperatures drop out of the 90s. Today it’ll be 103. No rain, of course.

Highly recommended: everything published by thebrowser.com.

I read most of a special report “How to Die”. (How to face the end? Peacefully? Still fighting? With all of medicine's help? Or naturally?)

My two favorites are:

• Best Of 2011: How Doctors Die

Ken Murray | Zocalo | 4 December 2011

    "What’s unusual is not how much treatment they get compared to most Americans, but how little. For all the time they spend fending off the deaths of others, they tend to be fairly serene when faced with death themselves.”

Physicians make it clear -- even to getting it tattooed on their bodies [NO CODE]--  that they do not want to get in the way of their own deaths. Most doctors believe that well-meaning relatives cause considerable pain and harm (not to mention, expense) by insisting that everything possible be done for their loved one who is dying.

Image by Ben Cooper on Flickr

• On The Meaning Of Life

HL Mencken | Letters Of Note | 1 February 2012

                                                                                         

Mencken’s letter is not so much about death and dying but about how to live. An avowed nonbeliever, Mencken’s attitude toward death was pragmatic and … confident.

In 1931 philosopher Will Durant asked a select few about life, death, religion. Mencken's reply is memorable. "When I die I shall be content to vanish into nothingness. No show, however good, could conceivably be good for ever."

And, what’s particularly surprising to me is how uplifted I felt after reading most of the 15 essays of the series. Perhaps it’s because it’s welcome to have discussion and conversation about our deepest fear – the monsters in the dark corners shrink considerably when the light is turned upon them…  

Image by Union-Square on Flickr

The Weather

Yep. Dog Days of summer.

What I'm Making

lots and lots of pretty shiny things ...

What I'm Reading

Wildly Affordable Organic, by Linda Watson

Lose weight, save money, and save the polar bears at the same time? When you live the Wildly Affordable Organic way, it is possible! Join the movement to change the way you eat—and keep the change.

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Field Notes on Science & Nature, Ed. By Michael R. Canfield, Foreword by E.O. Wilson

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...and, to start off on the right thought ...

How to get along with people, how to deal with violence, how to adjust to losing someone you love—such questions arise in most people’s lives. They are all versions of a bigger question: How do you live?

How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer,  by Sarah Bakewell

Winner of the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography

Turns out to be one of the best books I've read in a long time. Ms. Bakewell, formerly a curator of early-printed books and currently a writer and writing teacher in London, has combined a tour through Montaigne's views on just about everything with the details of his actual, physical life.

It's important to note right off that the book and Montaigne – as the title indicates – make no attempt to proselytize how one should live. Montaigne made certain to reassure everyone that he had no answers to the big questions. In fact, while he might glimpse a fleeting truth, he staunchly maintained his belief in its ephemeral nature and in his own inability to get to the root of anything.

Bakewell places Montaigne's individual thoughts and concerns within the turmoil of his larger civic and political life in 16th-century France. The religious wars, political unrest, wealth disparity, health crises, and a fluid knowledge and artistic panoply suggest the present 21^st century, but Montaigne’s response to these external pressures is unusual for any era. Mostly, he holds firm to his Stoic philosophic roots, refuses to take a stand on anything (even for action or inaction), and makes it look deceptively easy to straddle the balance beam of moderation in all things. Not for him the armed fortress, for instance; even during plague years and times when desperate bands of outlaws roamed the countryside, Montaigne kept his gates open and the welcome mat out.

What I'm Making

After a recent rush of creative energy -- and an attendant slap-up-side-the-head of problems and disasters, things seem to be evening out. Still feeling energetic but am making myself slow down and pay the attention to detail that I know I must do. In an opulent mood, as below:

Lt Amber Irid Pocket Vase w/dichro accent, copper handle

Fractured Irid on Black

What I'm Reading

“How We Do Harm: A Doctor Breaks Ranks About Being Sick in America,” Otis Webb Brawley, M.D., with Paul Goldberg. Don’t read this one at night because if, like me, you tend to bring the last-read-of-the-day with you into sleep, this book will bring you nightmares. Brawley (“Call me Otis”), an oncologist, is chief medical and scientific officer of the American Cancer Society. He has worked longtime in Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, the largest public hospital in the U.S.

What propels you through his stories of real people in America are his anger, his humor, and his passion for giving every person the best possible care. I took away three things Brawley knows will improve those possibilities: 1. Insist that everyone in the position of giving medical care makes decisions based on the available science -- not on tradition, what-my-mentor-said, cost, or the best and newest drug pharmaceutical companies are pushing this week; 2. Make certain that methods and products of care selected will do the most good and the least harm – which sometimes means refusing to provide treatment that a patient wants but which the provider knows is inappropriate, useless, or even dangerous; 3. Eradicate the U.S. bifurcated healthcare system – one tier for the insured, another for the uninsured/or under-insured.

Brawley’s first story is of a middle-aged woman in Atlanta who, because she did not have access to screening, insurance, or good medical counsel, showed up in the Grady ER with her breast in a bag; it had fallen off her chest as her breast cancer advanced. See # 3 above.

I’m encouraged by the recent news of physicians who have publicized their concerns about unnecessary (and, sometimes harmful) medical tests; this is something Brawley would find hopeful.