My first alarm goes off at 6:45 am. Then I start hitting snooze. The number of times I hit it depends on the hour I actually have to appear vaguely awake and professionally competent at a desk or in front of a patient. I have a bit more leeway on Tuesdays and Thursdays, where it’s strictly deskwork before striking out on housecalls than I do on Monday, Wednesday and Friday when I need to be an exam room around 8:15 or so. Clinic schedules are unforgiving and I do try to follow them. I usually only get off by more than a half hour when there’s an incredibly complicated or needy patient or patient/family system that must be dealt with then and there. If you come see me and I’m running way behind, don’t get mad at me, throw me some compassion because I’ve probably just finished up with something that was incredibly stressful and I’ve taken a moment, pulled myself together, and put on my breezy and insouciant persona for your benefit while I’m still trying to handle some very tough stuff on the inside.
Usually sometime around 7:15 or so I open my newsfeeds and wonder what fresh hell is this, at least that’s been my usual reaction for the last three months. I glean other information throughout the day and, if it’s a brain dump day, I’m usually putting these essays out around 9 or 10 pm before I put on some TV and try to unwind a bit before repeating the whole cycle next day. I type them out in about an hour and hit post without thinking too much or rewriting or anything and hope I’ve caught the zeitgeist well enough that people might be interested in reading. They started as Facebook posts. They became a blog. Now they’re becoming a Substack. I’ve migrated everything since the change of administration over to that site and new posts will appear there as well. Those of you who have been barraged with notifications during the migration, I apologize. I’m still a newbie with Substack and haven’t completely figured everything out yet. Moving forward, though, there should only be one or two notifications a week as that’s about how frequently I write these – unless I’m travelling, then they become a daily travelogue until home again, home again…
There’s a lot going on and a lot of topics I could write about flowing from current politics and the degradation of society (and if there’s something in particular you want me to take on, I am open to suggestions) but what struck me today is what’s not being talked about. What are the stories that are missing from the headlines? The Sherlock Holmes dogs that didn’t bark in the night. In some ways they’re just as fascinating as the things we are all arguing about – until we’re distracted by the next outrage headline.
Public health: There’s a lot out there about what the cuts that are being made to various agencies under the purview of Health and Human Services: the CDC has been decimated. The FDA is becoming nonfunctional. Various federal teams that ensure safety in everything from automobile traffic to consume products are being laid waste. What’s missing? Easily accessible data. During the pandemic, it was easy for someone like me to understand what was happening in real time. Federal data was collected, curated and made public. The teams that allow that to happen no longer exist. We aren’t going to really know what’s going on with morbidity and mortality at a national level going forward. Is this opaqueness deliberate? The pessimistic piece of me thinks that this is a precursor to massive cuts to the health services that keep those with chronic illness alive and that we really won’t know how these policies shorten lives or be able to trace higher mortality rates back to the source. No one has really been digging into this as far as I have been able to determine.
Immigration and Deportation: We have heard the stories about the laziness in record keeping leading to ‘administrative errors’, the unidentified bands of goons kidnapping people off the streets, and the blatant disregard of due process and constitutional rights. I have yet to see or hear a single story of a member of ICE or the Border Patrol or DOJ who has quit their job out of disgust or moral injury. This means that there is a large bureaucracy whose members are perfectly fine with these actions. (I know the leadership was purged of people who might have stood up early in the process but there hasn’t been time for a full purge of the rank and file). If they’re perfectly OK with this, what else are they perfectly OK with? We all should have been taught sometime around middle school that ‘just following orders’ is not a justification for illegal or inhumane acts. I don’t see the news cycle or rallies contributing at all to getting these individuals to see things in a different way. How does one reach them?
Assault on Academia: Harvard showed up with a backbone and flatly refused, as a private institution, to kowtow to the federal government’s funding threats or illegal weaponization of the IRS. Harvard was 310 years old when Donald Trump was born and has weathered a lot so my money is on it in this particular contretemps. I read somewhere that the reason the president is picking on the schools he’s picking on is that they are the schools to which Barron applied and was not accepted. Given his petty vindictiveness in all other areas of his life stretching back over six or seven decades, I’m inclined to think that there may be a kernel of truth in this. What I’m more interested in is what’s going on behind the scenes in other academic institutions, both public and private? How are they coordinating? What are the alumni of the high profile institutions being attacked up to? What are they doing to protect international students from blatant overreach? (Deporting students on valid visas as criminals because they have a ticket for littering). How are their ties with academic institutions in other countries being affected and what supports are being offered? American scientific research has global implications. There’s been almost no reportage on any of these subjects. I understand that these institutions are probably trying to lie low and not draw attention to themselves but when and where do you speak up and use your bully pulpit? I read today that France is working diligently to scoop up American researchers who have been negatively impacted by federal funding cuts. The US’s opening itself to German physicists, chemists and engineers as the Nazis cracked down laid the groundwork for much of our dominance in the latter half of the 20th century. We’re just going to be on the other side of the equation this time.
On the personal front, I can’t say everything’s coming up roses but things have gone remarkably well the last few days. I have made arrangements to take time off in late May and early June. I’ll be pulling a Donalbain. (There’s your Shakespearean allusion for the day – coming from the guy who’s diligently working to shape Richard II into something that will play for a modern audience in August). I nearly have all my lines down for Second Samuel and should be comfortably off book for Monday’s rehearsal. And my desperately needed nurse practitioner position for my VA housecall program is back on and has a start date of early June. Perhaps I’ll celebrate with a shot of single malt before bed.
Life, The Universe, and Everything 