Cold Spaghetti

I have a confession.

I used to be very angry.  And the more I learned, the more I found out about how sick and twisted and unfair and awful the world can be, the angrier I got.  It felt a little like Sophie, who gets so very angry that she explodes like a volcano and runs and runs and runs.  Eventually, I realized that all that anger and exploding and running wasn’t really doing me or anyone else any good.  That no matter how angry and active and upset, the world was still sick and twisted and unfair and awful.

Sophie cries to let it all out.  I become cynical and apathetic.

How can I find a middle-ground with someone who refuses to let the President of the United States, a position that should be respected regardless of your political stance, address their child in a pubic space?  Where I can start to educate an individual who enjoys their Medicare coverage on the fact that their insurance is a government plan?  And if those ridiculous conversations cannot be fixed by reason and rational thought, then what future do we have?

I’d get mad, but I don’t think it’s going to help anything.

Is it to cliche to say I’m glad to read regular folks who write about these issues (and more)?  So thank you for the reading, for bringing these posts to my attention, and for suggesting them for this space.  Thank you.

August 2009 Just Posts…

Girl Griot at If You Want Kin… with: Choking on a Wishbone; Oh I See, Profiling is Colorblind; and What’s Good for the Goose

Kitty at The Show Must Go On with: Fallen into a hospital and can’t get out

Barbara at An American in Lima with: Government extends State of Emergency; more children to die

Holly at Cold Spaghetti with: Superheros; Thoughts on Rising Tide 4; and Why does New Orleans have different moral rules of conduct?

Painted Maypole at The Painted Maypole with: What Jesus would do and 4-years ago today Katrina made landfall

Laura at Our Feet are the Same with: B is for Backpack

Julie at Using my Words with: Why Playing the Whore Card in reference to Mommybloggers is not so cool

Catherine at Their Bad Mother with: Baby Got Boob

Margaret at Mostly in the Afternoon with: Youth in Asia

Elizabeth at A Moon, as if it had been worn by a shell with: Thursday Rant

Ilina at Dirt and Noise with: Marriott is a Disgrace

Angela at The Many Hats with: How dare you take your vagina out in public!

Jen at One Plus Two with: Culture Clash

Magpie at Magpie Musings with: You want to know how much a colonoscopy costs?

Chani with Finding my way back home with: War on Women

Fireweaver at Laboratory Tested with: Foolishness is Free

Contributors to this month’s roundtable:
Alejna
Mad
Emily
Holly
Painted Maypole

(Note: please forgive formatting and font issues here… the latest WordPress upgrade destroyed something important and I haven’t had a chance to track it down.)

I’m so glad Harry Shearer gets it.

He spoke compelling at today’s Rising Tide, poignantly describing the how New Orleans lost the media battle regarding the city’s story of Katrina, the Flood, and recovery.  He’s absolutely right, of course.  Read any article about New Orleans’ recovery and go to the comments; they are ripe with misinformation, sweeping falsehoods, and complete hatred towards this city and the people within it.  The reason it’s important for the people of New Orleans to continue to tell the story is because, somehow, the facts are still not understood: that this city was destroyed in a man-made disaster, a Flood that occurred when a Federally-funded agency failed to perform as it had been designed to perform because it was never built correctly.  And I can’t believe we still have to say this, again, but FOR THE LOVE, this city is NOT below sea level!  Can we move on now, please?

(See some video of Shearer’s speech here.)

—

A last minute cancellation resulted in my being a member of the Health in New Orleans panel (versus its moderator) — along with two well-known, established mental health professionals.  One is consistently named a Top Female Achiever in the City for her well-respected work with the police mental health crisis unit; the other, a psychiatrist and medical director for a large local non-profit.  I was an out-of-left-field addition to this group… I don’t have one primary affiliation with one organization, my scientific perspective is a bit different (public health), and I’ve spent nearly 4 years volunteering and researching how clients and health promoters navigate the waters of New Orleans social systems.

I wasn’t intimidated by the other panelists, but I definitely wanted to take the conversation to other places that I didn’t feel it was going (or maybe could not go).  Instead of sticking to questions and topics that had been pre-arranged, the my fellow panelists opened the talk to the floor to do a large Q&A.   What followed were a lot of discussions about local services, which I don’t find particularly useful in this type of venue: the panel wasn’t envisioned as a laundry list of mental health services for a reason, because people tend to not remember those sorts of specifics.  (If you want to list services or achievements or whatever, bring a resource guide and pass out copies.)  Panels, I feel, should build on that sort of available information.  A more productive conversation may be one that discusses how we can supplement existing programs.  As an example: what can be done to better support families to care for their loved ones transferred to facilities an hour or more away with the closure of NOAH?   Or maybe a discussion of the sorts of a strategies we all can use to handle our own stress and mental illness outside of seeking professional providers?   In my thought, the power of a group like RT is when you excite the room — after all, these are folks who write and read and write some more — so I think it’s important to try and throw out big issues.  Let people get charged up and see what types of good actions come out.

I did try to throw in a few cents — pointing out that health is so much more than access, more than doctors and medicines.  We are resource-poor in New Orleans, without a doubt, but focusing on access and getting more providers and opening more clinics and getting more people health insurance is ultimately a disservice to the people of New Orleans.  I’m not saying these things aren’t important.  I’m saying that in the end, these are not the factors that create healthy lives.  What does create healthy people are the more difficult, more sensitive, more POLITICAL realities of our lives.  Our physical living environments (FEMA trailers, polluted properties, abandoned structures, proximity to blighted areas), our work environments (are we respected? do we have benefits and fair pay? do we feel useful?), our school environments (are our children eating healthy lunches? are they learning? do they have pride in who they are?), our streets (can we exercise without fearing for our safety? are children safe walking home?), and our neighborhoods (can we buy affordable healthy foods close to our home? is there a clinic nearby to see a doctor for non-emergencies? can we get a medicine when we need it?)  All of these factors contribute to our health: they create stress, they weigh on our hearts and minds, and when not addressed in comprehensive ways, they make us sick.

And, since the feeling of having no control over your life is a key part of mental illness, (as mentioned by a panelist) perhaps involvement in some of the issues above on a community level would help individuals find more purpose and agency in their lives.  Just a thought.

But that’s not all.

And here is where I am embarrassed.  My one note, the one thing I most wanted to discuss, maybe even the most important thing to discuss within the context of health and New Orleans, did not get mentioned.  I didn’t know where to put it in without sounding like the crazy loon in the armchair throwing off the conversation… so I waited for a question from the audience that would let me bring it up.  Unfortunately, it didn’t come.  So I didn’t say anything about the issue of race and class… and neither did anybody else.

Which is a shame because we cannot consider the scope of health challenges of any kind within our city — access, stress, mental health, behavioral concerns, nutrition, whatever health issue one can think of — without discussing race and class.  Race and class shape any health experience regardless of the location.  But in New Orleans, it is a paramount issue.  For one, before 2005, New Orleans was the only city in the country that had a defined two-tier system with separate and (un)equal medical facilities for the haves and have-nots.  What has not returned post-Flood are those services for the have-nots.  So what isn’t being said is that the reason these services aren’t here, or are being taken away, is because they are for a population that many do not want here in the first place.  The rest of us work away at putting money and resources into community clinics (whose funding is not indefinite) and outreach and signing individuals up for public services — but how effective can we be in the long run if we never take a step back and look at the big picture?

In the panel that preceded ours, John Slade mentioned that the movement to re-open Charity Hospital was gaining support because Uptown whites were having to wait longer in medical facilities for treatment and were unhappy with the current desegregation of the system.  Although flip, I think his comment speaks to an important truth… at the heart of our health concerns about access, treatment, and who gets care are long-held ideas about race and class.  Until we address those base realities and histories with honesty, I’m not sure we can build a solidly healthy community — no matter how many top-of-the-line medical facilities we open.

My silence on the issue is not because of lack of interest, thought, or evidence.  Either I’ve become so apathetic that I’ve lost the ability to hold faith in anything (a distinct possibility) or I’ve smartened up — after awhile, you just have to face the fact that the dining room table is never going to respond.

Then, this past week, we were faced with situations that necessitated medical attention. The first occurred while in Pensacola, where we visited a walk-in clinic that was part of the medical center Kate was unexpectedly born in 3 years ago; the second took us to an urgent care center favored by many in our area as one of the best around.

The differences were distinct and pronounced in every respect.

At Pensacola’s Baptist Medical Center, both Kate and I were seen by a friendly, good-natured, respectful, and competent provider who gave both of us very thorough exams with no ounce of hurry.  Kate had a chest x-ray to check out some wheezing heard in her lungs.  We had several pharmacy prescriptions filled.  The kids played in a children’s area.  And, all of the above happened within a 2-hour time frame.

Then, over the weekend, one of the kids who was staying with us at the beach tested positive for Type A influenza (aka: H1N1 flu).  The testing occurred on Sunday, with Will’s first day of school Monday, the next day.  We couldn’t send him to school until we knew that he was without flu — and in the interest of due diligence, needed to show that the rest of our family were not harboring flu as well.  Both Kate and Will had some fever on Sunday afternoon, and on Monday morning, all four of us were showing fever.

Despite pre-arrival calls to the one clinic that would see all four of us, and despite filling out all paperwork before our arrival, we waited for over an hour and a half in the open waiting area.  It was not particularly busy.  When we did see a nurse, she was secretive in her assessments (if you take a measure, you share it with the client, and you most certainly do not hesitate in reporting it), and was incomplete in her evaluation.  I had good reason to believe that some of the equipment was showing measurement error and one of the machines even broke during use.  We heard the doctor insulting us from the other side of the door.  When we finally did get seen, they did not provide the service we requested, I had to correct an inaccuracy the physician made regarding influenza, and in the end, they prescribed medicines the CDC specifically advises against for H1N1 flu treatment and prevention.  From start to finish, the whole thing took about 4 hours.  Note: we did not take the extra 2 hours it would have taken to fill the prescription.  (Buying a house is faster and involves less paperwork than filling a prescription in New Orleans.)

In short, we tried to do the right thing so that Will could be cleared to attend school.  In the process, we paid a gross amount of money, lost precious work hours, were insulted, and came away with poor treatment advice.  Such is the nature of health care in New Orleans.

Yes, without question, the health care system in the United States is incredibly broken and dysfunctional.  Our country is among the worst in the developed world in virtually every indicator of health.  Without question, it’s bad.

And in New Orleans?  Whether from lack of providers, lack of resources, lack of compassion, or apathetic frustration (all of which are factors) — it’s even worse.

—

A few months ago, I was asked to help on a survey that a local agency wanted to do regarding experience with the health system.  It was being put together last minute, by well-intended people who were driven by a need to show the dysfunctions within our medical services.  Surveys in New Orleans are incredibly difficult post-Katrina (if not impossible) because we simply do not know how many people are here, particularly within marginalized, minority populations.  Still, this organization had a group of health students coming from a respected northeastern University during their spring break, and these students wanted to “help” by doing whatever “survey” this group could concoct.  Upon investigation, I discovered that the students were under no supervision from their institution, had no IRB approvals despite the sensitive nature of the questions they were wanting to ask within high-risk groups, and (most alarming) felt no ethical conflict about any of the above.  These things would be in-excusable for work done in their own city, but in New Orleans, a place known to be low on resources, it was seen as perfectly acceptable by both these students (who, frankly, should have been trained to know better) and the local organization.  In short, the idea was that it was fine for New Orleans to accommodate lower standards of research and be accepting of unethical inquiry simply because we are resource-poor.

I withdrew from the survey and advised the organization to put the students to work finding information that was needed for an area benchmarking of services.  The students protested that it wasn’t a good enough use of their time and proceeded with the survey… which grew into a monster so unethical and alarming that I pondered reporting it to their home institution.

All people deserve ethical treatment in research, no matter how resource-poor they or their communities may be.  I do not feel that this is negotiable on any level.  What does that say about us when we decide which kind of people get respect and value in a health inquiry and which do not?

—

How we can talk about health without talking about ethics?  About what it means to be human and the ways in which our society should reflect how we define humanity?  Isn’t that the point?

I do not know how ethics have left the conversation of health care.  How, in our debate of it, we have forgotten to discuss what is right, what is the most human response.  But it isn’t there.  And in New Orleans, ethics is not only ignored but deliberately surpassed as an annoying step one can causally eliminate.  As if the people here are so desperate and pathetic that we should be thankful for any “help” we can get.

It is beneath us to compromise ourselves, no matter where our community stands in recovery, no matter where our society stands in development.

A note from alejna, co-host of the Just Posts: As Holly is off travelling, without predictable access to the internet, she’s asked me to put up her JP intro. Here’s what she sent while she was still stuck in the airport a couple of days ago.

Maybe it’s the fact that the past 24 hours have been spent in Orlando, lost among endless strip malls and cookie-cutter stucco Florida houses baking under the hot sun. Maybe it’s the fact that our flight is now yet another hour late, putting the total delay to 4 hours and meaning that our first day in Scotland is going to be a mess of driving in order to get to our night’s destination. Or maybe it’s the awful way we left New Orleans on Friday afternoon, having endured yet another rude service experience with employees who cannot be bothered to perform on the clock.

Oh, and then there’s this guy. Likely the only other American (aside from Paul and me) to be on the flight to Glasgow that is currently so very delayed. A self-important, pompous windbag who thinks the epitome of American film is The Deer Hunter.

For whatever the reason, our consumptive, crazy, sprawling world is weighing on me lately.

No, actually, maybe it’s just this dude. He is now square dancing with his pre-teen daughter, has referred to his too-cool-for-school son as “bro” twice in a single sentence, and is throwing around awfully pronounced Spanglish in flashy volleys. (We’d clear away but we’re capitalizing on an outlet for juice before reaching a foriegn island whose plugs require additional equipment for use.) Oye. THIS is what the UK gets as an American tourist? No wonder the VAT tax is so darn high for foreigners. I’d want to keep us out, too.

While Paul and I practice saying “eh?” after every sentence (is will make people think we’re Canadian, eh?) please enjoy this month’s Just Posts. Alejna is likely to have some delightful musical accompaniment for the reading and deserves a big thanks this month for finishing up the formats on this month’s list while I’m off to ponder race, nationality, environment, and social justice whilst seeing a friend get married in a Scottish castle.

Cheers to all for another roundtable and drinks ’round for all in hopes of another!

The July Just Posts:

• anvilcloud of Raindrops in the Desert with Dedicated…
• Barbara Drake of An American in Lima with Peru’s Politicians Lock Horns with Scientists, Deny Crisis as Water Shortage Looms,
  250 Children Dead of Cold in Andes: Death Toll Keeps Climbing and Cemetery Dog, Buried City of Yungay, Peru
• Emily at Wheels on the Bus with Race Matters; or, the Judge, the Professor, and the Doctor and The one in which Emily admits to making a mistake
• Hispanic Fanatic with the great american melting pot (?)
• Holly of Cold Spaghetti with What’s that Smell? and Of Two Minds
• jen at one plus two with American Me
• Jennifer of Conversion Diary with One couple’s journey to adopting HIV-positive children part 1, part 2 and part 3
• Jingle of Just Jingle with On Twitter, Blogger, Weight Watchers and Self Esteem
• Kimberly of The Gav Menagerie with When is zero not really zero? When it describes your food.
• laloca of baggage carousel 4 with stockholm syndrome
• Lawyer Mama with Pat Buchanan: You Are a Hateful Disgrace
• Leigh at Liprap’s Lament with At an antiwar march, circa late ’60’s-early ’70’s
• Rebecca of Flying Tomato Farms with Good on ya, Greenpeace!, You Think E Coli Spinach is Scary? and Lack of Information and Support has a Chilling Effect on Farmers Markets in South Dakota
• Sasha at Sasha Dichter’s Blog with Real giving conversations
• Scarlett Lion at Scarlett Lion: Liberia with Context Africa: Senegalese wrestlers captured in monochrome
• Slouching Mom of Slouching Past 40 with Anatomy of a Diseased Brain
• wrekehavoc with peace train and american girl
• XUP with The Freegans
• Zack Ford of Zack Ford Blogs with Faculty Responsible for Campus Climate, Too! (NYU School of Law), Pat Buchanon: The Epitome of Racism in Our Country and Academic Freedom: Anti-gay Opinions vs. Anti-gay Untruths

The posts of this month’s roundtable were nominated by:

Lucy
Mary
Tina
alejna
Holly

In class on Tuesday, I showed students part of a documentary film called SASA! about the interplay of violence and HIV in women’s lives in Uganda and Tanzania.  Sasa means “now” in Kiswahili (the Bantu language most of us know as Swahili) and was chosen as the name of the film to emphasize the need for knowledge building about how violence, disease, and cultural power dynamics impact women.  The organization that worked to create the film, Raising Voices, is a respected NGO working in non-violence, specifically regarding women and children. The film itself was made by The People’s Picture Company in partnership with Raising Voices.

The film follows the stories of women who have been personally impacted by violence and HIV.  Their lives illustrate the common barriers women face to health and personhood.  The issues are not particularly unique to this one place nor are they revolutionary in terms of what we already know about women, poverty, and heath — but they are still tremendously tragic.  Bride prices, cultural expectations, personal beliefs of a woman as economically dependent, social acceptance of plural marriage… when these are combined with violence and poverty, disease is not far behind.

(Quicktime 30 minute film here.)  SASA (30 minutes)

I was surprised at how much of the material discussed in the film came as a surprise to students, or at least, that they showed such great pain at the realities in the film.  I had been taking it for granted that these were things everyone knew about women in poverty: that their lives are characterized by great abuses and limitations that are unthinkable to women raised in the West.  In fact, I usually am frustrated by the over-characterization of ALL women, particularly AFRICAN WOMEN, of living these oppressed lives.  Films like this often frustrate me because I feel it gives us wealthy Westerners reason to pity women who aren’t like us, infantilizing their lives and experiences in patronizing, imperialist ways.  I’m more comfortable talking about strengths, resistance, community building, and learning.  These sort of films and stories can paints the picture that women, even women within these terrible circumstances, are completely passive — controlled by the whims of their fathers and husbands — providing no self-directed action toward any part of their lives.  In depth research into these issues shows us that women who we view as the most “oppressed” by our definitions of oppression still act in resistance in ways that we might not see or appreciate.  Those are the sorts of conversations I like to have.  Let’s talk about what works and build on it.

But this class is an overview class.  Many students within it have never been outside of the United States, least of all to a non-OECD country.  First, then, they learn of the realities of poverty.  Thus, the film.  Thus, the discussion.

It was a good class, a fine, interesting discussion.  But it left me a bit raw.  I’m not sure how to teach an introduction to the realities of global poverty without painting the “woe is me” picture.  Is there a way to tell a tragic, terrible story, showing relevant barriers and challenges without painting a picture of a passive victim and active perpetrator?  I tried my best to break up that binary dynamic, about how the limits on one equally limits and defines the other – if you define one as black, then by definition the other one is completely white, leaving no room for gray.  I tried to walk that line of breaking thought out of submission versus aggressive, masculine versus feminine, victim versus perpetrator… but who knows how far that was absorbed.

Maybe it’s just that easy to believe that men are assholes?  Or, maybe it’s easier to believe that women are passive, submissive, and silent.

Donors do like a good victim story, after all.

Still, I like this film.  I think it does a good job of showing the problems and gives focus to how the community is coming together in their own terms to deal with them.  It does an excellent job of showing the ridiculousness of the “ABC” approach and how utterly useless it is in women’s lives.  (The ABC approach is the “Abstinence, Be faithful, use Condoms” approach to HIV prevention.  You might as well tell women that drinking Kool-Aid will prevent HIV.  Actually, the chemicals in Kool-Aid are probably more effective in limiting HIV infection than ABC.  But I digress.)

It ends in a positive light, showing the impact of peer counseling and community work.  And of course it does!  Because ultimately the film needs to show interest and build compassion.  Ultimately, this is an agency that relies on donations.  It is a wonderful organization doing work I respect and admire.  The sort of place I’d love to work, actually.  When you think about it, they tread a fine line in this film: showing just enough compelling story for donors and then showing the proactive ways a good organization can be capable of improving even the most difficult of lives.

So why do we focus so much on all that terrible, victimizing stuff?  What is it that is so compelling?  Is it the same thing that makes us listen harder when the neighbors start to fight, or slow down to look at the scene of a traffic accident?  Do the realities of living in poverty provide good voyeur material?

I can’t help but feel a little frustrated.  Maybe it’s that I’m jaded and tired of the essentializing of ‘women in the developing world’.  Maybe I’m tired of seeing the same solutions for problems that seem never-ending.

In the end, I felt that putting it here might be a way to work it out.  Maybe I’m wrong and there are very surprising things to be found in this film.  Maybe I’m alone in my frustrations.  And maybe there is more we can do?

June has been a difficult month, with posts that reflect this with writing on the thoughts and life changes that come with civil unrest, national conflict, and personal loss. Two countries which we have deep personal connections, Honduras and Peru, have been immersed in violent clashes. I’m still not sure where I stand with the Honduran coup d’etat… I’m not even sure if I feel right calling it a coup. I do hope that the International community keep Honduras in it’s sights no matter how the situation continues to unfold: it is a country of beautiful, open, forgiving people, 70% of whom live in poverty. Any sanctions or separation imposed on the country due to its political situation will ultimately work to the detriment of the nation’s most vulnerable. The Big Picture, the fantastic photography site hosted at Boston.com, posted a collection of photographs of the protests.

Peru also has experienced civil unrest. For years, indigenous peoples have lived in remote areas of the Amazon rain forest with protection from development. But the country wants to use it’s natural resources, particularly it’s forests and oil reserves, to comply with agreements the government made in the US-Peruvian free trade agreement. Violence erupted at roadblocks where people gathered to protect their land from entering developers. You can read more about the conflict at Life in Peru, particularly this post.

Also, as was pointed out by another Peruvian blogger, Peru also lost one of it’s musical legends, Alicia Delgado, who was unexpectedly murdered (a true-to-life telenovela type story). In honor of Alicia (and with appropriate homage to Alejna’s musical JPs) here is Ms. Delgado:

Below are the June Just Posts. Thank you thank you thank you.

• almostidealist at One Year to Change the World with Take action for Tiananmen Square’s victims, Sexism sells, Free speech, free range and Going green for the Iranian protesters
• Barbara Drake at An American in Lima with Archbishop of Cusco to Evict More Local Restaurants
• Christine at flutter with The Luxury of Safety and an untitled post
• City Girl at Country Girl/City Girl with Oh, HELL no
• Emily at Wheels on the Bus with This is what a leader looks like, Education dollars at work,
  Questions (part one) and Rejecting Yertle
• Emily at LA Mom’s Blog with What kids need
• Erika at Be gay about it. with My, what a gayngled web we weave.
• Emmy at Los Pininos with Revised Eulogy
• girlgriot at If you want kin, you must plant kin… with Voice of the People?
• Glenna Gordon (guest posting) at Scarlett Lion: Liberia with Global Post: Miss Coco’s Liberian Barbies
• jen at one plus two with the universal backbone and guess what’s coming to dinner
• Kyla at The Journey with My child, every child
• La Gringa at La Gringa’s Blogicito, with Relative calm in Honduras, despite what you might read and Honduran views on Mel Zelaya and the current events
• laloca at baggage carousel 4 public health stuff
• Mary at The Eleventh with Fed
• meg at A Different View of a Good Life! with Prison in Belize
• Mouse at The Mouse’s Nest with The radical act of being ourselves
• papilio588 at Walk with Me with Nickelsville
• Paul Newnham at Give a damn about poverty? with Why is fighting poverty so hard? and 40 Hour Famine
• Rebecca at Flying Tomato Farms with Are you “Man Enough” for the Middle Border?
• redbird at A Gringa Diary with The Honduran coup was personal here
• Zack Ford at Zack Ford Blogs with Sorry white men (and Ann Coulter), Sotomayor is not a racist. You are.
• Chris at Formerly Fun with Oh Oh, She’s Back on Her Soapbox Again

This month’s readers:

Mad
Emily
Holly
alejna
Stacie

Be sure to head over to Alejna’s for more Just Post love and musical thought!

—

Dear Dow,

WHAT in the world DID YOU DO THIS TIME?

(From the T-P : )

The strong chemical-like odor blanketing the metro area this morning is coming from the Dow chemical plant in Hahnville, according St. Charles Parish emergency officials.

Rodney Mallett, a spokesman for the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, said the plant released the chemical ethyl acrylate.

So.  My husband is breathing ethyl acrylate as he carries out the trash?  My children are breathing ethyl acrylate as they run and huff and puff and play outside in the sun?  I am breathing ethyl acrylate as I walk to campus?

You down play it, sure.

(From same T-P : )

St. Charles Parish spokeswoman Renee Allemand Simpson said parish officials were told by Dow that a crack had developed along a seam in a tank at the plant, which released the odor at about 6:40 a.m.

Simpson said a Dow technical advisor [sic] said a blanket of foam had been sprayed over the roof of the tank, reducing the volume of leakage, and that the chemical was being pumped from the tank.

Some people may experience headaches, dizziness and vomiting, Simpson said. Two deputies were made ill by the release and were treated at St. Charles Parish Hospital, according to Sheriff’s Office Spokesman Capt. Pat Yoes.

“It’s not toxic at the levels that it’s at right now, but it is noxious,” Simpson said.

The plant has not shut down and is operating as usual, Dow spokesman Tommy Faucheux said.

Not that you have any history of downplaying chemical leaks or anything.

(Again, T-P : )

The chemical may cause toxic effects if inhaled or absorbed through skin, and it can irritate or burn the skin and eyes. The chemical is listed as a possible carcinogen by the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health. Officials, however, say the mixing of the chemical in the air has resulted in levels too low to be a health threat for those outside the immediate area of the plant.

Hahnville resident Ida Martin said her son woke her up early Tuesday after smelling the odor, but when she called the parish Emergency Operations Center, the person who answered the phone seemed to downplay the matter.

“She said it was just an odor,” Martin said.

Sorry, Dow.  BUT.  I.  DON’T.  BELIEVE.  YOU.

—

A few Just Posts ago I posted a note from our dear friend Carmen, who recently began her job with the Peace Corps in South Africa.  Earlier this week I spoke to Carmen via chat — our first “live” conversation in 6 months. We talked through some ideas, challenges, and experiences. Not necessarily all connected to her current situation, but about the characteristics of “the work” in general. The realities of rural poverty. Being aware and at times surrounded by gross inequalities. The struggle of whether a problem is local or regional or national or global… and what it means to work at each level. Many of us involved in poverty work are called to it from a deep seated mission of social justice — yet are often asked or forced to work in ways that can codify or sustain the systems that create the inequalities we would like to address. There is a lot to struggle with, personally and professionally. There is always so much need and the desire to help, to give, to serve… it can get overwhelming. I want to find ways to help her and her new home; making the world a little smaller through our connections and friendships and trust in each other just feels like the right thing to do.

Here is some exciting news!  Carmen has started a blog. Right now it’s a place of photographs and brief descriptions.  Her emails reflect the richness of her experience and the tremendous need she encounters each day in her work. I’m hoping to write more about her work on THIS blog, and link to it in THIS space… and hopefully, maybe, possibly… get some ideas, suggestions, and contributions to her work from the wonderful readers and writers who participate in the Just Post social justice round table.

As for Ga Gona Mathata?  It means no worries*.

The Just Posts Roundtable for May 2009:

• Becky at I‘m Just Sayin with Racism? Really?
• Claudia at The Bottom of Heaven with Creative Freedoms and the Not Now Book
• Erika at Be Gay About It with Fingerprints make a family and day of decision
• Girlgriot at If you want kin, you must plant kin with Roundup and Please tell me
• Her Bad Mother with Humanity I Love You
• Holly at Cold Spaghetti with You don’t want to meet the new boy in town and Pondering Fate
• jen at One Plus Two with Everyday Piscasso and school daze and at Blogher with Bird by Bird
• Julie Pippert at Using My Words with Women with Big Dogs (and infertility)
• kittenpie at Life of ‘Pie with No Less
• Matt at Matt, Liz, and Madeline with yesterday…
• Mouse at The Mouse’s Nest with A pre-Blogging for LGBT Families Day rant
• Neil at Citizen of the Month with Proposition 8 and the California Supreme Court
• Paul Newnham at Give a damn about poverty? with Fairtrade fortnight begins and What is going on in Canberra?
• Skye at Heroine Content with On Anachronisms, Sexism, and Reality
• thordora at Spin Me I Pulsate with I’m sorry, is The Mother’s Act trying to help women? My bad…
• wrekehavoc with Guilty Pleasure Monday: Goodnight Saigon Billy Joel
• Zack Ford at Zack Ford Blogs with Why the Prop 8 Decision Inhibits Equality
• Zoom at Knitnut with Warts, wars, and the language of cancer

May Readers:

de
girlgriot
jen
painted maypole
alejna
holly

Please send love to Alejna, who has great music to go along with your JP reading.

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* Well, according to Carmen: “literally it means ‘there are no problems’, but it does also mean ‘no worries.’  Setswana – along with Sepedi and Swahili, among others – are in the Bantu language family, and they all share similar sayings, made famous by a certain Disney movie.”

Rounding out the triumvirate of part-time employment I have distracting me from writing That Damn Paper (the new official title of my dissertation) is a teaching position in the School of Social Work.  Last week I lectured alone for the first time, on material new to the course and to me.  I’m one of three with teaching responsibility for these classes, which is an absolutely fabulous set-up; low stress and interesting all at the same time.

On Tuesday, the students will have an in-class simulation of a UN Global Humanitarian Forum based on a variety of readings on Human Development.  To give them a primer of what is expected, one of my colleagues sent out links to videos from last year’s UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) in Bonn.

This is the sort of stuff that gets passed around my collegial circles all the time… climate change, gazillions impacted, always the lowest on the totem that get sunk… yeah, yeah.  It buzzes around back there as we focus on whatever tiny section of the Global Health pie we’re devouring.  It’s not that we’re not interested, it’s just that well… sometimes it feels like folks in this field tire of the gore and horrors. And sometimes you get so caught up in just doing a job and just getting ahead that the senses get dulled. Passion is not something easy to sustain. Then, sometimes, an ear picks up a few words and slowly lifts the head around to attention.

The discussion of the Himalayas, and the ONE BILLION people who live on either side, is what turned my head. Because that’s right, of course. One third of our roughly 6 billion earthlings call either India or China home, so it’s right to throw those numbers out there. At least a billion people live to the north and south of the Himalayan range and rely on it’s freshwater runoff.

I know. His tongue is a bit serpent-like. I hope it didn’t distract too much from his arguments. By the way, this guy, Yvo de Boer, is the Executive Secretary of the UFCCC. Like most folks at the UN, I feel like he’s caught in a battle of conscious and politics… wanting to get tough and present vision and do all those hard-line things that Greenpeace (et al) slam him on, but having to deal with arrogant leaders (ahem, GW) who aren’t having it and would simply shut it all out if he did go that route. I dunno. Maybe this is me dreaming? I always want to believe that people long to do more than they are able.

A statement made by 17-year old Rishika Das Roy, from Kolkata, India, was also sent to students. Here are some photographs of her community, the Sunderbans. I wonder what her statement would have been if she had attended the meeting as the Executive Director of the UNFCCC for the day, rather than a “witness”?

Watching the two speakers — their different roles, ages, positions, passions, intents, and approaches — the hierarchies in it all just stood out. This young woman is poised to be a leader in some capacity. Will 30 years of working with International organizations dull her passions, force her to recognize the compromises in politics, shake her down to broad numbers of impact? Is this fate for all go-gooders? That we become jaded, pessimistic, burnt out, fed up?

Kate has been dealing with diarrhea for almost two weeks. It’s been a pain. She has an incident at school and is home for a day and nothing happens, then she goes back and the whole thing happens again… with an occasional blow out at home that results in floor, clothes, and bed washings. I’ve been able to take her to the doctor for tests, give her fluids, and not for a moment worry about any of it. The inconvenience of it all was in the back of my mind when I read Robin’s post for assistance. My friend, Robin (whom you may remember from her amazing Mama-multitasking) lives and works in Bangladesh. She works for ICDDR, B and recently posted a plea for support for her agency, which is struggling to get re-hydration salts to an impoverished population that will die without them. One of this month’s Just Posts is about poverty in Bangladesh and offers an interesting backdrop to the reality that Robin sees in her work — and what went on in my own head when I thought about how “inconvenient” diarrhea was for our family while others are facing it as a life and death situation.

Also? A package of oral rehydration salts costs about ten cents.

Just a thought. And on to Just Posts.

Thank you thank you thank you thank you to this month’s readers and writers and especially to the new folks who contributed to the April Roundtable… thank you. Be sure to stop by and say hi to my Just Posts Partner, Alejna, too!

April Just Posts:

• Amanda at Love Letters in Hell with I chose my choice!
• angielynne76 at Angielynne76’s Blog with Equality for All
• antiracist parent with Oprah and the secret lives of moms
• Ashley at The Dhaka Diaries with Faces of Poverty
• Emily at Wheels on the Bus with Bea and Eve
• erika at Be gay about it. with Marriage equality again — VERMONT!
  and Marriage equality — IN IOWA!!
• flutter with RAINN dance
• flyingtomato at flying tomato farms with the un-holiest marriage
  and Quit calling me a “Hobby Farmer…”
  
  GirlGriot at If you want kin… with Will This Make My Mom an Immigrant and Ceremonies in Dark Old Men
• Hispanic Fanatic with Prepare for Impact
• Holly at Cold Spaghetti with Where I Ponder Charity
• Julie at Using My Words  with Breastfeeding is like five whole minutes of your life, total…so to speak
• Julie Pippert at Momocrats with Senator Roland Burris supports National Equal Pay Day, co-sponsors Paycheck Fairness Act
• Knitnut with A few highlights from Rethinking Poverty
• Mad at Under the Mad Hat with Dear John
• Phoebe at Rectory Entrance with How’s that Gentrification Going?
• Planet Nomad with Do They Know It’s Christmastime
• Quadelle with A mini home makeover
• Rae at Journey Mama with Thirteen Follows a Long Time After Twelve
• Thailand Chani with Susan Boyle and Necessary Rant
• The Painted Maypole with Ten

THANK YOU to April Just Post Readers:

• Alejna
• Elizabeth (no blog… yet?)
• Holly
• Lucy
• Mad