Public policy, social issues, gender politics, religion, civitas, and other taboo topics fall under the hammer of Shava's iconoclasmic force of natural philosophy.
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
National Nurse
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
7:02 AM
My friend Teri Mills in Oregon is on a campaign to keep Americans healthy:
As many of you know, Teri Mills and the National Nurse Team have been working with nursing leaders in Congress for a bill. Representative Lois Capps (D-CA) has taken the lead and her staff spoke with us a few weeks ago, stating that the bill was headed to Legislative Counsel. We are asking Congress to create an Office of the National Nurse to focus on providing all Americans with preventive health care resources.
To read exactly what this proposal is about, please go to our website
www.nationalnurse.blogspot.com
Each of us can make a difference to help move the bill for a National Nurse forward. Please email Representative Capps’ office at jeremy.sharp@mail.house.gov or if you prefer, call Rose Gonzales, the Government Relations Specialist at the American Nurses Association (301-628-5000).
Simply tell Representative Capps and Rose Gonzales you support an Office of the National Nurse because it will: (use one statement from
below or you can also use your own words which is even better)
1. Focus Americans on preventive health practices.
2. Focus on reducing health care costs through prevention and education.
3. Complement government services already in place; help prioritize and deliver the health agenda to the nation.
4. Provide a trusted unified source for people to consult first when considering options for addressing their wellness needs.
5. Involve entire communities because nurses in the community they live in will provide services.
6. Continue the collaborative work nurses do with physicians and other health care providers in individual settings on a community and national level.
7. Develop National Nurse teams to serve as prepared volunteer groups in emergency situations.
8. Demonstrate the value of education as an important intervention to help decrease health care costs.
9. Focus national attention on the value of nursing; inspire entry into nursing careers, and enhance the value of practicing nurses.
10. Attract nurses to become educators by demonstrating teaching in action.
I would appreciate hearing the result of your call and/or email. You can reach me at teri@nationalnurse.info PLEASE sign up for our newsletter
to follow the progress of the National Nurse Team. Please forward this email to every nurse that you know.
Florence Nightingale declared, “I think one’s feelings waste themselves in words; they ought all to be distilled into actions which bring results.”
Your voice may make the difference in pulling the bill out of Legislative Counsel.
Thanks for your support.
Teri Mills
National Nurse Campaign Coordinator
I wrote this in support of Teri:
I believe we need a national nurse, because nursing better represents the domestic needs of the people of the United States. The Surgeon General's office, even in name, is an office springing from a wartime mind set. Although we are at war (or something closely resembling it), our domestic needs are not for a wartime surgeon. In fact, the Surgeon General's office has been concerned with domestic policy for ages.
But it's health maintenance, not the trauma center, that are at the center of silent crises in this country.
Children are getting fat and idle -- not the young colts of prior generations, but tired, stressed, sickly children that will be a burden to themselves and the health care system.
Air quality, while under the control of the EPA, is likely causing childhood asthma in so many of these weakened youngsters.
Diet is at the root of a pandemic in youth and adults, likely responsible for a significant slice of chronic ailments.
Exercise habits are ceasing to be conditioned into children whose schools are cutting teaching positions and instruction time including PE and sports activities.
Stress management and anger management could improve the lives of Americans of all ages.
Simple monitoring of vital signs could stave off many health crises. Likewise, education in issues such as the recognition of the signs of heart attack, melanoma, and many other conditions could save lives and load on the medical system.
"Sustainability" is a word that we hear a lot these days. We need to make the health of American sustainable, to maintain, literally, our quality of life through hard times.
I encourage all people in DC to support the office of the National Nurse.
Reconstruction II
Friday, September 09, 2005
1:01 PM
George Bush issued an executive order on Thursday saying that contractors rebuilding after the devastation of Katrina don't need to pay minimum wage.
Is that a Halliburton convoy I hear rumbling in the distance? Is that carpet bags they are packing? Are their shares going up, while they anticipate re-building the south in their image on the backs of poor, landless, displaced black folks without a lot of job alternatives?
I feel ill.
displaced persons
Tuesday, September 06, 2005
3:07 PM
A friend of mine was chatting in my living room and expounding passionately that our nation had never seen such a thing as a natural disaster displacing a whole economic area and all these people, such as we see with Katrina.
And I said, "Hm. Have to disagree. One word: Okies."
Lets hope that the nation treats those displaced by Katrina better than the victims of the dustbowl.
Johnstown Flood and Katrina
2:57 PM
Today on a folklore email list I'm on, a southern professor asked, "What is the place of floods in American folklore, which we can compare to Katrina?" And although it hadn't even occured to me until that second, I immediately compared Katrina and the Johnstown Flood which swept away about 2200 in 1889.
Katrina and the Johnstown Flood are both natural disasters amplified hugely by the negligence of the monied.
I think it's a decent comparison of two indecent events.
September Oregon vs. September Cambridge
Friday, September 02, 2005
9:23 PM
In Oregon, about this time of year, the gritty tightness of late summer gives way to rain. If the rain is enough, you can walk down the street and see the first curls of ferns coiled tight, ready to unfurl from the crotches of the big trees around town. Lawns that have been boasting a politically correct tan take to greening exuberance, and gardens strained from a dusty harvest season go suddenly rampant with weeds.
In the evenings, the sound of rain is like a sigh of relaxation. All nature is letting hir hair down, stretching, like a lover after a massage at the end of a long weary working week.
But in Cambridge, the season's change comes with a different patter. Today after wrestling with the angels to try to get Joseph registered for school (I nearly succeeded, but that's another essay), I got a bit of hummos and pita bread and stopped at the cafe tables inside Harvard Yard.
I've been feeling like a bit of an interloper on the Harvard campus, but today I started to feel at home. It rains on and off all summer here, but in Cambridge the drought in summer is one of students and chatter. The yard was suddenly a-buzz. The average age of a Cantabrigian went down ten years or so this week. There is a flux and flow and bustle at the beginning of the year in a college town...
And that's when it hit me. It's new years! In an agricultural society, new years comes with the return of the light and warmth of Spring. In this town of many minds, it's the influx of young bright energy that is our spring. Thoughts linger tentatively in the rafters of dorms hundreds of years old just like the coils of young ferns.
Springs.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
