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Wednesday, April 28, 2010
For the time being, I am not blogging daily. I need to concentrate exclusively on the
book I am currently writing.
1:48 pm edt
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Help from Beyond
The Mississippi Delta – not a delta, really, but an alluvial plain in the northwest corner of the State
– has some of the richest farmland in the world, but some of the poorest people. (They are also extraordinarily talented;
the Delta has produced the likes of blues musicians B. B. King and Muddy Walters.)
In the Delta, as reported by the National Institutes of Health, the infant death rate is on a par with that of Lybia.
It has the highest rates of obesity, hypertension and teen pregnancy in the country. So after decades of frustration and millions
of dollars invested with dismal results, writes Ann Puderbough, Mississippi health care pioneer Dr. Aaron Shirley (photo)
decided to reach out to Iran – yes, Iran – for help.
Iran has had stunning success in providing medical care
for its rural area. Their strategy is simple, and centers around “health houses,” of which they have more than
a thousand. These are small facilities located in each village. Health care workers are chosen from within the village and
trained. The focus is on preventive care and priority is given to high-risk groups such as mothers and children. In addition,
the trained workers, trusted by their neighbors, monitor diseases, collect data, and follow up patients. Preventive and curative
programs are fused seamlessly as the “health houses” in turn are integrated into a larger system of clinics and
hospitals.
Dr. Shirley, who works out of Jackson State University,
spent a good deal of time last year at the Shiraz University Medical Services in Iran studying the Iranian system. Returning
to the Delta, Dr. Shirley has developed a pilot community health house plan and to date 15 Delta communities are involved.
All this demonstrates that help can come from unexpected places. When we look outside our borders we can learn a lot
from others. Perhaps I should mention that I came across this story on LinkTV, whose slogan is “Television without Borders.”
Friday, April 23, 2010
Rich Fools
The U. S. Government Accountability
Office now reports that the F-35 Joint Fighter project (see photo) is not only two and a half years behind schedule but has
risen dramatically in cost. Each one of the planes in this photo is now priced at $112 million. Since the U. S. plans to build
2,400 of them, we are talking about $325,000,000,000! And this is only one small part of American’s war machine.
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates tells us that these mammoth
expenditures are necessary to “save” our children and grandchildren. His perspective reflects the views of leaders
on both sides of the aisle, Democrat and Republican alike. Worse still, the project commands support from Reinhold Niebuhr-style
“Christian realists” of virtually all denominations (the Anabaptists perhaps being the only exception).
Donning my “holy fools” cap, I say that we Christians – not to mention the nation as a whole -- are
tragically mistaken and misguided. We have unthinkingly and uncritically adopted a worldly wisdom that affirms that national
security depends on overwhelming military power – a perspective denied by both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament.
“Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit,” the Lord God Almighty told the prophet Zechariah in a passage
directly related to the security of Israel. Consequently, as the prophet Haggai reminded the people of Israel, “You
earn wages, only to put them in a purse with holes in it.”
Jesus warned us that he who would save his life will lose
it. He told the story of a rich man who, rather than share his abundance with the needy, determined to “tear down my
barns and build bigger ones, and there I will story my surplus grain.” Jesus called this man a fool (not a holy fool,
mind you). In recent months many Americans raised a hue and cry over the cost of providing health care for millions who cannot
afford it. These same folk don’t blink an eye at spending 325 billion dollars on the fool’s errand of the F-35
which many experts believe will never get off the ground – and billions more on other “national security”
projects. From a biblical perspective, I can’t see that such people are “realists” at all.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Unintended Consequences
One of the more senior citizens in our complex –
a widow whose husband left her rather well off – is cruising the South Pacific this summer. That got me thinking about
Easter Island and unintended consequences.
Easter Island (Rapa Nui) is perhaps the most isolated acreage on the globe. It lies in the middle of the Pacific Ocean
2,000 miles west of Chile. Polynesians explorers settled it about a thousand years ago, soon thereafter sculpting and erecting
hundreds of massive statues (mo’ai: guardian spirits, as in the photo above. This was all part of their surprisingly
sophisticated culture.
During the decades that followed, the island’s population
exploded, even as its resources, particularly its trees, diminished. Eventually not a single tree was left. The land eroded,
crops failed, and vicious clan warfare began. By the time Western explorers came across them, the islanders were in dire straights.
By 1877 only 111 Rananui remained, and of these, only 36 had descendants.
Consider our world today. Since my birth 80 years ago, its population has tripled from two billion to six billion.
Demographers now project a global population of nine billion by the year 2050. This population explosion is the unanticipated
consequence of amazing advances in medical science.
Infant mortality has dropped everywhere and people are
living much longer, on average. Pressure on earth’s natural resources keeps rising, thanks to the green revolution,
but the distribution of those resources is demonically uneven. Competition for them increases – hence our planet’s
unending series of national and tribal wars. The same science that produced the population explosion has also made possible
weapons of mass destruction. Who knows whether there will be anyone left by the year 2050.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Another Pioneer Passes
My wife, Georgia, is a Life Member of the NCNW, the
National Council of Negro Women, an organization that supported her strongly during her six-year tenure as the first African-American
Freeholder (county commissioner) in northern New Jersey. Yesterday Dorothy Height, photo, who was president of the NCNW for
40 years, died at the ripe old age of 98. Few people live so long or serve so well.
Born here in Virginia and famous for her hats, President Obama frequently referred to her as “the godmother of
the civil rights movement.” During
the height – no pun intended -- of the civil rights movement in the 1960s, Dorothy Height organized "Wednesdays in Mississippi," which brought together
black and white women from the North and South to create a dialogue of understanding.
Ms. Height (she never married) served for decades on the
national board of the YWCA, where she headed up the Y’s leadership training program. Until her death, she served as
chairperson of the executive committee
of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the largest civil rights organization in the USA. Fifteen years ago she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom,
America’s highest civilian honor. This country will be the poorer without her presence
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