Ah, to begin beneath a stunning picture along the waterfront.
Fellow subscribers, During my time with Letter from an American, Heather informs me and the solidity of her work generally calms me down, I have gotten to know more about a few of you beyond the churn of these last few months in the USA. Your range of knowledge, generosity, humor, and care for our country, the people here and everywhere, in particular, represent a pillar of our discourse. Thank you. Happy Easter and or Happy Sunday. In consideration of you and Easter, I would like to share a piece connected to the Holiday, which touched me in a few unfamiliar ways. I hope that you will read it:
Opinion
The Unsettling Power of Easter
The holiday is about much more than a celebration of spring.
By Esau McCaulley
April 2, 2021
I grew up in the Southern Black church tradition, where Easter was the opportunity to don your best outfit. The yellow and red dresses and dark suits set against the Black and brown bodies of my church were a thing to behold. The hats of grandmothers and deacon’s wives jostled with one another for attention. The choir had its best music rehearsed and ready to go. Getting to sing the solo on Easter was like getting a prime spot at the Apollo.
I watched rather than participated in these festivities during most of my youth. I didn’t have the money or social standing to attract much attention. Then one year my mother cobbled together enough money to purchase a navy blue three-piece suit and a clip-on tie. Without my father around, neither she nor I could tie the real thing. I thought I had joined the elect when I showed up fresh and clean for Sunday service.
The feeling didn’t last long. During a song, a woman sitting next to me with one of the aforementioned hats got excited. Our tradition called it “catching the Holy Ghost.” In her ecstatic state, she kicked out, hit me in the leg, and ripped a hole in my brand-new pants.
That Sunday introduced me to the two Easters that struggle alongside each other. One is linked closely to the celebration of spring and the possibility of new beginnings. It is the show that can be church on Easter. The other deals with the disturbing prospect that God is present with us. His power breaks out and unsettles the world.
We like to imagine the story of the first Easter as the first of the two, a celebration of possibility. We would be wrong.
The four Gospels describe Jesus’ female followers going to his tomb on Easter morning, only to find it empty. They receive the news that Christ has risen from the dead. Each Gospel, at different points, comments on the fear that these women felt.
The Gospel of Mark’s account is especially striking to me. The earliest and most reliable manuscripts of Mark conclude with a description of the women as “trembling and bewildered.” Mark tells us that they “fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid” (Mark 16:8). That the story is known at all makes it clear that Mark believes the women eventually told Jesus’ disciples what they had seen. But what do we make of the fact that Mark ends his Gospel on the women’s fear and silence?
Mark’s ending points to a truth that often gets lost in the celebration: Easter is a frightening prospect. For the women, the only thing more terrifying than a world with Jesus dead was one in which he was alive.
We know what to do with grief and despair. We have a place for it. We have rituals that surround it. I know how to look around at the anti-Black racism, the anti-Asian racism, the struggles of families at the border and feel despair. I know what it’s like to watch the body count rise after a mass shooting, only to have the country collectively shrug because we are too addicted to our guns and our violence.
I know how to feel when I look to some in the church for help, only to have my faith questioned because I see in biblical texts a version of social justice that I find compelling. I put it all in the tomb that contains my dead hopes and dreams for what the church and country could be. I am left with only tears.
Hope is much harder to come by. The women did not go to the tomb looking for hope. They were searching for a place to grieve. They wanted to be left alone in despair. The terrifying prospect of Easter is that God called these women to return to the same world that crucified Jesus with a very dangerous gift: hope in the power of God, the unending reservoir of forgiveness and an abundance of love. It would make them seem like fools. Who could believe such a thing?
Christians, at their best, are the fools who dare believe in God’s power to call dead things to life. That is the testimony of the Black church. It is not that we have good music (we do) or excellent preaching (we do). The testimony of the Black church is that in times of deep crisis we somehow become more than our collective ability. We become a source of hope that did not originate in ourselves.
After we take off those suits and sundresses and hats, we return to a world that is racialized. The Black skin that set nicely against those yellows and blues also makes us stand out as we live in a world that calls our skin a danger. We need more than celebration; we need unsettling presence.
To listen to the plans of some, after the pandemic we are returning to a world of parties and rejoicing. This is true. Parties have their place. Let us not close all paths to happiness. But we are also returning to a world of hatred, cruelty, division and a thirst for power that was never quarantined. This period under pressure has freshly thrown into relief the fissures in the American experiment.
As we leave the tombs of quarantine, a return to normal would be a disaster unless we recognize that we are going back to a world desperately in need of healing. For me, the source of that healing is an empty tomb in Jerusalem. The work that Jesus left his followers to do includes showing compassion and forgiveness and contending for a just society. It involves the ever-present offer for all to begin again. The weight of this work fills me with a terrifying fear, especially in light of all those who have done great evil in his name. Who is worthy of such a task? Like the women, the scope of it leaves me too often with a stunned silence.
###
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.
Esau McCaulley (@esaumccaulley) is a contributing opinion writer and an assistant professor of New Testament at Wheaton College. He is the author of the book “Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope.”
Happy Easter to you Heather! Many thanks for all your eloquent summations and also the visual treats🐤🐰And thanks also to all of you lovely folks that make this vibrant community a place of connection, reflection and solace❣️My childhood Easter’s in the 1950's went like this. Off to church in my pale pink chubby coat and flowered hat, mary-janes and frilly socks, white gloves, a fifty cent piece in my pocket for the collection plate. I loved and still love the whole hat, coat, gloves routine of that era. Later at home searching out the Easter baskets hidden around the house was the most fun ever. I can still see in my minds eye all the hidden places, the oven, the fireplace, my toy box, behind the sofa. Striped baskets with Green straw grass filled with jelly beans, hand coloured hen eggs, and silver wrapped chocolate And always, somewhere, really hard to find, an enormous chocolate Rabbit. Being an only child I got to eat the ears first. Then days and days of egg salad sandwiches. May you all have a lovely holiday and may you find happiness in all the hidden places in your lives. 🐰🐣🐥
Happy Easter to all! We would like to share a great essay for anyone missing today's Heather reading (which we read aloud each and every day for added comprehension and discussion in our household). It's by Cree Hardegree and titled, "Why We Need The John Lewis Voting Rights Act". It is great Sunday reading, if you are so inclined. (The last few about paragraphs about Coke and Delta are particularly enlightening.) Please enjoy!
Normally on the day before Easter we do "art eggs", but today was my daughter's Birthday. I drove down, and my daughter and her husband picked up food ordered online from one of the best restaurants in town, while my granddaughter introduced my tiny dog to the two giant cats staying with them for the time being. We spent several hours well-spaced around the big table, eating delicous food, choc cake and coffee and talk about politics. I am fully vaccinated and at leaving time got hugs and even a kiss on the cheek at leaving time. The first in a year (though we have visited before, no hugs). A beautiful drive home as the sun set. I am happy. Happy Eostre, everyone.
It is so reassuring to see the cycles of nature, with Spring following Winter, daffodils coming up and birds migrating-in spite of all the political mayhem. Thanks for the lovely photo celebrating new life coming back, Heather, and thanks for the excellent summaries of the GOP's current attempts at voter suppression and all the blow-back.
Happy Easter, Professor Richardson, and thank you for your dedication and commitment to open factual discussion of issues that are critical to the well-being of our national community.
Perhaps on these Heather off days it is appropriate to say nothing and rest but it usually gets me to thinking.
I’m observing all this current turmoil in our potential futures, the paths that lead from the successful continuation of voter suppression and the white supremacy that fuels it, or the path that leads from S1 becoming law and being followed by even more election reform such that the power of those that have accumulated wealth beyond what they can personally use, in any form is not dominate. These paths diverge over the choice of whether super-wealth has an ever decreasing effect on our collective future, or increasing.
I believe these are two very different paths. One leads to slow progress along the lines of life style improvements for some of humanity while others are left to resort to sporadic violence. The other leads to a period when cooperation and communality is emphasized over competition and where success is not measured in monetary terms.
Acknowledging the historical lesson that every generation feels that they are living through the pivotal time when potentials are split between disaster and salvation; this time, now, does seem to hold that in some measure of truth.
So I’m asking myself the question I asked when I was practicing medicine and witnessing that professions dive in to profiteering. What will it take to change this? Can it be done by incremental change and essentially business as usual or does it require some disruptive force that demands change on a different scale. I relate to medicine from the inside, from a position of greater experience than I do politics but I do feel there are parallels that are cogent.
Both medicine and politics are altruistically purposed for the greater good. Both are necessary in a way that food is but automobiles and trinkets are not. Both rise in visibility and focus when crisis comes and then slide to the background of our lives when times feel stable. Both are huge systems of human endeavor that do not change easily. Both are currently influenced by systems of finance that are overwhelming in their complexity and yet hidden as if to say that what is happening would not go well in the true light of day. Both are hot beds of lying and deceit that have been institutionalized by the monetary power structure.
Medicine can only be disrupted by recognizing that the essential process takes place between a patient and a caregiver. Everything else exists only to serve that relationship. Therefore, it is the caregiver and the patient that actually hold power.
Politics exists between the representative and the constituent. Therefore, it is the voter that holds ultimate power. Why, in both of these cases is, this fundamental truth not playing out? Which is the opposite of asking why and how does money exercise its power?
In medicine money exerts its influence through a propaganda that it is only when you have money that you get great care. In politics money exerts its influence through the propaganda that votes are bought. Both of these experiences have been promoted for so long now that they seem true. Many patients feel that the more expensive the care the better it must be even in the face of the experience that we sit below the median in most indicators of overall health of industrialized countries while we spend an order of magnitude more. Likewise elections have been reduced to fundraising contests but to fund, what? Just advertising? Is that how votes are bought? Or is it used to buy a platform for your lies that is taller and louder than any other?
I concluded in medicine that incremental change would never be sufficient to change the path. Disruption on a major scale was/is required. In medicine, in my view, the tool for this is the computer. Software has now occupied the space between the patient and the caregiver. Generally, the experience of this fact has been negative. Changing the reality of this and making the computer a tool of communication and education between the patient and caregiver rather than a tool that at its root is a way for money to change hands is the disruption that could rewrite the way medicine functions.
The truth that the best care isn’t the most expensive care is only to be revealed through the experience of caregivers and patients and only when that experience is discoverable directly through the use of the tool that that relationship uses. Simply, when you as a patient can directly query other patients on the results of their experience of the choice that you are now facing can you get beyond the financially motivated scheme of decision making.
Therefore the disruption comes when patients insist that their medical record is their property and that it must be delivered in a format that they can understand and that serves them as its primary purpose. This will not come about by incremental change of current medical records systems because they would require a complete rewrite and because the companies providing these system are motivated by the current financial structure not by patients. It is important to remember that it is not a limitation of computing or clinicians or patients. It is a snare of finance that is firmly snapped.
I’m wondering if politics isn’t the same? The tool that rests between our representatives and us is the media and that media is more subservient to money than it is to people. Ratings drive the media. Ratings seem to be driven by drama. The population’s need for truth is in a second or third seat. What would disrupt that?
We often just hope for better media but that is essentially business as usual. Fox promotes itself as ‘better media’ and for those who buy that promotion Fox becomes the bringer of truth. The medical parallel: Pfizer promotes Lipitor and gets fantastically wealthy. Lipitor becomes the answer. The results of that experience are lost in the haze of Pfizer promoted outcome studies that depend upon lab tests to demonstrate its success because the actual experience of people taking the drug isn’t so clear.
It is people sharing their actual experience over time that actually holds the information and not as individuals. These choices are about marginalizing risk in large populations so only a tool that aggregates data would work. Yet, people lie. Would you lie about your experience? Did you eventually need a bypass or not? Did you have kidney problems or not? These basic facts are harder to lie about than, I liked it or I didn’t. What is the political parallel?
The comments of people living in Ted Cruz area of sponsorship have been helpful. Do they like his performance? I don’t access what Fox is saying but I can imagine. Does he pay Fox for that? Probably not directly but definitely I would say. How can the Georgia legislature pass a law that is so manifestly unpopular? Only with the confidence that that decision brings them what they need to stay in power.
How does that work? How does that money translate to votes? I can see it in medicine but I don’t know enough about real world politics to quite get it. We in medicine often fall back on the idea that patients aren’t smart enough to understand but that wasn’t my actual experience. What would an actual disruption to the currently financially controlled electoral process look like?
"In commemorating the Resurrection of Jesus, Easter also celebrates the defeat of death and the hope of salvation. Christian tradition holds that the sins of humanity were paid for by the death of Jesus and that his Resurrection represents the anticipation believers can have in their own resurrection." To those who celebrate: Happy Easter!! https://www.britannica.com/topic/Easter-holiday
"Passover, Hebrew Pesaḥ or Pesach, in Judaism, holiday commemorating the Hebrews’ liberation from slavery in Egypt and the 'passing over' of the forces of destruction, or the sparing of the firstborn of the Israelites, when the Lord 'smote the land of Egypt' on the eve of the Exodus."
"Ramadan 2021 begins at sunset on Monday, April 12, and ends on Wednesday, May 12...Ramadan is a holy month of fasting, introspection and prayer for Muslims, the followers of Islam. It is celebrated as the month during which Muhammad received the initial revelations of the Quran, the holy book for Muslims." To those who celebrate: Mark your calendars!!
"The conclusion of Ramadan is marked with a major celebration known as Eid al-Fitr (or Eid ul-Fitr), the Feast of Fast-Breaking. It starts the day after Ramadan ends and lasts for three days.
Eid al-Fitr includes special prayers and meals with friends and relatives, and gifts are often exchanged. The "politics" of Ramadan:
"In 1996, then-first lady Hillary Clinton hosted the first Eid al-Fitr dinner at the White House. President Bill Clinton continued the tradition throughout the rest of his time in office.
His successor, President George W. Bush, hosted an iftar at the White House in 2001 and continued the dinners every year of his two terms in power. President Barack Obama followed suit, hosting his first White House Ramadan dinner in August 2010. After skipping it in 2017, President Donald Trump hosted iftar dinners to honor the Muslim holy month in 2018 and 2019."
Ah but with spring comes pollenization...and allergies which have rendered the period more than somewhat difficult since the age of 25. (An awfully hot, dry and windy vist to Paris while doing my Masters in UK did the trick and it's stayed with me ever since. Fortunately i only have the trees to worry about and can enjoy the summer. Homeopathics always manage to keep the beast from biting too hard.
Ah, to begin beneath a stunning picture along the waterfront.
Fellow subscribers, During my time with Letter from an American, Heather informs me and the solidity of her work generally calms me down, I have gotten to know more about a few of you beyond the churn of these last few months in the USA. Your range of knowledge, generosity, humor, and care for our country, the people here and everywhere, in particular, represent a pillar of our discourse. Thank you. Happy Easter and or Happy Sunday. In consideration of you and Easter, I would like to share a piece connected to the Holiday, which touched me in a few unfamiliar ways. I hope that you will read it:
Opinion
The Unsettling Power of Easter
The holiday is about much more than a celebration of spring.
By Esau McCaulley
April 2, 2021
I grew up in the Southern Black church tradition, where Easter was the opportunity to don your best outfit. The yellow and red dresses and dark suits set against the Black and brown bodies of my church were a thing to behold. The hats of grandmothers and deacon’s wives jostled with one another for attention. The choir had its best music rehearsed and ready to go. Getting to sing the solo on Easter was like getting a prime spot at the Apollo.
I watched rather than participated in these festivities during most of my youth. I didn’t have the money or social standing to attract much attention. Then one year my mother cobbled together enough money to purchase a navy blue three-piece suit and a clip-on tie. Without my father around, neither she nor I could tie the real thing. I thought I had joined the elect when I showed up fresh and clean for Sunday service.
The feeling didn’t last long. During a song, a woman sitting next to me with one of the aforementioned hats got excited. Our tradition called it “catching the Holy Ghost.” In her ecstatic state, she kicked out, hit me in the leg, and ripped a hole in my brand-new pants.
That Sunday introduced me to the two Easters that struggle alongside each other. One is linked closely to the celebration of spring and the possibility of new beginnings. It is the show that can be church on Easter. The other deals with the disturbing prospect that God is present with us. His power breaks out and unsettles the world.
We like to imagine the story of the first Easter as the first of the two, a celebration of possibility. We would be wrong.
The four Gospels describe Jesus’ female followers going to his tomb on Easter morning, only to find it empty. They receive the news that Christ has risen from the dead. Each Gospel, at different points, comments on the fear that these women felt.
The Gospel of Mark’s account is especially striking to me. The earliest and most reliable manuscripts of Mark conclude with a description of the women as “trembling and bewildered.” Mark tells us that they “fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid” (Mark 16:8). That the story is known at all makes it clear that Mark believes the women eventually told Jesus’ disciples what they had seen. But what do we make of the fact that Mark ends his Gospel on the women’s fear and silence?
Mark’s ending points to a truth that often gets lost in the celebration: Easter is a frightening prospect. For the women, the only thing more terrifying than a world with Jesus dead was one in which he was alive.
We know what to do with grief and despair. We have a place for it. We have rituals that surround it. I know how to look around at the anti-Black racism, the anti-Asian racism, the struggles of families at the border and feel despair. I know what it’s like to watch the body count rise after a mass shooting, only to have the country collectively shrug because we are too addicted to our guns and our violence.
I know how to feel when I look to some in the church for help, only to have my faith questioned because I see in biblical texts a version of social justice that I find compelling. I put it all in the tomb that contains my dead hopes and dreams for what the church and country could be. I am left with only tears.
Hope is much harder to come by. The women did not go to the tomb looking for hope. They were searching for a place to grieve. They wanted to be left alone in despair. The terrifying prospect of Easter is that God called these women to return to the same world that crucified Jesus with a very dangerous gift: hope in the power of God, the unending reservoir of forgiveness and an abundance of love. It would make them seem like fools. Who could believe such a thing?
Christians, at their best, are the fools who dare believe in God’s power to call dead things to life. That is the testimony of the Black church. It is not that we have good music (we do) or excellent preaching (we do). The testimony of the Black church is that in times of deep crisis we somehow become more than our collective ability. We become a source of hope that did not originate in ourselves.
After we take off those suits and sundresses and hats, we return to a world that is racialized. The Black skin that set nicely against those yellows and blues also makes us stand out as we live in a world that calls our skin a danger. We need more than celebration; we need unsettling presence.
To listen to the plans of some, after the pandemic we are returning to a world of parties and rejoicing. This is true. Parties have their place. Let us not close all paths to happiness. But we are also returning to a world of hatred, cruelty, division and a thirst for power that was never quarantined. This period under pressure has freshly thrown into relief the fissures in the American experiment.
As we leave the tombs of quarantine, a return to normal would be a disaster unless we recognize that we are going back to a world desperately in need of healing. For me, the source of that healing is an empty tomb in Jerusalem. The work that Jesus left his followers to do includes showing compassion and forgiveness and contending for a just society. It involves the ever-present offer for all to begin again. The weight of this work fills me with a terrifying fear, especially in light of all those who have done great evil in his name. Who is worthy of such a task? Like the women, the scope of it leaves me too often with a stunned silence.
###
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.
Esau McCaulley (@esaumccaulley) is a contributing opinion writer and an assistant professor of New Testament at Wheaton College. He is the author of the book “Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope.”
Happy Easter to you Heather! Many thanks for all your eloquent summations and also the visual treats🐤🐰And thanks also to all of you lovely folks that make this vibrant community a place of connection, reflection and solace❣️My childhood Easter’s in the 1950's went like this. Off to church in my pale pink chubby coat and flowered hat, mary-janes and frilly socks, white gloves, a fifty cent piece in my pocket for the collection plate. I loved and still love the whole hat, coat, gloves routine of that era. Later at home searching out the Easter baskets hidden around the house was the most fun ever. I can still see in my minds eye all the hidden places, the oven, the fireplace, my toy box, behind the sofa. Striped baskets with Green straw grass filled with jelly beans, hand coloured hen eggs, and silver wrapped chocolate And always, somewhere, really hard to find, an enormous chocolate Rabbit. Being an only child I got to eat the ears first. Then days and days of egg salad sandwiches. May you all have a lovely holiday and may you find happiness in all the hidden places in your lives. 🐰🐣🐥
Happy Easter to all! We would like to share a great essay for anyone missing today's Heather reading (which we read aloud each and every day for added comprehension and discussion in our household). It's by Cree Hardegree and titled, "Why We Need The John Lewis Voting Rights Act". It is great Sunday reading, if you are so inclined. (The last few about paragraphs about Coke and Delta are particularly enlightening.) Please enjoy!
https://www.patreon.com/posts/why-we-need-john-49566190?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copy_to_clipboard&utm_campaign=postshare
Normally on the day before Easter we do "art eggs", but today was my daughter's Birthday. I drove down, and my daughter and her husband picked up food ordered online from one of the best restaurants in town, while my granddaughter introduced my tiny dog to the two giant cats staying with them for the time being. We spent several hours well-spaced around the big table, eating delicous food, choc cake and coffee and talk about politics. I am fully vaccinated and at leaving time got hugs and even a kiss on the cheek at leaving time. The first in a year (though we have visited before, no hugs). A beautiful drive home as the sun set. I am happy. Happy Eostre, everyone.
It is so reassuring to see the cycles of nature, with Spring following Winter, daffodils coming up and birds migrating-in spite of all the political mayhem. Thanks for the lovely photo celebrating new life coming back, Heather, and thanks for the excellent summaries of the GOP's current attempts at voter suppression and all the blow-back.
Renewal...that's what spring is all about. And your letters, Heather, offer renewal almost everyday. Thank you for being our "spring" all year long.
Thanks. To you as well.
Happy Easter, Professor Richardson, and thank you for your dedication and commitment to open factual discussion of issues that are critical to the well-being of our national community.
Perhaps on these Heather off days it is appropriate to say nothing and rest but it usually gets me to thinking.
I’m observing all this current turmoil in our potential futures, the paths that lead from the successful continuation of voter suppression and the white supremacy that fuels it, or the path that leads from S1 becoming law and being followed by even more election reform such that the power of those that have accumulated wealth beyond what they can personally use, in any form is not dominate. These paths diverge over the choice of whether super-wealth has an ever decreasing effect on our collective future, or increasing.
I believe these are two very different paths. One leads to slow progress along the lines of life style improvements for some of humanity while others are left to resort to sporadic violence. The other leads to a period when cooperation and communality is emphasized over competition and where success is not measured in monetary terms.
Acknowledging the historical lesson that every generation feels that they are living through the pivotal time when potentials are split between disaster and salvation; this time, now, does seem to hold that in some measure of truth.
So I’m asking myself the question I asked when I was practicing medicine and witnessing that professions dive in to profiteering. What will it take to change this? Can it be done by incremental change and essentially business as usual or does it require some disruptive force that demands change on a different scale. I relate to medicine from the inside, from a position of greater experience than I do politics but I do feel there are parallels that are cogent.
Both medicine and politics are altruistically purposed for the greater good. Both are necessary in a way that food is but automobiles and trinkets are not. Both rise in visibility and focus when crisis comes and then slide to the background of our lives when times feel stable. Both are huge systems of human endeavor that do not change easily. Both are currently influenced by systems of finance that are overwhelming in their complexity and yet hidden as if to say that what is happening would not go well in the true light of day. Both are hot beds of lying and deceit that have been institutionalized by the monetary power structure.
Medicine can only be disrupted by recognizing that the essential process takes place between a patient and a caregiver. Everything else exists only to serve that relationship. Therefore, it is the caregiver and the patient that actually hold power.
Politics exists between the representative and the constituent. Therefore, it is the voter that holds ultimate power. Why, in both of these cases is, this fundamental truth not playing out? Which is the opposite of asking why and how does money exercise its power?
In medicine money exerts its influence through a propaganda that it is only when you have money that you get great care. In politics money exerts its influence through the propaganda that votes are bought. Both of these experiences have been promoted for so long now that they seem true. Many patients feel that the more expensive the care the better it must be even in the face of the experience that we sit below the median in most indicators of overall health of industrialized countries while we spend an order of magnitude more. Likewise elections have been reduced to fundraising contests but to fund, what? Just advertising? Is that how votes are bought? Or is it used to buy a platform for your lies that is taller and louder than any other?
I concluded in medicine that incremental change would never be sufficient to change the path. Disruption on a major scale was/is required. In medicine, in my view, the tool for this is the computer. Software has now occupied the space between the patient and the caregiver. Generally, the experience of this fact has been negative. Changing the reality of this and making the computer a tool of communication and education between the patient and caregiver rather than a tool that at its root is a way for money to change hands is the disruption that could rewrite the way medicine functions.
The truth that the best care isn’t the most expensive care is only to be revealed through the experience of caregivers and patients and only when that experience is discoverable directly through the use of the tool that that relationship uses. Simply, when you as a patient can directly query other patients on the results of their experience of the choice that you are now facing can you get beyond the financially motivated scheme of decision making.
Therefore the disruption comes when patients insist that their medical record is their property and that it must be delivered in a format that they can understand and that serves them as its primary purpose. This will not come about by incremental change of current medical records systems because they would require a complete rewrite and because the companies providing these system are motivated by the current financial structure not by patients. It is important to remember that it is not a limitation of computing or clinicians or patients. It is a snare of finance that is firmly snapped.
I’m wondering if politics isn’t the same? The tool that rests between our representatives and us is the media and that media is more subservient to money than it is to people. Ratings drive the media. Ratings seem to be driven by drama. The population’s need for truth is in a second or third seat. What would disrupt that?
We often just hope for better media but that is essentially business as usual. Fox promotes itself as ‘better media’ and for those who buy that promotion Fox becomes the bringer of truth. The medical parallel: Pfizer promotes Lipitor and gets fantastically wealthy. Lipitor becomes the answer. The results of that experience are lost in the haze of Pfizer promoted outcome studies that depend upon lab tests to demonstrate its success because the actual experience of people taking the drug isn’t so clear.
It is people sharing their actual experience over time that actually holds the information and not as individuals. These choices are about marginalizing risk in large populations so only a tool that aggregates data would work. Yet, people lie. Would you lie about your experience? Did you eventually need a bypass or not? Did you have kidney problems or not? These basic facts are harder to lie about than, I liked it or I didn’t. What is the political parallel?
The comments of people living in Ted Cruz area of sponsorship have been helpful. Do they like his performance? I don’t access what Fox is saying but I can imagine. Does he pay Fox for that? Probably not directly but definitely I would say. How can the Georgia legislature pass a law that is so manifestly unpopular? Only with the confidence that that decision brings them what they need to stay in power.
How does that work? How does that money translate to votes? I can see it in medicine but I don’t know enough about real world politics to quite get it. We in medicine often fall back on the idea that patients aren’t smart enough to understand but that wasn’t my actual experience. What would an actual disruption to the currently financially controlled electoral process look like?
Anyway, it is a day off really, right?
Barnacles and blooms. Beautiful.
Look forward to your gorgeous photos every week...they’re beautiful, calming and a reminder of how peaceful things can be:)
Happy blessed Easter, Heather!
"In commemorating the Resurrection of Jesus, Easter also celebrates the defeat of death and the hope of salvation. Christian tradition holds that the sins of humanity were paid for by the death of Jesus and that his Resurrection represents the anticipation believers can have in their own resurrection." To those who celebrate: Happy Easter!! https://www.britannica.com/topic/Easter-holiday
"Passover, Hebrew Pesaḥ or Pesach, in Judaism, holiday commemorating the Hebrews’ liberation from slavery in Egypt and the 'passing over' of the forces of destruction, or the sparing of the firstborn of the Israelites, when the Lord 'smote the land of Egypt' on the eve of the Exodus."
Today, April 4, marks the end of Passover. To those who celebrate: Happy "end of Passover"!! https://www.britannica.com/topic/Passover
"Ramadan 2021 begins at sunset on Monday, April 12, and ends on Wednesday, May 12...Ramadan is a holy month of fasting, introspection and prayer for Muslims, the followers of Islam. It is celebrated as the month during which Muhammad received the initial revelations of the Quran, the holy book for Muslims." To those who celebrate: Mark your calendars!!
"The conclusion of Ramadan is marked with a major celebration known as Eid al-Fitr (or Eid ul-Fitr), the Feast of Fast-Breaking. It starts the day after Ramadan ends and lasts for three days.
Eid al-Fitr includes special prayers and meals with friends and relatives, and gifts are often exchanged. The "politics" of Ramadan:
"In 1996, then-first lady Hillary Clinton hosted the first Eid al-Fitr dinner at the White House. President Bill Clinton continued the tradition throughout the rest of his time in office.
His successor, President George W. Bush, hosted an iftar at the White House in 2001 and continued the dinners every year of his two terms in power. President Barack Obama followed suit, hosting his first White House Ramadan dinner in August 2010. After skipping it in 2017, President Donald Trump hosted iftar dinners to honor the Muslim holy month in 2018 and 2019."
https://www.history.com/topics/holidays/ramadan
Thank you👌
While Easter/Passover weekend is a source of joy, in 2021 it falls on a sad anniversary.
On April 4, 1968, the Rev Dr Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated in Memphis TN, while supporting both the civil rights and labor movements.
For his last public words, he chose the first words to the Battle Hymn of the Republic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oehry1JC9Rk
Ah but with spring comes pollenization...and allergies which have rendered the period more than somewhat difficult since the age of 25. (An awfully hot, dry and windy vist to Paris while doing my Masters in UK did the trick and it's stayed with me ever since. Fortunately i only have the trees to worry about and can enjoy the summer. Homeopathics always manage to keep the beast from biting too hard.