Summertime and Livin's Easy

Last night on our muggy, but much needed walk (thanks to Moe's burritos) Meg and I discussed how nice it is to have a seasonal change in our work schedule. Having a new routine has opened our eyes to new experiences and ideas that we would normally breeze by during the hectic school year. For example, I've been able to do a book exchange with a couple of friends, I've started checking out CDs from the library to add some new jams to my repertoire, and I've gotten a couple of interesting jobs.

I know changing jobs every summer isn't possible for people with real jobs, but I think we all ought to try to incorporate seasonal changes into our lives (besides what kind of yard work we do). For a very long time we humans have been dependent on the seasons to order their lives and activities. But now, we work in offices and live in air conditioned homes (neither of which are bad things), but these amenities make it easy to become detached and uninterested in the changes going on around us. For example, the constellations that glimmer in the night sky vary according to the time of the year, but we city dwellers can see very few stars to notice this change. I'm glad we're moving out of suburban Vestavia, so maybe I can get a telescope and start exploring the cosmos at night in Lake View. Well, once I start working full time for 40-80 hours a week in a hospital or clinic I'll read this and reminisce of better and more interesting days, but I bet that ache for newness and change will persist.

Confronting Scholarship

So I'm doing a "scholarly activity" this summer as part of fulfilling my requirements for medical school graduation. We are encouraged to pursue publication in whatever field we work in, but this seems to be a foolhardy venture to me. I'm working on an ethics paper and when I put my thoughts to screen they sound so sophmoric. I recall my mind working more freely in days of my undergraduate English literature courses, but now I think my medical education has put my creative powers in a straightjacket. How can I resolve this low flow of creative juices in the short 2 months I have to accomplish this project? Now I know why physicians of yesteryear wrote poetry and fiction in their spare moments- the ability to think creatively atrophies with the slightest bit of neglect.

Bluegrass as it should Be

In these days of Nickel Creek and String Cheese Incident (who I sometimes can tolerate) newgrass, it's nice to step outside and take a deep breathe into clean air of Gillian Welch. Her songs are so sad and picturesque. The tragedy and richness of the Southern culture are given their twangy voice. Annabelle and One More Dollar are my current favorites.

Maybe This Time

I heard once that you can't keep someone's attention for more than 21 words. If this is true I've lived my life over the past two years in millions of 21 word increments.

Things that bring gladness to my heart:
Being finished with boards and have passed
The summertime
Moving from our apartment
Fiction
High schoolers at my church that I'm going to hang with this summer
Having time to blog and figure out how to work facebook again.

That's four increments of 21. (If don't count this statement, the title, or contractions, but you do count the numbers, if anyone is actually still paying attention.)

My Life's Running Book List

I love books. They are a refuge to me from the day. Typically, I've read books around our apartment randomly choosing whatever suits my fancy at the moment, but now I've decided to get organized because I want to get to the end of some books. So here's my list that I plan to add to and finish for the next lifetime or so: (Also, if you have a similar list or are inspired to make one please share it!)

Have and want to read
1. Flowers in the Dust Bin (with music) by James Miller
2. House of God by Samuel Shem
3. Oxford American, Nat Geo, and Smithsonian Magazines
4. Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond

Need to Finish List
1. Under the Banner of Heaven by Krakauer
2. Evil and the Justice of God by NT Wright
3. Orthodoxy by Chesterton
4. Catcher in the Rye by Salinger
5. On Doctoring by Reynolds
6. History of Medicine by Porter, Gordon, and Duffin (3 volumes)
7. American Mania by Whybrow
8. On Presbyterianism by Lucas
9. Rediscovering Jesus by Muggeridge
10. Don’t Know Much about the Civil War by Kenneth Davis

Don’t Have but Want to Read List
1. Better for All the World: The Secret History of Forced Sterilization and America's Quest for Racial Purity by Harry Bruinius
2. The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief by Francis S. Collins
3. In the Shadow of Man by Jane Goodall
4. Bioethics: An Anthology by Helga Kuhse and Peter Singer
5. The Moral of the Story: An Anthology of Ethics Through Literature by Peter Singer
6. Blood and Guts: A Short History of Medicine by Roy Porter
7. Salvador Dali by Salvador Dali and Luis Romero
8. Flannery O'Connor and the Christ-Haunted South by Ralph C. Wood
9. The Feminization of American Culture by Ann Douglas
10. Eiger Dreams by Krakauer
11. Christian Origins and the Question of God 3 Volumes of by NT Wright
12. Fast Food Nation by Linklater
13. Dr. Zhivago by Pasternak
14. The Shack by William Young

Author List
1. Edwin C. Hui
2. Wendell Berry
3. Dorothy Sayers
4. Alvin Plantiga
5. Michael Polyani
6. Kurt Vonnegut
7. Fyodor Dostoeovsky

It all depends...

…on our worldview. A worldview is how we look at the world according the sum of all our experiences. It’s not just our college years or traumatic events that inform our worldviews: our parents, our environment, our friends, our elementary schoolteachers, definitely TV, our happy, bored, and everyday moments, and whatever else we put in our brains affects us. Things that we don’t even remember from childhood have changed the way we look at the world now. It is this observation of the human experience that is the cornerstone of postmodernism. But, postmodernists take the concept and expand it to say that since I have a worldview specific only to me, then I can only have truth that is true to me and my experiences and not anyone else. This, as many have written about extensively, is the worldview that Americans breathe. We love to say, ah, that’s a nice belief FOR YOU. (Did someone mention Oprah?)
So why am I saying this? Because of a conversation I had here in med school with a guy about what doctors should do with their overly educated (and way too expensive) minds. Okay, so here’s the setup. A group of us were talking about this new approach to medicine where rich people pay willing doctors to be on retainer for them. Basically what this means is that a doctor (most likely a primary care doc) has about 80-100 regular patients (most have way more than this) who each pay him a few thousand bucks a year to be their personal doctor. In addition, his patients pay him every time he visits them at their home, work, or whatever is convenient for them. So if you do the math this guy is making really good money and he gets to know his patients really well. That’s sounds perfect, right? Well, yes, except that he/she is not really helping the systemic problem of healthcare delivery because these folks could get good healthcare anytime they want. So I said to the group, “Don’t physicians have a responsibility to other human beings, their profession, and society as a whole to fix some of the inequities in the healthcare system?” (In asking this I understand that people can do with their medical degree whatever they want, but I’m asking what is best.) And the guy responds, “That depends if you consider medicine to be a moral endeavor.” And I said, “Yes, it does depend on that, do you think it is?” And he said, “I’m not saying it is or it isn’t I’m just making the point.” I wonder what he really thinks…. Anyway, it just goes to show that even in medicine, a profession supposedly (or ideally) devoted to service, a worldview can turn those ideals on their head.

My point is that what you think matters to other people. In this guy’s case, for example, whether or not needy people get his much needed attention depends on if he thinks medicine is a moral endeavor. What do we consider moral or amoral? It changes the way we live and the quality of people’s lives around us.

A Cynic makes New Year's Resolutions

(Sunset in Fort Morgan, AL)

I looked up the word cynic in the dictionary. Its most commonly used definition is “a person who has little faith in human sincerity and goodness”. I hate to say it but this describes me all too well. The funny thing is that this is mostly a projection of mine. In psychology authors talk about how it is unhealthy to project or place the faults you see in yourself onto others; and, unfortunately that’s what I do. I doubt my own sincerity and goodness, and therefore, doubt everyone else’s so that I can protect myself from too much self-loathing. (If anyone has ever read Catcher in the Rye, the narrator Holden Caulfield is a perfect, hilarious example of this.) Anyway, this off-putting tendency of mine is one I try to fight, but the roots run deep.

Despite this, every year I make New Year’s resolutions. I love the changing of the year, there always seems to be more contemplation, hope, and fun around this time. We Americans eat black-eyed peas (for me only a face-twitching spoonful soaked in salt), listen to sermons about living with a purpose, watch football with family, and melodramatically talk about how we could never have guessed all the things that happened last year. This is a time where I get to hush that cynic’s voice and dream a little about the future. This is the time of the year when I believe most strongly that change is possible. Unfortunately for Meg, I often wax eloquently (and incessantly) in the car ride home from our holiday vacation. So this year I’ve resolved to read more in the evenings as my form of relaxation, instead of mindlessly watching the TV. Also, I want to start writing letters to loved ones because I think letter writing is a lost art that keeps families and friends close.

Oh yeah, the other definition for a cynic is “one of a school of ancient Greek philosophers founded by Antisthenes, marked by ostentatious contempt for ease and pleasure”. To save the suspense, I don’t plan on developing contempt for pleasure this year, but maybe ease. See, when ease is my primary aim, my pleasure in ease begins to diminish. But, when I get pleasure in things like reading over TV and letter writing over growing distance, I realize that contempt for ease is not so bad after all because it gives pleasure that lasts longer than a half an hour episode. So this year I resolve to be a half-Cynic.