ChaiTeaLatte

INDIA, SUMMER, 1991

In the summer between my first and second year of medical school, I visited India with my cousin. The two of us went alone, to stay with various relatives and travel in UP, Haryana, Rajasthan and up into the hills surrounding the Himalayas. I have a particular memory, from Haryana I think, in which I am riding on the back of a scooter with fields on either side of road. They are corn fields, lined with rows and rows of corn stalks, much smaller than the genetically fortified giants lining the fields back home in Iowa. I remember thinking: what perfect symmetry. From one set of farmland to another. I have an even older memory, one of those ancient images from deepest childhood that seems like a dream, the images are so faded and soft with time. I am in another field, in India, near my grandfather's house and I am chewing on a stalk of sugar cane which is both sweet and fibrous in my mouth. They laugh at me (and who are 'they' in this dream back in time? I cannot remember, for the life of me) because I try to swallow the tough pulp instead of spitting it out.

SCOTS-ASIAN FICTION IN THE BARCELONA REVIEW

Psychoraag by Suhayl Saadi: "The book is divided into five sections, each part representing an hour of Zaf's Junnune Show----junnune meaning madness or a trance-like state." Click on link and keep reading. I like the way the reviewer searches through his/her? record collection after reading the book - "and settled for an Asian favorite I had on hand, Talvin Singh..."

Update: Suhayl Saadi leaves a comment below! So please, do check out Suhayl's website.

TIRED

today. Gritty, dry-eyes looking in the scope too long, tired. Sigh. I forgot to take my avonex last week and I think I'm paying the price. Beautiful weather, cool, dry air and sparkling blue skies outside. A touch of chill, preview of fall, in the air and the faintest smell of smoke. I think I'll take advantage of the weather and isn't that a perfect phrase? Take advantage, advance from the gloom of the computer lit office, clicking and clacking of the printer, advance into the light, soft and evening-like. I think I'll go home now.

Schlesinger report and NPR

Listening to NPR just now. They had a short audio clip from James Schlesinger, former secretary of defense under the Nixon administration, who is heading up a panel on the abuses at Abu Ghraib. One thing that he said struck me (the reporter did not elaborate on this point and I am only going by what I heard and not by anything that I have read) and that was that he said the majority of abuse occurred during the night shift. The day shift was a completely different matter, he implied (this is my interpretation). I find this interesting. For one thing, if there was evidence of abuse, why wouldn't the day shift pick up on it and report it right away? Sergeant Joseph Darby, a military policeman, was the one who blew the whistle on the abusers after "he was given a CD containing the now infamous photographs from Abu Ghraib from guard Charles Graner."I would feel more comfortable if there were multiple instances of people coming forward that were recorded. Were there other instances of abuse reported during the same time frame as Sergeant Darby's initial report? Were they reported as part of systematic checks of the prisoners or because soldiers troubled by what they saw came forward? I think this distinction is important, as is the distinction between the night and day shift. This means that there were accepted and proper practices regarding the treatment of prisoners and either lack of oversight, supervision, accounting policies or other failures of process occurred during this shift. What happened differently between the two shifts? I think reading the final report will be very instructive. And very important.

ON THE ART OF PATHOLOGY

We try, as much as we can, to use every scrap of information to arrive at the correct diagnosis. From the clinical history provided on the requistion, to phone calls to clinicians, to the size of the lesion and the size of the tissue sample (how much of the lesion are we looking at?), the age of the patient, the presence or absence of trauma to the lesion, any medications or topicals applied to the lesion? All of it. We need all of it to come to the correct diagnosis. Under the scope is an array of color and shape and texture, the irregular lines of the nuclei, the bold nucleoli pink and abundant, the way the cells relate or don't to their 'environment.' This is the art of pathology.

ULCERS PAST AND PRESENT

by Anthony Daniels in the New Criterion (courtesy of Arts and Letters Daily, link to the left).

"Whenever I think of medical progress and its effects upon human existence, which are both profound and yet not quite fundamental, peptic ulcers always come to my mind."

Dr. Daniels discusses peptic ulcers in a unique way: how living with the disease effected his father and his family and how easily years of work and medical dogma can go right out the door with a new discovery. The discovery of H. pylori radically changed treatment of peptic ulcer disease. I wonder what new discovery will completely and utterly change a current accepted practice? Be sceptical, doctors. Don't be too wedded to any ideas.

IRA SINGH, IN THE HINDU NEWSPAPER,

Reviews The Rules of Engagment by Anita Brookner...

What makes this possible is the exquisite balance of Brookner's prose (no less sharp here). Her writing, while dealing with the elegiac (one of her favourite scenes is meditations on the fading light of day, the early onset of autumn: one never tires of this exquisite and highly stylised melanocholy) is anything but sentimental: It is, on the contrary, hard, analytical, polished. Witness, for example, this passage: "One's longings might be, and usually were, unsatisifed, so that if one were lucky they merely receded, but remained subject to conjecture. One returned time and time again to memories, or fantasized alternative endings, in which the triumph of the moralist, or the novelist, prevailed. But I had been expelled from that sequence and should now have to live with doubt."

HEY COMPUTER-LITERATES!

Does anyone know why my banner is cut-off by text?

THEY SHOULD HAVE COMMENT-ERASERS

Do you ever leave a comment on someone's blog that makes no sense even to yourself? And then wonder what exactly your point was? Well, look here. (In the comments to the Layne vs. Blair post). Yeah, I agree with Mr. Welch. Huh? I try to explain in a second comment, but it's clear I was overcaffeinated or stressed or something because none of it makes sense. (And also, I wish I had made it more clear that I think Ken Layne mostly rocks.) Oh well.....

IN PRAISE OF JULIA CHILD.....

"Because people are too afraid these days of a little bit of butter....."

This is the voice of someone else: We ate such simple food, we made these dishes, my mother made them because we did not have much money. She grew her own vegetables, she refused to live with the men, she lived on her own with her children in India. At that time, in that place, this was not common. This is what she made. You cook tomatoes in a little oil and garlic, cook them without the skins until they are soft and soft and soft. Then, you add anise (saaf/sp?) and a little pinch of sugar and take the mixture off the heat. It is a relish, you can have it with roti or tikkis or rice. It is warm and smooth and surprising, the essence of the anise oil and sugar lingering on your tongue after the tartness of the tomato. Cheap and healthy food, it tastes of the earth and of love. Both a source of nourishment.