111 over 69

Williamson Medical Center was established in 1957. The Hill-Burton Act provided federal funds to build the hospital, meaning its mission included a focus on providing care without discrimination and regardless of ability to pay. According to their website, Williamson’s beginning was driven by the desire to provide care, to show compassion, to help neighbors. If my experience is any indication, those ideals remain a guiding principle today.

_________

The original idea emerged recently when my friend Fredbear forwarded a hilarious article by Dave Barry about his colonoscopy. A few weeks later, Tenkar brought home a horror tale from work and since I am 52, we decided to 'look into it'. I usually suffice on oxygen and a cup of hot soymilk until early afternoon, so when they told me I couldn't eat anything after breakfast, it wasn't too hard. The worst part was trying to drink a half-gallon of that thick flat lemon-flavored stuff in two hours. Visions of bleached animal skulls near alkali ponds in some western desert; dead from dehydration exacerbated by shitting water faster than it can be replaced.

The nurse wheeled me into the room where the procedure would take place. She was from Oxford Mississippi and used to watch old William Faulkner walk by her school as a child. She squeezed a mound of clear gel onto a tray where a glossy black tube was loosely coiled. Yellow marks and numbers in millimeters along its length provide depth readings.

"Is that it?" "Yep, that's it."

"Can it squirt water?" "Yes it sure can."

She leaned over and hooked a clear line onto a nozzle.

I had been thinking about it last night when I'd wake in the dark, but had not visualized it as black, or so thick. A meshed cable covered in latex, wide enough to contain wiring for a light and camera, a mini-pincer and yes, a water line. Two monitors, dark except for my name in the corner border the bed. I have an iv in my right arm, an automated blood pressure band hooked to a computer on my left; 111 over 69.

"Turn over onto your left side." I could feel the drug moving through me immediately and had no problem surrendering. The next thing I remember is the nurse telling me I can get up and sit back in the wheelchair. I had been unconscious less than an hour.

"So that's all? I'm done?" " Yep, you're done."

I moved from the table to the chair and she rolled me back to a room where Tenkar helped me dress. I was still a little groggy as we walked through the parking lot. I removed the band-aid and gauze where the iv had been and noticed a bright orange plastic bracelet on my right wrist which read SAFE in big black letters.

Like 50 million other Americans, I have no health insurance. But my recent experience with the Williamson County health care system was ideal. The registrar, the doctors, secretaries and all the nurses were angels and made me feel right at home and very comfortable about the whole thing. There was no hassle about our ability to pay; we will work that out over the coming weeks. I was in and out within three hours. All they asked for was $260 up front, and I will let you know the final price after we run the bill through the system. In the meanwhile, everyone seemed to enjoy their job, looked me in the eye and was very kind. You would think we already had socialized medicine in Tennessee.

Benton Chapel

Last week, on a warm spring evening in Nashville, the magnolia trees were in blossom around the chapel on the hill.

We arrived early for the reception in a paneled room with a fireplace, rugs and lots of dark leather furniture. Not only was there no charge, they had a smorgasbord with wine, cheese, pastries and fresh fruit.

All of a sudden, my little group dissolved and I was left alone in this nice space with two black waiters in vests. Ah, disturbing, yet elegant visions of the old South. The irony is so thick here you could build an entire city on it but goes largely unnoticed. They offered me a variety of drinks, including wines and urged me to check out the food. I declined and asked them if they'd seen Obama's speech that morning. Neither of them had, but were interested to know how it went. I told them I agreed with Reverend Wright in the first place but thought Barry O' did a great job of explaining his views.

The older man said, "Hell yeah; like just to offer one small example, what about the Tuskegee men that were shot up with syphilis and never told about it as a government experiment? It isn't like these things have never happened."

The younger guy said, "He's a smart fellow if he can get people to understand."

Amen.

The room filled with all sorts of folks, only a handful of whom I recognized. Loy finally entered wearing a tweed blazer and mustard colored shirt. He stood and talked with some grey haired men in dark suits. I pointed him out to a few folks near me but they all thought I was kidding. I said, no, really, I google him regularly, he's the dude with the beard and big glasses. Finally, Brother Martin went over and said a few words to Mr. Loy and he immediately approached our circle, introduced himself and sat down with us. A gentle hippie buddhist brother now manifesting in an academic's body with a very sharp mind and comprehensive awareness. Told him how much I appreciated his work and the importance of making dharma clarity available and relevant to a wider audience; building practical bridges btwn bald-headed formalism and pop zen-lite. We talked family and culture for a good fifteen minutes. He had spoken in Sewannee the night before.

Before we parted, David invited us all, yeah, you too - up to the Buddhist Peace Fellowship conference in Cincinatti next December.

David Loy

David Loy, Tenkar and myself

Last night sangha, family and friends met in Nashville to attend a free lecture at Vanderbilt University by Buddhist teacher David Loy. The talk was entitled Healing Ecology: A New Spiritual Perspective on the Challenge of Consumerism. Although he has traveled throughout the world, this was his first trip to Tennessee. A podcast of the talk is available here. Some of David's articles and books, such as the excellent Buddhist History of the West, can be a challenge to read but last night, his personal sense of ease, a long familiarity with western culture and study of esoteric dharma combined in a very easy, clear explanation of complex ideas. Loy builds modern bridges, so sorely needed at present, revealing important seeds of buddhist wisdom and offering ground for the process of insight into causal forces. A comprehensive understanding of the mind behind the rising tide of sociological and ecological crises is where transformation begins.

Here is an excerpt from an article written a decade ago but more relevant than ever;

According to Buddhism the three roots of evil are lobha greed, dosa ill-will, and moha delusion. Traditionally these are personal problems, but today they must be understood more structurally, as institutionalized.

Our economic system promotes and even requires greed in at least two ways: desire for continuous profit is necessary to fuel the engine of economic growth, and consumers must be insatiable in order to maintain markets for what can be produced. Although justified as raising standards of living worldwide, economic globalization is actually leading to increasing unemployment and environmental degradation. The U.N. Development Report for 1997 pointed out that 1.3 billion people now live on less than one dollar a day, and estimated that there are 93 countries which have a per capita income below what they had a few decades ago.

Long after the end of the cold war, the U.S. federal government continues to devote about half its resources to maintaining an enormously expensive war machine. Most other countries also continue to spend much more on arms than social services. There is no sign that the military-industrial complex, or the lucrative international market in arms sales, will be diverted into plowshares anytime in the forseeable future.

The media that might inform us about these problems distract us with "infotainment" and sports spectacles to promote their real function, advertising. Universities traditionally encourage the critical thinking necessary to reflect on these developments, but in the midst of the greatest economic expansion in history we are told that budget cutbacks are necessary because there is less money available for education. Increasingly, the need to become more market-oriented is diverting academia into corporate research and advanced job training for those eager to join what I will argue is a morally questionable world order.

In short, our global economy is institutionalized greed; our military-industrial complex is institutionalized aggression; our media and even our universities promote institutionalized ignorance of what is actually happening.

David R. Loy

THE SPIRITUAL ROOTS OF MODERNITY
Buddhist Reflections on the Idolatry of the
Nation-State, Corporate Capitalism and Mechanistic Science

David's latest book is Money Sex War Karma Notes for a Buddhist Revolution

No Limit

Early this morning Dechen called me to the kitchen window. A brown pickup truck with a plastic amber light on the cab was idling near the end of our lawn. A stout man in a cap and a gloved hand wielding a hammer banging a post into the grass made the sound that got her attention then screwed a sign to it. He's on my land, putting a sign in my lawn. Amazing. What ever might it say? HOME OF FIRST BUDDHIST IN COUNTY perhaps. DISTANT RELATIVE OF GREAT JEWISH POET maybe. Sure, it is a bit odd, but I'm only half-awake and when you are as well-known as I am, you learn to expect this sort of thing. Or similar inexplicable things. Or not. It all seemed relatively unintrusive, quite unlike that telephone polejack out here a few years back, who was a genuine weirdo. Besides, these guys are not necessarily paid to think, but get paid no matter what you think and will invariably tell you that they are just following orders. If you want to complain, call this number, press three and ask for Ms. Nancy.

It was still cold enough and early enough that as much as they love a good rousing bark and snarl at hapless intruders, the dogs didn't want to leave their padded nook on the front porch to badger the dude and at that hour, I felt much the same way. It all looked harmless enough. I really didn't want to have to put on my shoes and jacket and go out there and engage the good fellow. If he is confident enough to live in rural Tennessee and be banging something into my front lawn at this hour, well then, I'll just stay curious and give him the benefit of the doubt. Besides, I'm nursing a cup of hot soymilk here, the only food I will eat for the next six hours; this is definitely not the time to do much else.

It wasn't until he waddled back into the truck and drove off that we could see what the sign said. Whoa. That's a little aggressive, ain't it? We laughed and Tenkar walked out with her camera to record another true-life experience that you might not otherwise believe. Our land ends in those woods beyond the magnolia. We are the very last house on a dead end street. This sign will be seen by my family alone. As if to admonish us for our pace of preference through this world and urging us to conform to the cultural hyper-drive and not only to get with it but to literally step on it as we risk another excursion into denser and often meaner parts of the grid.

We have never driven this fast on our little road, don't intend to start and don't think anyone else should either. This curvey gravel lane soon ends at the blacktop where the schoolbus stops, a mere quarter mile away. Kids living in the hollow walk this stretch at least twice a day.

Time to give them a call down at the courthouse. In the meanwhile, money is getting tight (again). Watch 'em try and clock us for driving too slow down our own driveway.

Primeval Dixie

Late last night snow;
this morning
brightness pouring in
through every window.

***

Mankind suffers from the narrow viewpoint afforded by conditional consciousness and the largely egological concerns of this present life. We habitually ignore or overlook those aspects of the cosmos which do not relate to the present pursuit of money, food and sex. Through the subtle complexities of causality, one of the more obvious consequences of this mass fixation on self is the wave of extinctions now taking place on all continents. Short-sighted, expedient actions and decisions made by ordinary people are irreversibly changing and impoverishing us all far into the future. In a saner world, awareness of this situation would immediately lead to a global summit to direct all available resources toward measures which might slow (if not stop) this trend, beginning with attention to the most vulnerable species. Like the dark of the moon, the moment passes and it is already tomorrow.

We will all do everything we can while true transformation will not come about through any mechanical process. The nature of consciousness itself provides the key. Beyond all the hope and hype, the media is fixated on absurdities, congress is chasing down baseball players while all the Presidents men conduct business as usual. It doesn't take a Buddhist to see that on the political front, things are so locked up, fixated on fear, and dumbed down, whatever we might think is practically irrelevant; thus the angle of this blog.

It is now as it has always been, a matter of ongoing education, self-understanding in the widest sense and individual-cum-collective spiritual evolution. It has certainly been said before and I only confirm it here, that the pure land, the great beyond, the final frontier of infinite wilderness, is certainly within you. So without getting astronomical, let's roll it back a few years to get some context on this place. A wider, prehistoric perspective deepens appreciation of the fleeting present.

A few extinct North American carnivores up against a grid of two foot boxes. L-R: Dire wolf (Canis dirus), sabre-toothed cat (Smilodon fatalis), short-faced bear (Arctodus simus), cheetah-like cat (Miracinonyx sp.), and the American lion (Panthera leo atrox). (Turner and Anton, 1997).

Ice ages have been happening periodically for the last two million years. Twenty thousand years ago, massive glaciers two thousand feet thick covered all the land north of the Ohio. Dark evergreen and the smoky blues-greys of coniferous forests covered most of the southeast. An endless sea of spruce, jack pine, and fir extended south of the Tennessee River to 34°N latitude. Deciduous species dependent on temperate conditions either 'migrated' further south or died off. In some parts of the earth, such as northern Europe or central Asia, all escape routes were blocked by massive rocky upthrusts like the Alps, the Tien Shan and Himalayan ranges which are oriented on an east-west axis. Species such as sweet gum (Liquidambar), tuliptree (Liriodendron), and hemlock vanished from Europe completely.

In contrast, the general north-south orientation of the Appalachians provided passage for refugee species during glacial maximum. The northern margins of these temperate zone deciduous forests persisted in sunny havens throughout the full glacial in south—facing pockets and gorges of the highlands and mountains of southern Tennessee. As the glaciers began melting, powerful outwash streams carried Canadian shield boulders hundreds of miles across Kentucky and distributed the glacial till over a wide flood-plain. Relatively undisturbed since the paleozoic, gravity and water work the grooves, draining plateaus, redistributing the earth. A wide range of soil types develop supporting what will become one of two of the greatest temperate forest regions on earth, (the other is in China) displaying great biodiversity. As temperatures warmed, the competition for territory was renewed. The broadleaves, blessed with flowers and co-operative insects began pushing north. Through the magic agency of the living seed enclosed within a fleshy carpel, borne by winds, rivers, mammals and birds, this complex engine of organic productivity known as the mixed mesophytic forest gradually dominated the temperate zones of Turtle Island. Collecting energy from the sun and drawing solutes up from the earth, attracting weather, storing water, providing homes and sustenance for countless life forms.

South of the glacier, an amazing variety of megafauna roamed the marshy grasslands and forest, including four genera of giant ground sloths as big as hippos, giant beavers with six-inch teeth, two types of llama, 'stag moose' - actually a deer taller than a man, dire wolves, mastodons, wooly mammoth, American elephants, saber tooth cats, and the lion-sized scimitartooth (Homotherium), four species of musk-ox, yak like those still found in Tibet, giant jaguar, cheetah like those still found in Africa, capybara and peccary species which still exist in South America, native camels, even maned lions. Lumbering ten foot armadillos, water-loving tapirs, four-horned antelope, horses, asses, a huge species of bison, six genus of longhorn, five kinds of deer, and condors with sixteen-foot wingspans. Perhaps most fearsome of all was the short-faced bear (Arctodus) measuring six feet at the shoulder, eleven when standing, the largest land predator on the continent throughout the ice age.

One thousand years after humans arrived, most of the animals mentioned above, seventy species (80-95% of the megafauna) - disappeared completely from North America, very likely due to a combination of over-hunting, and climate change. Recent evidence indicates an extra-terrestrial impact around 11,000 BCE may have been a major contribution, by generating a mini- 'nuclear winter'.

Russell Cave in NE Alabama provides the first evidence of human habitation in the southeast. Hunter-gatherers occupied it as early as 6500 BCE. Using short spears with sharpened stone points propelled by atlatls, combined with masterful cunning, paleo-hunters were extremely proficient at bringing down big game. By the time that little band of twenty five or so moved into Russell Cave, there was plenty of smaller game like fox, squirrel, skunk, raccoon, rabbit, and bobcat - animals you can still find (in far less numbers) in the woods today. They also fished and gathered nuts, fruit and berries, wove baskets and were fond of wild turkey. White-tail deer and black bear, the only larger animals remaining in the region were both hunted seasonally. Fortunately, both of these four-legged cousins are still with us today.