I drew up a crude diagram. Long story short, we were heading home from church when an oncoming vehicle (a dark red Mercury Mountaineer) pulled out in front of a silver Dodge Intrepid which was traveling at an estimated 55-65 mph. The collision spun the Mountaineer backwards into our Explorer (the light red one), which we had just bought in December. That impact broke out the rear window of the Mountaineer, which was loaded with firewood. The firewood came through the back window. Four or five logs hit the front of our truck; one of them hit the windshield and sprayed glass all through the interior of the truck. (There was firewood and a spare tire laying 50-70 feet behind our vehicle.)Thankfully, none of us were hurt. The drivers, who were both traveling alone, of the other two vehicles were taken by ambulance to a local hospital. I called the hospital a little bit ago and while they weren't, obviously, able to give me any details on their conditions, they did say that both were no longer there, which is good. Unfortunately, the driver that initiated the crash didn't have insurance. Aaarrgghh!
I'll post more details later. I'm going to go take some pics too. For now, that's all I have to say about that...
2 comments:
HERE'S SOMETHING ELSE YOU GET FOR YOUR $5,000:
Dean Ornish M.D.
From Newsweek
Recent studies document the harmful effects of discrimination on our health.
Mar 25, 2008
Like many of us, I was inspired by Sen. Barack Obama's recent eloquent speech on healing racial and other divisions in this country. His words resonated with my personal experiences. In 1981, for example, when my friend and I moved to Boston to start our medical internships at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Brigham & Women's Hospital, the landlord forced us to find another place to live when he saw that she was African-American.
In his speech Senator Obama was careful to point out that access to affordable health care is a human issue, not one reducible to the color of our skin or the color of our states, Red or Blue. As he said, "This time we want to talk about how the lines in the emergency room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care, who don't have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together."
However, a growing body of research during the past few years indicates that one of the most glaring inequalities experienced by African-Americans is the disparity in health care that they receive. This week, for example, the New York Times reported that the Department of Veterans Affairs found that black patients "tend to receive less aggressive medical care than whites" at its hospitals and clinics, in part because doctors provide them with less information and see them as "less appropriate candidates" for some types of surgery.
Statistics tell the story. A new government report found the difference in life expectancy between poor black men and affluent white women to be more than 14 years (66.9 vs. 81.1 years)! African-Americans have a higher risk of dying from chronic ailments such as coronary heart disease and high blood pressure than any other ethnic group. Only part of this disparity is explained by differences in income and access to adequate medical care. On average, the most affluent African-Americans suffer more health problems than the least affluent whites.
In the past decade more than 100 studies have been published documenting the harmful effects of racial discrimination on a variety of health measures in African-American men and women. For example, a recent study that followed nearly 60,000 African-American women for six years found that women who reported on-the-job racial discrimination had a 32 percent higher risk of breast cancer than others who did not. Women who said they faced racial discrimination on the job, in housing and from the police were 48 percent more likely to develop breast cancer than those who reported no incidents of major discrimination. Another study of African-American women found that those who reported chronic emotional stress due to their experience of racism had more severely blocked carotid arteries (which supply blood to the brain) than those who did not. In yet another study perceived racism was associated with a significantly increased risk of uterine fibroids in black women, and this was unrelated to differences in health care utilization.
Some critics say that racism cannot be objectively measured and so does not lend itself to rigorous research. However, the latest studies show that it is the perception of chronic stress that determines whether or not it is harmful. For example, two people in the same job may react very differently to a boss's demands—one may perceive them as an exciting challenge and not experience them as stressful, whereas the other person may experience them as chronically stressful and have a higher likelihood of illness. While the experience of racism, like any chronic stress, is subjective, the harmful effects can be quite real. The effects can be both direct (increased blood pressure, decreased immune function) and indirect (more smoking, drinking and overeating, less exercise and social support).
This area of research is controversial for some, as it can be misused to further polarize and fan the flames of anger and blame. To me, however, awareness is the first step in transformation and healing. Chronic hostility, fear and hatred are among the most toxic forms of stress. Chronic stress due to racism affects everyone, not just African-Americans. As Senator Obama shared, "a similar anger exists within segments of the white community." Even his beloved white grandmother, who "once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe … Resentment builds over time." In another example, Arab-Americans experienced a period of increased harassment, violence and workplace discrimination in the weeks immediately following Sept. 11, 2001. A study of pregnant Arab-American women in the six months following 9/11 compared with a year earlier found a significantly elevated relative risk of poor birth outcomes.
Well then, what can we do about it? As we understand how chronic stress leads to illness, we begin to understand even more profoundly that how we treat each other, and how we talk with each other, matters—not only in our quality of life but even in our survival. "Just words" can harm or heal. We can all find many reasons to righteously justify our anger and fear, but we have more constructive choices. When we can connect the dots between what we do and how much we suffer—from both chronic stress and increased illness—then we can make different choices that are a lot more enjoyable and healthful.
When we are angry with someone, we empower the person we hate the most in that moment to make us stressed out or even sick. That's not smart. Seen from that perspective, the most "selfish" thing we can do is to be more compassionate, tolerant and forgiving. When we forgive someone, it doesn't excuse their actions; it frees us from our own chronic stress and suffering, so it's in our own self-interest.
As then-President Bill Clinton said in his address to the Nigerian parliament in 2002, "Some things you just have to forgive and let go. That's one thing I learned from my friend Nelson Mandela. I asked him, 'When you were taking your last walk for freedom, didn't you hate your oppressors again?' He said, 'I did for a while, after all. Look, they kept me for 27 years. I didn't get to see my children grow up. I felt hatred and I was afraid. I hadn't been free in so long.' And then he smiled at me and he said, 'If I still hated them when I got outside the prison gate, I would still be their prisoner.' He said, 'I wanted to be free, and so I let it go'."
In his speech Senator Obama concluded, "In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world's great religions demand: that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother's keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister's keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well."
All divisions are man-made. In an era in which war and terrorism—at home and abroad—are often based on racial, religious and ethnic differences, rediscovering the wisdom of love and compassion may help us increase our survival at a time when an increasingly divided country and world so badly need it.
© 2008
From the Washington Post:
4,000 Dead for What?
By Eugene Robinson
Tuesday, March 25, 2008; Page A15
Four thousand.
When U.S. military deaths in Iraq hit a round number, as happened Sunday, there's usually a week or so of intense focus on the war -- its bogus rationale, its nebulous aims, its awful consequences for the families of the dead. Not likely this time, though. The nation is too busy worrying about more acute crises, some of them real -- the moribund housing market, the teetering financial system, the flagging economy -- and some of them manufactured, such as the shocking revelation that race can still be a divisive issue in American society.
So the fact that 4,000 men and women serving in the U.S. armed forces have been killed in Iraq is somehow less compelling than the zillionth playing of snippets from a sermon that the Rev. Jeremiah Wright preached more than six years ago.
For now, that is: Sooner or later, attention is bound to turn back to the war and the stark choice voters will face in November.
It may happen sooner. A few weeks ago, it looked as if Iraq might be entering another cycle of headline-grabbing violence. Now, the increase in mayhem is clear. On Sunday alone, more than 60 people were killed in several incidents, including a car bombing. Insurgents even sent rockets crashing into Baghdad's ostensibly secure Green Zone, a rare occurrence. While the violence hasn't risen to the levels that prevailed at this time a year ago, when the country seemed to be coming apart, it is clear that both civilian and military deaths are on the rise.
Dick Cheney, who in 2005 told us that the insurgency was "in the last throes, if you will," was asked last week about polls showing that two-thirds of Americans don't think the fight in Iraq is worth it. Cheney's response: "So?"
At least Cheney was being candid, if breathtakingly arrogant. He and George W. Bush have never cared what the American people think about this elective war. A little bamboozling was necessary at the beginning -- overblown claims about weapons of mass destruction, mushroom clouds and being "greeted as liberators" by smiling Iraqi children. Once that hurdle was surmounted, and once Saddam Hussein's government had been destroyed, there was essentially nothing anyone could do to force the Bush administration to bring the war to an end.
Let me revise that, since on three counts it's not quite accurate. First, the war did end once, an occasion Bush marked nearly five years ago in his "Mission Accomplished" speech; according to Associated Press, 97 percent of the 4,000 U.S. military deaths in Iraq came after Bush stood on the deck of that aircraft carrier and declared major combat operations over. Second, we keep calling this conflict a war, but it's really an occupation, though the Bush administration doesn't like to use that word; it must not test well with focus groups. Third, the American people did what they could by snatching control of Congress from the Republicans. But even if Democrats in the House had the political will to end the occupation by cutting off funding, they don't have the 60 votes they would need in the Senate.
That's how we arrived at 4,000. And from the way John McCain talks, there's no telling what round-number milestones we'd have to mark if he were to become president.
On Iraq, McCain vows to continue the occupation as long as it takes for the United States to win. Like Bush and Cheney, he is quick to define any kind of withdrawal as defeat, but he makes no real attempt to describe what victory would look like. He at least realizes that the repressive and ambitious government of Iran has been the real beneficiary of the Bush administration's blundering in Iraq -- but the way he talks about Iran is just plain frightening.
The 71-year-old McCain's recent misstatement that al-Qaeda terrorists were being aided by the Iranian regime -- quickly corrected by Sen. Joseph Lieberman in a whispered aside -- might have been simply a senior moment. Or it might have reflected an intention to do something precipitous about Iran's growing stature in the region. Either way, scary.
It's understandable that Americans are riveted by the most exciting presidential nomination campaign in decades. It's natural that they're worried about the shrinking value of their homes and their 401(k) plans. Come the fall, though, they're going to have to decide on Iraq: Bring the troops home, as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton both say they will do. Or keep them in, as McCain pledges -- and watch the numbers continue to rise.
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