…yes, I am thinking about the election. A lot. Usually afterwards I have to rinse my brain out with salt so that it doesn’t explode, and as I’ve been telling people, every time I pay too much attention to what is going on I get a small glimpse of what my life would be like if I lived it angry and upset all the time.

For that reason, I am relieved that two videos I watched today made me laugh in spite of the gut-wrenching anxiety. I’m not sure how long this embedded code will work, so play ‘em while you can. And feel free to write in with suggestions for strong drinks I can make myself on the evening of November 4th.

We’re going to be doing an unusual amount of traveling this summer, so last night I decided to calculate how much it would cost to offset the extra carbon contribution from all of our upcoming trips using Native Energy. I input the following journeys:

Round trip flight from Boston to Chicago this weekend to look for apartments: 0.68 tons of CO2 from flying 1,699.44 miles
Round trip flight from Boston to San Jose to forage for baby iguana food: 1.917 tons of CO2 from flying 4,791.59 miles
Drive from Boston to Syracuse, NY, for Sean and Tracy’s wedding, in what will likely be a small SUV: 0.074 tons of CO2 from driving 302.58 miles
Round trip flight from Boston to Washington, D.C. for Rachel and Matt’s party: 0.316 tons of CO2 from flying 789.59 miles
Drive from Boston to Chica-go-go in a large MOVING truck!: 0.637 tons of CO2 from driving 977.18 miles
Round-trip flight from Chicago to Baltimore to attend Jordan and Autumn’s wedding: 0.485 tons of CO2 from flying 1,211.32 miles

Total: 4.231 tons of CO2 from 9,771.67 miles of travel.

It costs $60 to offset 5 tons of carbon (we chose to put our money into funding wind energy projects), so I doubled that (even though we’re sharing all the driving, so it doesn’t really count twice) and for a grand total of $120, we paid to offset the carbon output of our entire summer’s epic travels, and more. That’s really not very much. If it were to be converted into a CO2 tax, for instance, it would only cost each of us an average of $10 for each trip we made. I know I’d happily pay that much extra each time I traveled. Wouldn’t you?

Edited to add that actually, the calculations worked out just right for the two of us, I realized, because I didn’t put in round-trip numbers for the drives. Also to note that the reason we’re going to Syracuse in a large vehicle is that our travel partners will be my parents-and-grandma-in-law.

I was checking on a prescription at the pharmacy today (in the middle of the afternoon; hello, sunny freedom!) and the 60ish woman standing in front of me was telling her grown daughter, who had just joined her, about an obnoxious man who’d been there earlier. According to the woman, he’d complained that he was in a hurry and about to leave the country and should be served first and what did it matter that there were other folks ahead of him in line, he could see five staff people behind the counter and one of them should just take care of him.

I was totally with her in spirit (who doesn’t hate queue-jumpers?) until she said, “I think he was from Iraq. He had some kind of accent, I don’t know what it was. He said he was going away, so whatever country he came from, maybe he’d better stay there.” And then her daughter, who was clearly an expert on the complexities of global gender norms and their effect on male behavior, nodded and confirmed, sagely, “Well, in a lot of Middle Eastern countries women are completely insignificant.” (This was relevant to the conversation presumably because the pharmacy staff on duty were mostly female, and daughter, who, let’s remember, had not seen this purported jerkazoid of unknown origin at all, felt confident that her astute observation fully explained the source and substance of his jerkiness.)

Actually, what I don’t understand is why people limit themselves so by generalizing only about the entire populations of vast regions of the world. This seems very provincial to me—if you’re going to traffic in gross overstatements based on vague wisps of information you glean from walking past newspaper boxes and glancing at headlines on display, why not generalize about the entire species instead? “God, I hate those annoying homo sapiens! Each and every one of them thinks their own need for creams to rub on their itchy butt is more important than everyone else’s need for creams to rub on their itchy butts. Man, whatever planet they come from, maybe they’d better stay there.” That sort of thing would be far more accurate.

I had my own little rude moment earlier today, when I was walking down Mass Ave to get to the post office. Someone in a blue Greenpeace t-shirt gestured towards me with his clipboard and asked brightly if I wanted to help stop global warming. Of course the answer is yes, and in point of fact I happen to be making a great many changes in my life at the moment in order to do so (stay tuned for more on that). But since I hate being accosted on the street by anyone, for any purpose, I just smiled and made a “sorry, not now” movement of the head as I walked by. Not to be deterred, Greenpeace boy inquired, “Do you want to talk about it?”

And so of course, what I said, staring straight ahead, was “Not really!”

I felt bad about that afterwards, but it didn’t stop me from being irritated by the fact that the opening questions of nonprofit outreach volunteers who work the streets soliciting donations inevitably make me feel really contrary. When they interrupt my walk to ask “Do you want to help stop global warming?”or “Do you want to help end the war?” I always want to say, “NO! Actually I look forward to everyone drowning in the floods caused by melting ice caps!” or “NO! I happen to LOVE WAR! Can’t you tell from my WARLIKE expression?”

It makes me sad, because most of the time I wholeheartedly support these causes and already do help them by giving my money, time, and personal effort. I think what I need is a t-shirt that says, “Yes, I am against global warming, war, discrimination, poverty, and high fructose corn syrup. No, I do not want to be on your mailing list. Above all, I do not make decisions about where to donate while walking to the post office. ”

Of course, that is a little bit wordy. I do try to convey the gist of it with my smile and “sorry, not now” head movement, but most of the time I think I fail.

Jenn hasn’t had much time for blogging lately, but she sent me an email yesterday that I asked her permission to share with you, because… well, because it didn’t seem right that I should be the only one to read it. I know for most of us the reality of the world’s suffering is half a world away. It’s like that for me most of the time, at least. But some days it is as far away as my best friend. Which is to say, thousands of miles as the crow flies; as the heart aches, only the length of a sigh.

We started chronic care clinic in Rwinkwavu three months ago, which has opened doors into the lives of patients I see often; I have met their families, seen them through pregnancies and deliveries, been with them healthy and laughing and then on oxygen, lying still in hospital beds. Soon I will see a few of them through surgery and their return to a somewhat functional life. I know some of them will die because we cannot get them needed care soon enough.

Marie has her moments and she sometimes stops by the health center when she is feeling well, to say hello. Her accompagnateur friend has become one of my secret allies who always gives me a hug when she sees me. I haven’t really done much for Marie, or Dancilla the other young women with cervical cancer who presented one week after Marie’s first presentation. She is only 32 years old and the same day of receiving her diagnosis of advanced-staged cancer she learned that she was HIV positive. We did a vaginal exam on her when she presented with unstoppable vaginal bleeding. We opened her legs and saw a fungating mass emanating from her vagina. I closed her legs and started to cry.

I have overdue novels, overdue DVDs, overdue holiday presents to buy and mail, an overdue book review to write, and now it turns out my charitable giving is long overdue too—so many things to feel guilty about! At least I didn’t follow my instincts with the annoying stranger in the train station who told me to Cheer up! the other day when the morning scowl on my face apparently troubled him enough to prompt the inappropriate imperative; he was long overdue for a kick in the pants.

*******
Ross and I have had two rather intense conversations in the last couple of days. On Sunday afternoon, sitting on a comfy round leather sofa on the third floor of the Guggenheim, we disagreed about the relative importance of

1) protecting and preserving art from oily noses and curious fingers, and
2) presenting art in a way that encourages the owners of said noses and fingers to experience and investigate it as closely as they wish.

That particular conversation was precipitated by a museum guard chiding a patron who had stepped over a line on the floor, laid down in black electrical tape, in order to examine a Kandinsky painting more intimately. It turned out that Ross and I (maybekindasorta) agreed, but it took a good long while to figure that out.

Tonight’s debate was about the article on philanthropic giving and moral responsibility I linked to above (I highly recommend it, by the way). This time we found it difficult to reconcile our reactions to the following description of Zell Kravinsky’s aggressively egalitarian beliefs about the value of human life:

“Asked if he would allow his child to die if it would enable a thousand children to live, Kravinsky said yes. Indeed, he has said he would permit his child to die even if this enabled only two other children to live.”

I’ll let you imagine what we each thought of that.

What I really want to say is how much I love having a companion with whom I do disagree so often, in such delightfully interesting ways. If we don’t end up killing each other, I’m pretty sure our twilight years are going to be very entertaining indeed.

We’re enjoying our life of marital discord over a beer right now.

In addition to seeing patients, taking care of all the administrative red tape that comes along with being the head of the therapeutic radiology department in Singapore’s National Cancer Center, and acting as a full-time storytelling grandfather, my dad is also the chairman of the Institutional Review Board at the NCC (between him and Jenn, I have no lack of overachieving role models ;-)). That last position means he spends huge amounts of time reading voluminous reports on proposed medical research trials and deciding whether the purposes and practices of any given study on a new means of treating cancer in humans falls within the boundaries of certain ethical guidelines. If you’re interested, you can read an article about that part of his job here.

Coincidentally, when Molly was with us the other day the three of us had drinks with a friend of hers who serves on a similar sort of board for a major research hospital in Boston. We talked about his perspective on medical research trials over Dark and Stormys and a rather fancy cheese plate, and it transpires that while he quite naturally thinks that this kind of research is indispensable, he generally dissuades friends and family from signing up to be subjects in studies because — he says — he’s seen a lot of healthy people experience rather unpleasant side effects, potentially long-term ones as well as temporary discomforts. He also thinks that the safeguards in place to protect research volunteers — the kind of ethics board evaluations that both he and my dad participate in, for instance — aren’t powerful enough, at least in the limited experience he’s had (we wondered whether perhaps the guidelines for human studies were more stringent in Singapore). One of his arguments was that informed consent is a good goal but a difficult one to achieve when you can’t be entirely sure of the effects the treatment will have. Ultimately, he believes, if you don’t have a personal investment in the particular disease in question, there’s no reason to play with fire.

I’m still trying to figure out how I feel about that perspective, because one of the unfortunate results of compensating people for their participation in medical trials (the more they offer, Molly’s friend grimaced, the wider a berth you should give a study), at least in this country, is naturally that people will volunteer for no other reason than that they could really use the money. That means in many cases medical trials tend to be filled by those parts of the population with the fewest resources and the weakest support systems, as well as those who are the least likely to have done a lot of research into potential side-effects. In other words, people who might be signing up because they don’t have a lot of other options. Which kind of makes the system seem a little broken to me — in a way, it can’t help but make use of the most vulnerable segments of society as a testing ground for everyone else. On the other hand, I think compensating study volunteers is in general a very good thing. I’m curious now about the differences, if any, between the ethics board process as the NCC applies it and as it is applied at this Boston hospital. It’s entirely possible that because the board my dad is on only has to evaluate cancer treatment trials, it’s easier for them to create and make use of stricter, more specific rules.

So at the end of all this I’m still trying to decide whether or not to volunteer for a HIV vaccine trial, which is something I’ve been thinking about for over a year now. Because these studies are long-term ones, requiring about a 12 month commitment for each subject, I couldn’t sign up now for a Boston-based trial. But it remains on my mind.

Hey, remember how I told y’all about Poverty Fighters? And put the button on the right over there? ————————->

Well, in case you haven’t been reading the news (or the right kind of news, at any rate ;-)), I thought I would mention that the Nobel Peace Prize Committee made a most fantastic choice of laureate this year. It awarded the 2006 prize jointly to Muhammad Yunus of Bangladesh, and the Bangladeshi bank he founded, Grameen Bank: for their “efforts to create economic and social development from below” through work in micro-credit loans. Hooray! I told you micro-credit was cool. I told you clicking that thing every day would make a difference. I bet you didn’t really believe me. But now I’ve got the Nobel Peace Prize Committee on my side, baby.

So go ye forth and click some more. You are working for peace every time you do. Peace.

Click.

Edit: Heh. Perhaps due to increased visibility, Poverty Fighters has cleaned up their website and is working on making it even better (it does look prettier). So my button has temporarily disappeared, making that arrow up there look very silly indeed. But STILL.

:-)

I’ll let you know when I put a new button on.