Years of Poems and Spirits

Aug 29 issue by Schjeldahl

Read the article online.

Viewed in the context of the overall American journalistic disposition, articles in New Yorker almost always have an ghostly air of Victorial detachment. Yet every once in a while, I find myself reading something that is not only intelligently cogent, but also emotionally naked and forceful. It is as if the author wrote the whole piece without breathing even once.

Hedonists seek pleasure. Matisse served it, as a monk serves God.

He didn’t start drawing until he was 20 years old.

Matisse said to his fiancee, Amelie, “I love you dearly, mademoiselle; but I shall always love painting more.”

Of the 2nd painting (ever in his life), “Digging this picture out of his father’s attic ten years later, Matisse said it came so close to containing everything he had done since then that it hardly seemed worth having gone on paiting.” Twenty years later, he had the same sentiment. Only stronger.

His view on art: … a soothing, calming influence on the mind, something like a good armchair which provides relaxation from physical fatigue.

He designed a convent chapel in Vence, including 17 stained glass windows and several nearly abstract murals.

His earliest sponsor and collector was a Russian textile magnate, Sergei Ivanovich Shchukin: “The public is against you, but the future is yours.”

Lenin expropriated the collection in person but allowed Shchukin to remain a caretaker.

Matisse’s wife and daughter all actively participated in French Resistence.

Aug. 29 issue, by Tad Friend

The article is about a new trend in California: green burial.

Instead of elaborate tomb stones, people are buried without being emblmed or metal coffins.
The idea is to return body to nature, to become fertilizer for trees, for example.

An even more scientific approach by Susanne Wiigh-Masak, a Swedish biologist, who proposed to freeze body in liquid nitrogen and then shatter them into powered compost.

A natural extension of using black Volvo SUV or Priuse, instead of the good ol Cadillac, as hearse.

Very detailed descriptions of the body decaying process.

History:
why ancient Egyptians extract brains and other internal organs before mummify bodies: they rot first and nastiest.
Embalming came into use during the Civil War. It forestalls putrefaction for about a week.

Peacock is a symbol of immortality.

Main attraction: James Tyler Cassity
Grew up in a born-again Baptists family in Missouri, has Chinese and Cherokee ancestors (”I am assuming they were both raped”)

When just 13, he realized recordings of dead people could be re-packaged and sold as part of the funeral service.

He came out a gay in college. His father said “I had looked at gayness as a choice, because that is what my religion said. It became obvious that is wasn’t a religious or moral issue.” and turned “spiritual” thereafter.

Cemetry expansion is controlled by zoning codes in CA (maybe elsewhere too).

Cremation rate: CA 51%, Nation: 30%, Marin county, CA 80%

Other characters: Ron Hast, Richard Jongordon (drive through cremation), Jessica Mitford (The American Way of Death), Campbell, Sehee

Aug. 29 issue, by Malcolm Gladwell

Read the article online.

Based on a Harvard research publication: Uninsured in America, by Susan Starr Sered, et al.

1. America has between 40-50 million uninsured.
2. The article quoted quite a few graphic and painful cases how the uninsured live, e.g. woman learned to speak without opening her mouth because of bad teeth. Factor worker rather had a disformed hand than paying for operation.
3. The sorry state of America’s healthcare:
a. We pay 2.4 times for hc than industrialized world’s mean.
b. But we actually visited doctors less, stayed in hospitals less.
c. American life expectancy is lower than the Western average. So is Childhood-immunization rate. Higher infant-mortality rate.
d. We have fewer doctors, CT, MRI machines than other developed countries.
e. We spend more than $1000 per capita per year on paperwork, admin, $700 more than Canadians.

Question: Why we are stuck with this inefficient institution?
Answer: The fear of “Moral Hazard”
Permise: A wider safety net induces more reckless behavior. E.g. if there is a sudden cure of AIDs, fewer people will follow safe sex
Result: Co-pay, deductables, No national insurance, and Bush admin’s Health Savings Accounts

Mark Pauly, Juhn Nyman argued against this theory.
RAND did an extensive study on the question in the 1970s. Concluded “cost sharing is a blunt instrument”.

Social Political Implication:
Social Insurance vs. Actuarial Model.
SI: risk sharing, e.g. national healthcare coverage nations, Medicare, etc. Communal insurance fund.
AM: behavior coaching, e.g. car insurance.
“The main effect of putting more of it on the consumer is to reduce the social redistributive element of insurance” Victor Fuchs, a Standford economist.