Rural Medical Camp Tackles Health Care Gaps

 

Betty Lettenberger/NPR

Link gakked from AppyLove, story from NPR.

Think about this story for a moment. Or two. We need new, better, options for health care, and we need them yesterday. And that's probably as political a post as I'll ever consciously make.

It was a Third World scene with an American setting. Hundreds of tired and desperate people crowded around an aid worker with a bullhorn, straining to hear the instructions and worried they might be left out.

Some had arrived at the Wise County Fairgrounds in Wise, Va., two days before. They slept in cars, tents and the beds of pickup trucks, hoping to be among the first in line when the gate opened Friday before dawn. They drove in from 16 states, anxious to relieve pain, diagnose aches and see and hear better.


"I came here because of health care — being able to get things that we can't afford to have ordinarily," explained 52-year-old Otis Reece of Gate City, Va., as he waited in a wheelchair beside his red F-150 pickup. "Being on a fixed income, this is a fantastic situation to have things done we ordinarily would put off."


For the past 10 years, during late weekends in July, the fairgrounds in Wise have been transformed into a mobile and makeshift field hospital providing free care for those in need. Sanitized horse stalls become draped examination rooms. A poultry barn is fixed with optometry equipment. And a vast, open-air pavilion is crammed with dozens of portable dental chairs and lamps.


A converted 18-wheeler with a mobile X-ray room makes chest X-rays possible. Technicians grind hundreds of lenses for new eyeglasses in two massive trailers. At a concession stand, dentures are molded and sculpted.

 More.

Appalachia's Agony

Gakked from Jim Tomlinson on Facebook. Let's hope President Obama notices.

The longstanding disgrace of mountaintop mining is now squarely in President Obama’s hands.

A recent court decision has given the green light to as many as 90 mountaintop mining projects in Appalachia’s coal-rich hills, which in turn could destroy more than 200 miles of valleys and streams on top of the 1,200 miles that have already been obliterated. The right course for the administration is clear: stop the projects until the underlying regulations are revised so as to end the practice altogether.

And buy Jim's new collection of stories, Nothing Like an Ocean. You won't be disappointed.

Happy Labor Day? Not in Appalachia

(or anywhere else, really).

CHARLESTON -- The portion of Appalachian states living in poverty last year increased by 114,000 people to 13.3 million, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures released Tuesday.

But it's all going swimmingly, isn't it? That's what the man tells us, and that's what we know. Unless, of course, you pay attention.

I'm such an unpredictable seat-of-my-pants voter I should be shot. I read everything I can on the candidates, always have, and like a dog eating catshit, I eventually get sick of it all and vote my unreliable instincts. This year, after voting for George I in '88 (please forgive my youthful indiscretion) and after those straight Libertarian tickets I voted until 2004, when the doo-doo hit the fan and I voted Kerry, I will be voting the Obama ticket. There are no real candidates for me out there. I'm settling. I think a lot of us must feel that way. Where is the pro-gun, pro-abortion, anti-death penalty, anti-fucking-around-in-other-countries, stay-out-of-my-bedroom, small-community-minded candidate? Maybe I just don't pay enough attention, or look in the right places. It's been known to happen.

Anyway. We're all working for a living in our own way. I hope that whatever work you do goes well for you today and tomorrow. In the meantime, sit tight here and wait for a Dennis Mahagin poem later on today or tomorrow, and the Tomato Girl review I promised last week sometime this week. Sorry I didn't get a lot done these last few days, as the family and I drove eight hours across MA and NY and back to show off our new daughter. Not fun. I'm pale by nature, and my window-hanging arm is red like a spanked ass, and I'm sort of sun-sick. In my off moments, though, I'm reading Matt Wray's Not Quite White: White Trash and the Boundaries of Whiteness.

Don't you wish you were me?

Don't answer that.