Whites Coats, White Robes

Christianity and Western (allopathic) medicine are deeply appealing for the same reason: They promise simple solutions. Accept Christ as your savior and you will be helped through this life and accepted into heaven. Take this bread and eat it, for this is my Body...Take this pill and eat it so that you will be cured, perhaps of all your problems, ever. The cleanness of these systems is attractive; it whispers freedom from curses and goblins and reincarnation, headaches and sorrow and injuries. It calls like a crisp bed inviting rest. I fear, however, that I am messy, and that, to live and heal, I need to sing praises to multiple gods for multiple lifetimes, and to boil up huge pots of strange-smelling herbs.

Substitute "snowy" for "stormy", ignore the bits about romantic heartbreak, and we've got it exactly.

Don’t know why there’s no sun up in the sky
Stormy weather
Since my man and I ain’t together,
Keeps rainin’ all the time
Life is bare, gloom and mis’ry everywhere
Stormy weather
Just can’t get my poorself together,
I’m weary all the time
So weary all the time
When he went away the blues walked in and met me.
If he stays away old rockin’ chair will get me.
All I do is pray the lord above will let me walk in the sun once more.
Can’t go on, ev’ry thing I had is gone
Stormy weather
Since my man and I ain’t together,
Keeps rainin’ all the time

--Ed Koehler / Harold Arlen

I just returned from an amazing trip to Mexico. I could feel the sunlight on me! More about that later. In the meantime, go see Emma, who is writing insightfully and eloquently on class issues this week.

You know what would be funny

...if vending machines worked the same way that parking meters do. Two quarters gets you a candy bar, but, if you're going to pay in dimes, it costs ten.

The Pope: One Powerful Dude

Every day we hear the reports in all the news outlets: the moment-by-moment play-by-play of Pope John Paul II's health fluctuations. As we endured another such report (at 9 AM his ventilation tube was removed, at 10:10 it was put back in, or some such thing), I commented to G. that even Brad and Jennifer don't get this degree of media attention. G. sort of humored me in this sentiment, not fully onboard with the ludricrousness of the PJPII health bulletins, until the reporter--the NPR reporter--launched into a catalogue of, I'm not kidding you, what PJPII ate for breakfast. (Coffee with milk, 10 biscuits, and yogurt, and he ate everything, in case you were concerned.)