Last gasp: The Sunday night reader for 4/11/21
The broken front line, my "little grandma," and Nancy Reagan revisited.
Living memory
“She knew it was polio. The doctors told her she was being hysterical…” While I sat and waited the required 15 minutes after my second Moderna dose, I collected my thoughts on vaccination, our duty to one another, and the experiences that my “little grandma” had more than 100 years ago.
The broken front line
ProPublica rode along with EMTs, capturing their exhaustion during the COVID pandemic and their feelings as they tended to patients suffering and dying in the halls of hospitals. EMTs who were working in the LA area and making between $15 and $18 per hour in December 2020. Right here. Right now.
“In late November, the [American Ambulance Association] sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, pleading for more government aid. ‘The 911 emergency medical system throughout the United States,’ it stated, ‘is at a breaking point.
A few days later, in Los Angeles, it broke. ”
Sharing this newsletter is the best way to help keep it going. Take a second to tell your friends.
How Nancy Reagan helped win the Cold War
I’m not sure what to make of this excerpt from a new biography of Nancy Reagan by Karen Tumulty, focused on Nancy Reagan’s relationship with Raisa Gorbachev. Two women using the means that they had at their disposal to great effect? Or a continuation, decades later, of some outmoded cat fight narrative? Readable and interesting, either way. Give me your take in the comments.
Nothing Wants to Suffer by Danusha Laméris
Nothing wants to suffer. Not the wind
as it scrapes itself against the cliff. Not the cliff
being eaten, slowly, by the sea…
The riverbed, gazing up at the stars.
Least of all, the stars, ensconced in their canopy,
looking down at all of us— their offspring—
scattered so far beyond reach.
