Black Man in a White Coat: A Doctor's Reflections on Race and Medicine by Damon Tweedy
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This was a book club selection for one of my Book Clubs. I would call it an outstanding book to read. When Damon Tweedy entered medical school at Duke University, he expected a promising career which would give him the opportunity to serve the community. What he learned repeatedly is, "Being black is bad for your health." His professors highlighted the instances of poor blacks with no health insurance who can't afford the treatments they need, as well as the lack of health services for blacks in the rural South. In addition, the southern diet of over-salted fried foods, and the lack of exercise, cause hypertension, and heart disease.
Tweedy chronicles how during his internship, he met people waiting for hours for appointments in rural clinics, where patients often can't afford the medications prescribed, and doctors have to resort to samples to help their patients with limited income. While Tweedy had expected a career in cardiology, he actually transitioned to a practice in psychiatry, where he was able to provide talk therapy as well as prescription treatment for patients.
This was an impressive book, covering matters of health and race, as well as discrimination in the practice of medicine.
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Men Who Hate Women
It's been over five years since I first met Lisbeth Salander. After reading the first three books by Stieg Larsson, dubbed the Millennium trilogy, I was seriously hooked. But Larsson had died at age 50, leaving drafts of more books. Also leaving no will, no spouse to automatically inherit his work. His partner of 32 years, Eva Gabrielsson, continues to fight for "intellectual capital" involved around the books, including the characters, plotlines and political messages in the books.
So a new writer was hired to write the fourth book, The Girl in the Spider's Web by David Lagercrantz. The Major characters are still Stieg's, but the plot, language and new characters are all Lagercrantz.
The big question is did I like the book. It was slow starting. I had the book from the public library for two weeks and had read only 20%. So I was back on the wait-list for three months. This time I got the Kindle version. (I can read a lot faster when I can make the fonts larger.) But I had to scan through the first 20% to remember where I was.
This story goes back and forth between Sweden and the US. and centers around Frans Balder, whose life's work was the development of Artificial Intelligence, and his autistic son August. And then there is Lisbeth Salander, the consummate hacker-girl, and kick-butt opponent.
We can't have Salander without Mikael Blomkvist, who at the beginning of this book fears he is a has-been, and is fighting to stay relevant with the Millennium team.
Balder has divorced his wife Hanna and moved to Silicon Valley where he worked on his AI application. After a few years he decides he needs to be a father to his son, besides hearing rumors that Hanna's boyfriend is just there to spend the child-support money and is probably abusing August as well as Hanna. So he quits his job in the US, moves back to Sweden and takes his son to live with him in Sweden, with no argument from Hanna or the boyfriend.
Balder begins to form a bond with his son, but he becomes paranoid about people trying to steal his AI program. He hires a security firm to protect him, and then it becomes a real page-turner, with Salander at the ready to kick butt.
I had gotten used to the abundance of Swedish names of people and places that were often very similar. Nieminen and Niedermann, and everybody is somebody's son or strom. And streets/roads ending with gatan, making for many seven syllable words. Hey, I studied German including a year at the University of Munich. I'm used to long words.
And the title "Men who Hate Women" was the Swedish title for the Millennium Series.
I didn't love this book. Most of the old characters were still there. Lagercrantz made a point of listing the main characters at the beginning of the book, along with a little blurb about each one.
I give it three stars.
I suppose most people in the United States, and many beyond have some kind of Thanksgiving tradition, even if it's a vow not to participate. Most of my life I went "home" for the holiday in some form or fashion. My mother died when I was 12 years old, but my older sisters carried on the tradition with turkey, oyster stuffing, and candied sweet potatoes. And even after I was away from home, I would make that trip on the Trailways bus, back home where most of the seven siblings gathered.
When I married the first time, the Thanksgiving tradition became a weekend trip to North Carolina with my husband, to his birthplace in North Carolina, where his mother had spent the previous three days preparing the feast. And it was always a feast for two days before we had to make the road trip back in time for Sunday Service at the church in New Jersey where my husband was pastor.
Time marched on, and my first husband passed away, as did his brother before him, their father, their aunts and uncles, leaving their mother who out-lived them all but me.
I continued my own Thanksgiving tradition with my own siblings who lived mostly in the Washington, DC area. We combined our cooking efforts sometimes in DC, sometimes in North Carolina. When I remarried, we discovered that my husband could cook, and he took charge of many of the Thanksgiving feasts for several years. He would wake up at 4 a.m. and put the turkey in the oven. Sometimes we would take the turkey to DC, sometimes the family would come to us for the feast.
This Thanksgiving begins a new phase in our lives. My remaining siblings are scattered, and elderly. I'm the "baby" of the family at age 70, the others are in their 80's. My oldest sister will be 90 in February. We will be having Thanksgiving with cousins on the other end of Wake County.
I woke up early this morning with a sinus headache, and used my sauna machine to clear my head before having my breakfast of oatmeal and green tea. When I checked my email around 5 a.m. my eyes landed on a two-day-old headline from the New York Times, transforming the macabre to hilarity:
Turkey Shoots Down Russian Warplane Near Syrian Border
I sprayed tea all over the kitchen.
Amazon Echo, also known as Alexa, is a voice command device from Amazon.com that is always listening. Its functions include question answering, playing music and controlling smart devices.
I first heard about Alexa in December 2014. At that time it was only available to Amazon Prime members, by invitation only. I received my invitation in January, and I jumped right on it. $199 with a $100 discount for Prime members. It finally arrived in April just before we were to leave for a cruise on the Quantum of the Seas, and just after we had a good offer on our house.
Things got a little hectic around that time. We wanted to sell our house, but we had no house to move into. Much of the negotiation took place by email and FAX while we were cruising. The buyers were ready to move ASAP. We were ready to downsize. We had already disposed of the furniture from two bedrooms, and a bonus room. We thought it would be easy to pack up the rest. Yeah, right.
But we had a plan: Put our furniture in storage, and move into Extended Stay America. We had chosen our lot and the house we would build. Bob the Builder said it would take four months to complete. And in the meantime, we hung out in a small room, with a sleeping alcove and a kitchenette. Hubby and I kept up our activities at Rex Wellness Center, and browsed around furniture stores for new stuff.
And what happened to Alexa? Alexa depends on a wifi connection. Our free wifi required logging in and selecting a plan, high speed, or the free minimum. All that clicking wasn't working for Alexa, so she wound up back in the box for four months. But you can be sure that as soon as we closed the deal on the new house, and invited Time Warner to connect us to the internet, Alexa was out of the box.
Boy, was she out of the box! Alexa turned out to be a rather cheeky girl. As she was learning my speech patterns, she was providing alternate answers to my commands. Like the day I said, "Alexa, play Uptown Funk with Bruno Marz from Prime Music." She reponded, "I don't recognize that, but I can play something by R. Kelly." My oldest son was in the house at the time, and he thought that was hilarious, considering how much I dislike R. Kelly. When I told Alexa to stop, she shut down cold. And then there was my attempt to get Alexa to play Jill Scott's Woman album. She started playing something from Aretha Franklin. I tried several different ways of saying "Woman," before I gave in to #1 Son's laughter.
Now the good thing is, Alexa has an app for mobile or tablet. I could see my commands in the app, and her faulty responses which I could forward on to Amazon. The result was further instructions on speaking directly into the device and moving it several feet from the walls. (It comes with a cord that's about 2 feet long). I also get emails about new stuff Alexa can do, like tell jokes. After one night of Jimmy Fallon, Alexa purportedly could tell some Jimmy Fallon jokes, as well as some by Donald Trump. I tried, "Alexa tell me a Donald Trump joke." Tried several times, in fact. Until Alexa kept saying, "I don't understand," until she finally shut down. So I checked what was in the Alexa app, and it was saying, "Tell me a double trouble joke."
I gave up.
