The Death of the Map

On Thursday my daughter returned to me the lovely AAA Maps of the cities of the Bay Area that I gave to her when she went away to college seven years ago. They were pristine. She had never opened them. “What do I need a map for?” she asked. “I have a GPS.” So I took them home and offered them to my son, who is about to leave for college, and he declined. “What do I need a map for?” he asked. “I have an iPhone.” My daughter confessed that she doesn’t even know how to read a map. It then occurred to me that I can’t remember the last time I used a map.

I am severely directionally impaired. I could get lost in a mop closet. I once spent 20 minutes trying to find the exit in an apartment building. After visiting my friend Jim at the Fantasy Building in Berkeley, I said good-bye and proceeded to get completely lost trying to find my way out (exactly the same as the way in only opposite). After wandering around in a confused funk, I mercifully turned up back in his studio. He had to accompany me to the elevator. My sense of direction is so dreadful that if Ron and I get turned around while driving and I suggest we go left, he will automatically go right since 99% of the time going in the opposite direction from my idea is the correct choice. But since the advent of Mapquest, I rarely get lost (only when I inadvertently stumble off the Mapquest). And now I have Thomasina, my trusty Tom-Tom (that Ron gave me), who speaks to me in a calming English-accented respectful voice (she never derides me for failing to make a turn). Thomasina usually steers me in the right direction, although there was the time we don’t speak of when she had me turn the wrong way down a one-way street (“take the next left then you have reached your destination”). She is usually spot-on. Between the Mapquests and Thomasina, I’m AOK. But I feel badly about the plight of the map.

It is quite astonishing to think that an entire generation no longer uses maps whatsoever; that I myself have stopped using them. Cartography is an art and a window into how humans view the world. Perhaps one day the AAA maps I have used in the past will grace the walls of a giant map museum. Or not; they aren’t anything special. According to our method of finding our way these days, I suppose we view our world as an electronic network that bridges geography, truncating distance, removing visual evidence of relationships between places, and making journey an abstract quantity.

Here is Ptolemy's Map of the World:

Health Care in California Comes to a Grinding Halt

Healthy Families provides health insurance coverage for children in families that make too much money to qualify for MediCal (California’s Medicaid program) and who have no health coverage. If you visit the State of California Healthy Families website, you will learn that because of the budget crisis, the program has been frozen. Suspended indefinitely. According to the website, families filling out new applications for their children can expect to be wait-listed for at least a year (other children will have to drop off the rolls to make room for new children). What does this mean?

It means, among other things, that:
--Parents will not take children for regular check-ups so illness and issues of concern will not be caught early. More children falling severely ill and dying.
--Children will turn up in emergency rooms in record numbers, when untreated health issues blow up. Higher cost to the system. Greater stress and suffering for children and their families.
--Children with tooth decay in families that can’t afford the dentist will be in pain. By the time they enter kindergarten, 50% of California schoolchildren have tooth decay and 28% have untreated tooth decay. On any given day, 4% of California kindergarteners are experiencing tooth pain, often as the result of an abscess. How can they concentrate on school when their teeth hurt?

It means that families who let their Healthy Families coverage lapse at the annual renewal date will lose their spot and be wait-listed. It’s easy to forget to renew. New babies born into families on Healthy Families will not be automatically grandfathered in. Their older siblings may be covered, but the baby will be wait-listed. Parents living just above poverty level with a child who experiences a health crisis will basically have to quit their job and drop into poverty to be covered by MediCal so they can get needed medical services for their child.

There are options to resolve this problem, many have been proposed by Democrats in the state legislature, but the Republicans don’t want to listen. I’m burning out on these supply-siders; wish they would toddle off to the old-age home already so the rest of us can get on with evolution.

Homeless Vets

I read an article in the Sunday Santa Rosa Press-Democrat about Stand Down, an annual three-day event held last weekend in San Diego to provide respite and services to homeless war veterans. The injustice of homeless war veterans infuriates me. Whether you are a pacifist, hawk, Republican, Democrat, or lefty war protestor, doesn’t matter, across the board, I am willing to bet that you feel the same as I do. There should be a fail safe mechanism that ensures that every war veteran at the very least has a home, an income (from a job if they are able to work), food on the table, security. In this land of plenty, even in a recession, you would think there is room for us to provide for our war veterans.

Stand Down events are held annually in many cities throughout the country for, as they refer to them, “former members of the armed forces whose lives have collapsed.” At the one in San Diego last week, a tent city was erected for three days. Nearly 1,000 vets turned up (more than last year’s 830) to take advantage of services, including hot food, haircuts, massages, dental care, legal aid, referrals to substance abuse treatment programs, connection to federal benefits, and a place to sleep. Almost all the vets at the event are suffering from some form of mental illness, such as traumatic brain injury, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), or clinical depression. Many of those suffering from depression are depressed because they can’t get a job and have been chronically unemployed for so long that they have become homeless. One woman interviewed was an electrician’s assistant in the service. She had a job but lost it in the recession. Unable to get work again in the field of electrical work, she applied for anything she could find. She says even McDonald’s turned her down. I know affirmative action is being outlawed nationwide, but it seems to me that a war vet should be able to go to the front of the line.

The V.A. estimates there are over 200,000 homeless war vets in the U.S. right now; but that number will be increasing because vets from Iraq and Afghanistan have not yet landed on the streets since it takes a few years in a downward spiral for a disoriented vet to end up homeless. The number one reason for homelessness among vets has traditionally been psychiatric problems and more than a third of Iraq and Afghanistan war vets who have enrolled in the veterans’ health system since 2001 were diagnosed with PTSD , depression, or other mental health disorders. This means there are vets out there who need attention, recognition, and support to secure a productive, comfortable life. They are owed, don’t you think?

3 Cups of Tea (Not a Book Review)

I recently joined the Code Pink Book Club, local group, which was begun by a member of Code Pink with whom I am friends. This month, we chose not to read the recommended Code Pink book but instead we read Greg Mortenson’s Three Cups of Tea. If you haven’t read the book, it’s about Greg’s passionate mission to build secular schools throughout Pakistan and Afghanistan. These schools educate both boys and girls and offer an alternative to political Islam’s religious extremist schools that are used as a breeding ground for soldiers. Greg says he’s working for peace one school at a time. He really is. One day he will win the Nobel. And when he does, I have no doubt he will be thoroughly embarrassed by the attention, although excited about the money it will bring in for more schools.

When I finished Greg’s book, I felt inadequate. He has risked his life, endured great personal discomfort, and spent months at a time on the other side of the world from his family to dedicate his life to the important work of making a difference in the lives of others. I, on the other hand, would not place risking my life high on my list of entertainment. And I enjoy my creature comforts. In fact, I usually bring my own pillow with me when I travel. I wouldn’t last one night sleeping on the ground in Afghanistan. I was never apart from my children for more than a few days until they left home for college (with the exception of a couple of weeks of sleep-away camp during a few summers). I don’t measure up to Greg on the personal sacrifice yardstick. But what about the making a difference? Because that’s what matters to me.

Then it came to me that I have made a difference in perhaps as many lives as he has, but I have done so with far less bravery, effort, and drama. I have secured the funding necessary to launch and maintain programs that have changed the lives of thousands, many of whom are impoverished children. In doing so, I have had the privilege to work with dedicated people nationwide who regularly put in more than 40 hours a week and use all their ingenuity to make a difference in the lives of others. We have not trekked over miles of rock or dodged bullets. We sleep in a comfortable bed. And we do our best each in our own way. Miracles come in many shapes and sizes. I am proud to be among the ranks of the behind-the-scenes, undramatic, everyday miracle-makers.

Who Needs a Computer?

Apparently not my 85-year-old cousin, whom we visited over the weekend. This cousin is not a boring old lady, either. She’s a spitfire. More fun than a crate of Looneytoon characters (without the speech impediments). She said she understands that if she was in the workforce these days, she’d have to use a computer. But retired 20 years, and busy with an active social life and many interests, she doesn’t have time to sit around browsing the internet. She has no interest in email, which she views skeptically as little more than people sending dull jokes around to each other, hacking into one another’s private files, and attempting to steal someone else’s identity. “The only thing I might use a computer for,” she says, “is research. And for that I just call my son.”

So I turn to her son and I ask him how he provides her with the research. “Well,” he smiles indulgently, with a smile that reveals just how much he loves his mother, “once I get the information, I read it to her over the phone, mail it to her, or bring it with me when I come to visit.” She doesn’t have a fax machine, which does not concern her one iota. “What would I use that for?” she asks, and then launches into a rant about Facebook and “twattering” (we think she means Twitter). My cousin asks me if I use Facebook. I explain that I check out Facebook a couple of times a day, that this is new in my life, and I like it because there are people I connect with regularly on Facebook who live far away and would normally not be part of my daily life. Facebook makes it possible for me to have an ordinary day-to-day connection with quite a few people whom I like and would not otherwise have had any contact with for many years at a time. Facebook gives me that global village on a personal level. Although I am careful not to let it suck up too much of my time and I skip most entries by the people who post too much.

I have to say that I remember vividly the exact moment in 1986 when I realized that I needed a computer. Prior to that moment, I could not fathom what a regular person would do with such a thing. Maybe if I was a mathematician, I thought. Or maybe if I had to do a lot of accounting. Then I got a job writing a book for an educational publishing company. My friend Jim gave me the key to his front door and permission to use his computer during the day while he was at work. He gave me a one-hour lesson in the use of WordPerfect on his Kaypro. DOS operating system. No mouse. I was struck by lightning. My life changed forever. Today, my ability to work from home and have the independence and freedom that I have had for the past 10 years is a direct result of the capacity of a home computer and the internet. I am truly grateful for the technology that makes my lifestyle possible.

Yesterday, when I looked at my 85-year-old cousin, I tried to imagine a life in which a computer is useless, a life rich with in-person experiences in the local village. It reminded me to step out of my own cultural context more often for a different perspective.