Prices in the United States remain high for inpatient services compared to other countries, according to a report released by the Health Care Cost Institute in July 2022. For instance:
A hip replacement was $28,167 in the U.S., compared to $16,622 in New Zealand, which was the next most expensive.
Patients paid $11,326 for a C-section in the U.S. The next highest cost was $7,948 in Switzerland.
Health Care Cost Institute. "INTERNATIONAL HEALTH COST COMPARISON REPORT," Pages 24 and 28.
This is an incredible poem a friend sent to me after we had been discussing the use of flowers in poetry:
https://tinderboxpoetry.com/why-the-names-of-flowers
This is from an 2019 article in The Atlantic by Daniel Markovits:
Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, and Yale collectively enroll more students from households in the top 1 percent of the income distribution than from households in the bottom 60 percent. Legacy preferences, nepotism, and outright fraud continue to give rich applicants corrupt advantages. But the dominant causes of this skew toward wealth can be traced to meritocracy. On average, children whose parents make more than $200,000 a year score about 250 points higher on the SAT than children whose parents make $40,000 to $60,000. Only about one in 200 children from the poorest third of households achieves SAT scores at Yale’s median.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/09/meritocracys-miserable-winners/594760/
Whenever I have been feeling uncertain about beginning something, remembering this advice by Lewis Carroll has been very helpful: “Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end, then stop.”
We tend to make things much bigger than they are, or much smaller than they are. We upset ourselves over things that have not even happened.
I hope to always see things as they are. And to maintain a sense of humor.
“Neither culture nor its destruction is erotic; it is the seam between them, the fault, the flaw which becomes so.” —Roland Barthes, The Pleasures of the Text
Where does the ‘starving artist’ live now? At least in the developed world, the cost of living, particularly housing, with all its attendant pressures, has made the freedom to make art almost unachievable for someone from a middle or lower class background. The cost of higher education completes this pressure. If an artist, of whatever kind, receives training through school, they will leave school with half a lifetime of debt. The starving artist isn’t starving anymore. They are working as an assistant lecturer or assistant curator, getting paid little, and working on their own art as much as they can on the weekends. Unfortunately even relative success no longer offers little monetary compensation. The struggle for the artist now isn’t to eat: it’s simply to continue making art.
If the dual beats of the Old English line represent the movement of the oars, perhaps the ceasura represents the sea that must be crossed.
It is still strange to me to think that on this coming Monday I will be starting college. I have no idea what it will be like. I hope, at the least, that at school I can meet other writers, meet mentors and future collaborators, and expand my field of knowledge.
If someone in New York or California was asked which US state is the most segregated for black students, what do you think they would say? Louisiana? Texas? How surprised would they be to learn the answer is New York? However, New York is only the second most segregated state for Latin students—following California.
Last week I attended the Napa Valley Writer’s Conference. I learned so much that I think it will take a year for me to process it all. I attended lectures and readings and workshops, but most importantly I met some incredible poets. I could not have attended without the support of the Conference, for which I am extremely grateful.
I sometimes like to begin a poem with a long line, making the reader unexpectedly use their entire breath—even doing these several times in a row—then moving into a line with a quick stop. A great way, I think, to create dynamic and surprise the reader, especially when you have something surprising to tell. It’s like a long phrase by Coltrane that suddenly sputters into staccato.
I want to share this article, which considers the US abortion ban in the larger context of capitalist policy:
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/building-a-movement-against-the-war-on-reproduction-connecting-with-silvia-federici/?mc_cid=0298e4faa8&mc_eid=06a4e77501
St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274). A 15th century painting by Carlo Crivelli.
The medieval Christian philosophers had to reconcile the newly rediscovered, beautiful logic they encountered in Aristotle with their religion, which was based on contradiction. This is why St. Thomas Aquinas, a Doctor of the Church, was so important to the Christian faith, and the most influential philosopher of his time and place. He was, to an extent, able to make something of a reconciliation. He called Aristotle ‘The Philosopher’. After his lifetime, it became commonplace for others to do the same. This is why Aristotle is referred to as The Philosopher in the Inferno. It had by then become unnecessary to name him otherwise.
When we take a general view of the wonderful stream of our consciousness, what strikes us first is the different pace of its parts. Like a bird’s life, it seems to be an alternation of flights and perchings. The rhythm of language expresses this, where every thought is expressed in a sentence, and every sentence closed by a period. —William James, “The Stream of Consciousness”
Report: Texas' strict abortion ban linked to over 10% spike in infant deaths
https://www.axios.com/2023/07/20/texas-abortion-ban-infant-mortality-rate
“Showing and not telling” may be helpful for the great majority of what is written. It can also be a technique of evasion. Consider what Shakespeare’s plays might be like without the soliloquies and asides. In the way the characters tell about themselves, we learn more about them than anything else that happens to them, even their moments of action.