Jan Gurley, MD, writer and filmmaker.

The list of doctors who write is a long one.

Legendary Russian short story writer Anton Chekhov.  William Carlos Williams, the bard of New Jersey.  Famed child psychologist Robert Coles.

This is to say nothing of current luminaries like Oliver Sacks, Jerome Groopman and Atul Gawande.

At their best, these authors use the accumulated knowledge of science and healing to give some insight both into their craft, and even the human condition.

At the Hunt Fellowship on Saturday we heard from Jan Gurley, a Harvard Medical School-trained doctor who says she  ”is the only Harvard Medical School graduate to have been awarded a Shoney’s Ten-Step Pin for documented excellence in waitressing.”

Dr. Gurley lives in the Bay Area, works with homeless people and writes about “an insane medical  system” on her blog.

A willowy redhead who told me she recently became the shortest person in her family at 5’11″, she also taught herself to make videos about some of the people who we too often choose not to see-the homeless and downtrodden.

Her movie blended the contributions of the people she worked with and to whom she gave cell phones with cameras and the instruction to take pictures of items that scared them and gave them joy.

Her work also includes her own images and the voices of the people she has gotten to know, and, in some cases, treated.

In one particularly poignant piece, she tells the story of Carlos, an man who, when we meet him, has but three months to live because of liver cancer caused in part because of his excessive drinking.

Through the project, Carlos reconnected with his sister, and, we learn, spent more time with him in his final days than she had the rest of his life combined.

We do not see the sister on the screen, but we do hear her voice as she talks about the great gift of having ushered her first husband and Carlos through the end of their life and into death.

She talks with pride about the joy he took in his life, explains how she changed his diapers when necessary, and asserts both that his death was a triumph because it did not happen on the street, but when he was with his family.

“If I could die the way my brother did, I would be a happy woman,” she says. “It’s about showing humanity.”

“You wouldn’t let a dog die in a ditch,” she says in the piece’s final words.  ”Why would you let a person?”

This haunting question sits posed and unanswered by the sister, and, by extension, by Gurley.

Although her work ostensibly was about building community around one’s work, it also spoke in a very profound way to questions of dignity and to the role of a healer in witnessing and facilitating connection in life’s final moments.

Gurley’s session was the last one we had, and the sister’s question and Gurley’s compassionate work will stay with me as we go forward.  Not a novelist like Michael Crichton or Robin Cook, she nevertheless is carving her space among the ever-expanding list of writing (and videoing) doctors.

Father Greg Boyle writes about Tattoos on the Heart.

It’s a beautiful thing when words can make you cry, and Father Greg Boyle’s Tatoos on the Heart did it to me over and over again.

For those who do not know, Father Boyle is the founder of Homeboy Industries, the nationally-acclaimed project that provides former gang members with all manner of services, from tattoo removal to a job to therapy to legal help.

The book is peppered with vignettes from his nearly quarter century working in Los Angeles’ poorest neighborhoods-a period during which he has buried more than 175 gang members killed by rivals.

A skilled raconteur and deft writer with a gift for dialogue and telling detail, Boyle takes the reader through many of the moments that have both wounded and healed in his casting his lot with the poor.

In Tattoos we meet former gang members trying to heal from unspeakable child abuse and create a different way for themselves and their children.  In one story, for instance, Boyle writes about a young man who gets his first job ever as a rat at Chuck E. Cheese.  The suit is hot and uncomfortable, and kids poke at him constantly, but the former gang member keeps working because he knows he will be a father in two months and wants his son to grow with a working man for a father.

Homeboy Industries began with a bakery in which the workers had to share space and time with former enemies, including those who killed fellow gang, and even family members.

Boyle describes two such workers between which something so fearsome had passed that they refused to shake each other’s hands and worked together in tense silence for months.

Yet when one of the members was beaten beyond all recognition, the former enemy asked Boyle if he could donate some blood to him.

Many of the stories are drenched in pain and the undeniable reality that for far too many f these young men and women, life will end too soon and too young.  In some cases, the wounds seem to come from, or to bring home, the consequences of their actions.

Boyle tells the story of two brothers who danced around, and ultimately joined, the gang life.  A shooting near their home did not kill them, but did claim the life of their younger brother who had no affiliation.

Yet other former gang members are gunned down in daylight and without provocation.  In one such case, a young man who had worked 20 yeas to gain a reputation he ultimately concluded he did not want was killed while removing graffiti from the community.

These false starts and incomplete efforts at redemption add a deeper level to the suffering so many in the community endure.  Boyle writes openly about the question of success, ultimately drawing on the words of others to conclude that it lies not so much in the outcome, but the effort.

Deeply literate and spiritual, Tattoos also drops in liturgy with quotes from writers ranging from Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron to poet Mary Oliver to Teillard de Chardin.  These excerpts cast the specific stories Boyle recounts in a larger purpose of seeking to restore all of G-d’s creatures to their intact, beautiful, shame-free selves, and to urge everyone not to segregate themselves from the outcasts among us.

In one such case, he writes about the early days of his church in Dolores Mission, when he had started to welcome homeless people into the parish.  The smell finally got to the point when he felt he had to address.

He asks the parishioners what the church smells like.

An elderly gentleman answers loudly, “Like feet.”

While not denying the answer, Boyle then leads his congregation through the process of identifying the source of the odor and the reason for their presence in the church.

He repeats the question.

This time, the answer is different.

“It smells like our commitment to Jesus,” one woman answers.

“It smells like roses,” says another.

These tender moments of connection and kinship not only keep Boyle going, they provide the backdrop for his description of the evolution in his approach to his work.

As a younger priest, he repeatedly drove his bicycle around the housing projects where he worked and lived, intervening in conflicts and even mediating truces between gangs.

In addition to leading to an unsustainable pace that ultimately burned him out, he also came to conclude that the negotiations legitimized the gangs.

That process of growth and change continues.

In the time he spent with us on Tuesday, Father Boyle told us that he now feels uncomfortable with the expression he used to champion, “Nothing beats a bullet like a job.”

At this point, he said, he has arrived at the conclusion that he is seeking to help the thousands of young men and women who enter Homeboy Industries’ doors transform their identities from where they are to the potential spouses, parents, workers and contributors they have within them waiting to emerge.

It’s a glorious vision that has materialized often enough, and with enjoy joy, humor and connection along the way, to lead Boyle to conclude at one point that he at times has to sit back and soak in the good fortune he has to lead the life he has chosen.

Tattoos on the Heart articulates that vision in a way that provokes outrage at the conditions into which these young people are born, moves the reader to tears at their resilience, heart and all-too-frequent early demises, and inspires us to consider what we can do to make a small but real contribution to this and other causes.

 

 

Day 3 of the Hunt Fellowship

Today was the third day of the Hunt Fellowship, and brought a different set of experiences and sources of learning.

Two sessions filled the morning.  The first was fellow Hunt Fellow Sarah Kliff presenting with law professor Brie Clark and advocate Martha King about the perils and promises of health care reform.

Each of the women focused on the relationship between the states and the federal government.  Clark focused on the legal challenges to health care reform, taking us through a constitutional primer that included clauses and amendments dealing with interstate commerce, the power to tax and the supremacy of the federal government over the states.

Both Martha and Sarah had a dizzying grasp of the myriad details in the 2,000-page bill, concentrating their remarks and the ensuing discussion on key provisions like the health exchanges, the individual mandates and the Medicaid expansion.

Emily Ramshaw, assistant managing editor of Texas Tribune, followed this  session with one of her own that was equally impressive and engaging.

A National Fellow last year, she shared her project about Texas’ colonias, a group of more than 2,300 unincorporated areas in the state.

The residents in many of these areas live in Third World-like conditions, with cockroaches, vermin and dirt floors, but without running water, paved roads and streets.

It was wrenching material indeed, and Emily also included information about one of the colonias where residents refused to accept their poor treatment and fought a lengthy but ultimately successful battle to have the paved roads, sidewalks, street lights and running water that so many of us never even consider.

After lunch,  the Hunt Fellows and our editors met with Senior Fellow Martha Shirk to get input on our projects.

Out of respect for my colleagues’ confidentiality, I am not at liberty to share what I learned, and I can say confidently that the projects have much potential.

And tonight we saw The Blue Hour, Eric Nazarian’s haunting paean to the Los Angeles River, where, he told us, he smoked his first cigarette and stole his first kiss.

The film is divided into four vignettes that show the city’s ethnic and racial diversity, people at different points in the life cycle and residents’ disconnection from each other.

Nazarian, who spoke about the film before the screening and answered questions about it afterward, called it a “quiet” film, and it’s true that there is little dialogue in the work.

But there is plenty of emotion and action, if not the type that one typically sees in a Transformers film.  Each vignette contains elements of death, touch, alienation, drinking, and smoking while touching on the youth, adulthood, middle age and old age the main characters experience.  As opposed to Crash, another Los Angeles film where the characters are all interconnected, in The Blue Hour, the connections are far more fleeting and indirect.

The Blue Hour is not easy watching, but that is different from saying it’s not worth seeing.  The film was only the latest in a variety of resources that have  in different ways pushed and educated and inspired us.

Tomorrow, we go in person to the River Nazarian portrayed to meet activists seeking to restore the water’s concrete reality to its former glory.  In the afternoon, another panel.

We will learn from both.

Father G and Homeboy Industries headline Day 2 of the Hunt Fellowship

In 2007, while attending the Institute for Justice and Journalism fellowship at USC, my brother Jon and I had our choice of going anywhere we wanted in Los Angeles.

We chose to go to Homeboy Industries, the multi-service center created for gang members by Father Greg Boyle, the charismatic and controversial priest with a seemingly bottomless well of compassion for poor people and an equally limitless willingness to establish hope in those who previously had none.

It was a memorable experience.

The lobby throbbed with activity, as the homeboys and homegirls lined up to participate in the largest tattoo removal in the United States, to apply for work, to get legal, parenting, psychological or nearly any other help imaginable.

Fast forward four years.

Day 1 of the Hunt Fellowship.

The ceremonial dinners over, the Hunt Fellowship got under way in earnest today with a series of engaging presentations, lectures and discussions.

As I mentioned yesterday, our group of fellows receiving support to do health care projects hails from all over the country and Puerto Rico.  Members work in print, radio, or both, and in both Spanish or English.

In short, it’s an impressive group, and I’m excited to be a part of it.

Today we heard from a number of speakers, with the presentations alternating between lawyer, writer and advocate Angela Glover Blackwell, who talked about the health impact of the nation’s failure to deal with race.   Her speech sparked an engaging post-session discussion that would be continued during the evening about to what degree race is a, but not the, most important variable to consider in evaluating these issues.

Former fellows and award winners Suzanne Bohan and Sandy Kleffman shared the story behind the story of their analysis of 80 Bay Area zip codes whose life span averages varied by 16 years, with residents in Walnut Creek, one of the wealthiest areas they examined, having an average age of 87 years, compared with a poorer community, where the life span was just 71 years.

The project included mapping based on data from area public health departments, several multi-media stories and a four-part series.  It also included a helpful tip sheet around topics like connecting with sources and the timing of enlisting editorial support.

After lunch Robert Oglivie spoke about how to create a healthier future with development and redevelopment.  Peppered with examples and photographs, his presentation was based on a national perspective about how to make the healthy choice become the easy choice.

Finally, Fran Kaufman, an accomplished and witty doctor, and Maureen O’Hagan, a Pulitzer-Prize winning reporter from the Seattle Times, talked about childhood obesity from clinical and journalistic perspectives.  This also led to an animated discussion about the role of individual and collective responsibility, what part the food industry and our culture and lifestyle play in creating endless opportunities and far less distinct times to eat, respectively.

One of the fellows asked about research that considered the notion that asking some of the folks and communities being studied to give up one of the easiest available pleasures in an often difficult life can be a hard thing to do.

In short, I’m glad that I took a lot of notes and remembered being a participant for the first time at a Facing History seminar in 1995 at Pine Manor College, both excited about all that I am learning and aware that far more information is being mentioned than I can talk in fully at the moment.

In short, it was a full, rich and informative day, and I’m looking forward to tomorrow.

For now, though, it’s time to wind down and head to sleep as part of my ongoing effort to adjust to Pacific Time.

Until tomorrow.

In LA for the Hunt Fellowship

It’s tough to be away from Dunreith yet again after spending just an evening together, and being here at the Dennis A. Hunt Fellowship in Los Angeles does cushion the blow.

To begin, the weather is full of those cloudless, cool, comfortable days for which the city is known, yet without the smog for which it is so infamous.

I spent a lovely afternoon with childhood friend Hisao Kushi, his wife Karen and their beautiful children Kate and Ty.

The folks from the Hunt are putting us up at the Los Angeles Athletic Club.

It’s an aptly named hotel, as, in addition to the lobby, which holds a trophy case with the list of annual winners of the John R. Wooden Award, here are literally four floors worth of gym options.

I’ve not yet checked them out, though, as I am also fortunate enough to have an exercise bicycle in my room.

The five of us Hunt fellows were treated last night to a moving and intimate dinner in which Dennis Hunt’s family members, partner, former workers and friends all spoke about the dynamic, charismatic communications visionary whose sudden death in a 2007 car accident prompted the creation of the fellowship.

The other fellows are a highly impressive bunch with a fascinating array of topics, and they are  just a fraction of the stimulating, ambitious and talented peer group that is participating in this year’s fellowship.

Tonight we met a host of others.

The entire group of us also heard tonight at a dinner from former FDA chief David Kessler, who gave us the essential argument of The End of Overeating, his 2009 book that each of us received while he spoke.

In his presentation, which was part neurological lecture, part inside scoop about changing societal perception of the tobacco industry and part Socratic dialogue, he summarized the book’s central argument that sugar, fat and salt can essentially highjack our brains and cause us to overeat, with predictably negative consequences.

The question he returned to repeatedly: Are we toast as a nation?

His answer was no, but the path to reverse these trends was not completely clear.

One key factor, though, was changing social norms in a way similar to what he and others worked hard to do around the nationwide perception of tobacco.

I agree with Kessler about the importance of changing social understandings-Allen Brandt shows convincingly in Cigarette Century how the pendulum swung back and forth during the last century-and also feel that part of the thus far elusive solution can be found in how Dunreith developed Aidan’s attitude toward food.

Dunreith spent the first seven years of her life as a single parent, bearing the responsibility for tending to Aidan’s development by herself.

With food, she always encouraged him to eat just what he wanted, and not more.

Aidan grew up always eating the amount and type of foods he enjoyed.  This pattern has continued throughout his life until today, and is just one of many areas in which I have learned from my son.

Cultivating that sense of self-control in an environment in which it can be very difficult to do so is neither easy to do nor replicate.

And yet it, along with looking at those people and communities who once overate and now consume food in healthy amounts and types, may be one of the keys to reversing the trends.

I’m looking forward to Kessler’s book and the week’s lectures, films, and field trips.  For now, though, it’s time to bed, grateful for the opportunity and for the teaching of moderation that is just one of my wife’s many gifts to our son and our family.

Dunreith Comes Home

I’ll be heading out in a few short minutes to O’Hare Airport, where, for the first time in about six weeks, Dunreith will return here to Evanston.

A lot has happened since mid-May, when she arrived at her mother’s house planning to go to Rockport for a week’s vacation, but ended up tending to her mother in the hospital for two weeks after Helen had a seizure in front of her.

Aidan’s gone to his prom, graduated, attended Bonnaroo and completed six weeks as a camp counselor.

Dunreith has spent almost all of the time in Western Massachusetts with Helen, who on Monday will finish the radiation and chemotherapy stage of her treatment.

We all know that at some point our lives will end, and Helen and our family has had to confront that unwelcome reality with more urgency since she received her diagnosis toward the end of her hospital stay.

In all, we’ve managed quite well.

Aidan has taken care of himself just fine, as befits his status as a ready-to-leave-the-nest-any-minute young man.

I know I’ve written this before, and I’ll say again how proud I am of Dunreith for what she has done and how she has carried herself during this time.  Although it’s been hard, she has managed to keep things going at Facing History, the leadership of which has been enormously supportive of Helen and her, while also dealing with the myriad details associated with caring for an ailing parent who is aware of what she is losing, yet is understandably resistant to relinquishing hold of the actions that have given her days structure, routine and even meaning.

I’m talking about doing the dishes.

Sweeping the floors.

Paying the bills.

Despite the difficulty and inevitable sadness at Dunreith’s departure, there have been many moments of joy, profound connection and gratitude at the shared experiences.

One of these will be tonight, when I pick her up at O’Hare, retrieve Aidan, have some dinner and a walk, and generally soak in the pleasure of each other’s company.

The irony of this summer is that we are entering  a stretch when I will be away all but one of the next five weekends.

This means that, just 18 hours after Dunreith lands, I’ll be flying west to Los Angeles.

The timing of course is unfortunate, and the good news is that we’ve got tonight and we’ve got each other.

In a very real sense, the present is all we ever actually have.

Plane lands in 46 minutes.

I’m out.

Peace.

Personal Finances Online Course in Spanish

Have you ever taken an online course?

If so, how has it gone?

I’ve done a few now, with varying levels of success.

In some ways, the format has all the inherent advantages and challenges of any form of conversation.  On the one hand, being  in an online forum gives people who may be shy in person a chance to reflect, write and then share their thoughts.  The courses I’ve done through Facing History and the Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma literally bring together from all over the world dialoguing about the topic at hand and accompanying questions of the day. This richness is generally harder to accomplish than bringing those people together in the same room, although videoconferencing has reduced that barrier to some degree.

On the other hand, there are the same challenges of certain people dominating the conversation without the corrective that an able facilitator can provide when in the room through a quick affirmation of the ascendant voice and then pivot to another person and subject.

Beyond that, I often find the online discussions a bit more based in opinion and personal experience than in a thoughtful evaluation of available data, or even, facts.

I’m taking my first online class in sp

Spanish Online Personal Finances Course.

I’ve written quite a bit during the past four months about my ongoing efforts to master the speaking, reading and writing of the Spanish language for my job at Hoy.

During the past three weeks I’ve been taking my first Spanish online course.

The language is the medium of instruction, but not the course’s subject. Taught by former Menudo member Xavier Serbia, this six-week offering from the International Committee for Journalists is about personal finances.

It’s challenging, and I’m starting to find my groove.

I don’t know if you’ve taken online courses before, and my experience has been that the tone is generally quite conversational.  In the long run, this is beneficial to me, but at the beginning it was a bit hard for me to orient myself to this more informal style of writing, especially when people are weighing in with dozens of comments on three different topics weekly, with Xavier firing in detailed responses on a regular basis.

It’s a stimulating mix, and, with ‘classmates’ from all over the Spanish-speaking world and at various stages of their lives and careers, there is a ton to learn.

Which, of course, is why I’m there.

I’m also thinking of the space as  a lower stakes place to develop my Spanish thinking and writing than Hoy (This is fortunate on a number of levels, not the least of which is that I have not yet looked up/figured out how to type accents in Spanish on the Mac.).

Beyond that, the topic is an important one for any community, and there is particular resonance for Latinos, many of whom are vulnerable to various types of exploitation and abuse.  The general consensus among the group is that there also seems to be a hole in high-quality coverage in this area by Spanish-language publications.

All in all, though, it’s a worthwhile challenge in what has at times felt like a dizzying array of them since I started in March.

I’ll keep you posted as the course continues and pass along any particularly valuable insights I learn.  In the meantime, voy a dormir.

Hasta manana, gente.

 

Otherwise: The Wisdom of Jane Kenyon

I consider myself highly fortunate in living a rich and full life.

I’ve written before about the different elements that make me feel that way, so won’t run through the aspects of family, friends, spirit, sturdy health, meaningful work and financial stability that make me feel so blessed.

Part of the richness for me comes in the seemingly small details like waiting with a colleague to interview Chicago’s new mayor for the first time, hearing about a dear friend’s trip to Chile and Argentina with his family to visit their intrepid daughter, exchanging a tender good night greeting with my mother-in-law, or feeling the pleasure in a crisp sentence, the ability to comprehend Spanish and a deep breath that soothes me to my core.

A large part of the fullness, too, comes from my ever more heightened awareness both that these gifts are not inevitable and that, at some point, my life will end.

This knowledge pushes me not to live in a frenzied manner, but to savor and treasure what is in front of us now.

I of course am not the first person to reflect on these issues, nor, I am sure, will I be the last.

The late poet Jane Kenyon was married to Donald Hall, one of my mother’s former professors at the University of Michigan. Like Mom, she met Hall as a university student.

Shortly before her death from leukemia, she wrote Otherwise, a poem about this moment of recapping a day and thinking both about the many simple pleasures she had and the ever stronger knowledge that her time is limited.

I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise. I ate
cereal, sweet
milk, ripe, flawless
peach. It might
have been otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
to the birchwood.
All morning I did
the work I love.
At noon I lay down
with my mate. It might
have been otherwise.
We ate dinner together
at a table with silver
candlesticks. It might
have been otherwise.
I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.
But one day, I know,
it will be otherwise.

Like Kenyon, who was little older than I am now when she wrote this work, we all know one day it will be otherwise.  Her unflinching celebration of life’s joys-nature, physical health, a loving mate, work that matters and inspires passion, a shared meal and future prospects-and the sense that they will soon not be available moves and inspires me.

I hope it does the same for you.