SOC week 5

Oh gee sometimes this healthcare class can make my head hurt. At the beginning of the semester I for sure thought that healthcare should be a privilege and therefore I wasn’t necessarily for universal healthcare. After the readings this week and our first class discussion I’m not quite sure anymore. I mean in reality a type of universal healthcare is already in progress in America so really what I think doesn’t quite matter anymore, the majority voted and they voted universal healthcare. Still though everyone is entitled to their own opinion, yet sadly my opinion has lost its way.

One topic we further discussed in class on Tuesday was the idea of if we have control over our health. In my previous blog I gave the typical “yes, but” answer which seems to be a pretty common answer for healthcare questions but now I a definite answer and that answer is no. In class this week someone mentioned that the things we do like exercising and eating right are all factors that play into our health. I completely agree, everything we do factors into our health but it doesn’t necessarily determine our health. You can be someone who smokes everyday of your life but yet never develops lung cancer or you can be someone who wears sunscreen and a hat each time you go outside and still develops skin cancer. It’s my opinion that what is meant to happen will happen and that applies to our health.  

Before I thought that healthcare was a privilege and as long as you worked hard then you should be rewarded with the privilege of good healthcare end of discussion. However one of the readings this week pointed out a very real and somewhat sad case. In his article Malcolm Gladwell commented on an interview that was dated back several years ago and dealt with uninsured Americans. In his article he quotes the interview writing that Loretta, who worked nights at a university research center in Mississippi, was missing most of her teeth. “They’ll break off after a while, and then you just grab ahold of them, and they work their way out. It hurts so bad, because the tooth aches. Then it’s a relief to just get it out of there.” To me that is such a sad thought. Here is a woman, who has a job, and a respectable one at that, and yet she can’t afford dental healthcare and as a result has to suffer through what I can imagine is intense pain and pull out teeth herself. No way could I ever do something like that. And this is exactly where I get confused which side of the argument I fall on. On one side we have people like Loretta and on the other side we have lazy people who are always just looking for a way to cut corners. It’s a very hard topic to firmly plant your feet on one side.

Tomorrow we go and interview real Italians about their opinion on their universal healthcare system. I think it will be quite interesting because up until now we have only been discussing theoretical scenarios statistics, which can be misleading, and the opinions of authors. I think these interviews will really help us to form our own opinions about universal healthcare and possibility of it working for America. If citizens who have had universal healthcare for years and years don’t like it I imagine many of us will lean towards the opposing side of universal healthcare as well as vice versa.

GL Week 5

This week at dinner Mike made a comment about making a bucket list for our remaining time in Rome; he said with a little more than three weeks left making a list would be helpful. I can’t believe I only have three weeks left here! A couple of us were on this train this week and we were saying how it feels like it was just the beginning of August yesterday and now it’s Thanksgiving and Christmastime. It’s amazing; I just don’t know where the time went! By far week five has been my favorite week here! Aubree and I gave a tour of the Borghese Gardens and Via Vento, my family came to Italy and I’ve been able to spend time with them showing them around, and we visited the Gucci Museum, which if I had the choice I would visit daily!

To start off the week on Tuesday Aubree and I gave our walking tour which consisted of showing the other students the Borghese Gardens, Via Vento, Santa Susanna, and Santa Maria Della Vittoria. I know personally for myself I had a lot of fun giving the tour, and the gardens were really beautiful. In our Smiles reading for this week Edith Wharton makes the remark “these gardens have excited so much admiration that little thought has been given to the house, though it is sufficiently interesting to merit attention.” While yes I did enjoy the massive gardens I found the Borghese Gallery, which was at one point a house, more magnificent than the gardens.  In fact the Borghese Gallery has been my favorite museum we have toured as a group so far! It just astounds me that every room we walked through, with the elaborate painting, and marble floors there was someone, at some point, sipping tea or taking a nap in the room.

After visiting the museum I went and found my family and was able to show them around! Wednesday we went on a tour of the Vatican which was amazing. I mean just looking at the massive ceilings and walls I can’t even imagine painting them. As I am in every building I enter I was completely in awe. As memorable as the Vatican and Sistine chapel are by themselves being “escorted” out of the Sistine chapel made it even more so memorable. In the book The Italians in chapter 10 Barzini talks of the pursuit of life and basically what it boils down to is power, personal power to be exact. He states that, “Without power all threats would be risible and bombastic gestures… The choice between one alliance or another, between hostility or peace, resistance to the last breath or immediate surrender, are the result of a realistic estimate of the forces each side can marshal.” In the chapel our tour guide, who was licensed with a badge, was telling us about the artwork in the chapel and pointing out things and all of a sudden she had museum security telling her to be quiet and she wasn’t allowed to speak at all. She showed him her badge and told him we were a tour and she was just explaining the chapel, however, he wouldn’t take her explanation and told her just last week the rules changed and if she wanted to talk we needed to leave. We decided just to be quiet for a little bit until the security guard wandered away then she started talking again. Well I’m not sure where he came from, but, all of a sudden he was back yelling at her and poking her telling her he warned us and now we had to leave, of course we had no idea what was going on because it was all in Italian but later our tour guide translated. Anyway, instead of immediate surrender, Barzini’s words, our tour guide argued back for a while until three more security guards came over and too joined the dispute. It was after that we were escorted out which led to a couple more angry word exchanges; our tour guide said they were purposely picking on her and ganging up on her and just basically being completely unfair. Using Barzini’s theory though it was because our tour guide was seen as a person with less personal power that is why the security guard was able to “pick on her” and in the end essentially escort us out.

Besides that little hiccup it’s been such a fun week being having my family here and being able to show them around Italy.  As it is currently I’m sitting on a train and we are traveling from Florence to Venice. Being able to take my family to Florence and myself being able to go for a second time has been so great. With only three days left with my family before they head back home and with only having three weeks left in Italy myself I can’t wait to see what the rest of this trip will be like!

SOC: Week 4

Being now halfway through the Rome experience means I’m also halfway through my classes here. Specifically I am halfway through Italian, halfway through GL, and of course halfway through Comparative Health. Now being at the midpoint in my classes everything is starting to come together. Italian is getting slightly easier, GL is becoming more interesting as we are experiencing all the things we have been reading about, and understanding both Italian healthcare and American healthcare is becoming less pig Latin and more so something I am able to process, understand, explain, and in some cases refute. Before coming to Rome and taking Comparative Health I really didn’t know much about healthcare let alone the healthcare of other countries outside the U.S. Now though after discussing for weeks healthcare I feel like I have an understanding not only of the healthcare we as Americans have, flaws and all, but also the healthcare system of Italy, flaws and all.

Italy provides its citizens with a universal healthcare system; this is something the U.S. does not do. The system covers all citizens under law with healthcare, therefore it is available to everyone and no one is denied. One of the readings we were assigned this week told of the “famine” the U.S. is in with regards to healthcare. Clark Newhall wrote, “When too many people are fighting to get the scarce stuff to stay alive, whether the scarce stuff is food or healthcare that is a famine.” The U.S. might be in a famine but Italy is not. Italy has no scarcity of healthcare because it is universal and given by the government. With millions of Americans suffering from being uninsured or underinsured this is possibly one approach our government can take from Italy’s healthcare system.

Thinking on this thought of millions Americans being without health insurance though, maybe some of them just don’t want health insurance. Possibly some people live healthy lives and do not go and see the doctor often and therefore don’t want or need to pay for health insurance. I mean our health is, for the most part, something we have control over. If someone takes precautions, like that of exercising daily, eating right, taking vitamins, etc. then very much so their health is being controlled. However, and there always seems to be a however or but when it comes to the topic of health and healthcare, certain aspects of the health cannot be controlled. Diseases like of certain types of cancers, and certain intellectual disorders are all, for lack of a better word, predetermined.  A person can live an incredibly healthy life still and yet still develop breast cancer. In those instances a person’s health is something he/she does not have control over.

This week we were able to go visit the Museum of the Mind, which until quite recently was run as an insane asylum. Going in and touring the museum it was clear and can be connected to my previous paragraph the patients in the asylum had no control over their health. Some of the patients had disorders they were born with and sadly after they were diagnosed by a doctor would be bound to the insane asylum for basically the rest of their life. As interesting as the museum was it was also a little haunting and sad for myself. The procedures and lifestyles these patients had were nothing close to pleasant; in most cases the patients never even went outside. Being in the museum and seeing the rooms redone and partaking in simulations that were close to what the actual patients of the hospital did just made the experience very real-life

 

GL Week 4

So it seems like each time I sit down to start writing my blog the only thing that pops into my head is, “Wow I seriously can’t believe that week (insert week number here) is done!” It just amazes me that week four has come and gone. I mean we are only here for eight weeks and four out of those eight are gone already. Good thing my camera hasn’t left my hand and I have been able to capture a little bit of the reality I am living daily. Anyways, back to week four. Week four in Rome brought days full of traveling and exploring the city of Rome, which you think I would be semi-familiar with by now but every day brings new streets, shops, and bakeries. Also during week four we traveled outside of Rome to Florence but I’ll comment on Florence later on.

Thinking back on this week there really isn’t much I can say. Every day we do something that just blows my mind. Like this week Rachel and Aimee took us on a tour with the usual stunning churches and art and Danielle showed us ancient ruins of various worship places.  Then on Thursday we visited the Museum of the Mind which was an insane asylum until just recently. It makes me wonder if there is anything in Rome that is plain and average; so far my mind is saying no.

For class this week the readings assigned were “My Rome” written by Muriel Spark and “Without Reservations” written by Alice Steinbach. “Without Reservations” was a reading that I really was able to connect with. It was a reading that not only made sense for my journey through Rome but also through life. Steinbach wrote “The unexpectedness of life, waiting round every corner, catches even wise women unawares. To avoid corners altogether is, after all, to refuse to live.” Reading this the only thought going through my mind was this should be every person’s life motto. When I made the decision to come and study in Rome I turned a corner in my life and I just feel like every day I am here it’s just another corner being turned. Each day something new happens; I haven’t had one day where I’ve done the same thing I’ve done another day. If I see something chances are the next day I won’t be passing it again. It’s that unexpectedness Steinbach was writing about; it is exhilarating.

Florence. I don’t even know what to say about Florence right now. As it is currently I am sitting on a train that is taking me from Florence to Rome and I am not happy. The experience of Florence went incredibly too fast for me, and thinking back on it right now all I can recall is leather. Leather EVERYWHERE. Well ok actually that’s a lie I can remember the seven course dinner too, but I mean who doesn’t remember a seven course meal?

 

GL Week 3

WOW! I simply cannot believe week three has come and gone! I feel like just yesterday I was at the airport getting on a plane to head to NC! As it stands today I’ve now been to two countries since then and traveled to three major European cities; looking back on my journey thus far it’s simply unimaginable all the amazing experiences I’ve had. And what is even more amazing to me is I’m not even half way through this trip! I mean people talk about having a bucket list I can’t even imagine trying to come up with one after this trip.

Well as I said before, and by my post title, this was week three in Rome and with each passing day I am becoming more comfortable with this city and more comfortable in myself. I am comfortable and confident in myself that even if I get lost it’s nothing I’m going to panic about. There’s so much history, art, beauty, and shopping around every turn getting lost in Rome is more like a treat than mishap. With that said though, there was no getting lost for me this week. The week started off with a tour done by David and Emily and they took us through a more spiritual rooted tour. The theme, or idea, of Rome this week was “Rome as a city of faith” and as a result David and Emily’s tour led us to places like that of San Giovanni and the Holy Steps. San Giovanni was breathtaking. Everything from the outside of the church, to the gold ceiling, the paintings on the walls was amazing. The church was filled with history and art and of course a spiritual dimension. In the book The Smiles of Rome, Margaret Visser talks about churches being “in total opposition to the narrowing and flattening of the human experience” how right she is. San Giovanni had such an essence and just so many dimensions. Churches like that, in my opinion, truly open up a person to a whole new world and give a person an entire new outlook.

Thinking about the Holy Steps, though, I don’t think anything else has compared.  Going to the Holy Steps and climbing the steps on my knees was without a doubt one of the most humbling experiences in my life. And honestly what made it even more humbling to me was that I was climbing the Holy Steps not by myself but with a mass of other people. Seeing person completely hunched down with forehead pressed against the steps and muttering a prayer, words can’t describe. In a nutshell I suppose the atmosphere of the Holy Steps was almost a little overwhelming. Like we talked about in class going up all the steps on your knees was a little rough but unanimously   we agreed once we got to about five or six steps from the stairs the pain kind of washed away. It’s an interesting thought to think about where the pain went. In The First Letter of Peter he states, “No one can hurt you if you are determined to do only what is right; if you do have to suffer for being good, you will count it as a blessing.” While climbing the steps was a slight challenge at first because we were determined to do it and because it was the right choice to make possibly it was the idea that God could wipe away all pain that moved us along the stairs.

While this week proved to help me gain many new insights being at Santa Giovanni and climbing the Holy Steps were indeed the most rewarding.  Moving into week four now I’m ready for whatever new adventures and opportunities lie ahead of me.  Until next week, Ciao!

SOC week 2: Looking at the opposing argument

During Soc. class this week Professor told us our blog for the week should be about understanding our opponent’s viewpoint and we should write about the supporting details and facts of their viewpoint, not ours.  Well isn’t that tricky. It’s easy to have our own opinions and come up with reasons that support our opinion but when I sit down and think about reasons that support my opposing viewpoint I come up with nothing. Not one darn thing. I mean I understand that in order for my argument to be more valid and effective I need to understand and appreciate the opposing argument but the problem is every time I sit down and think about it I feel like my mind is having a debate with itself. I’m sure if my mouth actually articulated what my mind was thinking people would think I am crazy. Even with this debate running through my head, I think I have been able to come up with some points that could prove to be appealing to some people.

I see health care as a privilege. If you work hard, learn a lot, and meet the right people in the end you will be successful and rewarded. In this instance you will be rewarded with healthcare. That’s the way I see it. No freebies no donations, simply in the end hard work pays off. However, possibly this theory isn’t always true. Sometimes fate gives you a bad hand. What if you work hard your whole life, study hard in school, and don’t meet the right people? What if you study hard in school and work hard then can’t afford to get a college education? What if you’re a hard worker but no jobs are available and you’re left working at a diner or grocery store? Should those people not have health insurance? Of course not. People like that who are honest and hardworking should be rewarded and not punished just because they weren’t dealt the best fate cards. I suppose then for people who have a life similar to the examples I listed, healthcare being a right would be the obvious and right choice for their opinion. Possibly this is the situation for the majority of people, that they just have been dealt a bad set of cards, and only a small minority would abuse the system of free healthcare. If this is true I would fully support healthcare as a right.

The Pastoral Constitution of the Church states that “(God) has willed that all men should constitute one family and treat one another in a spirit of brotherhood.” Basically in modern language this quote is saying that men, women, children no matter the race, ethnicity, age, etc. are all related and a member of the same family tree and in a family everyone helps each other. If someone has fallen you help them up; if someone is dealt a bad fate you help them and give them some of your fortune. In the instance of healthcare, if someone has lost their job or simply can’t afford the cost it is your job, as a member of the family, to support them and make sure they have the care and coverage they need. This could mean that possibly you pay a little more in taxes and you may not receive the same benefit you were receiving before but at least now everyone, your extended family members, have care.

Moving away from the idea of healthcare being a right or privilege I want to just briefly discuss another blog prompt we received. This prompt dealt with the Cleveland Clinic and the people of Cuyahoga County. The Cleveland Clinic is known worldwide and is rated has one of the best hospitals yet the people living in the surrounding houses of the hospital are not all healthy. I just think this is silly. Of course all the people living in Cuyahoga County are not healthy. The hospital is a nonliving object. It does not give off good health. People always say that you are who you surround yourself with. You surround yourself with certain people and sooner or later you will start acting and behaving like them, guaranteed. This is because you’re feeding off another person, they are giving you actions and cues and you’re basing yourself off that. That’s where it ends though. You can’t feed off something that doesn’t produce actions, emotions, cues, it’s impossible. To say you live next to a hospital and you aren’t healthy is like saying you live next to a fast food restaurant and you are obese. It just doesn’t make sense. Just because you live next to McDonalds doesn’t mean you are automatically obese; just because you live next to the Cleveland Clinic doesn’t mean you are automatically healthy.

 

 

GL 350 Week 2

Week two in Rome proved to be just as fast paced and memorable as week one. The week has been filled with many new sights, experiences, food choices, and insights to Rome living. For example, insight number one; the 2:23 train from Rome Termini to Villetta is not my friend. Not even close. Barzini said we would eventually see some flaws in this beautiful city, the 2:23 train, definitely a flaw. After making a mad dash to the train only see it roll out of the station just as we reached the platform I knew I had an issue with the train system; but then just two days later after making the 2:23 train but then it breaking down for forty minutes and being forced off the train at a stop that wasn’t ours I definitely came to the conclusion that the train system is a flaw in my eyes. Oh and did I mention both days it was raining and cold because it was.

Now the second insight I gained from this week basically was the polar opposite but it still came from that horrible train ride and believe it or not. Just to make a quick recap of the situation what basically happened was the train broke down and an announcement came on over the train but sadly for us it was in Italian. Now even though I am taking an Italian course my understanding and comprehension of the language is at about that of a two year old, maybe a little below so basically Aubree, Katie, and myself were sitting there like “ummmm help.” Luckily though this gentleman sitting next to us obviously could tell we were American and when I looked at him completely confused he told us that the train was broken and we were all to get off at the next stop and another train would be there to pick us up. This conversation was the first part of my insight. This gentleman was a complete stranger to us and he had no obligation to translate what was being said over the loudspeaker but he still did. Once we were all shuffled off the train at the stop we lost our translator and we were left standing again by ourselves in a sea of savvy Italian people already locating their correct train. Well we managed to find our train platform and even found some nice older ladies and a man in a red sweatshirt all whom were headed to Villetta. We felt good, until an announcement came over the train station that I guess meant that the schedule had switched and the platform we were at would no longer take us to Villetta; basically all that was going through my head was greatttttttt. Oh and don’t forget it was still raining. Well so to make an already long story have a short ending basically, because everything here in Rome seems to be fast paced, we ended up half jogging half running to the right train. The part of this experience that made an impression on me though was the ladies who we had stood by us and were headed to Villetta got to the train before us and before they got on the train they turned around and smiled and looked relieved that that we had made it on the train as well and they were yelling at the man in the red sweatshirt hurrying him along to the right train.   

Barzini said the fatal charm of Italy was that people no matter who they are always feel wanted here. “It (the charm) made and still makes unwanted people feel wanted, unimportant people feel important, and purposeless people believe that the real way to live intelligently is to have no earnest purpose in life” (pg. 42). These were the exact words Barzini wrote in his book about the charm that draws so many people to Italy and this is the charm I felt that day. To so many Italian citizens I’m sure I am probably just another gawking, clueless, unimportant tourist but to the man on the train and the older ladies I was someone of stature and that gave me a sense of belonging and a little less like a tourist and a little more like an extended family member.