Federal Express has delivered my re-application for my visa to work in the UK, so all I can do now is wait and try (in vain) to concentrate on other topics.
I did concentrate on following up a conversation I had with Clay, one of the friends with whom we’re staying this summer. I was talking to Clay and Sarah about a course I’d like to teach in Glasgow (eventually), a course about Death (which I’d hope to teach with a member of the medical faculty); that reminded Clay of the work of Nortin Hadler, who teaches at UNC. Clay has heard Hadler give a few lectures, and has read his books (The Last Well Person and Worried Sick) ; Sarah has read him and keeps an ear open for him on NPR. Anyway, I’m intrigued by Hadler’s way of thinking about health issues; he shows a lot more attention to “forest” issues, while the dominant public discourses concentrate on individual trees or, at most, species of tree. At a time when “rationing” (and whether it be done by a for-profit private entity or by the government) and “death panels” are in the news, I appreciate Hadler’s approach to shaping medical care. Now, he’d make a strong Surgeon General or Health Czar.
I know enough credentialed New Testament scholars who propose idiosyncratic solutions to vexing dilemmas (i.e., “cranks”) that I don’t simply take Hadler’s word for everything he says. Clay’s pretty impressed, though, and I’m sympathetic with Hadler’s account of why the medical system functions as it does, and how it might function more humanely on behalf of all.