T. Tamara Weinstein

Cover Me: A Health Insurance Memoir

mandy — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 10:00:00 +0000

If you suspect that your experiences alone put the hell in healthcare, then Cover Me by Sonya Huber is the memoir for you. By the age of thirty-three, Huber had already endured eleven gaps in healthcare coverage, and had also been sent to collections for medical debt multiple times. She became an expert at scavenging for alternatives and at squeezing every drop of blood from the recalcitrant turnip that is the US healthcare system.

Cover Me is a moving portrait of how access to healthcare determines who is a “have” and who a “have not” and in Huber’s hands, the issues surrounding healthcare reform become clear and relatable. Improbably, given the toll the struggles exact, the author is also very funny, telling her stressful tale with an irrepressible sense of humor.

Huber began her adult employment journey as an idealistic labor activist and became a university professor. At one point, she held down three jobs at once, none of which offered healthcare benefits. The pressure to find affordable healthcare ballooned exponentially as Huber went from single working woman, to wedding a man who was also a healthcare "have not," to becoming a mother.

But even as a single woman, the challenge of good health was daunting. Diagnosed with a disabling panic disorder, Huber was forced to scrounge for low cost medical clinics and sliding scale arrangements, at one point even bartering office cleaning services for therapy. She was often left to rely on two of the universe’s most unstable forces: luck and the kindness of others. At times, sympathetic doctors offered free pharmaceutical samples and dentists forgave their fees. But there were consequences, many of which could be filed under “you get what you pay for,” or more accurately, “you get what you are able to pay for.”

As a wife and mother, Huber’s determination grew even grittier. Schlepping her infant son through the frozen Ohio tundra to register for WIC and Medicaid benefits, and expertly working the phones to correct inevitable and near catastrophic bureaucratic errors, Huber became a master of resourcefulness and tenacity. Even during a rare stretch when Huber had coverage through an HMO, she found it to be Dungeons-and-Dragons-esque, requiring the right "passwords" to gain entry. (The passwords being properly worded referrals and appeals, and an intimate familiarity with the policy’s fine print.) If it’s true that insurance companies spew gobbledygook and denials to weed out folks who lack perseverance, they never counted on someone like Huber.

Huber’s Odyssean journey through the American healthcare system throws the institution's inequities and ironies into stark relief. She describes working for a nonprofit whose mission is to provide low income workers with health insurance; however, in a stunning revelation of either outrageous hypocrisy or business-as-usual in fund-strapped nonprofits, that same organization was unwilling to provide Huber with healthcare coverage. Meanwhile, Huber’s boss, who had stellar insurance through her prominent surgeon husband, could brandish her benefits card and blithely obtain top care. Reading this, you will be tempted to hurl the book against the nearest wall, but you won’t because you’ll be too riveted to let go.

Huber’s story will resonate with anyone who has ever battled a medical bureaucracy. That is, with everybody in America. Her refusal to say “uncle” will inspire, and along the way, readers may even pick up invaluable tips on navigating the labyrinthine depths of both public and private healthcare. There is also a twist at the end that makes university bureaucracy even scarier than its medical counterpart.

One question nagged me throughout Cover Me: where is Huber’s husband? He seemed to hang back and let Huber take the front lines, a story known to too many wives and mothers. But that question aside, and because Huber is such a deliciously skilled writer, Cover Me is the best kind of memoir; it is engaging, enraging, tragic and funny. Fortunately, laughter as medicine is one thing the insurance companies have not yet managed to deny.

Written by: T. Tamara Weinstein, September 15th 2010

Nothing But a Dog

admin — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 08:00:00 +0000

By Bobbi Katz, Jane Manning

Dutton Children's Books

Timmy and Lassie. Henry and Ribsy. Henry and Mudge. Shiloh, Sounder, Old Yeller. All great, classic stories. All beautiful illustrations of the so-called timeless bond between boy and dog. But where are the stories about girl and dog? There’s Because of Winn-Dixie and it, too, is a deservedly award-winning classic. But where is the rest of the canon? Finally, Opel and Winn-Dixie have worthwhile company with Nothing But a Dog, by Bobbi Katz, a picture book which manages to be both sophisticated and fun-loving.

Nothing But a Dog is told in the voice of a young girl who has a well thought-out argument about why when you long for a dog, nothing but a dog will do. Not parakeets, squirrels or kittens. Not soft, furry boots. There’s no activity fun enough to compensate, either. It is in the enumeration and illustrations of these allegedly lesser activities that the book really soars. In vibrant watercolors by Jane Manning, the girl “works at her own workbench with real tools,” rides a grown-up bike and climbs trees with a hat designating her Vice President of the Tree Climbers’ Club. (Another girl is president. A boy in the picture appears several branches below, but the girls are clearly the leaders). As the lively illustrations make clear, none of these activities are anywhere near the boring wasteland of time that the girl claims. But when you long for a dog, even playing the trumpet or going to monster movies (another wonderful illustration with the girls looking blasé and the boys terrified in their seats) can’t quell the longing.

The girl, although she remains unnamed, is real and appealing. She is calm, thoughtful, and adventurous, and knows how to present a convincing argument. Does she prevail in the end? Her parents, who make their only appearance on the last page, respond just the way one would hope to a daughter who knows how to vividly present her case.

Nothing But a Dog will appeal to both children and parents. While some children’s books about pets strive to present the sobering reality (it’s a lot of responsibility, kids!), this one is all about the joyous, free-form, muddy, messy, incomparable, unconditional love between child and dog. And, yes, it’s a lovely change to have that child be a girl.

Parents will be quick to notice that the book leaves out the darker side of dog ownership. Where are the chewed carpets, the scarred cabinets, the poor dead soles? (I refer to shoes and slippers.) The puddles? The vet bills? The forced marches through blizzards with small-bladdered pups? In case you’re wondering, yes, we did recently bring home a puppy in the middle of a Chicago winter. And that is precisely why I wanted to read this book. The magic of dog ownership was lost to me somewhere between February and the realization that the rugs were no longer salvageable. The wonder of the guaranteed happy greeting faded as I considered how our new friend resembled Tigger if Tigger were to be reincarnated as a weapon of mass destruction. I badly needed to recapture the messy magic. Perhaps it was a reflection of my mental state that before I read the book, I kept mistakenly referring to it as, “Anything But a Dog.” But meeting this lovely, strong girl and drinking in the illustrations has gone a long way towards reminding me why we all love a good girl-and-her-dog story.

Written by: T. Tamara Weinstein, July 14th 2010

Black Dogs and Blue Words: Depression and Gender in the Age of Self-Care

admin — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 08:00:00 +0000

By Kimberly Emmons

Rutgers University Press

Jerry Seinfeld jokes that pharmaceutical companies could save time by naming all of their antidepressants “Cramitol” (“Cram it all”). Kimberly Emmons would likely agree. Her eye-opening Black Dogs and Blue Words opens up an original, potentially life-changing perspective on antidepressants and the companies who market them. Emmons, an English professor at Case Western Reserve University and an expert in medical rhetoric, offers shocking and persuasive evidence that women are not only the targets of these ads, but have become complicit in the targeting.

Emmons builds her case brick by brick. Although her prose is academic and dense in places, the slowly building logic and the reader’s ensuing sense of outrage make the book as hard to put down as any who-dun-it. In fact, the book is its own brand of who-dun-it. How did women become Big Pharma bullseyes? Solving the mystery requires understanding how the language of antidepressant advertising both reflects and shapes gender stereotypes. To illustrate, Emmons dissects print and broadcast ads word by word and frame by frame. She points out how words such as “excessive crying," “fatigue," “loss of zest,” and “tearfulness” have long been used in our culture to describe women’s emotions and alleged deficits, and how drug manufacturers have co-opted the phrasing to describe depression.

It gets worse. Analyzing the photographs that accompany the ads, Emmons demonstrates how they reflect our societal norms of acceptable female behavior. The ads feature sad women standing apart from their family, women whose disappointed children accuse them of being “no fun anymore,” and protective fathers with their arms around children, standing apart from mom, fixing her with baleful stares. Next frame, the woman diagnoses herself with depression. Next, she is shown at her doctor’s office requesting antidepressants, and, presto, next frame, the woman has been restored to her acceptable “gendered self.” How do we know? She reports her progress as she shops for the family groceries, or while playing with her children, or while involved in some other womanly scenario. Emmons also surveys children’s literature and that women’s magazine staple, the self-diagnostic quiz, with equally interesting and well-considered conclusions.

One of the book’s most fascinating chapters traces the history of the Diagnostic and Statistics Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), which, as the title implies, spells out the criteria for diagnosing psychiatric illnesses. In one of her biggest bombshells, Emmons reveals that much of the language employed by Big Pharma to describe depression is not found in the DSM. Rather, drug manufacturers have cherry-picked synonyms primarily associated with women. Women absorb the ads, diagnose themselves with depression and make a beeline for the doctor’s office. The doctor, bombarded by the same marketing and lacking the time for a more in-depth probing, agrees. Prescription signed. Pills sold. And so we circle.

But don’t think that Emmons is anti-antidepressant, because she isn’t. Her view is much more reasoned. She acknowledges the good that medication can do under the right circumstances. But she also urges women to go from a regime of self-doctoring to a regime of self-care. Emmons uses “self-doctoring” to refer to women’s willingness to buy into the pharma-philosophy that emotional and social malaise stem from chemical problems which only can have chemical solutions. By accepting this rhetoric, says Emmons, women deprive themselves of their own personal narrative, one which may have little or nothing to do with clinical depression.

In contrast, self-care involves reacting to signals that something is not right with a conscious surveying of one’s life and all its circumstances. Perhaps medication will help. Or perhaps a much more profound change is in order. Learning how we have been manipulated, our lives altered by corporate profiteering, is depressing. Pass me the Cramitol. On second thought, don’t. It doesn’t have to be this way.

Written by: T. Tamara Weinstein, July 12th 2010

The Third Chapter: Passion, Risk, and Adventure In The 25 Years After 50

admin — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 08:00:00 +0000

By Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot

Farrar Straus and Giroux

It turns out that Madonna is not the queen of reinvention. That title belongs to Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, who truly is reinvention royalty. Lawrence-Lightfoot’s The Third Chapter offers a wise and uplifting guide to creating a new life or to drastically improving the one you’ve got. Although the bulk of advice is directed at folks actually in their “third chapter”, anyone in need of a transformation can benefit from Lawrence-Lightfoot’s advice and from the experience of the forty post-fifties she interviews.

As Lawrence-Lightfoot points out, our society expects seniors to retreat. But the book’s subjects—all in their fifties, sixties, or seventies—refused to see their “third chapter” as retrenchment or, worse, stagnation. Rather, they viewed their third chapter as an opportunity to resurrect old dreams and to create new ones.

The characters include a doctor who decides to study opera singing, a policy wonk who leaves a prestigious position to attend divinity school, and a successful businesswoman who becomes a relief worker in Kosovo. Many others revisit artistic passions. In one poignant story, a former professor begins painting a portrait of her best friend. Over time, as she tweaks and shades, her own face emerges from the canvas. As this new artist and so many of Lawrence-Lightfoot’s subjects discover, the post-fifty years are prime time for discovering one’s true voice and for new learning.

New learning is the crux of The Third Chapter and it is a theory from which readers of any age can benefit. Paradoxically, the first step to new learning is unlearning. Successful unlearning means dropping the unhealthy habits that most of us have picked up by high school: people-pleasing, guilt, aggressive competition, valuing external rewards over self-fulfillment, measuring ourselves by others’ high and low expectations, and allowing the harsh critical inner voice to suffer from terminal logorrhea. These are traits, practically reflexes, that many women will recognize. Appropriately, the theories of Mary Catherine Bateson and Carol Gilligan figure prominently.

Unlearning is only the first step, but once taken, self-consciousness, fear, and other limitations drop away. Only then can new learning kick in. Lawrence-Lightfoot, one of new learning’s pioneers, provides an excellent description of the extraordinary ways it pays off. A willingness to embrace collaboration, to take risks, and to practice strategic restraint (i.e. talking and acting less, listening and observing more) all turn out to be great methods for identifying and following one’s true passions and for hearing one’s own unadulterated voice. New learning also includes embracing struggles and setbacks as additional sources of knowledge, not as confirmation that one’s self-doubt was well placed (that’s so old learning).

While new learning requires maturity and experience, its principles can be applied at any age and with potentially unlimited benefits. By the end of the book, I was wondering why I hadn’t figured all this out already (I know, the self-chastising is ripe for unlearning) and equally pondered the unexpected and shocking revelation that, according to Lawrence-Lightfoot, at age forty-eight I am almost into the third chapter myself.

The meaningful takeaway is well summed up by someone else who accomplished much in the third chapter: “It’s not the years in your life, but the life in your years [that matter]." Abraham Lincoln said that; he became president at age fifty-two.

Written by: T. Tamara Weinstein, March 16th 2010

The Madonnas Of President Street

admin — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:01:00 +0000

By John Sandman

Xlibris

There are several formulas in life for crazy-making: having all of the responsibility, but none of the power; placing one’s fate in others’ untrustworthy hands, reacting instead of acting. These states may sound especially familiar to women raised in the 1950s, ‘60s, and ‘70s. Vivian Viola, the very believable narrator of The Madonnas of President Street, is grappling with all of them.

That Vivian is having trouble staying sane will come as no surprise to the legions of women raised in the Tao of the good girl. What may surprise readers is that this relatable protagonist was written by a man, New York journalist John Sandman who, in his day job, covers topics from AIDS to Z-bonds. In Vivian, Sandman has created a woman all women will recognize, perhaps even from looking in the mirror.

Single mom Vivian and teen daughter Melanie make their entrance in 1984 during a move from a much loved apartment to a Brooklyn neighborhood, which “brought back memories so stuffed with conflict, they could barely breathe.” It’s the neighborhood where Vivian lived with her in-laws after her Vietnam veteran husband Sal deserted her. Ceramic Madonnas line the stoops and Vivian badly wants them to portend comfort and certainty. Instead, they come to represent a world of inflexible expectations and suffocating encounters. After a failed business venture, Vivian, to her mind, is all out of options. “You take what you can get and I took it” is how she sees it. So begins a harrowing journey, triggered mostly by Vivian’s delusions of impotence.

Isn’t it criminal how so many girls are raised to doubt their grandeur? This is a point Sandman makes again and again. The move to President Street is downright Tarantino-esque. As the landlady, Mrs. Rotoli, harangues Vivian about her unmarried state, the movers attack Melanie upstairs. Vivian arrives in time to thwart the rape. “For the first time in months, I knew just where I stood and what to do.” But don’t cheer yet, because Vivian also refuses to report the crime so that she can stay on whatever part of Mrs. Rotoli’s good side she still occupies. After all, Mrs. Rotoli wouldn’t like the police storming up her walkway, and who would really believe the rape story anyway?

Of course, as so many women know, this way lies madness, or at the very least, intense, bone-piercing frustration—and this is not a good time for it. Vivian and Melanie are in one of those difficult times in life where changes come at you like an F-15 in a war zone. Melanie is about to start at Smith College, or enlist in the army like her dad (she’s still deciding), and she would like her mom to hook up with a man to be less alone. Vivian is under intense financial pressure and struggling to hold on to a job. And surprise, surprise, she tends to date the undatables. That special brand of pandemonium bred by desperation ensues.

Although this is a sadly common story, Sandman tells it most uncommonly. Issues of competition between generations of feminists, between mother and daughter, and between one’s inner good girl and sense of self-preservation are treated deftly and, amazingly, with a wonderful sense of humor. (“Mrs. Rotoli was a cross between Marlon Brando in The Godfather and Ernest Borgnine in McHale’s Navy.”) Vivian is Thelma and Louise put together, both a victim and a perpetrator of violence and chaos. But in the end, she comes out better than you might expect. In fact, she comes out with a wonderful, uplifting play on the words “coming out.” (It’s not what you’re thinking, but reformed good girls will approve.) If at Thelma and Louise’s sad end, you exclaimed, “It doesn’t have to be that way!”, in the end, Vivian proves you right.

Written by: T. Tamara Weinstein, November 2nd 2009

The Media Relations Department of Hizbollah Wishes You a Happy Birthday: Unexpected Encounters in the Changing Middle East

admin — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 07:59:00 +0000

By Neil MacFarquhar

PublicAffairs

The brash leather-clad sex columnist who hosts her own television show, The Biography of Love, is:

a) a Parisian whose show airs in France b) an American whose show airs in the U.S. c) a Kuwaiti whose show is broadcast throughout the Middle East

The surprising answer is C. But sex educator Fawzia Dorai is only one of the unexpected and colorful agents of Middle Eastern change profiled in The Media Relations Department of Hizbollah Wishes You A Happy Birthday. A Middle East correspondent for the New York Times, MacFarquhar grew up in Libya, the son of an American oil company employee. With both an insider’s and an outsider’s perspective, MacFarquehar has crafted a rare work. Traveling from Iran to Morocco and points in between, he interviews activists, celebrities, renegades and politicians about the region’s potential for change. The answers are as astonishing as finding the words “Hizbollah” and “Happy Birthday” in the same sentence.

Westerners tend to view the Middle East monolithically, as a vast expanse of violence and extremism. But, as MacFarquhar illustrates, the region consists of competing philosophies and contradictions. For every cleric who believes that politics should serve Islam, there is another who would twist Islam to serve politics. For every activist who would cement society into strict adherence to Islamic law, there is another who believes that Islamic ideals of justice and dignity are more consistent with an open society. The United States’ missteps, MacFarquhar believes, result from failing to recognize the nuanced difference between Western-style democracy and the ways in which Islam’s humanistic values could be used to advance tolerance and pluralism.

Don’t just take MacFarquhar’s word for it. The people he profiles make these points in their own riveting ways. Fawzia Dorai cites ancient Islamic texts on sexuality in support of her frank talks to the public. A Lebanese television chef rockets to stardom by blending American and Middle Eastern cuisine. A Bahraini journalist refuses to bow to censors who hate her bold calls for reform. The book is full of such innovators, stunning in their courage: poets, professors, singers, farmers.

The odds are daunting, as a discussion of fatwas makes clear. Fatwas are clerical rulings and range from pronouncements about jihad (clerics disagree whether the concept condones violence) to decisions banning dogs (which prompt black market dog sales). The clergy is as diverse as the population it serves. Some are fundamentalist, others more liberal. Some are better trained. Some have political agendas.

To add to the complexity, fatwas are not always binding. A layman who doesn’t like a fatwa can look for one that’s more favorable. Sometimes this is a good thing. One woman’s imam ruled that she could unveil at work, but only if she suckled her male colleague, making him her surrogate child. (The ensuing outrage resulted in the fatwa’s reversal.) The proliferation of competing decrees hampers reform by preventing clear definitions of what an Islamic society should look like.

Women activists figure prominently. To MacFarquhar, their status is not simply about gender politics, but about how it reflects on society as a whole. A government using religion as an instrument of oppression affects women in kind. A more pluralistic regime, such as Lebanon’s, offers all citizens more freedom. Bahrain, a mixed bag of tolerance and fundamentalism, allows women to drive, but only if fully veiled. As long as tools of change such as freedom of speech and assembly are discouraged, egalitarianism remains elusive.

MacFarquhar seamlessly blends his knowledge of Middle Eastern history, religion, politics, and culture in The Media Relations Department of Hizbollah Wishes You A Happy Birthday. The experience feels like spending time with a very smart and connected buddy who has pulled you aside to share secrets, insights and anecdotes that you won’t hear anywhere else.

Written by: T. Tamara Weinstein, August 31st 2009

Impermanence: Embracing Change

admin — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 23:44:00 +0000

By David Hodge, Ha-Jin Kang Hodge

Snow Lion Publications

It's day five of my computer's meltdown. This morning the dishwasher broke. My husband has no job leads. My doctor emailed me this afternoon, and there are no new answers to my health issues. As my husband flew out the door to another networking event, I couldn’t help a somewhat desperate whimper, "Are we destined for instability?" If we are, we are in good company. In the company of the whole world, according to Impermanence: Embracing Change by married multimedia artists David Hodge and Hi-Jin Kang Hodge. Impermanence focuses on the Buddhist concept of change which teaches that instability, change, impermanence, call it what you will, is a fact of life. Accepting that sands inevitably shift is a necessary path to stability and peace of mind. Impermanence is a valuable way station on this rocky, cliff-hugging journey.

While Impermanence is packaged as a book and DVD set, it is so much more. It is an art exhibit you hold in your hand. And view on your DVD player. Its first incarnation was as part of the traveling art installation, The Missing Peace, a celebration of the Dalai Lama’s life and work. The Hodges filmed a diverse group of 108 women and men discussing impermanence. The interviews played on sixteen iPods arranged in a circle and set to play at both timed intervals and simultaneously.

Transferred to DVD, the exhibit feels like a friendly cocktail party where the host has banned superficial chitchat and commanded guests to talk only about life’s enduring matters. It starts as a mosaic of faces and a soft cacophony of voices. It is interactive. Let the film take control as it moves between mosaic and individual or click on arrows which arrange the interviews into themes such as "awareness," "message to the world," and "presence." Either way, just like that, you are launched into the exhibit as if you were there.

The interviewees each speak for several minutes about impermanence. Is it a source of dread? A harbinger of death and loss? The other shoe dropping?

Or is it proof that one is alive? Nature’s way of making us appreciate the here and now? Promise of a better tomorrow?

Yes.

Impermanence is all of this. Several interviewees also emphasize its potential to unite: we all have impermanence in common. In addition, letting go of our own little corner of status quo leaves us open to new connections.

The book adds even more depth. It is arranged into the same themes as the DVD, each introduced by an enlightening and thoughtful essay or poem. Photographs of the participants and snippets of their interviews follow.

Impermanence is uplifting and depressing, energizing and draining. In fact, it feels a lot like life. While I thought women might struggle more with change as we seem disproportionately affected by it during life events such as marriage, childbirth and divorce, this turned out not to be so. Women and men equally expressed hope and trepidation.

Impermanence would have been an even more absorbing experience had it included less philosophy and more anecdote. But its overall message of accepting impermanence without fighting it, of refusing to feel defeated by change even when it's in the wrong direction and of remembering that impermanence allows for the possibility of better times, not just worse, is invaluable. In the time since I began this review, the computer and dishwasher were fixed. And Impermanence has persuaded me to focus on what is, instead of lamenting what will surely be the continuing ebb and flow of life.

Written by: T. Tamara Weinstein, April 24th 2009