Tuesday, December 14, 2004
With over a year of blogging under the belt I see that it is inevitable that moments don't arise where you don't occasionally repeat yourself. Let's just call it reinforcement of an idea. Or reiteration of a concept. Sounds better.
Like I think it was just about this time last year I found myself complaining about trying to clean up our intern-built database at work. The one I am a year later still cleaning... (it's amazing the havoc an untethered intern can wreak left to his own devices). Yesterday I was combing through for the dead and then deleting them. 'Bye, bye. No more Xmas card for you.' Then changing Mr. and Mrs. to a single derivative thereof -- usually Mrs.
Next I peeled out separate Excel sheets for the seniors living in affordable housing units (the easier to delete them when they die). This is when I start getting depressed. Firstly you have to have visited one of these apartment complexes in city X. They are moldy brick and cracking concrete. They are windows that look out to treeless bleak. They are dark narrow corridors along which are numbered doors: here #17 where sits a woman watching television. Waiting until her number is up at which time someone who has been on a waiting list for two years can take her place. In summary these buildings are top-to-bottom aesthetic nightmares that nobody deserves to live in. But that's the thing. Even if everything points that you are headed to that building in your old age, nobody actually thinks it's going to happen to them. And then it's too late.
I haven't figured out quite yet how you could effectively legislate growing old so that you could do it with dignity but suffice to say the present system in the US isn't it. Not unless you are fortunate enough to have a caring family nearby and lots of money. Personally I would be in favor of some of my tax dollars being spent on scientific research of the sort that would develop the ultimate over-the-counter magic pill. An innocuous little pink something that once taken, offers you up a pleasant little dream before you slumber off into permanent sleep (yes testing would be problematic I admit). Wouldn't this be better than sitting alone wheelchair-bound for hour after endless hour in a dingy apartment somewhere? Better than the humiliation of having your diaper changed in a nursing home? Is the will to live really so strong that people would rather choose a living hell than death? I say all this because I am acutely aware of the fact that were I not a highly subsidized woman, there is no reason to think that apartment number #17 wouldn't be in my cards
Like I think it was just about this time last year I found myself complaining about trying to clean up our intern-built database at work. The one I am a year later still cleaning... (it's amazing the havoc an untethered intern can wreak left to his own devices). Yesterday I was combing through for the dead and then deleting them. 'Bye, bye. No more Xmas card for you.' Then changing Mr. and Mrs. to a single derivative thereof -- usually Mrs.
Next I peeled out separate Excel sheets for the seniors living in affordable housing units (the easier to delete them when they die). This is when I start getting depressed. Firstly you have to have visited one of these apartment complexes in city X. They are moldy brick and cracking concrete. They are windows that look out to treeless bleak. They are dark narrow corridors along which are numbered doors: here #17 where sits a woman watching television. Waiting until her number is up at which time someone who has been on a waiting list for two years can take her place. In summary these buildings are top-to-bottom aesthetic nightmares that nobody deserves to live in. But that's the thing. Even if everything points that you are headed to that building in your old age, nobody actually thinks it's going to happen to them. And then it's too late.
I haven't figured out quite yet how you could effectively legislate growing old so that you could do it with dignity but suffice to say the present system in the US isn't it. Not unless you are fortunate enough to have a caring family nearby and lots of money. Personally I would be in favor of some of my tax dollars being spent on scientific research of the sort that would develop the ultimate over-the-counter magic pill. An innocuous little pink something that once taken, offers you up a pleasant little dream before you slumber off into permanent sleep (yes testing would be problematic I admit). Wouldn't this be better than sitting alone wheelchair-bound for hour after endless hour in a dingy apartment somewhere? Better than the humiliation of having your diaper changed in a nursing home? Is the will to live really so strong that people would rather choose a living hell than death? I say all this because I am acutely aware of the fact that were I not a highly subsidized woman, there is no reason to think that apartment number #17 wouldn't be in my cards
Well on that morbid note...
Comments:
Post a Comment
