NYPL and 1941

To begin with, despite reports to the contrary from my GP back in December, I am the picture of health and unlikely to keel over any time soon. (I braved yesterday's not-so-snowpocalypse, headed out to a doctor's appointment, and learned that all is well. Later, I celebrated with a day full of eating, including a modified vegetarian carbonara for lunch, eggrolls and soup for dinner, and brownies for dinner. Go team Emily.)

Therefore, given my recent clean bill of health, I think I'm fully equipped to move on from mooning over waste disposal (though I'm going to keep trying to schedule my terrorist-watch-list-inducing interview, even though making too many phone calls asking to tour waste treatment and processing plants may begin to arouse some suspicions). However, in the meantime, barring future success in that department, I want to pull on your coat a little bit (hah! moments from now, this will be a joke!) about clothing.

So, I spent some time this weekend organizing my closet, and I noticed something. First, I noticed that I have a lot of very similar sweaters -- nearly all black, grey, or green, and nearly all either cabled or hooded. Second, I noticed that I'm kind of woefully unfashionable. Then, though, because I'm of a ruminative nature, and because I've been thinking about waste disposal, I started to wonder: what happens to all this clothing when we're done with it? And how much do we really need?

Recently, the NY Library blog had a feature on the same topic. While things have changed (do they even still make dickies?), I was struck by one thing: I have a damn lot of clothing.

If I were ten years younger and it were 1941, I would be a straight-up clotheshorse. I have more shoes than even the Imelda Marcos-y Vassar girl, who averaged ten pairs, and I may even beat the Smithie's even dozen sweaters. Sure, I have fewer evening dresses than the average Texas coed (7 1/2? Really?), but she also reported having an even seven boyfriends. So, you know.

Here's my thing: This list was for everyday wear. The low end of that means a wardrobe comprised of a dickey, a hat, three evening dresses, three skirts, three pairs of shoes, three and a half blouses, three day dresses, and three sweaters. (Plus one boyfriend.) I'm imagining arriving to work like that for the next little while -- cycling through a total of six tops and three dresses for the remainder of the year. How long until someone commented? Or would they? (Answer: Yes. Yes they would.)

There are a lot of articles, if you pay attention to those things, about the evils of "fast fashion," of H&M and Forever 21 providing cheap, disposable clothing that only winds up in a landfill within a year or two, and I usually scoff and figure, well, I'll ditch the fast fashion when the regular kind is cheaper. But is the solution really to go the 1941 way? How would it work -- switching to fewer, higher-quality items that you can wear into the ground? This is feeling very tempting right now. We'll see.

I know, and I've known for years, that the key environmental solution is to reduce consumption, not just to recycle (or bring to Goodwill, as the case may be). I think it may be time to introduce my principles to my closet.

*Notification: As of today, I'm officially beginning requirement 4 of the Business badge: "Keep a complete and actual account of personal receipts and expenditures for six months." Yeah, this is something I should do all the time, as an actual and competent adult, but I don't. So let me start. Today: $3.75 for coffee with Wendy after work.*

meaner than a

It's hard to find a junkyard in Brooklyn.

Actually, no. It's not hard to find one at all. But it's hard to have a conversation with someone -- anyone! -- at one, I will tell you that. And you will believe me, because if you try for yourself you will be met with the same mysterious, scrap metal-y silence I encountered. (Unless you use some sort of deceptive measure, like asking for a crankshaft for a '87 Dodge Aries (though, of course, I celebrate the entire K-car catalog equally and with great delight).) So, anyway, in the past three days I have spoken to no fewer than eight different junkyards in the Brooklyn area, not counting those whose telephones have been disconnected (2). Out of personal (and professional? I guess?) courtesy, I'm not going to say which junkyards or where. Know why? Because they are positively Masonic in their unwillingness to have a telephone conversation. It's like I'm ringing up the Skull and Bones, Mossad, and the Illuminati, but with car parts.

You are wondering right now (quite correctly, mind you) what the hell I am doing trying to track down a junkyard. Ah! (I am telling you), it's for the badge. I am also reminding you that a scout "ought to have a command of polite language," so watch the "what the hell." Now. While I'm in the process of trying to set up a waste treatment plant tour that will probably a) never happen and b) get me put on some kind of government watch list, I decided to stop playing phone tag and start following another urban waste stream: rusted-out cars. This seemed like both a pretty interesting move, and a visually-striking one (I could get out to a junkyard, take the kind of urban-blight photos people love to put on blogs, that sort of thing). Here's the problem: I'm really, really honest. And when I called up junkyards, I explained my actual reason for wanting to stop by. I even varied the approach a little (sometimes I was writing a short, internet-based article, sometimes doing research for a blog), but still: nothing.

One guy told me, formally enough, that his employers don't allow him to grant interviews. A few hung up on me. The most talkative man I spoke to (though, actually, they were all men, except for one receptionist -- the junkyard world has a glass ceiling still, I guess?) told me, "I learned a long time ago not to talk to the press. It's just better for everyone that way. I like to keep my business in the business." (For honesty's sake, one guy told me he handles six cars a month, which equals out to a single truckload, but that he would give me that number, nothing more, and the contact info for another junkyard that might talk to me. Seriously, this was like working informants on The Wire.)

So help me out here: what's the story with junkyards and their secrets? Was there some kind of 1980s muckraking junkyard expose I know nothing about? Do junkyards hate me?

So, I had this really terrible job in college

While I talk a good game about environmental protection (and am kind of a lunatic rearding food choices, shutting off lights like a lunatic, that kind of business), there's one eco-friendly step I really, really can't make: I can't handle compost.

I spent a semester or so in college working for the compost program, driving around in a remarkably stinky van from dining hall to dining hall, collecting the campus's food scraps and tipping them into a dumpster down by the soccer fields. I managed to make my clothing filthy enough that my roommate came in one day and wondered if there was an infestation of some sort in our bathroom, and I had a close call with a raccoon on at least one occasion. The $7.25 an hour (generous for student pay!) wasn't worth it, and I quit way, way sooner than I meant to.

Since then, there have been a few other composting endeavors, none of which were more successful than the first. There was the compost bin in a study-away house (mold), the backyard composting in early grad school (fruit flies), and on and on. I've totally given it up by now. Is this a good decision? Um. You could make a statement either way, I guess, but I do feel like I'd be a regular composter if only I were a better human being.

Now then.

In the Public Health badge, a scout is urged to learn where his garbage goes. This whole composting discussion? Pretty much a long-winded way of getting right to it.

I discovered, today, the most depressing video game ever: the Gotham Gazette Garbage Game. Sure, I've played it twice so far, but I don't think I have the heart to give it another go. It's engaging, no question, but would only have made ten-year-old Emily weep. (You think I'm joking? Hah. Just ask my parents.) However, when you decide to go play it yourself (which you will, I'm sure), you'll see the same thing I did: that something like 30% of New York's garbage is compostable in one form or another.

Holy crap.

That, my friends, is a lot of garbage. Imagine if every third week, you just decided, eh, heck with it, I won't bother producing any trash whatsoever. Yeah. Eliminating food waste in the garbage would pretty much have that effect.

For a slightly more well-thought-out reaction than "holy crap," I talked to Caroline Kruse, the development director at the Lower East Side Ecology Center, which offers composting programs in New York. (For the record, and especially in light of the iPad fever in the general public, they also have electronics recycling. I'm just saying.)

The LES Ecology Center has two major things going for it: volume and enthusiasm. Seriously. They started out twenty years or so ago at the Union Square Farmers' Market processing vegetable scraps, and by now they're collecting roughly 6 tons of food per week for composting at East River Park. (Now, when you're thinking of 6 tons, I'd like you to think, instead, of 3 male walruses. Or six and a half SmartCars. Or something. Um.)

Now. I started out explaining to Caroline that I don't compost. I have a small apartment with no outdoor space. I fell into a dumpster in college. All that. But she told me about something I will absolutely not try in my current place, but will maybe consider someday: a worm box. Now, I remember reading about this kind of thing back in high school, but really. LESEC holds regular workshops setting up non-composters (like me) with this kind of thing. Take a pound of red wigglers (the Cadillac of worms), add 'em to a slightly-ventilated plastic box, and add your weekly table scraps. (Caroline suggests that you stick to about 3 pounds per week, but also advises me that one might avoid weighing garbage if, instead, you just assume that 2 adults = 3 pounds. Sounds good to me.) This is a lazy person's composting -- no hauling food outside at night, no shovels, no angry raccoons. The worms go through your waste (no meat or dairy!), and in 3-6 months, you go from a mess of squirmy worms to a great big box of dirt. Go team!

But wait! Six month old garbage hanging out in your kitchen? You crazy girl. Aha! While I have no months-old indoor compost experience, she assures me all will be well. Caroline described her compost bin as smelling "like earth, or like when you go into a forest." I can handle that.

Well, I can't handle it right now. The combination of a teensy apartment (the compost box would have nowhere to go but actually on the living room floor) and one particularly aggressive cat (who would imagine nowhere for himself to go but into the compost box) would mean trouble. Maybe someday, though? We'll see.

All this, and I've still avoided discussing landfills. Hold tight, good buddies. Garbagefest '10 continues.

Ooh! Ooh!

Hey, guess what! You went to the most happenin' event in the city today, right? Psh, not the no pants subway ride (seriously, maybe the Public Health badge is making me a little germaphobic, but I have seen a surprising amount of poo on subway seats, and I don't even like to touch the subway handrails. With my hands).

Duh. Today was Mulchfest.

I do not have a Christmas tree. In fact, I pretty much could not less have a Christmas tree. My apartment has a single plant, and it's an aloe that Charlie the cat ate half of at some point this fall. But I do know that, well, Christmas trees exist. It's impossible to walk a block without seeing them, forsaken and browning by the curb. And yet, while I was both being kind of bummed out by trees and by Public Health's requirement that I spend a little more time than I'd like considering the city's disposal of garbage, Mulchfest arrives.

With 81 locations (by the way, is that not an enormous number?), Mulchfest makes post-Christmas either a little less depressing or a hell of a lot gorier. For no cost (except the time it takes you to lug a tree a dozen blocks or so), a crack team of volunteers from MillionTrees will send your tree on a one-way trip through the woodchipper. (There's a kind of adorable flash video of a pigeon demonstrating on the Parks and Rec website. In real life, it's noisier and smellier, and with 100% fewer pigeons in jaunty hats.) The nearest location was a 15 or so block walk from my house, and while no one had a total for today's turnout (yet!), Prospect Park was pretty busy. Check out great photos from FlatbushGardener for the whole volunteers-with-shovels experience.

Best part? Free mulch, if that's the kind of thing you need. (This would have been amazing when I was a kid and neighbors were always in the process of remulching their landscaping, though I suppose that was more of a get-a-truckload-of-mulch and less the bag-your-own option available today). Saddest part? The frequent reminders to remove all ornaments and tinsel from trees. (People totally fail to do this every now and again, and it's a little bit heartbreaking, in a MacArthur Park, cake-in-the-rain kind of way.)

Anyway. Mulchfest is a good example of things that are right about NYC's trash disposal, though there's a good bit that's wrong with it as well (which I'll address later on). It's waste disposal week here at Boy Scout Handbook. How can things get any better?

I mean this in the least-weird way possible

But my lips are totally vibrating right now.

I'm back on the bugle. I've decided that practicing with just the mouthpiece is way quieter, and thus is totally acceptable for apartment dwelling. Therefore, I had my most-serious (which isn't saying much) bugle rehearsal in months. (John is a saint for this, or totally deaf. I'm leaning towards saint, though.) I've gotta keep it up, though -- otherwise, it's just temporary irritation with no payoff.

Coming back to public health, I'd momentarily hoped I could track down a volunteering opportunity with the board of health (and thereby identify the way a scout can cooperate with the BoH to prevent diseases), I learned, instead, about an organization I'd never before heard of. ServNY calls upon health care professionals (sadly, no scouts) to join an emergency response registry. It's a great idea, and one I need to learn more about in the next few days -- not to join, of course (I'm entirely unqualified), but to, well, learn something new. Let's see where this goes.

Now I'm going to talk about poo. A lot.

The Public Health call to explain proper camp sanitation confounded me for a full half-second: when I was a kid and camping with the Girl Scouts, we never went anywhere without running water, and so the concept of having to make sure no one was peeing in your camp was . . . bewildering. Then I remembered: my troop was a bunch of wimps.

Now, the Handbook itself seems a little confused about how to talk about camp sanitation without either a) getting a little overly familiar with bodily functions or b) reminding scouts that they are not the invulnerable supermen the Handbook usually encourages them to be. In fact, the entire sanitation section spans a little less than a third of a page, largely exhorting the campers to burn or bury garbage and to make sure their water supply is "carefully examined," though there's no real explanation for how to do it. Of course, if I were a 1911 boy (lots of big hypotheticals there, buddy), I'd lean towards boiling, followed by the addition of a few drops of 2% iodine or bleach. Now, I might even consider some water purification tablets (or the kind of awesome-looking portable pumps), though the last time I did much camping I just hauled around a big honking jug of water. The water purification advice, though, is one where the Handbook shows its age. Rather than giving much advice for how the scout can tell if water needs purification or not -- and rather than advising the scout to just go ahead and boil all his water anyway -- it sort of throws up its hands, urges immunization, and moves on to the next bit.

Surprisingly, also, there's no additional advice regarding the location or construction of one's latrine, which was always a big concern of a friend's father, who kept urging my preteen Brownie troop to consider -- just this once -- forgoing the campsite-provided restrooms. Weird. The friend's-father had a lot of suggestions, many of which sounded nightmarish to me at the time, and at least one of which, I'm like 90% certain, involved installing ropes along trees so we could lean back over a latrine pit without falling in. (I can find no confirmation of this kind of thing on the internet, so it may just be that I was nine and had an incredible imagination, because I always pictured this as like the American Gladiators of bathroom-use, and I would be delighted to have someone confirm this for me.)

I have a feeling the Handbook would have some great suggestions -- and some elaborate ones -- for latrine building, if only they had the nerve to publish them. It's delicacy, I think, that's holding us back, not a lack of ideas. Even something simple -- that a latrine should be downhill from the campsite, far from water, and several feet deep -- would do the trick. But, in 1911, I think the Handbook wants to preserve our decorum more than it really wants to help out.

As usual, the Handbook delights me the most when it totally abandons all attempts at any instruction that's not of a moral nature. One agreeing that we'll all look real close at the water and nothing else, the Handbook emphasizes the importance of following its agreed-upon rules: "A scout's honor will not permit him to disobey in the slightest particular the sanitary rules of his camp." Right on, buddy.

If you'll excuse me, I have to go cook dinner.

Faking it

It's 20-some degrees out, and I was going to post tonight about making rice pudding (a requirement for the cooking badge). There's only one problem: I cannot come up with a food that sounds grosser to me than rice pudding. Sure, I've never eaten it. And sure, what's not to love? Rice? Fine. Milk? Delicious. Sugar? Yes please. Hell, Alton Brown has a version featuring cream and coconut milk, which can be nothing but tasty. And yet, the notion, or the notion of the mouth-feel, particularly, just gives me the willies.

Anyway, today I've been thinking about phoniness. In one way in particular -- faking illness. See, last night I was feeling pretty cold-y and out of it, and I was seriously considering calling out of work today. I didn't, though, and for one major reason: I am terrified of calling in sick. Or, more specifically, of calling in sick or otherwise declaring myself in poor health and of having someone not believe me.

This isn't something new. When I was a kid, I would tell my parents I wanted to go to school, almost no matter what, not because I was an enormous dork (well, I was, I mean, but that's not the point), but because I didn't want them to think I was trying to get out of gym class or something ridiculous. (This doesn't mean I was a particularly stoic kid. Just an antsy one.) Please bear in mind, of course, that I was never faking. But I was terrified of the accusation.

It continues today, but in slightly different ways. I don't worry about my parents thinking I'm faking sick anymore (yay adulthood), but even still, doctor's appointments and things like that make me kind of nervous. While I sit in the waiting room, I'm running through symptoms in my head. Sure, my knee swelled up like a grapefruit last winter when I tore my MCL, but did it really look bad enough? Was the doctor going to laugh at me? Would he think I'm a wimp? Am I a wimp? This is the opposite of the usual doctor anxiety, I think -- my sense is that usually, people who are scared of the doctor are worried it'll be worse than it seems. I'm terrified that what I think is painful or infectious or troubling isn't really bad enough.

I wonder: is this an artifact of being a sort of generally nervous person, or is it something else? I tend to be pretty driven (in many situations) -- do I want to be so good at being sick that it'll impress the doctor, which makes me resistant to admit to more minor illnesses? I'm really curious about this. Is this more normal than I think, or do I sound like a lunatic? I'd love your opinion.

Typhoid oy vey

I am ready to admit something absoutely mortifying: I had no idea that people still died from typhoid.

In my head, it's an old-timey disease, the sort of thing that's totally horrific, of course, but that really isn't a risk anymore. Like smallpox or polio, it's something characters in novels get but people in real life just . . . don't.

Holy crap am I wrong.

So, somewhere in the vicinity of 17 million people get typhoid per year, though only about 400 Americans. (This either exonerates me from not thinking of typhoid as much of an issue, damns me for being pitifully America-centered, or both. I lean towards both.) This is largely an issue of clean drinking water, and in fact US typhoid levels declined almost to nil (well, to 400 per year, including travelers) quite quickly following the advent of chlorination. Interestingly enough, there are rumors floating around the internet (though, of course, there are rumors floating around the internet about pretty much anything) suggesting a link between cystic fibrosis and typhoid resistance, but that's really beyond the scope of where I'd like to go right now.

Regardless, in the 30 seconds 'til I go to bed (it's been a busy day today, including a Papier Mache Incident in my fourth grade class, and I just need to get off to sweet, sweet sleep), the thing I've spent all day thinking about:

The CDC suggests that somewhere around 5% of typhoid patients (who recover) can become asymptomatic carriers. This is bizarre and fascinating to me, and leads me to Typhoid Mary, and not just because everyone loves a scandal (except the people whom it hurts). She infected 20-some people and, at least in part because she was a woman and Irish in a time when it was good to be neither, was locked away in quarantine. (Should she have been? Debatable. If the CDC numbers are correct, which I have no reason to doubt, then there must have been tens if not hundreds of other carriers walking around New York in the early 1900s. That said, things get weirder.) Mary got out of the hospital (on North Brother Island, which should maybe become a Handbook field trip) after 3 years, swore to avoid all food service jobs, and then, promptly, got a gig as a cook and infected another 27 people.

At this point, the public health authorities declared enough enough, restored Mary to quarantine, and kept her there for more than twenty years.

Now, I'm a little torn on this. On one hand, was she dangerously irresponsible? Absolutely. But was she the only one? Not hardly. 1910's New York Times ran an article about Typhoid John, a mountain guide who had infected more than 100 people. However, the article informs us that there is "no law by which 'Typhoid John' can be isolated." Oops. Someone should have told Mary. The authorities let TJ go free.

I'd like to look into this more and to spend some more time thinking about it, but I think I need to cut things off for tonight. I meant only to talk about infection rates, not about illegal imprisonment.

Seriously. I have paid this much for brunch.

Rather than thoroughly addressing the spread of malaria (thanks, mosquitoes, we're done.), this seems like a better moment to address something: I am really, really lucky. So are you, probably, in that you have internet access and can spend your time reading my site rather than filtering your water, mending worn-out clothing, working 16-hour days, things like that.

Instead, I'd like to refer you to the Nothing But Nets campaign, devoted to sending mosquito nets to Africa. The thing is, malaria causes something like 500 million infections each year, and somewhere in the vicinity of 1 million deaths, most of them children, and most of them in sub-Saharan Africa. (This, by the way, works out to roughly 110 deaths per hour. Think of that next time you're watching 60 Minutes.) How easy is this to stop? I cannot even begin to tell you. Ten dollars buys a mosquito net, which NBN will ship and distribute.

Anyhow. Check it out. I"ve donated tonight, and I highly, highly recommend it.

(Another thing, from exploring the website: the Union for Reform Judaism and the United Methodist Church are two of NBN's biggest partners. Coincidentally enough, I grew up attending both a reform congregation and a Methodist church. Go team!)

Houseflies

Public health requirement #2: Draw a diagram showing how the house-fly carries disease.

I knew the Natural History Museum had an exhibit on frogs, so I was hopeful that there may be a certain housefly component as well. (After all, it would be like having an exhibit on me without a section on the Snickers bar I just ate, or an exhibit on Charlie the cat without featuring kibble.) However, despite making for a swell excuse to visit the museum, I found the AMNH almost entirely fly-free.

(Should I have checked this before just arriving at the museum, which was already a pain in the neck because, hey, Brooklyn to upper west side = difficult, and Brooklyn to upper west side when the trains are delayed for some sort of smoke-in-the-station = nearly impossible? Sure. But let's move past these things, shall we?)

John and I spent some time exploring the Hall of Biodiversity, where I'd never been before, and which features some remarkable beetles, as well as a many-times-magnified bee arm (bee leg? I have no idea). There is also a large, bronze nematode head, the kind of thing that will haunt my nightmares forevermore.

Regardless.

Here goes: a Comic Lite version of the housefly-as-disease-vector. Enjoy it, kids.

Contagion

So, like I've mentioned a lot lately, I'm exposed every day to a lot of ick. (Despite being over the flu, I haven't been back to the gym yet, by the way, so the final requirement for the athletics badge is still on hold 'til this week, I hope.) But spending time thinking about has led me to the natural next badge project: Public Health.

The first task: "Tell what should be done to a house which has been occupied by a person who has had a contagious disease." I can make that happen, because I spend time worrying about it after school every single day.

Unlike in 1911, quarantines and even the intense house-cleanups that used to go with them are pretty well out of fashion -- the CDC explains that, while they keep no records of voluntary quarantines, the mandatory type is extremely rare these days. The biggest concerns, they elaborate (largely via the H1N1 info pages) are twofold: the cleaning of doorknobs, books, and other common surfaces and the washing of hands. Now, the CDC recommends various antibacterial household cleaners for the surfaces and soap and water for hands, and a good bout of laundry-doing for all involved.

The laundry (and the CDC's H1N1 reference page) is reassuring: when I was a kid, no story broke my heart like "The Velveteen Rabbit." Specifically, the part about the rabbit being confiscated after the boy has scarlet fever. See, I think the rabbit becoming real is lovely, but as a child I was so attached to my stuffed animals that the notion of one of them being taken away if I got sick was omnipresent and sort of terrifying. (I was, for a notable time, actually a little nervous about having my favorite stuffed animals out if I had a cold or something, just in case.) I'd actually even been a little worried about looking into this particular requirement, on the off-chance I'd learn that, no, I actually should have burnt my favorite childhood toys.

Oh man. Just got a little overemotional there.

Hand-washing notes are forthcoming: oddly, my friend Wendy and I had a long discussion about how we each wash our own hands just this afternoon, and I'm trying out a slight modification to my handwashing routine. I'm a little more excited about this than maybe I should be.

Anyway. All's well that ends well and I'm going to bed.

Boogers

As I guess I've already mentioned, I have a new job teaching elementary school science (a job of such specificity that I didn't know it existed before I interviewed for it). It's a big change moving from middle to elementary school, but the biggest issue is a surprising one:

Nose picking.

Seriously. I cannot even handle it. The little kids hardly know better, of course, but still, it's ongoing and it's making me think a lot about the public health badge.

Also prompting some public health thoughts was my trip this weekend to the Chinatown flu clinic's swine flu vaccination event. Despite a long, long line, things were remarkably well-organized. We arrived by ten, signed in, and received a noon appointment, though we waited and got seen by 11. There were color-coded lines, tidily organized time charts, and I was, in general, totally, totally impressed by the efficiency of the whole shebang. (Heck, the clinic even had escorts to bring small groups of vaccinatees up the elevators.)

Incidentally, the vaccine I got was the nasal spray version, which had a back-of-throat numbing effect and a weirdly dental hygiene taste, but was so much better than the shot. Oh man. I want all my shots to be administered via nose from now on.

This was not my first use of one of the city's free clinics, either. This summer, when I was between insurances, I went to the Bed-Stuy Lung Center for a TB test. Once again, a long wait time, but this time it wasn't evened out by excellent service -- though, of course, given the cost of the appointment, I hardly have grounds for complaint. Really, though, I waited there for nearly three hours for a five-minute blood test. Since summer, for a teacher, isn't exactly the busy season, this wasn't a big deal. There aren't many free lung clinics in the city, and they're pretty high on demand and low on funds. If that means they can only employ so many doctors, can only have so much in the way of office staff, so be it. That's far from the fault of the fine people there. But let me tell you, using the free clinic there kind of sucked.

Please, please, please don't you dare take this as a statement that publicly funded health care is a bad thing. Not hardly Underfunded and overused health care is a less than ideal thing. The situation of uninsured folks who have to wait all day for a single appointment is a bad thing. I have the utmost gratitude to the city's health system. (Hey, free swine flu vaccine! Free TB test!) But there's such a gap between the health care haves and the health care haven'ts, and sitting in the Bed-Stuy clinic with lots and lots of poor kids . . . . There are few words.

There's more here to consider, and more I'd love to go into. But now may not be the time. Not in a blog post entitled "boogers."