"Lost in a River of Grass" by Ginny Rorby

There are only a few places in the world where I do not want to travel. The Everglades is one. (The Amazon and Clyde Peelings Reptile Land are others) Even reading a book about the Everglades was a bit of a stretch for me. The reason? I'm utterly terrified of snakes.

Or course, so was Sarah at the beginning of the book. As the book opens, fourteen year-old Sarah had just begun attending the Glades Academy, a private school where she'd been accepted on a swimming scholarship. However, she quickly realizes that she is the girl from the "other side of the tracks." When she finds herself miserably traipsing through the Everglades on a weekend field trip, it doesn't take much convincing for her to ditch her classmates and join a nice local boy named Andy on a rather sketchy airboat ride. He promises her they'll be back before lunch.

Well, if they had returned before lunch, there would not have been much to write about.  The sketchy airboat sinks in a very remote part of the Everglades. Sarah and Andy realize that they have to trudge back to civilization on their own, sharing a can of Spam and a bottle of Gatorade between them. However, to provide a bit of comic relief throughout the ordeal, the author causes the two teens to cross paths with an orphaned baby duck. This of course spurs a bit of tension between the two. Andy who wants to abandon the duck and let nature take its course, has no hope of prevailing against a determined Sarah who quickly adopts the duck and names her Teapot.

I have read survival books in the past, but this is the first one that I truly believe might give me nightmares. There were a lot of mosquitoes, alligators, and of course, SNAKES! Every shape, size, and color of snake was represented in this book. (At least it seemed that way to me.) There was even a particularly disturbing scene where a Burmese python consumed an alligator. If this is ever made into a movie I will not be able to watch it.

Now I don't want you to think that I hated the book or regretted reading it. Despite my terror, I felt like Rorby conveyed a valuable message to those of us who struggle with our own internal phobias and insecurities. Throughout the story Sarah's fear of nature slowly turns into respect and admiration. The two teens realize that they need to learn from one another. They begin to eschew personal pride in favor of mutual dependence. As Sarah overcomes her fear of snakes, and of nature in general, she develops into a confident and strong young lady.  No longer does she need to seek out the constant approval of classmates. Sarah realizes that the obstacles in her life have indeed made her unique - but she is proud of accomplishments, and she has learned to appreciate her own distinctiveness.

That being said, I'm happy to let my experience with the Everglades end there. I'm resigned to the fact that I'll always be afraid of snakes. Getting over a phobia often means being exposed to it. I'm quite content to keep my phobia and stay away from all snake habitats.

"Five Days At Memorial" by Sheri Fink

In a world of 30-second news blips and catchy sound bites, Five Days At Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged City offers an uncommon investigative expose. In her book, Sheri Fink, shines a light inside a hospital at ground zero of Hurricane Katrina. It was a natural disaster followed by a bureaucratic disaster. The forces of nature and human error collided into a horror where post-apocalyptic fantasies became reality on the grounds of New Orleans' most esteemed medical facilities.

Fink's story begins in the days before the hurricane hits. New Orleans' citizens are no stranger to hurricanes, and the medical staff at Memorial embarks upon their normal pre-hurricane routine. Doctors, nurses, and other personnel, flock to the hospital as they have done in all previous storms. The hospital, with its sturdy construction and back-up generators is a refuge in the storm. Hospitals are supposed to be built to withstand the most treacherous elements, as they are rarely evacuated when storms hit. The medical staff comes with their families, their pets, and coolers full of food in tow. This is standard operating procedure for Memorial. They have to let the families come - including the pets. If they did not, all qualified medical staff would be hightailing it out of the city with their loved ones.

This storm will be different. Katrina's deadliness was not simply in the strength of her winds, but in the flooding levees and the waters that raged throughout the city. The hospital's backup generators were on the first floor. Slowly they started shutting down, taking with them the life-force that many terminally ill patients depended on.

When Katrina hit, Memorial had an unusually high proportion of patients on hospice care. The Lifecare facility, which provided this type of care and operated as a hospital-within-a-hospital, had imported some patients from other facilities in the days before the storm. Four days in, the staff and volunteers are exhausted The heat, the stench of human waste, the hopelessness, and the fear of looters bear down on them hard. Helicopters are coming irregularly. There is no organization to the rescue effort. The hospital's execs, miles away in Texas don't want to foot the bill to charter a private helicopter company, so they leave evacuation to the overextended Armed Forces, who are flying day and night in the wake of the storm. These pilots are torn between rescuing premature babies from hospitals and desperate people off rooftops. All sorts of questions arise. Who goes first? The ones with the greatest chances or survival? Or the sickest? Where are they going? If they are seriously ill, will they receive appropriate care wherever the helicopter lands? Do we send the old? The young? What about the 300+ pound man that would be almost impossible to move up to the helipad?

They start by euthanizing the pets. I nearly cried. Not the dogs! The next step was clear. And somehow, killing sick people saddened me far less than killing healthy dogs. When I pictured the terminally ill Lifecare patients, lying hot, sweaty, wafting in and out of consciousness in their own vomit and feces, I really couldn't help but be glad for them. According to Fink, the order was given to inject the patients with Do Not Resuscitate orders. These patients were given a cocktail of sedatives that would lead to a quiet, peaceful, and somewhat dignified death, under the circumstances. But, as Fink points out, a DNR order only means that the patient does not want to be revived if his or her heart stops beating. It does not mean they are signing themselves up to be sacrificed for the greater good. And, ironically, as the order was given Tenet executives were finally signing on with a private contractor to send in helicopters and evacuate the rest of the patients. By the time these round-the-clock airlifts were provided, there were significantly fewer patients to be airlifted.

The second half of the book deals with the aftermath of the tragedy. It largely centers around Dr. Anna Pou who, according to Fink, commandeered the euthanasia at Memorial. At this point in the book it is somewhat difficult to follow. There are a lot of attorneys, Tenet execs, doctors, patients, and nurses whose stories weave in and out of the book. While it is clear that Fink assumes Dr. Pou was guilty of euthanizing patients, I do not get the sense that Fink is entirely repulsed by Pou's decision. As I read the book, I found myself attributing most of the blame to the Tenet company itself, and to the hospital's shoddy disaster-preparedness plan. This plan seemed to have been made up from a standard template downloaded off the Internet. It is ridiculous to me that a hospital located below sea level would put its generators on the ground floor. And that is only one of the many failings in the bureaucratic mess that was Katrina. The medical personnel never should have had to choose between life and death. This whole thing could have been easily avoided.

But they did. They felt, in the moment, that they had to choose. We know now that Tenet's contract with the private helicopter firm would have evacuated all the patients, but the doctors did not know that at the time. Communication was abysmal. What galls me, as one of the interviewees pointed out, was that Dr. Pou was arrested and put on trial while violent murderers and criminals roamed the streets of New Orleans. New Orleans has one of the highest per capita crime rates. Dr. Pou should not have been the priority for law enforcement.  Even in the days following the hurricane, the city was plagued by looters. There are haunting stories of rapes and violence at the Superdome. But this doctor, if she was indeed "guilty" of administering lethal doses of sedatives, was forced to endure a long trial and a media frenzy because she was making, what she felt to be, the most humane choice in a disaster.

I know that life is sacred, and obviously doctors shouldn't be going around euthanizing patients without proper consent under normal circumstances. I know that most of my fellow Evangelicals, and religious people in general, stand firmly opposed to euthanasia. But I often wonder why.  If we're the ones with the most hope for an afterlife, why are we so attached to keeping our lives here on this earth? If we truly believe we're not made for this world, that our earthly bodies are dying from the moment they are born, then why do we work so hard to stick around? Quite honestly, if I were a terminally ill patient at Memorial, I'd be asking for that cocktail! Get me out of this broken body ASAP! While it's true, that most of the patients at Memorial were not being artificially kept alive at the moment (most of those who depended on ventilators, etc had already been evacuated), I wonder how many were still breathing only because advanced surgeries, expensive drugs, and high-tech equipment prolonged their physical lives months and years after they had lost all quality of life. Do we ever use our advanced medical knowledge to subvert God's will to take life? Is that possible to do? You often hear the anti-euthanasia set rail on their opponents for "playing God." But don't we play God every day by offering chemotherapy, cholesterol drugs, resuscitation, etc? Or do we assume that He's given us the knowledge and ability to prolong life so it's always His will for us to use it? Are we only supposed to use our God-given intelligence to artificially prolong life?  Or are we allowed to use our knowledge to end life when it seems humane and appropriate? And personally, I wonder, is it wrong to want a Fast Pass into Heaven? I mean I would love to just bypass all the pain and suffering that comes with old age and death (pain and suffering that our drugs and technology often prolong). I don't want my body to outlive my brain - and with my genetics I'm a little afraid that's going to happen.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not against using medical knowledge/technology to prolong life and save lives - especially when there is hope for recovery. But at some point, I feel like we're not doing ourselves any favors. While I don't think it was right for doctors at Memorial to make a decision without the consent of the patient or proxy, I don't exactly blame them either.  At any rate, it does us cause to stop and ponder some of these end-of-life issues. Do we really want to be alive, but confined to a bed or a wheelchair?  Perhaps, more practically, the book has given me impetus to think about making a living will (not that any of that was followed at Memorial, but I'm going to hedge my bets on probabilities and assume I won't die during a natural disaster).

In conclusion, Five Days At Memorial was a heavy, heavy book. Literally and metaphorically. It was quite long and chock full of information. It was easy to get lost. However, in the end, it made me think. It didn't leave me with any easy answers, but it forced me to take a look into the complex world of medical ethics and ponder its convergence with Divine intervention. Medicine is a realm I don't often ponder, and Divine sovereignty is a thing I don't really understand.  But journeying into the unfamiliar and unknown, is, after all, the whole reason why we read.

"Awaken" by Katie Kacvinsky

Now here is a futuristic dystopian society that I actually like. Kacvinsky's Awaken probably does not have its intended effect on those of us who are homebodies. Kacvinsky creates a society in which fear and technology have evolved to form a world where people rarely leave the house. All shopping is done online, and "going to the movies" with a friend means that both individuals are watching in the same movie, at the same time, in separate places. Coffee houses are virtually nonexistent. Having coffee with a friend means making coffee at home and chatting together online. I've got to admit, none of this sounds all that bad to me. Granted, I'd much rather go running outside than have a simulator creating a virtual beach around my treadmill - but then again - that would be a very cool treadmill.  Other than the fake trees and faux grass, I'm pretty much completely on board with this dystopian society!

This is the story of a teenage girl named Maddie, whose father is the wealthy head of the virtual schooling program that has been mandated nationwide. Parents, afraid of the growing violence in society, have chosen to sequester their children at home. All socialization occurs virtually, away from the threat of school shooters, drug dealers, and rapists. In the confines of their homes, students build multiple online profiles. They form relationships on various levels, carefully maintain their chosen personas, and never, ever get a scratch or a scar.

Maddie tried, and failed, to fight against her cloistered existence years ago. Despite her hacking prowess, she was not able to escape her father's clutches and the omniscience of computers. Maddie's first attempts to take down Digital School were found out, and rather than getting sent to a reeducation facility, Maddie was put on a sort of internet probation. Certain sites are blocked and her activities are closely monitored - at least those that are online.

But when Maddie ventures out from the online realm she's able to live for the first time. She meets - and falls in love with - the leader of an organization seeking to take down Digital School and stop the technological brainwashing. For the first time she makes real, face-to-face friendships. Society has become so dependent on monitoring what people do online that it doesn't know how to handle plots that are devised offline. These social misfits meet in underground coffeehouses and dance clubs.  They eschew the belief that technology can improve our lives. Sure, it keeps us safe, but at what cost? When Maddie's new round of rebellious behavior is found out, she is once again in danger of being sent to a reeducation facility. But the world has become so dependent on technology that when she ventures off the grid she cannot be tracked. She is indeed awakened. She is awakened to the camaraderie of friends, to the salty sea air of a real beach, to the blazing warmth of a bonfire. She receives her first scars - both physical and emotional. She gets her first broken heart - and her first mended one. She finds that real life begins when we switch off the devices and actually choose to look at one another.

Despite my earlier comments about being a homebody, I do understand what this author is trying to communicate. I enjoy that technology allows me to shop from home, keep up with dear friends miles away, and get information instantaneously. However, for many of us, it can be a crutch used to replace meaningful interaction. Technology is a way for us to mask our insecurities and to create a persona who is - at least in part- a fictional one. And technology responds in kind. Amazon knows what I like, Facebook knows what's on my mind, and Google always reads my email. It's safe to say that my internet browser knows me better than many of my friends do.

I think in realizing my initial positive response to this futuristic society, I've realized a flaw in my own character. Where other fictional dystopias  have repulsed and scared me, I find myself hunkered down in the midst of a snowy winter, wishing I lived in Katie Kacvinsky's world. In the warmer months I do enjoy being outside - taking my dog for long walks, picking berries at our local CSA, and running miles in the early mornings. But even these things are generally solitary activities for me. I rarely socialize outside of work. Of course, I'm not always running to technology. Oftentimes I'd just prefer to be home with a book. I'm more comfortable with fictional companions that real ones. I'm never disappointed when plans are cancelled or when the weather gets in the way of a social gathering. I go to parties rather begrudgingly. While reading this book, a snowstorm enabled me to stay sequestered in my house for five days straight. Not once in that block of time did I crave human outside contact. I was quite content with my husband and my dog. I don't know if it's safety that keeps me at home as much as comfort. I really like my house and I have everything I need here.

I'll never stop being an introvert, and I don't think Kacvinsky's book is really intending to make us all extroverts. But it is cause for reflection. Technology allows my introversion to thrive - to an unhealthy level. I believe it can be detrimental for extroverts too. Extroverts seem to get a whole lot more text messages than I do, (I get 2-3 a week and usually from my mom) but they also seem to to be juggling several conversations at once, and trying to keep up their personas in each one. So, rather you are an extrovert or an introvert, a homebody or a partygoer, I think this book does give us reason to pause. To think. To perhaps intentionally change our relationship with the Internet - or at least to be conscious of how it's changing us.