Glass Shallot by Adam Baer

huffpo'ing immigrant health reform

And the fight rages on:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/adam-baer/keep-kids-covered----espe_b_99213.html

the springtime harvest: food stories

Recently, a 40-year-old friend e-mailed me a thanks for telling him what he should be eating at his ripe old age. About nine years younger than him, I couldn't claim to be a true expert and had a good laugh at his note. But the other cool thing about some of the facts I uncovered in reporting this recent Best Life food-for-health story is that you don't have to be a man to get benefits from these ingredients. Have a look at the piece, featuring actual experts (including a look at celebrity nutritionist culture), and if you see me at the local French bakery, I give you permission to smack me in the gut.

p.s. I also admit that I did send into the universe this cocktail story for Angeleno as well as this artisanal hot dog roundup for Lexus's newly retooled lifestyle and culture magazine--but hey, one of the dogs is made from organic, grass-fed beef, and let's not forget about the medicinal uses of ginger, which appear in one of Katsuya Hollywood's most transporting sips.

rotten bananas and working for a-holes

Ever since I first saw Charles Eames answer questions on design, I knew I wanted to know more about the people who follow at least some version of his career path (how hard is it to make a chair, right?). Anyway, filmmaker and designer Hillman Curtis 's recent film about artist-designer Stefan Sagmeister explains a little bit of the mystery (well, not about chairs, but about design; well, not about design, but about that little issue called life). It also could be Curtis's most illuminating designer film if only because it shows the work of a man who, among rotting bananas and inflatable gorillas, presented the texts: "Don't work with assholes," "Everyone thinks they are right," and "Worrying solves nothing." As for "Money does not make me happy," I can't exactly get behind that one given the current states of mag journalism and American healthcare. But I like the first sentiment, and I definitely get his drift in re: the greenbacks.

See the film.

keeping coverage--no matter how you got here

Yesterday's article in the LA Times about young immigrant liver-transplant survivors who hit 21 and lose state coverage, often causing a lapse in their post-transplant care without chances for re-transplantation, raises issues so important, it should spark questions in a forthcoming presidential debate. Not only does it shine a light on whether or not young, illegal immigrants should receive taxpayer-supported medical treatment; it is powerful enough to illuminate a candidate's sheer humanity, regardless of his or her opinion on immigration reform.

In reporter Anna Gorman's story, a young woman circumvented near-certain death and won her way back to state-supported care at UCLA, which could offer her another transplant if necessary as opposed to care provided by the county. Her strategy? Admitting that she lives in this nation illegally. Bold.

Now, I am not in support of every immigrant having to take such a leap in our current immigration-reform environment; but that isn't the issue. When terminal or chronic and progressive illnesses strike, certain compromises need to be made.

And surprise: For as many citizens who don't want an illegal immigrant on a liver-transplant waiting list in a country where supplies are low and costs are high, there are humanitarians in medicine and the field of medical ethics who believe that a hospital should not drop a pediatric immigrant transplant case--or any other type of chronic case--just because the patient has reached legal drinking age.

It is a terribly imperfect system, to be sure. But I don't just feel for these patients as a chronic disease sufferer who received a transplant during the pediatric period of my life. I see and hear about what these patients deal with firsthand as the husband of a cross-cultural health-psychology researcher who, among other things, assesses quality of life and depression in monolingual immigrant patients with similar circumstances.

The facts: These patients are under tremendous stress outside of their medical predicaments--as if they need anything else to worry about. Other cultures also sometimes view chronic illness differently than Americans—it's not just "bad luck" or something that can be "fixed." Some patients from other countires, for instance, may consider one disease a curse or punishment. Some may never tell family members. Some may not seek treatment consistently enough without strong reminders. These factors need to be considered when rendering a decision about medical care for non-citizens.

In fact, it's even harder to be a sick young adult as an illegal resident, and I say that knowing how terribly difficult it is to weather multiple conditions of this severity as an American citizen. When these 21-year-old immigrants received livers as children under state-supported insurance plans, they didn't ask for American care. They didn't ask to be here at all, most likely. We cannot hold them responsible for a choice they didn't make, and to ignore them on this count would show some of the lowest regard for human life I can imagine. While these patients may not pay the same taxes as other American residents, notifying the government of their status is not as simple as it sounds. It is a brave and risky measure. One with potentially harsh repercussions for their families that should be rewarded with at least the same care that would be given to any other American child.

For the record, oncologists consider patients "pediatric" up to and sometimes beyond 20 years of age. But the public has caught on to this labeling due to powerful cancer survivorship networks like that of Lance Armstrong's (love him or hate him). Liver disease and other ailments that strike patients up to this age, and perhaps beyond, should also be considered pediatric. And pediatric patients--for starters, at least—should have a reliable medical support system in this country regardless of how or when they arrived on these shores. As Dr. Michael Shapiro, the vice chairman of the ethics committee for the liver network, said in Gorman's LA Times piece: there's probably a better chance that more illegal immigrants donate organs in America than those who receive them.

So let's pose the question to all candidates, regardless of political party. The results could tell us not who is ultra-conservative or ultra-liberal but who really values human life. They could give us a true sense of a candidate's character. And wouldn't that be a little more interesting than getting nitpicky about whose national health plan will do exactly what before it's even put into place.

 

Not Just Hall of Famer Rod Carew

Aside from people asking me if I once had a relative named Max (my last name is Baer; Max Baer was a famous Jewish boxer), I never really thought about the influence my people had on athletics. That is, I never really thought about their influence beyond what I as an agnostic but cultural Jewish self-identifier gleaned from "Great Jews in Sports," perhaps the funniest book in the world, which was given to me as, it was to many a doughy young student, as a tacky Bar Mitzvah gift so new men might read about Sandy Koufax and dream of being more than violinists, lawyers, studio heads, and writers. At last, however, "Orthodox Stance," Jason Hutt's documentary about Ukranian boxer and Orthodox Brooklyn Jew Dmitry Salita proves that I don't have to return to old stories about Rod Carew to get inspired about an athlete who knows his Torah. The film, which opens tomorrow at LA's Laemmle Music Hall Theater, follows the 21-year-old from the Starret City boxing club as he and his 80-year-old African-American trainer move from relative obscurity to a deal with boxing impresario Lou DiBella and an honorary mishpucha that includes Hasidic musician Matisyahu. What the film doesn't explore—why this mild-mannered kid with friends of all faiths and colors turned to a conversion-happy chabad and extreme boxing discipline in the wake of his mother's sudden death to cancer, and why his brother and father aren't really a) religious or b) a part of the story—seems to hang in the air like an uneaten matzoh ball. But the boxing footage is fantastic. Dmitry, a welterweight, may dress like any hood from Brighton Beach, but he lays into his opponents with the passion of a young Sylvester Stallone. It's also good fun to watch Dmitry scuffle with his extremely stoic brother: he shouldn't wear a wrinkled suit to a press conference ("But it's DKNY," his brother exclaims). And it's cool to know that a pro boxing outfit will delay your matches beyond Shabbat so you don't have to piss off God just to knock down another heathen. Of course, the flick's no "Rocky Balboa." It's much more real and hence mildly dry. But in an age when a Hasidic actor's shunned by his Williamsburg community for attempting to act in a film with Natalie Portman, it's cool to see a present-day Great Jew in Sports balance his jabs and High Holiday prayers.

"Orthodox Stance" opens April 11 at Laemmle's Music Hall. 9036 Wilshire   Blvd (Doheny)
Beverly Hills, CA 90211. 310-274-6869. www.laemmle.com

thoughts on the mechanical tennis stars we love

I have just interviewed three of America's top tennis players -- though, not the celebs you may be thinking of -- and have to share the following with the world: these people are super-boring! So much so, I find the above tennis racquet-manufacturing image much more interesting. It's odd: Growing up, I always thought tennis was a social, thinking person's game. But now the young stars are not unlike the young conservatory bred violin prodigies putting us to sleep at concert halls. So much technical game, so little personality. More on this story as I get deeper into it. But how sad has tennis become since Andre Agassi left the courts? I continue to mourn life on the court.

a shallot hero

Talk about someone who knows more than he lets on.