In Be’er Sheva we went for a walk
I saw a grampa toting a Glock
Beyond urban creep
Are small flocks of sheep
But I don’t hear beef feed lot talk.
Synopsis: I’m a Family Practitioner from Sioux City, Iowa. In 2010 I danced back from the brink of burnout, and, honoring a 1 year non-compete clause, traveled and worked in out0of-the-way places in Alaska, Nebraska, Iowa, and New Zealand. I followed 3 years Community Health Center work with more travel and adventures in temporary positions in Iowa, Pennsylvania, Nebraska, Canada, and Alaska. 2019 included hospitalist work in my home town and rural medicine in northern British Columbia. Since the pandemic started, I did 10 months of telemedicine in my basement, staffed a COVID-19 clinic in southeast Iowa, visited family, attended funerals, and worked as a contractor for the Veterans Administration in South Dakota. We recently traveled to Israel.
Because of travel and internet access problems, some posts are out of order.
We were walking in Be’er Sheva when we passed an apparent grandfather with an apparent grandson. A few steps on I asked Bethany, “Was that a Glock 17?”
She shrugged. “Maybe. 9mm anyway.”
Some of Be’er Sheva’s residents responded to the March 22 terror attack. In 8 minutes, a school teacher killed 3 people with a knife and 1 with a car. The police arrived 4 minutes after an armed bus driver fatally stopped the slaughter.
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Most American cities have problems with homeless people struggling with substance abuse and mental illness. Recent trips to Denver and San Francisco showed an alarming number of people who, if given the opportunity to press a button and come to contact with reality, would do so.
Schizophrenia should not be a death sentence, but in the US the severely mentally ill live 20 years less than the sane.
We found alms seekers in Jerusalem, but not elsewhere. They did not appear to be mentally ill.
Israel has a very good medical care system, and as a society has done well taking care of the insane.
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Israeli cities have burgeoning populations of feral cats. Citizens feed them, and they thrive on garbage where they can reach it. There are no mice.
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Between the cities I looked at crop land with an eye honed by decades of living in Iowa farm country. I didn’t see the Iowa staples, corn and soybeans, probably because most of those harvests go into stock feed. I saw hay in square bales, not the 1700 lb. (750 kg.) round bales we’re used to seeing at home. We saw lots of well-tended vineyards and citrus groves.
Israel now has around 60 producers that grow the vast majority of pineapples consumed in the country, on a total of a little more than a square mile, according to online research.
We saw several herds of grazing sheep, generally less than 100 at a time, tended by a person with a dog. Chicken and turkey remain mainstays of meat consumption.
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