Mind over matter

Wed, 01 Nov 2006 12:00:00 +0000

I'm a reader and a writer, so I guess I'm used to the idea that deep down inside of things there is generally a kernel or a nugget of something, a theme or whatever. Meaning. You can talk about it, you can sense it; it's there. But that's not the beginning of all this. The beginning is when that stopped being enough for me and I wound up in Mike's class. People who traffic in ideas are famously underpaid, so money rears its head here, but I don't think it's uncommon, either, for writers to long for the kind of work where one's hands get dirty, where the sense of offering something up to humanity isn't so remote. I was broke; I was bereft. So I thought maybe I'd become a paramedic. Help people, get paid. Two birds, one stone.

Mike had been a paramedic once and now he taught the classes you took to become a paramedic at the hospital complex that dominated employment in Iowa City. Emergency medical technician certification comes in a variety of levels or degrees, and it's all vastly more complicated than it really should be. Emergency medicine traces its history back to morticians riding to accident scenes in hearses. That's why old-style ambulances all look like hearses painted white. They are.

Salon.com > JC Hallman

Mind over matter