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Mimi Swartz’s “Ticker” tells the story of the doctors who, against all odds, struggled to make a device to replace one of our most vital organs.

Ticker: The Quest to Create an Artificial Heart by Mimi Swartz https://amzn.to/2DniqI3

#Ticker #Mimi Swartz #books #book review #science #medicine #Ticker: The Quest to Create an Artificial Heart #heart surgury

More evidence of Texas Democrats' demolition

Mimi Swartz’s essay in the New York Times lends support to something I wrote just the other day.

It involves the pitiful state of the Texas Democratic Party.

My friend Tom Mechler was just re-elected chairman of the state Republican Party and then called for the demolition of the state’s Democrats. My response was that the Democratic Party already has been “demolished” in Texas.

Now comes…

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#John Cornyn #Mimi Swartz #NY Times #Texas Democratic Party.#Texas GOP

Mothers, Sisters, Daughters, Wives

By Mimi Swartz, Texas Monthly (August 2012)

There are things about women that most men would just as soon never discuss. The stirrups in a gynecologist’s office, for one; the tampon aisle at the grocery store, for another; and pretty much any matter involving words like “cervix,” “uterus,” and “vagina.” At least, that’s how it was until March 2, 2011. Back in January of the same year, at the start of that legislative session, Governor Rick Perry had pushed as an emergency item a bill requiring all women seeking an abortion to have an ultrasound 24 hours beforehand. As Sid Miller, the legislator who sponsored the bill in the House, put it, “We want to make sure she knows what she is doing.”

At a public hearing on the bill the following month, Tyler representative Leo Berman took the mike and insisted that 55 million fetuses had been aborted since Roe v. Wade—or, as he called it, “a Holocaust times nine.” The author of a book on abortion rights gave a somewhat overwrought speech about the differences between “a zygote and a baby.” A woman named Darlene Harken described herself as “a victim of abortion” because, she maintained, she wasn’t warned about the mental and physical fallout from the procedure; Patricia Harless, a representative from Spring, thanked her for her “bravery” and “strength.” Alpine’s Pete Gallego countered by expressing his resentment of “people who stop caring after the child is born.”

In March the bill reached the House floor, where debate raged for three days, as much as ten hours a day. Tensions ran high in the chamber, which was lit by a benevolent winter sun that glinted off the manly oak desks and supersized leather chairs. On the first day, March 2, Miller, a burly man with white hair and a sun-lined face that wrinkles into a bright, inviting smile, explained the legislation. A former school board member from Stephenville, he has a loamy Texas accent and favors a spotless white Stetson. If you stare at him long enough, you might easily forget that it’s the twenty-first century.

Miller described his bill in a matter-of-fact tone, as if he were pushing a new municipal utility district. “What we’re attempting to do is to provide women all available information while considering abortion and allow them adequate time to digest this information and review the sonogram and carefully weigh the impact of this life-changing decision,” he began. Miller then listed everything his bill would require before an abortion could be performed. A woman would have to review with her doctor the printed materials required under the 2003 Woman’s Right to Know Act. While the sonogram image was displayed live on a screen, the doctor would have to “make audible the heartbeat, if it’s present, to the woman.” There was also a script to recite, about the location of the head, hands, and heart. Affidavits swearing that all of this had been properly carried out according to Texas law would have to be signed and filed away in case of audits. A doctor who refused could lose his or her license.

As soon as Miller finished, Houston Representative Carol Alvarado strode up to the podium. There could have been no clearer contrast: her pink knit suit evoked all those Houston ladies who lunch, its black piping setting off her raven hair. Her lipstick was a cheery shade of fuchsia, but her disgust was of the I-thought-we’d-settled-this-in-the-seventies variety.

“I do not believe that we fully understand the level of government intrusion this bill advocates,” she said tersely. The type of ultrasound necessary for women who are less than eight weeks pregnant is, she explained, “a transvaginal sonogram.”

#texas monthly #long reads #mimi swartz #abortion

Modern Texas history is filled with stories of women who were held down by what academics like to call “the patriarchy” and the rest of us might simply call “macho white guys.” When trailblazing federal judge and legislator Sarah Hughes ran for reelection to the House in 1932, for instance, her opponent suggested that her colleagues “oughta slap her face and send her back to the kitchen.”

Mimi Swartz, "Mothers, Sisters, Daughters, Wives" (Texas Monthly)

#mimi swartz #long reads #texas monthly #texas

When the Art Guys, Houston’s zany performance art duo, staged a faux wedding to a live oak in 2009, they thought they were raising questions about man and nature. But before long, The Art Guys Marry a Plant had become a flashpoint for the fight over gay marriage.

Texas Monthly || March 2012

#marriage #lgbtq #mimi swartz #texas monthly

Mixed messges from our "Super" Intend Ant...

While "Houston We Have A Problem" was the mantra of our latest superintendent, Terry Grier when he ransacked our school budget for his pet project Apollo 20, it seems like HE might be a large part of the problem: "Super Collider" in October's Texas Monthly by Mimi Swartz http://www.texasmonthly.com/preview/2011-10-01/feature3 Then again, he sends out this article for all his teachers to read: "Effectiveness Drops in Teacher's Final Year" from Education Week If our Dr. Grier actually had critical thinking skills, he would immediately get rid of Teach for America (TFA) since many of them don't stay longer than 2 years and know that they're moving on... Which is a "duh" conclusion---we used to call it FYBIL syndrome in the Med Center, "F*** you buddy, I'm leaving". On the other hand, this weird article says that teachers "flatline" after 3 years of teaching, after earlier stating that we get better if we stay longer than 3 years? Which is it? We get better or we crater if we stay in teaching? What an insane article to pass along to teachers. No wonder the morale is so bad here in HISD. And then again, would there be an article that doctors or lawyers "flatline" after being in their fields for 3 years or more? Who in their right mind would say, "I'm going to only doctors/lawyers who are only out of school for 3 years?" Wish our Super Intend Ant had critical thinking skills or even half an education.