When Josiah Gregg and a company headed southwest on the Santa Fe trail in 1831, the young man was confined to lie prone in the bed of a Dearborn wagon. He suffered from chronic dyspepsia and tuberculosis, and western travel was proscribed for his condition. This therapy proved to be highly successful. [...]
What is "health," and what does it mean to be "healthy"? In this issue, Breanne Fahs queries how we, along with the pharmaceutical industry, have come to redefine mental, emotional, and sexual health. Meanwhile, Helen Heightsman Gordon's poem reflects on caretaking. Alex Jay Kimmelman reminds us that people once traveled to find healthier climates in the Western U.S.A., while Hope Miller reflects on a last breakfast before leaving the Western state of Utah. Luke Perry offers insights into the exceptionalist bent of U.S. political culture that underlies a contentious healthcare debate, and James K. Walker examines alternative approaches to the body in Le Parkour in Britain. This is the last issue of The Public Sphere until September 15, 2010, when The Public Sphere will return from a brief hiatus. Because much ...
Breakfast: December 2007 The furniture was gone. And only the promise of empty space stared back at me. It was the promise of empty space that had beckoned me to Utah six and a half years earlier. The naked sky offered me the possibility to do anything and be anyone, and the silent mountain sentinels assented to shield [...]
U.S. Exceptionalism and Opposition to Healthcare Reform Political discourse surrounding healthcare reform has included purposeful disruptions of Congressional town hall meetings, the brandishing of firearms at opposition rallies, and the use of Nazi imagery to depict President Obama. Why has opposition to healthcare reform been so contentious? Conventional responses from the political right typically focus on ideological differences, such as varying views [...]