Pennsylvania Pain
I decided to write about the first thing that popped into my head this morning (that wasn’t war in Ukraine) and it was the TV series I just watched, Mare of Easttown, starring Kate Winslet. (Warning: there will be spoilers. If you haven’t watched it and plan to, step away from the computer right now.)
Winslet plays a police detective in a small town in Pennsylvania, a role in which she wears no makeup, vapes and speaks with an accent the Pennsylvania friend I consulted during the final episode tells me is very difficult to master.
That I was texting a friend in Pennsylvania instead of paying full attention to the final, shocking twist in the plot probably gives you a hint as to my feelings about this series — which the critics apparently adored (95% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes) as much as the general public (94% Fresh).
It’s a murder mystery in which a teenage girl is found dead in the woods and basically everyone in town looks like a potential suspect. I get that this is how you keep a police procedural jogging along for seven episodes and I’m usually pretty adept at suspending my disbelief (I did it for the first season of Broadchurch, the British series to which Maire of Easttown is frequently compared, although come to think of it, I couldn’t do it for the second season) but this one started to make me giggle, “It was that mean girl in the park! No, it was the victim’s abusive ex-boyfriend! No, it was Mare’s ex-husband! No, it was the new priest! No, it really was the victim’s ex! No, it was the guy with the two teenage girls locked in his attic! No, it was the victim’s uncle! No, it was her other uncle! No, it was A CHILD!
As nonsensical as all this was, I might have put up with it were it not for the merciless litany of woes the writer — Brad Inglesby — heaps on his working-class characters. These include, in no particular order, murder, attempted murder, suicide, incest, rape, teen parenthood, addiction, drug overdose, cancer, alcoholism, theft, depression, adultery and bullying (of a child with Down’s Syndrome). There was a moment when I thought Inglesby was going to throw in “negligent parenting leading to a child drowning in a bathtub” but in a show of uncharacteristic restraint, he pulled back. (In retrospect, I think this was intended simply as an homage to another Pennsylvania writer, John Updike, whose Rabbit, Run famously had a baby drown in a tub.)
It’s almost never sunny in this corner of Pennsylvania. Nobody smiles unless they’re drunk or high. Even the supposedly fun community events look awful — there’s some sort of fair during which Jean Smart (who plays Kate Winslet’s mother) is sitting at a table selling tickets and she looks like she’s dressed for Shackleton’s expedition.
This thing will probably suck up Emmys like a shop vac, but I am here to say, in no uncertain terms: TWO THUMBS DOWN.
Private medicine
[Mounts soapbox. Clears throat. Jabs Index Finger at Audience for Emphasis. Intones.]
The price of universal healthcare is eternal vigilance!
The privatization ghouls — like the policy analysts at the Frasier Institute — are forever prowling about, looking for ways to infiltrate the system, and in the surgical backlogs caused by COVID, they clearly see their chance.
As early as July 2020, they had taken to the editorial pages of the Globe and Mail to claim that such backlogs demonstrated the inferiority of Canada’s single-payer system to that of wised up jurisdictions like Australia that “embrace, to varying degrees, the private sector.” Never mind that Canada itself has not been shy about embracing the private sector — the most cursory of Google searches turns up stories about British Columbia, Quebec, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia using, planning to use or expanding their use of private clinics since the onset of the pandemic. (A move the CBC, for some reason, lauds as an improvement in the headline to its Quebec story.) That those private clinics even exist speaks volumes about the “public” status of our healthcare system.
The Frasier Instituters point, as is their wont, to their own research to show that “throwing more money” at the problem isn’t the answer. There is much to be said in response to such arguments, starting with this data on Canadian hospital beds per 1,000 population from the World Health Organization:
There is much to be said, but I’m clearly not the one to say it. I have many thoughts on the subject but not enough facts. Fortunately, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) and the NS Health Coalition will take up this issue on March 30 at 7PM during a virtual panel discussion (via Zoom) called “Protecting Public Health Care from Privatization.”
The event will:
…bring together researchers, policy analysts, and service providers from across the Atlantic region. We will be joined by Dr. Monika Dutt, former Chair and Board Member with Canadian Doctors for Medicare and family physician at the Ally Centre of Cape Breton, Mary Jane Hampton, President of Stylus Consulting, and former Commissioner of Health Reform in Nova Scotia, Christine Saulnier, Director of the CCPA-NS and Chris Parsons, Provincial Coordinator of the Nova Scotia Health Coalition.
You can register for the meeting at the page linked above or wait for my coverage.
Bring on the Farting Ponies!
I’ve been a fan of Mabou born and based-cartoonist Kate Beaton’s work since I first discovered her Hark, A Vagrant! website lo! those many years ago. (I’m not actually sure when, as you can probably tell.)
Her cartoons about historical and literary figures cracked me up — I actually have one of her Jane Austen-themed comics framed on my wall. To understand how big a deal this is, you need to know how difficult it is for me to a) decide what I want on my wall, b) get it framed, and c) hang it. I can easily fall at any of those hurdles, but in this case, I completed the course.
Not being a child or having children, I’m less familiar (as in, not at all familiar) with her children’s books like King Baby and The Princess and the Pony, but I’m going to have to get up to speed quickly because the latter has been turned into an eight-episode comedy for Apple TV+ called Pinecone and Pony.
All I really know about the book is that it owes a debt to Robert Munsch’s The Paper Bag Princess (“Ronald, your clothes are really pretty and your hair is neat. You look like a real prince, but you are a bum”) and that can’t be bad.
Beaton and the series are getting lots of coverage, so you can find out about the TV show from the CBC and more about the original book (with its gorgeous drawings) from this 2015 (rave) review by Cory Doctorow or this TIME interview from the same year.
Although I have to admit, I’m possibly more excited for the arrival of Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands, Beaton’s graphic memoir of her time in Fort McMurray, to be published this fall by Drawn & Quarterly:
After university, Katie Beaton leaves family behind to join Alberta’s oil rush, but as one of the few women among thousands of men, the culture shock is palpable. The harsh reality of life in the oil sands is that trauma is an everyday occurrence yet never discussed. Ducks is an untold story of contemporary Canada.
I realize that sounds as dark as Mare of Easttown but I can’t imagine anything produced by Beaton being as unrelentingly grim. If you’re interested, while waiting for publication of Ducks, in hearing her discuss her experience in Fort McMurray, I recommend this Canadaland interview.
