This month's National Geographic has a long article on the effects of the Jamkhed health care movement, Necessary Angels in India. It is an amazing look at the grassroots power of providing basic health care — primarily preventive and environmentally holistic — in an area under-served by allopathic and ayurvedic techniques alike. This is a movement that has the same potential as the Grameen Bank, as the Green Belt Movement. It is changing lives, communities, and ecosystems.

A few lessons that can be learned:

• Importance of focusing development efforts on those with the "lowest" status (typically women, here untouchable women);
• Basic needs assessment emphasized over (but not exclusively) advanced medical treatments;
• Bringing science to the people;
• Self-organizing principals at the local level, including ability of those "on the ground" to make decisions and act locally without having to go back for expert guidance.

Tangent: there is much here convergent on Lean principles of management. This movement is eliminating a lot of waste in the way of delivering health care.

Somehow over the years I had never once encountered this in person; I had only been told about this happening. On a walk this evening up to the park, a guy leaned out of the passenger side of an SUV and yelled "hey sexy!" at my wife. Some would see this as a compliment. No. It is potentially-threatening verbal abuse, and we have to do better at educating society to cut this crap out. It ain't Egypt, but I'm not entirely convinced that this country is much better about public harassment of women.

Speaking of improper respect for women... with the caveat that I find Senator Hillary Clinton's press release a too partisan for my tastes... she and Senator Patty Murray have an insightful analysis of some ridiculous new proposed rules from the Department of Health. Major media coverage from ABC. Sadly this is the type of thing that it is nearly impossible to find reported without partisan overtones. I'm sorry, but a woman's access to contraception should not be impinged on by the whims of government policy or the religious beliefs of the local pharmacist. There is nothing partisan about that.

Interesting book review covering a new work by Susan Faludi on post-9/11 anti-feminism, partially comparing and contrasting with Bruce Springsteen's new album. The first reaction I had was: do her grim facts really paint the overall picture of the treatment in America? Most of the news coverage I read, see, or hear does not comport to her view of reality — but maybe I just don't pay enough attention to news outside the New York Times, NPR, and the local nightly news.