(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . DKos Asheville Open Thread: On the road edition [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2024-06-23 “Daily Kos fights for a progressive America by empowering its community and allies with information and tools to directly impact the political process.” Welcome to DKos Asheville . This space appears each weekend to share links to news and opinion from Asheville and Western North Carolina. The floor is open for comment and discussion. Wishing all a good day from this beautiful part of the world. Choked. Hit. Kicked. Thrown against walls. Nurses at HCA Healthcare-owned Mission Hospital face a steady stream of assaults and violence in their workplace and say management needs to do more to prevent their physical injuries and emotional trauma. The violence is so prevalent that nurses called Asheville police 25 times in 2023 and complained that year to the North Carolina Department of Labor about management’s inaction. The NCDOL closed its investigation but conceded to Asheville Watchdog that it never visited the hospital to look into the matter, citing staff shortages and a heavy workload. Nurses and other staff also detailed assaults to the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services late last year as it investigated deficiencies in care at the hospital. Mission emergency department nurse Misty Jackson described a recent assault in which she called security but continued to be attacked during the several minutes it took for help to arrive. “I’ve got hit in the head multiple times waiting for them to get there,” Jackson said. “Like, I had a headache for three days afterwards.” Jackson and other employees said Mission isn’t devoting enough resources to address violence. It especially needs to apply more security and add more nursing and auxiliary staff to deter attacks, they said. Sometimes it’s a good idea to reminisce about the past years, successes and failures that we all have, particularly for those people who have taken on real responsibility in their life work. Like me, for instance. A life of education, most of it intense, none easy, all critical and all of it involving risks. This is why we left San Francisco in search of mountains and forests and a minimum of human contamination. In 1971 my family and I arrived in scruffy Asheville, its downtown boarded up, a single Piggly Wiggly, no downtown restaurant. On arrival, Jasmin, my wife who had not been here with me, immediately broke into tears. I, on the other hand, had come to check Asheville out several weeks before. My friend here, Dr. Bob Byron, a Mayo-trained psychiatrist, met me at the airport. He said, “Peter, the place looks grim, but for me, it is heaven on earth and where I want to spend my life.” As my plane had approached the little airport, mid-April, I looked out and thought I saw the ground covered with snow! As we landed I was astonished to see the snow was thousands of dogwood trees in bloom. Bob introduced me to Dr. Charles Keller, a cardiovascular surgeon who’d come not long before. He told me that Asheville was made of gold and diamonds and we doctors would soon find Asheville to be the answer to our prayers, that we were on the forefront of a great medical community. Charley introduced me to Dr. Bruce Franz and Dr. Mike Keleher. Bruce had trained at Johns Hopkins, Mike was the heroic Marine doctor on the terrible battle of Tarawa. I immediately saw the incredible advantages of the small town of Asheville for a group or individual private practice of general surgery. These people were the friendliest, kindest, most human physicians I’d ever met. Facing a June deadline, the Community Reparations Commission met three times this month to complete voting on 39 recommendations to the City of Asheville and Buncombe County for how the local governments can repair harm caused by generations of systemic racism. While all 39 of the commission’s recommendations passed, not all were unanimous. Disagreements arose over language modifications to satisfy legal concerns. “Some folks voted against some recommendations specifically because we can’t single out Black residents because of the 14th Amendment [to the U.S. Constitution],” said facilitator Vernisha Crawford at the commission’s June 10 virtual meeting. The 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868 after the Civil War, granted citizenship to all persons born in the United States, including enslaved people, and ensured no citizens explicitly received privileges and everyone has guaranteed equal protection of the law. The City of Asheville has its own anti-discrimination ordinance that similarly prohibits “discrimination against any person on the basis of race, color, sex, religion, disability, familial status or national origin.” Just the first weekend into summer, extreme summer heat has arrived in the mountains-- and many people lack a proper cooling system. ABCCM, Asheville Buncombe Community Christian Ministry, has been working to make sure everyone is safe and cool through their cooling assistance program. Reverend Scott Rogers, executive director of ABCCM, said Saturday, June 22, that they have been partnering with different agencies to help those with fans and air conditioners, who cannot otherwise afford them. We're part of a cooling assistance program. Just like in the winter, we help in life-threatening conditions; for heat, we help during this life-threatening weather when it's over 90," Rogers said. It's official: Debris found littered across several places in Western North Carolina were part of a SpaceX spacecraft that broke apart during re-entry. SpaceX has confirmed the re-entry of Dragon spacecraft trunk hardware to NASA following its service missions to the International Space Station," the news release said. Officials said the debris was expected to burn up upon re-entry, but several pieces turned up in the mountains of North Carolina. "During its initial design, the Dragon spacecraft trunk was evaluated for re-entry breakup and was predicted to burn up fully," the release said. "The information from the debris recovery provides an opportunity for teams to improve debris modeling. NASA and SpaceX will continue exploring additional solutions as we learn from the discovered debris." Thanks for reading, wishing all a good week. 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