The whole person

After graduation, Weeks and Solow continued living in south Rochester, where they started a food co-op. When the ‘60s happened, she says, they were “in the vanguard of the movements,” dedicated to participating in outdoor concerts for civil rights and anti-Vietnam War marches, getting maced in the process—Weeks in the face and Solow getting a serious lung infection from inhaling mace at an event in Washington, D.C. “They were interesting times,” says Weeks. “Watching your own government aiming snipers at you from the roof of the Pentagon is an… interesting experience.” The couple lived communally, and Weeks managed a band for a while and substitute-taught while Solow was a member of a popular local band called North. “We were just following our beliefs, doing what we felt was right,” says Weeks. “We were into music and spiritual searching for what is real.”

When the couple moved to New York City in 1973 (where Solow is from), Weeks says she felt “extremely out of place there” and realized, “If I’m going to be in this place I’m going to have to really get into it.” She became a paramedic, which allowed her to participate in the city in an intimate way, she says, welcomed into all kinds of homes at all times of night and day, and in an era when the city was a much “grittier” place than it is today. “There weren’t many women doing it at the time, so it was a very exciting, cowgirl type of a job, driving on the sidewalk on Fifth Avenue against traffic… it was pretty amazing.”

After eight and a half years as an EMT, Weeks left the streets to work as the pediatric trauma coordinator at Harlem Hospital, developing and implementing programs to prevent injuries to children. Then, inspired by several of her former EMT colleagues, she became a physician assistant (PA), working in that capacity in emergency rooms in New York City and then at Kingston Hospital until the working conditions in that line of work led her to study homeopathy and found Healthcare is a Human Right.

Weeks and Solow had moved to West Saugerties in 1979–80, toward the end of Weeks’ time as a paramedic. While the move required some commuting to the city for Weeks for some time, she says she was very happy to find Saugerties. “I’ve always loved the country,” she says, “and couldn’t wait to get out of the city.”

The couple discovered the area through visiting friends who lived in the region who had bought land and built homes. They ended up buying their own land and building a cabin—back then, they were the first house on a dirt road. Now they’re the third or fourth house in on a paved street.

“Saugerties is a really great town,” Weeks says, “and I feel at home just as I felt at home in Maine. I love the fact that you recognize people on the street and they recognize you—that’s wonderful. It’s growing organically and developing, but I worry about it becoming a second-home place and losing its authenticity. People who live up here full-time get more involved in community.”

As does Weeks—she is a longtime member of the Saugerties Democratic Committee and the Saugerties Comprehensive Planning Committee. “My purpose for being on the Planning Committee is to protect the water and the air,” she says. “I want to protect the rural areas and the farms. If we don’t protect our farms we’re not going to have food as transportation becomes so expensive. If we don’t have healthy wetlands, we don’t have an ecosystem that works.

“One of the things that makes Saugerties interesting is the mix of people we have,” she says, “but sometimes it’s discouraging. We’re surrounded by people who want to suburbanize the country and don’t know how to live with it. But this is the Catskills; we’re on the most beautiful land. I grew up in the woods and have a very deep connection to it, to protecting the magic in wild places.”

Weeks says she would like to see Healthcare is a Human Right be ongoing and independent, and continue to grow. “I’d love to open more clinics,” she says, “but unfortunately there is not a lot of grant money for holistic modalities and I can’t ask the practitioners we have at present to do more than they’re already doing.” HCHR has approximately 60 volunteer practitioners at present who give many hours of their time every month, and when Hurricane Irene hit, the Phoenicia clinic operated seven weeks in a row.

Ideally, Healthcare is a Human Right would establish the standard that other healers and communities can draw from to create their own clinics, says Weeks. “We hope to create a prototype where people can easily do this themselves. It’s never going to make money, but it’s a calling, not a job—it’s like being a musician; you do it because that’s what you do.”

And what about the changes coming in the health insurance system? “It’s a piecemeal step, but at least it’s a start,” says Weeks. “At least people with pre-existing conditions, which we all have as we get older, can get insurance. And there may be some cost controls, but it’s nowhere near enough. Why are we still the only industrialized country that doesn’t have a single-payer system?”

As for whether holistic treatments will be included in the new healthcare insurance plans, Weeks says she doesn’t think it’s likely. “More doctors are realizing that these modalities do make sense and that people are spending money on vitamins and holistic treatments, so the upside is that it’s becoming more known, but then they’re attempting to regulate it. The system is set up so that it’s not taking care of people.

“Who knows what the world is going to look like in the next decade or two, but people need to learn how to take care of themselves and learn that there are other ways than taking drugs to mask symptoms. The whole system is distressing—it’s not on a human scale, and that’s what we need to make it.”