For several days, news helicopters have flown in great arcs around the East Dallas neighborhood known as Vickery Meadow, which includes the hospital complex as well as a dense, highly diverse neighborhood of Mexican and Central American immigrants, resettled refugees from Southeast Asia and West Africa, and others. The Ebola patient, identified as Liberian national, Thomas Eric Duncan, had reportedly been staying at the Ivy Apartments located there. Just this past September, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation awarded one of its prestigious "genius grants" to Texas artist Rick Lowe, who has overseen high-profile projects to install art galleries and public art in Dallas's "Own United Nations," as Vickery Meadow has been called. If that news hadn't already catapulted the neighborhood to national fame, the recent coverage of Duncan's background and activities in Dallas by CNN, The New York Times and other international media certainly has.
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