Something I admire about those I follow on the Fediverse is that many of you seem to be highly skilled persons who could possibly land lucrative jobs in the current administration, or under a supportive oligarch, if you were only willing to abandon your ethical principles to do their bidding. But, instead, here you are! Congratulations!
#Ethics #Morality #Sunday #Music #LouReed #VelvetUnderground
I’ve recently been listening to a lot of music by Lou Reed, The Velvet Underground, and Nico. It is good stuff. I really miss Lou Reed. He would have been on a short list of musicians I would have most liked to meet.
1. Having written and mailed a letter yesterday morning to friends I had not communicated with in about a year, I received a letter from them that afternoon. Serendipity!
2. Calling those friends on the phone today to wish the husband a quick and full recovery from a minor stroke that he mentioned in the letter I noted above.
3. Listening to Max Richter from Sleep, a CD he sent me with his letter, while ordering for him and his wife a favorite collection of poetry by Wislawa Szymborska.
1. Completed the lab work for my upcoming annual checkup.
2. Did some grocery shopping so there is now food in the house.
3. Wrote and mailed a letter to an old friend.
1. Feeling relaxed after a dog walk, some yard work, and a warm shower.
2. A good cup of coffee in hand from freshly ground beans in my espresso machine.
3. Settling down on a sofa to continue reading an interesting book.
Guapo sporting an Elizabethan collar (aka cone of shame) because he licked one of his paws until it was raw due to a yeast and bacterial infection. #Dogs
I could write a lot about these mental health issues, having been living around them for more than 20 years. In fact, I have written about 200 unpublished book pages of my thoughts. One problem is that I keep changing my mind about things, refining the way I think. So, I will have to go back and make revisions if I ever do try to publish a book. (2/10)
May is Mental Health Awareness Month in the USA
May is Mental Health Awareness Month in the USA and I have mixed feelings about it. My beliefs about mental health, mental illness, treatment, freewill, and legal agency have changed a lot over the years as a result of my reading, observations, and experience as a family caregiver for three adults with what some refer to as “mental health issues.” In my family they are schizophrenia, major depression, and bipolar-II. I will get to the “issues” rhetoric in a bit. (1/10)
#MentalHealth #Psychology #Psychiatry #MentalIllness #Caregiving
Hacky sack? #Poll #HackySack
RE: https://flipboard.com/@bbcnews/top-stories-hc55lmo2z/-/a-CSoLHhjsST-H2h9I4XWQyA%3Aa%3A3199692-%2F0
You know how we have lasting memories of insignificant events? My memory of a scene in this movie is only indirectly related to filming through the windows of a car being washed, from the opposite-side viewing perspective of prisoners in a work crew, which showed Harmon in a summer dress with her large but fully clothed breasts pressed up against the wet and soapy windows as she cleaned the roof of the vehicle. My enduring memory was really ingrained by the movie being shown as a fundraiser by students at Central Catholic High School where my older brother was enrolled and my mother’s audible gasp as she viewed the scene with disapproval.
I consider myself a master at putting large objects into my curbside trash bin. In the past, I cut up and disposed of a queen-size box spring and an IKEA loveseat using a handsaw on the wood frames and bolt cutters on the springs. Yes, I was proud of myself. Aside from the wood, spring metal, and stuffing they were mostly air.
Fast-forward to today. I was planning to give away my 34-year old fiberglass extension ladder until I read online that it is too old and potentially dangerous. Even though I have kept it in my garage and away from the elements, the fiberglass may be brittle. The internet tells me I should put on a respirator and leather gloves, cut it up into small pieces so that no one else will try to use it, and dispose of it in my trash bin. Understood. Challenge accepted.
Carelessly discarded items can be dangerous. More than 40 years ago, while I was a US Peace Corps volunteer in Africa, there would periodically be a news report about someone finding a discarded insecticide or herbicide bottle with printed warnings they could not read. Some people repurposed such bottles for storing cooking oil or water. Family members became seriously ill and even died as a result.
Have you or a partner ever had to climb inside a tubular plastic playscape to extract a child?
#Parenting #Children #Poll
Schizophrenia
I am reading a book titled Hidden Valley Road by Robert Kolker (2020). It is a true story about the Galvin family, an American family from Colorado with twelve children, six of whom are diagnosed with schizophrenia. It is an interesting read. I see some similarities between the sick children and my daughter. It is also a disheartening read, because it reminds me of how my daughter once seemed like a child with limitless potential. Today, I am mourning a little for her lost opportunity to live a relatively normal life, the kind of life that most of us take for granted and enjoy to a large extent. It is a recurring regret that pops up for me, occasionally. It is similar to what family caregivers for parents with dementia describe, only it lasts a lifetime. Her situation seems utterly and absurdly unfair to me. But I know a lot of other persons have lives that are unfair in various other ways. I want to fix things for her that cannot be fixed. I want to take her into our home and be infinitely patient with her, trying to reason with her and break through her delusional thinking. But she can sure be a handful, which is one reason why I suppose one sees so many like her living homeless on city streets in the USA. I lost my patience with her on the phone last night. Compassion fatigue. So, I am feeling bad about that today.
#Schizophrenia #MentalHealth #MentalIllness
#Delusions #Hallucinations #Disability #Mourning #Caregiving #Bookstodon
Found objects spotted on local hiking trails. (I counted photos of found objects along these trails in my iPhone photo album and have about sixty similar photos.)
#Hiking #Walking #Anthropocene #Art #StreetArt #Dystopia #Nature
Have you considered leaving all social media? Comments are welcome and encouraged. #SocialMedia #Poll #Survey
I stopped at a convenience store on my way home and a message from Homeland Security was playing on the store radio. It began with a story about a rape by an immigrant and Donald Trump’s commitment to making America safe again. Next came a stern message in a man’s voice for illegal immigrants to leave the country immediately and never return. Following that was a message in the same harsh voice telling listeners that if they register at a Homeland Security website on their way out of the U.S. they might be allowed to return sometime in the future. The whole message was made to sound threatening. I found it quite disturbing.
I am incredibly discouraged by this WSJ poll and hope it is based on an unrepresentative sample, because the alternative for me is to believe the majority of U.S. voters are just horrible people. That a majority of U.S. voters polled by the WSJ could witness what the Trump administration has wrought over the last six months and yet believe Democrats are worse is just incomprehensible to me. #WSJ
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/07/26/democrats-approval-rating-poll-00478141
Global Neuronal Workspace
I just finished reading Seeing the Mind (2023) by Stanislas Dehaene after previously reading Consciousness Explained by Daniel Dennett and Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter (only about 80% of which I fully understood). While I understood Dehaene’s book and learned some delightful new information from it, I am interested in learning more about the theory of a global neuronal workspace as a model for what we humans experience as consciousness. Dehaene touched on it only briefly in his recent book, writing there is a growing body of evidence in support of it, but not describing that evidence. Can anyone recommend a good introductory book about the global neuronal workspace theory for a novice science reader like myself?