Archive for June 2025
I was on my back, giving it the twenty-minutes it needs every so often since my 2015 accident. This time, though, I was hoping to slip into a brief nap to help recover from a couple of nights of poor and minimal sleep… sorry, I can’t help empathizing with those who are suffering. Instead, I found myself plunging into despair (Loss of hope.) I haven’t been that close to depression since the mid 1970s when the despair was more personal. At that time my 2:00 am moment clicked in and I started the turn-around-conviction that somehow I’d do something to make it better, and I did.
This time two relatively minor straws almost broke the back of my determination. On top of one loss of freedom after the other in the country – women’s rights, physicians rights, gender rights, asylum-seekers rights, health rights, housing rights, food rights, climate rights, even professor’s rights or the right not to be killed by gunshot, were two deliberate insults: the removal of Harvey Milk’s name from the ship that had been christened in his honor and the removal of the bust of Martin Luther King that had been in the oval office. But the major one that almost did me in? – the Supreme Court clearing the way to remove immigrants to countries other than their own origin where a language foreign to them might be the norm. Losing language communication is equivalent to solitary confinement, pretty close to a death sentence.
I solved my own problem by getting back to editing my manuscript, How Could These Lovely People Have Let It Happen? A Psychologist’s Intimate Journal. Really. It helped. By the time I had spent a couple of hours at the computer, walked the halls of the Waters of Excelsior and enjoyed an evening meal with friends, my symptoms were alleviated.
But what hasn’t been helping – and so I’ve stopped it – is contributing to the political party of my choice. (Guess which one.) I don’t see my minimal money being spent to help spread caring and justice. Why can’t they just tell the human stories of people being afflicted by current policies? I do understand it won’t happen with most news media telling them, for various reasons of fear and ownership control. But why can’t some of the party money buy ads just to tell the story of women suffering and dying because of legal controls over medical practices, or of families imprisoned, or of those living with the disaster of violent weather issue? Personally, I don’t know a single person who doesn’t care in one way or the other for the welfare of others. That’s where the truth lies, not in data and graphs and generalized hypotheses.
Oh well. Bottom line I guess we all have to take care of ourselves …
The prompt for our Waters of Excelsior writing group today was “energy.” The best offering was an AI product offered by a member who ran into writer’s block, or maybe just a dearth of energy. The following is mine, the shortest one, also representing a dearth of energy. And so it goes. Enjoy!
Energy, energy, where art thou?
To get you back, I know not how.
Why don’t you just take a bow
And let me take a nap for now.
The assignment for our Writing Group here at the Waters of Excelsior on Friday, June 13, 2025 was to applaud someone. The following was what I presented in honor of a resident whom I chose to leave unnamed, but who represents so much that is good in what seems like a tragedy.
I APPLAUD YOU
At least every half hour
You ask what day this is.
And in between you
Inquire about the time.
Then you ask when they will be
Playing the game you enjoy,
The one you will engage in
With full understanding
When it begins.
When nothing else is going on
You read your book.
I don’t know if it’s the
Same book over and over
Like the stories of your life
family, husband and occupation.
And always you are the first
To clear the table to make space
For the newcomer
Or help place the wheel-chaired person
Comfortably at the table.
And fetch a glass of water
For the person who wants it
Even as you pick up what the
Person with the walker has dropped.
You’re always there to open the door
When you think I want to come in.
I applaud you for all this —
What really matters,
The essence of who you really are,
Goodness, generosity, kindness.
Of course I want mental health for all. That’s the reason I don’t like the focus on “mental health.” The problem is, the focus of that term is on individuals, diverting attention from the major cause of poor mental health which is social structure. What can one expect when we live in a world where there are so many threats against healthy development right from the beginning: forced birthing, lack of prenatal care, laws against saving the life of a pregnant woman, no recognition of the importance of early – and later — child care. Failure to assure care is provided for the newborn as getting back to work is more valued that setting the stage for healthy infant development.
Enforced fear everywhere. What’s the message in schools with security checks and cops as part of the daily process? What is the message but “be afraid. Be very afraid!” Healthy mental health requires the courage to see ahead with hope, not the avoidance of reaching for future potential.
Healthy growth requires confidence that tomorrow will follow today in a physically safe world, with the safe haven of a constant home where one can count on enough nourishing food every day and a safe place to sleep every night. It requires clean air free of the constant news of tornadoes, hurricanes, and floods. It requires family, neighbors, and friends setting examples of success in purposed daily living with caring and respect for each other.
It requires being surrounded with sufficient honesty that a reasonably steady future can be anticipated. It calls for honest answers to any question, often requiring the help of a book to clarify, not wondering what awful truth is hidden in those banned books.
Stop it, Mona. You’re drifting into a rant. Let’s just summarize.
A healthy society calls for being “woke” i.e. being aware of important societal issues, especially those related to racial and social justice. It implies a consciousness of injustices and a commitment to fighting against them. It calls for respect for DEI – diversity, equity, and inclusion .. and empathy.
HEADLINE OF THE DAY: CHEF-IN-CHIEF STRIVES TO IMPOSE NATIONAL DIET OF WHITE BREAD AND WATERED-DOWN MELTING POT BY:
- Banning ingredients allowed in, specifically by
- banning travel to US by citizens of Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, The Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen.
- Imposing restrictions on travelers from Burundi, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela who will not be allowed to enter the US permanently or get tourist or student visas.
- maintaining diet changes already imposed by blocking asylum at the Southern border and barring international students from attending Harvard University.
- Altering historical memory by:
- Removing links to webpages in the “notable graves” section featuring Black, Hispanic, and female veterans buried at Arlington National Cemetery
- Reportedly removing from the federal website education section themes like “African American History,” “Civil War,” “Medal of Honor,” “Service Branches,” and “Women’s history.”
- Ordering the renaming of the USNS Harvey Milk, honoring gay rights activist Harvey Milk.
- According to some reports the Pentagon is also considering renaming other ships named after civil rights leaders, including Harriet Tubman, and other prominent figures.
Secretary of Defense Hegseth’s office cited the need for names to reflect the “warrior ethos” and the “Commander-in-Chief’s priorities” as reasons for the change.
Israel and the Palestinians are at war. Currently Russia and the Ukraine are at war. I believe there are many who feel free to demonstrate in favor of Ukraine. How is that different from demonstrating in favor of Palestine?
In a free country, like the United States, demonstrating for people to understand the Palestinian cause is not necessarily anti-semitic. In fact – (I know you’ll tell me if I’m wrong) – most Palestinians are also semites.
Does the story of its founding forever protect the Israeli government from protests against its actions just by defining them as anti-semitic? I don’t think it should. And I don’t think students should be punished for demonstrating for a cause they support.
And I think something else is going on when demonstrators who are not necessarily anti-semitic in their actions are accused of being anti-semitic by those who do reveal their own anti-semitism when they oppose diversity, equity, and inclusion as part of our national goal. In other words, I think just making a big news thing about anti-semitism is intentional promotion of the very thing it pretends to oppose.
I don’t have anywhere near full knowledge of what was going on at Harvard, but I do think what the President is doing in protesting so-called anti-semitism there is actually promoting anti-semitism.
Please, my Jewish friends, help me out here. Am I getting it right?
monagustafsonaffinito 