Dead Skunk and Turkey Vultures

Posted on May 26, 2011 in Creatures Driving Neighborhood

square730Two black bundles of feathers swaggered along the curb on Ridgeline Road. The turkey vultures held their scarlet heads even with the horizontal tilt of their tails. As we passed, they abandoned their carcass and flew into the trees. The brash, bitter scent of their prey — a skunk — blinded the nostrils.

Three hours after sunset ended the scavenging, the odor climbed the hill and barged in beneath the crack of the door.

Notes on the 2011 DBSA National Conference Part 1

Posted on May 25, 2011 in Addictions Anxiety Bipolar Disorder DBSA Support Groups and Conferences Stigma Sugar and Fat Travel - Conferences

square729The first big secret divulged to me and a select group of others was that the rumor that Peter Ashenden had been fired by [[Depression_and_Bipolar_Support_Alliance|DBSA]] after embezzling most of its assets ((Ashenden left because he was offered a job working for former DBSA head Sue Bergestrom at United Healthcare. The worst that can be said about him is that he sold out to Big Insurance.)) was not true. ((Thankfully I never spread this one. Nor is it true that our next conference is going to be in Hawaii.)) DBSA had worked itself into the red due to optimistic budgeting based on the assumption that the pharmaceuticals industry would continue its philanthropic support of its customer base. [[Abbott_Laboratories|Abbott]] — long a supporter of DBSA — left the psycho-pharmaceuticals field entirely. Money budgeted was based on what DBSA hoped to bring in. This led to $400,000 in payables in 2010. The board changed it method of budgeting to a zero-sum scheme meaning that you budgeted only the money left over at the end of the previous year. This meant a smaller operating fund — 44% of DBSA’s employees had to be phased out — but payables now stand at $20,000.


“I have not given up my neuroses,” said keynote speaker [[Patty Duke]]. “I have given up my psychoses. I am just enough neurotic to make me interesting.”

Duke is a tiny, frail woman (at least as far as I can see), far in figure from the [[Helen Keller]] she played in [[The Miracle Worker]]. Nonetheless, she moved the crowd with her account of her life as a person living with bipolar disorder. “Our disability is not a label we wear,” she extolled. “I wear the label of ‘we can, we do.”

The most meaningful part of the talk for me was where she spoke of her life as a bipolar harridan who tormented her family. She confessed that “I, Patty Duke, was an abusive Mom.

It started with the verbal abuse. My children never knew who they were going to meet…These children united with each other. When I was diagnosed and treated, it took some time for them to trust me….I didn’t exhibit these behaviors at the workplace. I exhibited them as soon as I got in the car, as soon as I got on the car phone. I exhibited them on my family.

Many mothers stood up and confessed to similar predicaments. The men were silent, but I think they knew what she was talking about, too. I, for one, resisted having children in part because I feared my rages. In the 23 years of our marriage, I have never hit or threatened to hit Lynn, even though my disorder seethed and overflowed. I attempted to break keyboards over my knee. I punched the wall. Still, I realized how easily the still hand could turn to a slap across the face. When you united them, they could push and a child is so small. Little bones encased in the slightest sack of skin and flesh could be broken like this. I feared the big man who could hurt. But now, I look at the long loneliness ahead. Other people my age already have grandchildren and children in college. What bonds can I form with my peers? My disorder and my consciousness of it have cost me life.

Near the end of her talk, Duke said “Our disease used to be a death sentence.” It still remains a prison cell for some of us.

Patty Duke


I started overeating after I surrendered my previous tension-cutting activity which was to chew on a pen and roll it around between my incisors. This not only wore down the teeth, but also ground a roundish hole. You could place any writing implement there and see the fit. I had to give this up because I started taking my oral health seriously. My dentist said the habit — along with my routine failure to brush — had to cease. So my nerves led me to substitute food as the all-natural anti-anxiety drug of choice.

Linda Chase LCSW said that it was all in the hands. She observed that the victims of emotional eating were people who moved their hands toward food even when not physically hungry. It was compulsive and uncontrollable, a self-destructive attempt at self-help. Serious eating disorders may result from it, but it can be overcome through treatment.

People do it for pretty much the same reasons — save one — that I chewed on my pens. It comforts, sooths, nurtures, numbs, sedates, and distracts. Through the extra-sized burger on your plate, you can escape painful emotions. Tension, anger, or frustration can be discharged by the rhythmic motions of your jaw. Some people reported that the comfort came from the larger body size they attained as a result. People feared you or they did not desire you sexually. ((This could also be true of someone with bad teeth as I had.)) Intimacy could be avoided.

There’s a cycle that we emotional eaters follow. First comes the cultural body ideal which suggests that you need to have the same svelte figure that you had at age 20. As fatty tissue accumulates with age — as it does for all of us — we panic. We label our big butts or our guts as ugly. So we resort to extreme diets that approach our former selves. But this is like putting ourselves in prison. Locked away and tortured by a life in which we allow ourselves not even a single chocolate chip cookie, we go stark-raving mad. Then we find ourselves in a store buying up our comfort foods and we eat them — all at once! This destroys any good and any anorexia ((Not every objective of a starvation regime is positive)) our diet may have accomplished. We look at our recently refattened bodies and feel guilt, shame, depression, and anxiety. So to escape these, we overeat some more until we look at ourselves again, measure our bodies against ridiculous cultural ideals, and return to our prisons. Each time this happens, we gain and lose more weight than before.

95 to 98% of who experience this drastic cycle gain all the weight back plus more. What we don’t realize is that there are happy and unhappy people in all sizes. True we should eat healthily, but do we need to excise chocolate chip cookies entirely from our lives? Do we need to exercise every day, eschewing every other activity that gives us pleasure until we feel like rats on a wheel? It is healthier to be large and fit than to be thin and unfit.

I liked some of her suggestions: First, seek a stable weight. I am aiming for 220 pounds rather than the 180 pounds of my youth for example, and when I get there, I will do what restraint and what necessary eating to stay in that region. Second, avoid yo-yo diets. Chase does not endorse radical surgeries for controlling your weight mostly because it does not address the emotional eating issues. She also warns us to be aware that some medications cause us to gain weight and require that we guard ourselves against entering a diet/binge cycle in an attempt to control it. Third, eat when you are hungry and eat what you want. This requires that you learn to recognize true hunger as opposed to emotional gratification. Successful challengers of emotional eating stock the foods that they occasionally love. Instead of turning your kitchen into a desert island, have those chocolate chip cookies around. I am diabetic. But I keep my favorite foods around, marking very carefully how much of each I eat and not eating too much of anything. Fourth, love your body as it is when it gets fit. Be nurturing towards yourself so that you don’t stampede into bad eating habits. Exercise in ways that give you pleasure. ((I love to plug in my Droid and listen to music when I get on the treadmill. Losing myself in the music helps me move on.))


Cheese pursued me everywhere. It arrived on the table in the Southwestern-style lasagna the hotel served for lunch during the Chapter Leadership Forum. It lurked on the pizza they served for those who went to the Friday night focus group. It lay in wait on the sandwiches they served for lunch on the main day of the conference. The hotel staff spared me the suffering a migraine or starvation by bringing me steamed vegetables on the first day’s lunch. I skipped the pizza and ate a salad rich in pickled peppers. During the second day’s lunch, I stripped the mozzarella from the turkey and passed it over to my friend Chato. The others at my table assumed that I was lactose-intolerant. I explained that I could drink milk, spoon up yogurt, and enjoy the cheesecake they brought for dessert. The [[tyramine|tyramines]], I explained, were what spoiled my equanimity. No one had a clue what those were.


Charles Willis got me to thinking about how a child is a captive audience who often does not get a chance to learn how to establish boundaries for her or himself. Parents can insist that their opinions reign supreme and that the child must internalize them. This can be the source of much misery later in life. And I will define this destruction of boundaries as one of the hallmarks of abusive parenting.

I think that abusive parents destroy boundaries because they, themselves, have trouble having them. They feel impelled to reach out and encompass their children. In the abusive family, the members are not allowed to accept their condition — they must drop the walls and be their condition as the hierarchs of the family define it.

I told one mother who was worried that her depressed sons would end up as failures that I personally had been sucked down by such thinking in my parents. I was told not to seek care for my illness. My family members worried that they would somehow be accused of doing what they did (of all things!) It meant the ruin of my life. I’m not sure Willis understood where I was coming from, but that is what issued forth.

The key to recovery is to acknowledge feelings and exert choice in how we respond. We may not be able to control our triggers, but we can plan for them. I can agree with this.

To be continued.

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Planet Houston

Posted on May 24, 2011 in Travel - Conferences

What is your travel horror story?

square728The shriek of jet engines can barely be heard inside the pressurized cabins of jet liners. My shrieks of frustration could not be heard beyond the door of my hotel room following the day that I had on Thursday, when I shifted my presence from California to Texas. The day’s irritations began innocuously enough with a snaking line at the Continental Airlines check-in counter where three of the five machines were down. This didn’t keep the system from running slowly: the same bad processing speed that airline computer networks are famous for continued to lugubriously serve customers. Once I had my ticket, I tacked myself to the tail of another human snake at Airport Security. All went well and I hardly noticed that I lost my boarding pass. A kind [[TSA]] agent found it for me, which served me well when I took myself to the gate which was printed on the pass. Here I waited for the efficient airport staff to announce about two minutes before boarding that there had been a widely disseminated misprint on the passes and that the One True Gate for the outgoing Houston flight was two stalls away.

I vacated my chair under the gaze of watchful passengers bound for another Continental destination and successfully climbed on board the plane. United/Continental felt that each little item deserved a charge (though they did pass out free earbuds), so I was obliged to pay for television service and, if I wanted it, a meal. A can of ginger ale that wasn’t (When is Ginger Ale not Ginger Ale? When it is Seagram’s! ((Look at the label. It has no ginger in it, just lemon and lime.)) ) caused me to barf 157 miles outside of George Bush International, which led adjacent passengers to hold their noses and offer me [[Tic Tacs]]. Everyone graciously gave me room as I exited and wove through a lengthy labyrinth that after many corridors, a few stairs, and a bleary-eyed guard brought me to baggage claim where I stupidly watched my own bag go round the carousel a half dozen times before I recognized it.

Lynn, I decided, should be informed that I had arrived. I tried texting her. When a mysterious error code flashed across the screen three times in response to three attempts, I decided to use my own voice to convey the message.

Verizon declined to grant me an audience with her unless I called her collect. In front of the Super Shuttle booth, I despaired but a nice agent loaned me her phone. I almost walked off with it. Lynn did not answer. I left a message to inform her that I had lost nationwide calling privileges and promised to call again from the hotel. Ah, I thought, I would have this matter cleared in under an hour. Super Shuttle ((Though this next episode sounds horrendous, I want to say that I like Super Shuttle. They are an economic boon when needing to get to and from a distant airport.)) would take me straight to the hotel.

The ride took an hour and ten minutes. First, the other passengers were spread out throughout Houston and its suburbs. Then we had a driver who decided to ignore her GPS directions and drop off other passengers before me. My whimpers that I was exhausted elicited no pity. When one young woman whined that she didn’t want to wait for the shuttle to take her home, but wanted instead to be dropped off at her mother’s office which was “right there”, the driver obliged. The white office tower proved to be five blocks from the avenue we were on. The whiner got out, showing her appreciation for the gesture by swearing that she would never use the service again. We needed to find a place to turn around in the office’s parking lot, then turn onto the street going in the same direction as that which we approached the office building, make a U-Turn two blocks down, and then backtrack to the same street that we had departed from to rid ourselves of the complainer.

Ah, the hotel did come (I was scheduled to be the second, but I was the last out) and I did get out, half-dreading that I would find that the hotel had lost my reservations. They did have them and they sent me up to the 16th floor where I frantically tried to call Lynn. When I failed to reach her after four tries, I attempted to get the number of her office using directory assistance. The electronic service did not recognize my pronunciation of its name and would not let me talk to a human being through I begged for this last option. “It’s not your fault,” said the automatic switchboard. “It’s me.” “And that doesn’t help!” I cried, but still there was no getting to a human being.

My exhaustion had blinded me to the obvious solution, which was to set up my laptop and call her. This brought its own nightmares which culminated in my summoning the hotel engineer who fixed the difficulty by refreshing my screen. I lost my room key in the room and asked the engineer to send me up a new one. He forgot but I found it and called him to let him know that it was okay if he kept forgetting. Lynn called just as I finished an email describing my predicament. The cell phone urgency could be dismissed. Verizon had neglected to switch on automatic billing. She had arranged a fix.

My followers on [[Dailybooth]] heard most of this in a note that ended:

after only five hours of sleep, I am blasted from the face of the earth. I take a nap and wake up feeling hungover.

When I fetched my information so that I could change my reservation so that I arrived at IAH an hour earlier, I cut my finger on the zipper. And that was Thursday….

Once I passed through the hotel doors, I did not go outside for three days. The Westin Galleria affixed itself to a cruciform known as the Galleria mall. I ate there, exercised there, and, of course, attended the conference across the hallway from the main hotel. My return came on Sunday. Super Shuttle made only one stop after it picked me up, then went straight to the airport.

This time I faced eight check-in stations, only two of which were out of order. Clueless customers stood in front of some and passengers with strange baggage — cardboard boxes labeled “Saigon egg rolls” and a skinny blond bearing a large Thule crate — occupied the rest. My halting advance through the line took twenty five minutes.

I finished my check-in in less than a minute, then waited for an agent to tag and take my bag for two more.

The airport security line was longer, but it moved steadily. The guy in front of me mislaid his belt. I gave it to an airport security guard who identified himself as the “safety” officer. My act of patriotic charity decided him in favor of making me go through the full body scan, behind a woman with a broken leg. I placed my feet on the white footprints, raised my hands over my head, watched the camera swing in front of me, and then left the glass cabinet. All was done with in less than a minute.

The gate number was right this time. I read while I waited, then got on the plane when my row was called. I swallowed two pills of [[Dramamine]] as I boarded. The woman and daughter sitting next to me had just come from London. When the pilot announced that they were having a little trouble with the onboard computer, the mother sighed. When he announced that the planes were being staggered so as to successfully navigate storms to the West, she groaned. An hour and five minutes after our departure time, we got our go-ahead. The plane slanted into the gray-pink sky and we were gone.

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Insert a Trite Metaphor for a Corral #98

Posted on May 22, 2011 in Roundup

Let us not look back in anger or forward in fear, but around in awareness.~ James Thurber

square727This was the week when Paul Ryan attempted to rebrand his tortured Medicare proposal and make his pitch to younger people. Ryan looked tired after a busy week of being heckled by those his Path to Prosperity would shred. Methinks he puts his faith in the gullibility of young people, an emotion which overcame him when he first read The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. But young people haven’t been going to Atlas Shrugged and it is a few months before DVD sales begin which are important because Rand’s followers can inflate the sales numbers with a few thousand strategic buys and returns. ((I’ve long suspected that the overwhelming sales of Atlas Shrugged were exaggerated and possibly faked by a deft manipulation of the book market. The big yawn over the film suggests that I may well be right.)) Is Rand through? There are 18 months to go before voters pass judgment. We will see.

If there is vital new news that didn’t make it, my apologies. I was in Houston waiting to be raptured.

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The Health Care Reform That Has Yet to Happen

Posted on May 16, 2011 in Dentition Depression Insurance Psychotropics

square726A plague is sweeping the nation. Three out of four Americans suffer from it. It is virulent and contagious. It destroys living tissue and bone. Bacteria at the point of infection inject their poisons into the bloodstream, exporting the destruction to other parts of the body. [[Cardiovascular disease]], [[joint problems]], [[pancreatic cancer]], [[diabetes]], [[asthma]], [[osteoporosis]], and even [[Alzheimer’s disease]] have been associated with it. Yet normal insurance does not cover its treatment. It was not part of health care reform. Most Americans are covered only to the tune of a couple of thousand dollars a year or less.

Bacterial plaque of the mouth is vile. ((Plaque occurs in layers. It looks like a thick off-white goo. As it builds up, the most destructive bacteria migrate to the bottom where they exist in an environment that is without air, light, or food. The longer you don’t brush your teeth, the thicker these colonies will be. And it is important to brush regularly: the bacteria growth or [[Pellicle_(dental)|pellicle]] can reestablish itself in only twenty minutes!)) Most people think it only causes [[caries]] or [[gingivitis]]. But recent studies show that the bacteria dump their waste products into the blood stream — a phenomenon called bacterima — causing problems in other parts of your body. If left untreated, the acids and other waste products will erode the bone of your mouth. This cannot be replaced. You will lose your teeth and if the condition is serious enough, you won’t be able to replace them with dentures or other dental appliances.

Healthy, mentally stable people think it is a simple matter to keep your mouth clean. Consider the third of the population who suffer from major [[depression]] though. When you twirl and fall into the morass as I did, you see your mouth as a hopeless cause. Why brush? Why floss? The commercials all say that your teeth must be white. ((Their natural color is yellow.)) You look into the mirror and fail to see the brilliant flash that advertising and employers say must be there. Even professional polishing fails to brighten your grimace. As conditions worsen, the costs of repairing the damage increase. It becomes more difficult to chew. Your jaw aches. So you give up.

Clearly, this is yet another symptom of the psychiatric disorder. But despite the broader health implications of the [[biofilm]], insurance companies and the public in general view dental care as cosmetic — about as important a medical concern as shaving or getting a haircut.

Insurance treats your mouth as an alien camper in your body. If you turn your lungs into a cancerous sac by smoking, your costs are covered to $750,000. If you become addicted to alcohol or other drugs, your rehabilitation is paid for. But most people are covered only to the tune of $1,500 or less each year. Beyond that low bar you have to pay out of your own pocket.

Do you see the discrepancy? Diseases caused by smoking and alcohol are equally caused by a lack of self control, yet they are covered. You can get your oxygen paid under Medicare ((At least for now)) and a heart bypass covered under most insurance, but there’s nothing out there for a dental implant if you need it. It cost me $40,000 to fix my mouth. Most of this came from my family and a large contribution by my Quaker meeting’s sharing fund. It has taken us years to recover from my melancholy-induced negligence.

In 2008, Congress mandated mental health parity. This meant that my bipolar disorder — which had indirectly caused my dental disaster — was now covered. Barring changes by this Republican Congress, regular care for this life-threatening condition of mine was now possible.

Given the wider damage wreaked by bacterima, it’s about time that there was parity for dental work.

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Insert a Trite Metaphor for a Corral #97

Posted on May 15, 2011 in Roundup

People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.” ~ Søren Kierkegaard

square725The Republicans can no longer hide in the afterglow of bin Laden’s death. They seem determined to weed out “the halt and the lame” through their cuts in Medicare which led a coterie of Catholic scholars to ask of Boehner what made him think he was a “good Catholic” if he followed the ways of Rand. I think it is important to challenge Christians who support candidates who hate the poor — which means the elderly, the mentally ill, widows, and orphans. Many liberal and progressive Christians are doing just that.

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Keeping Your Teeth and Your Sanity

Posted on May 11, 2011 in Bipolar Disorder Dentition Psychotropics

square724Someone raised his hand half way through Dr. Elizabeth Eshenaur Spolarich’s ((Dr. Spolarich specializes in the dental hygiene of people with mental disorders and addiction issues at the University of Southern California.)) talk at the Meeting of the Minds: “Can we take a break to brush our teeth?” Dr. Spolarich laughed. She had just taken us through the horrors that happen when you don’t take proper care of your teeth. Ahead of us still lay the terrors of xerostomia, bruxism, and the hideous “meth mouth”.

You almost don’t want to know what meth can do to your teeth. Keep in mind that the more than 600 sites that tell you how to make [[methamphetamine]] rely on materials you can obtain from any hardware store. That’s right. Hardware store. Among these is lithium which is pulled out of batteries. The manufacturers of the addictant don’t bother to cleanse the lithium, so it goes in along with the acid that coats it. So every time you take a dose of meth, you ingest some of this acid and it melts away your enamel. Meth mouth is not pretty: together with the extreme sugar cravings and lack of motivation for proper dental care, its ingredients turn your oral cavity into a wasteland of blackened gums and teeth that look like they have weathered a thousand years or more of erosion. The bone that holds the teeth in place is gone. The gums flash nearly as red as a traffic signal. Will people hire you with it? Can you chew with the charred crater it leaves you with? Not a chance. Even dentures won’t help you.

Count it as another reason to never start using meth.

When your mother first kissed you, you received your first infectious cultures of the [[streptococcus mutans]] and [[lactobacillus]] species that would, in later life, play havoc with your teeth. Your sterile mouth became a place that required regular care. If you did not get it, these beasties piled upon themselves in layer upon organized layer with the most destructive species — surviving in many cases without oxygen, light, or food — residing at the bottom next to your enamel. These secreted lactic acid which destroyed the hardest part of your body — the enamel of your teeth — and its supporting structures of bone. This is why it is imperative that you brush or floss.

Certain life habits can make things worse. Alcoholics, for example, torture their mouths with their consumable of choice. These are often full of [[caries]]-provoking substances used to give it flavor and color. The alcohol in Listerine, which is denatured, interestingly enough, doesn’t do this because it is a purer form without the extras.

Smoking is the number one risk factor for periodontal disease. Among its effects are increased tartar, increased pocketing of the gums — which lets the bacteria dig deeper around your teeth and bring them down — , loss of gum attachment, increased recession of the gums, and increased bone loss. Plus there is a nasty side effect of nicotine: normal gums look a light pink. When they are diseased, they turn a darker red. But nicotine causes [[vasoconstriction]] of the capillaries. This means that the gums appear lighter. So a smoker can examine his gums in a mirror and think everything was just fine.

Even if you’re not a smoker, mere depression or other mental impairment can lead to bad teeth. I can speak from my own experience here. I needed $40,000 in root canals, deep cleaning, implants, and restorative crowns to fix my mouth after years of impassioned neglect. I despaired that brushing would do any good. I avoided going to the dentist because my life seemed full of bad news anyways, so why gather more? In a blog I wrote some years after the three years of work were done:

…my teeth eroded quite spectacularly so that they resembled the spires at Bryce Canyon. They ached constantly because the bacteria living in them interacted with the sugars I took in and drilled caves for themselves. My incisors looked bad. One was literally split in half. All four of them were rounded off at the inner corner because of my compulsive habit of biting on a pen and rolling it.

A television person once told me that she thought my teeth lent me “character”. I didn’t think so. I was ashamed of my teeth. They looked bad. They hurt. I had trouble chewing. The joint in my jaw ached. And I had done it all to myself.

Today I forgive myself, but the work and the threats are not yet over. Thanks to the medications that I take to control my bipolar disorder and depression, there are two conditions which I now fear. The first is [[bruxism]] or grinding of the teeth which is a byproduct of [[selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors]]. This can be so severe that the hard enamel is sheared off and you are left with flat-topped teeth that expose the inner dentition and the pulp. Think root canal and crown time.

There’s a simple fix for this: a dental night guard. Any dentist can fashion one that fits you perfectly. Though many insurance plans do not cover them, they are relatively cheap compared to other dental appliances.

[[Xerostomia]] or “dry mouth” is a more complicated problem. Normally, you produce about 2 cups of [[saliva]] each day. You can produce half of this and still maintain a healthy mouth. But any less and you run into problems. You will begin to experience difficulty in chewing and swallowing. Your digestion will back up. Speaking may be difficulty as your tongue sticks to your cheeks. Forget about eating dry foods. Or wearing dentures and similar dental appliances.

Saliva protects your mouth from the bump and grind of normal chewing. And it also protects you against oral infections and trauma. Lose it and your mouth grows sticky. Bacterial cultures thrive. Enamel erodes. Your tongue grows smooth and loses feeling.

The scariest fact is that more than 600 drugs cause dry mouth. This includes all antidepressants, anti-psychotics, anti-convulsants, and stimulants.

Do not stop taking your medications. You need them to be able to properly care for yourself. But you must add a few things to your routine: a good soft [[toothbrush]], regular [[flossing]], antiseptic rinses, artificial saliva or a saliva stimulator such as Biotene Oral Balance or Oasis Mouthwash. New technologies are coming out (such as an Air Flosser by the Phillips Company which makes the Sonicare toothbrush line). Do not give up on your mouth because — as I can attest — the cost is high. You may let things get so bad that even dentures cannot help you. Eat right. Visit a hygienist at least every six months and be sure that you tell her about your medications so she can advise an effective course of treatment for keeping your teeth while keeping your sanity, too.

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Insert a Trite Metaphor for a Corral #96

Posted on May 8, 2011 in Roundup

Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people. -Eleanor Roosevelt

square723Almost as soon as the story about bin Laden’s death came out, people began putting up notices on Facebook that said “Obama didn’t kill [[Osama bin Laden]], a soldier did.” This was countered by many of us who posted “If Obama doesn’t get credit for killing Osama because he didn’t pull the trigger, does that mean that bin Laden gets a pass because he didn’t fly the planes?” The Deathers rose fast and crashed hard when their allegations that bin Laden wasn’t really dead were destroyed by [[Al Qaeda]]’s announcement that it would seek revenge for the death of their leader. One commenter gasped “Oh no! The conspiracy is so vast that even Al Qaeda is in on it!”

Silverado Canyon from the Motorway 4/20/2011

Silverado Canyon from the Motorway

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Reflections of a Progressive on the Death of Osama bin Laden

Posted on May 3, 2011 in Terrorism Violence War

square722Here is my ideal for handling a terrorist like [[Osama bin Laden]]: the Navy [[SEALS]] capture him. He is brought back to the United States for trial in the Great State of New York. It is televised (though no one is allowed to be in the courtroom except the necessary officers of the court ((All lawyers are considered to be officers of the court.)) which include the prosecution and his defense attorneys.) He is found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. He is locked up in solitary confinement for the rest of his days with only a Quran, a Bible, and a prayer rug. No one is allowed to interview him or see him. He eats and sleeps in the cell. He is forgotten and when he dies, he barely rates a mention on the obituary page.

Of course, that didn’t happen. The SEALS tracked him down and shot him. President Obama came forward and calmly announced that he was dead. Then left the East Room. That was that.

I would have liked to have seen this play out differently. But our armed forces are not trained to take prisoners in such situations. This deficiency should be corrected for future missions. We are engaged in developing all kinds of technology for the better killing of people, so why not develop better ones for capturing them, for neutralizing hostile fire without eliminating the combatants? This is a dream I have. I think war is a horrible thing and it does horrible things to the people who engage in and to the people who cheer it on. Pamela Gerloff writes in Psychology Today:

The death of Osama bin Laden gives us an opportunity to ask ourselves: What kind of nation and what kind of species do we want to be? Do we want to become a species that honors life? Do we want to become a species that embodies peace? If that is what we want, then we need to start now to examine our own hearts and actions, and begin to consciously evolve in that direction. We could start by not celebrating the killing of another.

It is hard not to think that some of the impulse to celebrate “justice being done” may also contain a certain pleasure in revenge–not just “closure” but “getting even.” The world is not safer with Osama bin Laden’s violent demise (threat levels are going up, not down), so no cause for celebration there; evil has not been finally removed from the Earth, so no reason for jubilation on that count. The War on Terror goes on, so there is no closure in that regard. The truth is that “celebrating justice” when one person is killed–as happens regularly in the gang wars of American cities–only incites further desire for revenge, which, from “the other side’s” viewpoint, is usually called “justice.”

The days following bin Laden’s death have been filled with partisan squabbling. The Democrats drum it into the Republicans that it was one of their own who finally got things together and tracked down the evil man. Republican lovers of waterboarding want to take credit for it even though the evidence shows that torture delayed the revelation of the name of bin Laden’s courier and the location of his compound. Progressives want to hang yet another albatross around the president’s neck for shooting the unarmed terrorist.

But Obama is staying cool. The hard work of his intelligence officers and the SEALS yielded this conquest. The victory is all his and the people who did their jobs at his command. But he is not gloating, he is not dancing in the streets. He has returned to other pressing matters. That is an example we all should follow whether we agree with the particulars or not.

Many Native American peoples used to have special ceremonies to decompress their warriors so that they could resume lives of peace. I think we could stand a bit of that transition now. Bin Laden is dead. Acknowledge the fact and move on.

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My Worst Migraine

Posted on May 1, 2011 in Body Language Neurology Travels - Past

square721[[Serbia]]. September 1992. We ignored the sanctions against the country to meet with some peace groups in the capital city of [[Beograd]]. The streets of the city were quiet. Few restaurants were open. We found one that proved to be ultra-nationalist in character. Long, lean icons of [[Chetnik]] leaders — think [[El Greco]] — stared down the tables in the darkened dining room. The waitress handed us a menu in Cyrillic characters which Lynn could read but I couldn’t. She pored down the list, rejecting beef items, until she found the Slavic word for “chicken”.

She pointed to the line. The waitress blinked her eyes and said “Are you sure?”

Absolutely, we confirmed. She shrugged her shoulders and went back into the kitchen. A few minutes later, she brought out a chopska salad made with chili peppers. I partook of this cautiously before our actual dinner arrived: a plate heaped with steaming chicken livers.

Hungry because we had not eaten all day, we devoured the organs. A few minutes into our gluttony, I began to feel sick. This worsened as the night progressed. When we went to sleep on the floor of a friend’s apartment, my stomach boiled and my head exploded like shells from an [[M-84]] tank. I wanted badly to throw up, but I couldn’t. Blindly, I cursed that salad.

The keeper of the peace center wrote a note for me explaining my condition and I sought relief from a nearby pharmacist who gave me a few white pills. They didn’t help. We took the train ((This was memorable for the man who shared our compartment with us. He was surprised to find a pair of Americans joining him. “Are you spies?” he asked.)) to our next stop, [[Skopje]], [[Republic of Macedonia]]. By this time, the migraine had torched the interior of my head and scraped out my digestive tract, all without the relief expulsion would bring. I felt the effects for three or four days. Sleep was difficult. Waking found me a mobile skeleton and little more. The attack left me cranky all the way to Athens. ((The transition from socialist Yugoslavia to capitalist Greece was interesting. In Yugo and Macedonia, all the trains were pulled by massive, modern, electric [[Bo-Bo-Bo]] 20s. At the Greek border, they switched to a steam engine!))

For years, I cursed those peppers. But recently, I discovered that they were not the culprit — the chicken livers had done me in! Had I chosen a steak over them, I would have been a happier man. In all future moments when the wind would rise or — when migraine pain eradicated all gentility — I would remember those four bad, bad days.

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Deciphering the Migraine Cipher

Posted on May 1, 2011 in Body Language Neurology

After great pain, a formal feeling comes. The Nerves sit ceremonious, like tombs.” by Emily Dickinson

square720Ah, blue cheese. I love soft blue cheese, tangy and creamy, a benediction to every stone-ground wheat cracker that it graces. I eat two or three small wedges a day, exalting in the crunch and softness of my snack pairing. Blue cheese makes me happy. And in this season, it also makes me sick.

I ate a lot of blue cheese this past week.

Aged cheeses trigger migraines, ((Funny thing is I used to blame all the herbs that went with Mexican or Italian food for the sickness I felt after eating these cuisines. It had to be the cilantro or the onions or the garlic or the oregano or the peppers. The idea that it was the cheese never occurred to me.)) a fact I forget for much of the year. Come spring, however, the [[tyramine]] levels concentrate in my system. Exaltation turns to eruption of my gastric system. ((There’s some recent research implicating the cluster of nerves that surround the digestive system and the bacteria living within in many brain disorders. I know that my gut figures prominently in my migraines, so is there a connection?)) My neck stiffens, my ears burn, and sometimes my head throbs behind the left eye. I sing misère, take my [[Compazine]], and cover my eyes. I crack my neck and lean forward because this sooths my stomach and my head. If I can, I lie on my bed and cover my eyes. All this, I am sure, is familiar to my fellow sufferers.

Strangely, I still laugh and I still get hungry, though the nausea makes me cautious. I dare not try one popular cure for migraines — [[cayenne peppers]] or their derivative [[capsaicin]] ((Sometimes incorrectly identified as “[[capsicum]]” which is the genus of plants to which peppers belong)) — because I do not trust the linings of my digestive tract to keep them down. When all this knowledge is reminded to me, I control my diet. But then come days when I am doing everything right but I still get sick.

The difference is the wind. [[Santa Ana winds]] — better called “satanas” by some of us — drop from the mountains and push against the windows. I’m not sure if it is the dust or the pollen or just the energy these [[foehns]] concentrate on my doorstep or rob from my rooms. I know that I cannot look at the bright light of the clear days that they bring, that the nausea returns, and I add sneezing to the usual complex. Their howl is joined by my whimpering. If I ate of the fell list during these times, I would most certainly die.


UPDATE: A friend who read this article sent me this link about the dangerous X-14 Cheese. (Hoax)

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Insert a Trite Metaphor for a Corral #95

Posted on May 1, 2011 in Roundup

To reach a port, we must sail – sail, not tie at anchor – sail, not drift. ~Franklin D. Roosevelt

square719Mark this as the week when Obama answered the birther conspiracy once and for all — and pretty much found himself in the same place. But you can also mark it as the point at which the birthers lost their cachet of “doing the right thing for the country” and exposed themselves as partisan racists. Would they have raised a ruckus about John McCain whose birth in the Canal Zone makes his fulfillment of the requirement to have been native born in the United States (not its territories, but the United States) questionable? I doubt it.

Dandelions 4/22/2011

Dandelions

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