Changing Places

Elyn Saks is a brave, brave lady….

Those of us willing to be open about bipolar disorder or schizophrenia are too rare. It’s really sad that if you have cancer everyone is sympathetic, but if you have a mental disorder people shy away from you or cuts you off. Those of us who have been there know how tough the loss of friends and sometimes even family can be. It’s a hard thing to be open enough to even blog about it, much less write a book. Namaste, Elyn…

A Law Professor on Living with Schizophrenia – Newsweek Health – MSNBC.com

It’s clear from your book you not only had good health care but friends and family who were adept at managing and coping with your psychosis. Many people with schizophrenia aren’t as lucky, right?

I say most of my success has been due to luck—to have supportive family and friends, to respond to medication and to have the resources to get proper care. There are a lot of people who have schizophrenia and bipolar disorder who do not have resources and can’t get help. Mine is a story of someone who did well with good treatment. One of the tragedies of our system is that most people don’t get the kind of help they need and if they got treatment, they could be much happier and higher-functioning

Why did you write the book?

To give hope to those who suffer from schizophrenia and understanding to those who don’t. I hope to give a window into the mind of someone who acutely suffered from psychosis. It seems to me if people understand, they’re going to be less likely to be frightened, less likely to be hostile, and hopefully the stigma will decrease. Obviously the stigma is bad for a lot of reasons, including that it discourages people from getting help.

How did your colleagues respond to your memoir?

About a month ago the book started circulating around the office and this person said I’m really glad I didn’t know you had a mental illness because I never would have gone out to dinner with you. In a way it’s stunning, but in another way I was glad she felt comfortable enough to tell me. The stigma is so powerful even good, and well-meaning people can’t always get beyond their fears.

(via Hoffmania)

John Edwards for President-Edwards Statement on the Resignation of Karl Rove

John Edwards today released the following statement in reaction to President Bush’s announcement that his senior advisor, Karl Rove, will resign at the end of the month:

“Goodbye, good riddance.”

Karl said he might be writing a book, but you know, Machiavelli wrote “The Prince” centuries ago. I really don’t think Rove would have anything original to add.

We can only hope the era of the Mayberry Machiavellis is coming to an end.

Stoopid Bush. Glad he’s going on vacation after crashing the market!

Dow Plunges 387 on Subprime Concerns: Financial News – Yahoo! Finance

Wall Street plunged again Thursday after a French bank said it was freezing three funds that invested in U.S. subprime mortgages because it was unable to properly value their assets. The Dow Jones industrials extended its series of triple-digit swings, this time falling more than 380 points.

Bush Confident of Market Recovery: Financial News – Yahoo! Finance

President Bush struck a reassuring tone Wednesday about recent turbulence on Wall Street, saying he believes the markets will work their way through the turmoil safely and achieve a “soft landing.”

Bush, in his most extensive remarks on a gyrating stock market that has sent investors on a rollercoaster ride, expressed confidence that investors would eventually calm down. The president said he expects investors to reassess their risk and begin to focus more on the economy’s fundamentals, which he said are solid and sound.

“I’m not an economist, but my hope is that the market, if it functions normally, will be able to yield a soft landing,” Bush said. “That’s kind of what it looks like so far.”

Who are we, not to shine? — Nelson Mandela

All of us have experienced moments of profound connectedness — the caress of a spring breeze on bare skin, the feeling in our chests when we look into another’s eyes with love, the holy awe of gazing at a star-strewn summer sky. There is a greatness right beneath the surface of everyday life, and every once in a while we catch a glimpse of it. Those are the sudden, lucid flashes when life beguiles us out of the prison of our minds and leads us right into the moment. On our mats and on our meditation cushions, we begin to experience this deep connection as an everyday occurrence. Isvara-pranidhana is about making the experience of greatness a priority.

And why not? We can live in the light with the same ease with which we live in our darkness. We are surrounded by mentors, by men and women who have chosen to live life on a higher plane, for a higher purpose. The music we listen to, the movies we watch, the books we read — all abound with references to the sweetness of “amazing grace”. This final moment in the eight limbs of yoga is about allowing grace to happen. Not hoping for it to happen, not trying hard to let it happen, not believing that one day it will happen — this final moment is about letting it happen. It is about shining, and who are we not to shine? — Rolf Gates, Meditations from the Mat

Isvara-pranidhana – This niyama doesn’t require that you believe in a god or follow any religion but comes from an understanding of the mind. Our neural networks wire according to the paths most frequently fired in our brains. That means the more you think something, the easier it is for your mind to follow the neural pathway of thinking that way. If you don’t think in new ways, learn new things or have different experiences, your brain will not form new neural pathways. You quite literally become ‘narrow-minded’. Living like this is unconsciously habitual, what yoga calls living with samskara (mental ‘sludge’ or buildup from repetition). Isvara-pranidhana encourages you to always “open your mind” to the opportunity of something bigger, different, or new. It’s an acceptance of the fact that your own desires, will to power and actions are not the only thing going on in reality. It encourages you to stay open to working with forces out of your control instead of fearing, resisting, or battling them, clinging to a desire to predict reality through habit. — Asia Nelson

As we remember, relaxation is very important!

Hmmm. Remember that post on resilience from the other day? Might be even more important than we know….

the whole post linked to is well worth a read for great examples of the dangers of electing Republican officials, too.

The Next Hurrah: Minnesota’s “Mess Across the River”

What they seem to be telling us is that this “style” of Bridge has no real redundancy in it — if one critical member fails, the whole thing falls down. This was understood with the Silver Bridge Failure over the Ohio River a few years after the I-35W bridge was constructed, and design criteria were modified requiring more redundency — but it was too late for this one, and about 700 others, mostly built for the Interstate System, around the country. Apparently they no longer build this style bridge.

So understanding the problem probably will require going back into the mists of the early 1960′s when the design contracts were let, and taking a good critical look at the assumptions of that period. I seriously doubt if they comprehended traffic volume, truck weights, and all the rest that apply today at the time of design, and I suspect we’ll find many modifications have been made over the years that did not go back and look at those assumptions before adding traffic, weight, and all the rest, and modifications — such as adding extra lanes further stressed the structure.

What is WRONG with this country that a man who almost cratered one company gets to run another one into the ground? Like Chrysler didn’t have enough problems, they pick THIS asshat to run it?

Geez, I don’t even need my MBA to know this will be another disaster. The man nearly destroyed Home Depot. It’s only now recovering at all. We literally stopped shopping there, it was so bad.

Well, I know I’ll never buy another U.S. made car again anyway. Geez, didn’t we rule this industry once? Too bad the Harvard MBAs can’t figure out that people actually want decently made cars with great fuel efficiency, isn’t it?

Cerberus Capital Management, indeed. A three headed monster for sure….

Ex-Home Depot Chief Taking Reins at Chrysler – New York Times

Robert L. Nardelli, who was ousted as chief executive of Home Depot amid shareholder discontent this year over his enormous pay package, is taking on one of the most prominent jobs in corporate America: revitalizing the troubled automaker Chrysler.

Chrysler’s new owner, the private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management, chose Mr. Nardelli because of his turnaround expertise, people with direct knowledge of the Cerberus plans said.

Damn straight. In my own life I realized that I didn’t have to be great, but I did have to stop being ashamed. I don’t try to live to anyone else’s standards but my own anymore – and you know what? It makes you a lot happier.

The people who “lead” our country and “represent” us need to set their own standards – and they damn sure need to start setting them a lot higher than capitulation to an administration that wants to spy on us so they can control the political scene in this country, that wants to use the justice department as a freaking political tool.

I want my America back, dammit. I want it NOW. To hell with this farce that is costing us our rights and liberties – to hell with it.

First Draft

I’ve been thinking about this a lot, about the ready-made excuses we all have for not doing what we know, deep down, we should be doing. I’ve got them myself, you know? I can’t call that person back, I’m too tired. I don’t have time to volunteer for that place, I have … important television to watch, or I need time for myself or my family … to eat things and not talk about politics with them, or I can’t commit to one more thing … because there’s a God-imposed limit of three, and what I really need is more time to sleep … because that’s totally what I want on my fucking tombstone, “she was very well-rested.”

I mean, we all have reasons we can’t be the people we know we should be, and we know they’re true because we spend that hour between 3 a.m. and 4 a.m. staring into the vodka shot that’s finally gonna knock us out telling ourselves that they’re true. Giving ourselves the courage to have no courage at all, because that inner voice is strong in us, the one that says, “Be more than this.” That voice is loud and it’s insistent and it’s a pain in the ass, and there’s not much most of us won’t do to drown it out just so we can have some fucking peace for once.

We all have reasons not to listen, and we all have stuff we throw out to get in the way, like the chase scene in an action movie, where guys are chucking stuff out of a van to create an obstacle course so the bad guys can’t catch them, like a desk and a big stuffed giraffe and shit. We all have all this stuff we put in the way of what we know we’re supposed to be doing, and the only breakthroughs that ever really happen to people are when the bullshit just suddenly stops working, and the excuses stop being enough, and the voice gets loud enough that we actually start listening to it for once. I’ve never had a religious conversion but I had someone explain it to me that way once, that her particular deity just sat her ass down one day and said, “Look, quit fucking around.”

And what we hear from our leaders lately is a lot of excuses, a lot of reasons why they can’t be the people we elected them to be. The Republicans will attack me. It’s too hard. Where’s the money going to come from? That’s not politically achievable. I need my powder dry for something else down the road. My constituents wouldn’t like that. Or this. Or another thing. They’ve thrown all this stuff out in the road, all this stuff they’ve told themselves is true about how they can’t be the people they know they should be and believe me, they know it, they wouldn’t be there if they didn’t, about how it’s the money, or the influence, or something else holding them back. Because if it’s outside factors, then it’s not that they’re failing. It’s not their fault. They can go home and be okay with the man in the mirror, they can sleep fine tonight.

And it’s not that far removed, really, from the wingnuts who sit on their couches and pretend it’s the women and minorities who are the reasons they can’t get good jobs or get laid. It’s all just stuff they’ve told themselves, conventional wisdom about not defying the president, stuff that’s only true because it’s been repeated long enough to sound like something that makes sense. It’s bullshit, all of it, and it’s exhausting, and sometimes I don’t know how they don’t get tired of it. It is tiring, throwing all that stuff out of the van into the road, it’s just as time-consuming to make up stories about how you don’t suck as it would be to not suck in the first place, so on balance, why not try not sucking for a while?

Because when you do throw out all those excuses, all those oh-so-acceptable reasons for behaving like muddleheaded spineless douchebags — I don’t have time, I have a family, I have a mortgage, I’ve gotta explain it to my district, I need this, I need that, me me me me me — and actually put yourself out there to do what you know you need to do? That’s how every glorious, God-given, leap-forward moment in anybody’s history ever happens. That’s how anybody does anything great, that’s the thing. It’s never that some new idea occurs to them that they’ve never thought of before. It’s that they stop making excuses and start acting like they knew they should have been acting all along.

I get this question a lot in my offline life and I’ll bet, in the face of the outrage of a lot of Democrats this morning congressional Dems will be asking it too: What was I supposed to do? In the face of all my excuses, what was I supposed to do? In the face of all the stories I tell myself about how I’m beaten down and the victim of a system that makes me a failure and the things I know are true for no other reason than I just know them, what was I supposed to do?

What are you supposed to do? You know the answer to that already. You’ve been trying to avoid it and shut it up for years. What are you supposed to do? You’re supposed to do what you’re supposed to do. You’re supposed to do what you wish you could do. You’re supposed to stand up when standing up is called for, and stop kidding yourself that you don’t know when that is. You’re supposed to stop being afraid of your own shadow, and of all the shadows you invent, and make your life mean something. You’re supposed to imagine yourself explaining to your children, when they come home with the book open to your time on this earth, to your opportunity, and say, “What did you do then?” You’re supposed to have an answer for them that doesn’t involve, “I had to pay my bills on time” or “I had to get re-elected.”

You’re supposed to be great instead of being ashamed.

Schmucks.

One of the things I learned while doing my volunteer orientation at the Escondido Humane Society today is that they currently have 684 animals at the shelter. There must be over 100 kittens in the kitten nursery. It is truly sad. Please, be responsible pet owners and spay and neuter your pets. It is so sad that this many animals need homes. And it isn’t just this shelter – they said every shelter in San Diego County is packed to the rafters with animals right now.

And many of the dogs are pit bulls or pit bull mixes. So sad that these dogs are raised and then neglected. We met a mastiff/pit bull mix named Homer Simpson who was so sweet. He looks fierce, but is so gentle. Someone had cut off his ears. I don’t even know how people could do such a thing.

And if there’s room in your home and heart for an adoptee, now seems to be the time. So many needing a home….

Darwin has passed his first hurdle today in becoming a therapy dog. We interviewed with the Director of Education at the Escondido Humane Society, and Darwin did very well, staying on his best behavior and not getting upset at the noise of lawn maintenance equipment, dogs barking, the small animals in the director’s office, or much of anything else. He made friends of the staff pretty quickly, and one of the older gentleman volunteers was very taken with him, saying, “Aw, you’ve made my day!” The director just beamed at me and said, “Well, this is what you’re in for!” . So we’re going to start working with their therapy and education programs. I think he’s going to have a great career as a therapy dog!